Welcome to the World of Thune, a realm of shifting currents, frozen echoes, and cosmic depths where reality wears thin.
The edge of the world is not a cliff, but a fading. Out past the known trade routes lies the Pale—a domain of “thin water” where pasts that never happened and futures that might have been drift like ghost ships through the mist. To sail here is to risk your sanity, your memories, and your crew, paying a toll with your very identity just to push forward.
Yet, despite the horror, the deep calls to those who have lost too much to turn back. Fifty years ago by dense time, the Cinderhold cartographer Sarella Oke sailed into the white to map what lies beyond, leaving behind only a recovered journal and a terrifying truth: someone did get close.
Setting the Scene for Your Campaign
“The wind drops to a silence so absolute you can hear the frost forming on the rigging. Up ahead, through the bank of blinding white mist, the ghost of another ship slows and turns. You see yourselves at the rail—older, whole, lanterns burning bright. The figure at the wheel raises a hand, pointing back toward the deep. Don’t, the gesture says. Or: not yet. Then, with a sound like snapping ice, the phantom unhappens. Ahead, the hum of the Pale Courts grows louder. Behind you, far beneath the freezing tide, something enormous shifts in its slumber.”
Campaign Hook: The Legacy of Sarella Oke
The Mission: The party has been hired—or driven by personal tragedy—to follow the route detailed in Sarella Oke’s recovered journal and breach the Pale Courts.
The Hazards: Navigating the Pale requires more than Survival checks. Players must contend with dimensional echoes, psychological erosion (“the toll behind the eyes”), and ancient leviathans sleeping beneath the ice.
The Goal: Reach the heart of the Pale Courts to rewrite a tragedy, claim forgotten ancient power, or chart the uncharted before reality unravels completely.
*******
THUNE: THE COMPLETE SETTING DOCUMENT
PART ONE: DEEP HISTORY
Before Thune, there was the Moon Maker: a place of fantastic horror
that nearly wiped out all life and sentient minds on its surface
and inside it.
An ancient being known as Miriada the Often Times Reasonable
created the first runes to sap, negate, and control the Moon
Maker’s power. The Moon Maker was broken into three moons,
each holding a lense of runic power.
THE THREE LENSES
1. BRIGHT FORGE (the Lense of Power)
Also called the Warrior’s Torch and the Evening Sentinel.
Second largest, second most dense. A moon of red iron,
granite, and clay, home to many forms of magical cactus
and insects, and grassy fields where the fastest equines
live, along with equine beings of almost all varieties.
Its lense holds all rune powers made of the philosophies
that discuss how things are achieved.
2. THE KING’S SHIELD MATE (the Lense of Love)
Also called the Light of Hope and the Queen’s Mercy.
Largest and least dense: a pale golden all-gas moon that
refracts light in the most beautiful colors. Within its
core sits the lense of love. All manner of aves (bird life)
and other heroic beings built a castle at its center,
guarded by giant eagles and the most heroic beings they
could find. Its lense contains the runes made of all
philosophies that discuss how to live in a more joyful,
peaceful world, and all ways to prevent and undo suffering.
3. THE MIDNIGHT MOON (the Lense of Truth)
Smallest and most dense: a tiny midnight-blue moon of
pure water. Its external volume is one fourth that of
Bright Forge, yet its interior holds four times the volume
of the Light of Hope, and is near boundless. It contains
every conceivable form of sea life, beautiful and horrific,
especially many varieties of ravenous sea serpents. Each
being lives there developing knowledge of its own magic
and learning the secrets of shapeshifting from Miriada
the Often Times Reasonable and her family, who guard the
lense in the middle of the lunar ocean. Its lense holds
all runes made of the philosophies dealing with evidence,
how information is examined, and what can and cannot be
observed or demonstrated.
THE CONTEST
The three lunar societies fell into conflict. Power wanted
its philosophy declared most valuable, but Truth stretched
out Power’s flaws and turned them against itself. Power saw
its own weakness and turned its strength inward to correct it.
Love bent Power’s force toward creative and defensive ends,
until Power could only serve the other two.
Love and Truth then strove to define which of their
philosophies was best, and each agreed to let Power cast
the deciding vote. Power agreed, but only through a contest:
each moon must demonstrate the most power achievable under
its own philosophy.
Power created a small moon called Science for Truth, and
another called Magic for Love. Each was to use its gift to
establish the largest domain of power.
Love used magic to create an aerial biosphere called the
Grand Shield, to develop and support life. Truth used science
to forge a deep, dense iron core within the Shield, governing
how magic could be controlled and wielded safely. Life grew
and evolved.
Power refused to vote, seeing both as critical to power
itself, and demanded one final test: Love and Truth must
together create a secondary moon of their own, and Power
would crown whichever brought the most love or truth through
a common source of power.
Love and Truth enveloped the solid core not with power but
with a boundless source of wonder, joy, and discovery. They
created a hydrological moon called Art, uniting love and
truth. In that realm, evolved beings developed intellect:
the Undine, born of water, used science to develop technology
and magic to create the runic forms that call on runic power.
From these they built language and math; from language and
math they used art to create song, poetry, paint, and
tapestry; and with art they inspired and guided their
technology.
In time the Undine built an empire more advanced than the
three moons had dared conceive. Yet Power could see no clear
winner, and offered a tie with a compromise: the moons of
Magic and Science would be absorbed into the core along with
all three lenses. Each day a new lense would rise to power,
each philosophy owning a day, holding power for eight hours
of the night.
The core was given a rotary heart for all three lenses. The
moon of Magic wove a highly advanced kelp forest from her
ever-long vines. Science descended as vast stone towers that
bonded to the core, regulating runic power so the Moon
Maker’s force could never resurface except as an inert shield
to aid and protect the life of Thune. This also allowed the
many vast board planes, where things could be built and
sustained more easily.
Seeing this, Power, Love, and Truth abandoned their contest,
accepting there could be no single best philosophy, only a
philosophy that is someone’s personal favorite.
THE BINDING
Each bound a piece of itself to Thune. Truth granted a vast
network of sandstone, earth, silt, and soil to seal away
Thune’s core, forcing science to become something that must
always be dug up. Love gave some of the clouds, granting
life-giving water to plants and electricity that energized
the earth and made the sky forever beautiful. Power granted
fire, covering each of the boards with thick, fertile ashen
earth. Power’s greatest gift: each stone tower of science
held a measure of new power from the center, radiating
outward as liquid fire which, frozen, created new land and
many new elements, letting life thrive on the surface. The
second gift was wind, scattering seeds of life across every
new place to live. The stone towers that did not serve as
geothermal vents held the power to divide and spread as
mystic energy shook them apart, scattering their presence
across all of Thune.
Exhausted, the three stayed to watch over this process until,
in their sleep, a new presence awoke: Thune herself, now the
moon keeper and lunar guardian.
The three can now grant only tiny amounts of power to any
one being, but they eradicated the Moon Maker’s toxic force
to forge the runes of Thune, defender of moons. As Thune’s
internal core matrix stretched out to bind and rebuild each
moon, those moons woke to be defended rather than defenders.
Over many years Thune evolved into an advanced planet.
Then the miracle repeated: nearly every Dred realm became
like Thune, each linking to the others, and every new cosmic
event caused the first Thune (Thune Da) to blossom into
another Thune-scape, near identical to the first. Ribbons
of tiny advanced planes formed, all connected by rune-powered
energy.
And that was something nobody could have protected.
PART TWO: THE ORATHI SYSTEM
Thune is not merely a planet but the heart of a star system:
nine true planets orbit a golden sun.
ORATHI, THE SUN
Orathi is a dense hydrogen-helium mass kept eternally young,
often called the Golden Queen’s vampire daughter; Orathi in
the old tongue means “gold daughter.” She holds an intelligent
matrix of dark matter enchanted by a central golden sigil.
Part of this sigil is the Nydilan system: a complex of
umbilical lines that draws abysmal energies out of all
thinking life in the system and replaces them. This network
keeps Orathi connected to the stardust of her system,
converting every element of thinking stardust into a rune
forge or spellcasting system that can conjure objects of
arcane force.
Arcane force begins as a network of dark matter and dark
energy bound to the strings of the cosmos, sometimes called
the cosmic harp, strung by sentient tachyons through the
Nydilan system. Simply put: arcane force is what ideas look
like in the universe before effort is placed behind them to
engineer them into something else. Being too abstract to
grasp directly, it is symbolized with runes and sigils, and
what runes and sigils represent is ideas.
Some ideas are so powerful they take on life and stardust on
their own, condensing dark matter to so fine a point it
becomes a proton. Such protons are called quantrons; they
attract far smaller neutron counterparts, and these forces
can convert any non-boson in their environment into an
acting electron in their field. It is with powerful ideas
that whole planets are born.
THE NINE PLANETS
Each planet embodies a philosophical question and an energy:
1. WHILMA — radiant energy. “When do we do something?”
(Wisdom)
2. TALLIA — fiery energy. “When do we avoid something?”
(Tactics)
3. THUNE — acidic energy. “Who am I?”
4. ARAMAYA — force energy. “How do we accomplish?”
(Ambition)
5. HERA — electrical energy. “How do we prevent?”
(Heroism)
6. HEYA (Hera’s twin) — healing energy. “What will
improve something?” (Health)
7. FRANCHESA — mind and psychic energy. “What is
dangerous?” (Foresight)
8. UNA — cold and acceptance energy. “Why do certain
things happen?” (Understanding)
9. PATRICIA — necrotic energy. “Why can’t certain things
come to pass?” (Peace). Patricia leads souls in and out
of dream worlds through the old docks.
Orathi herself represents the arcane schools of Conjuration
and Evocation, the tenth grand ultra-sigil of the system.
Greatest among the planets’ powers is Hera’s: the ability
to call in new moons and planetoids.
Thune holds the most powerful moons, as the system’s biggest
investment, but the other eight sisters can be repaid when
Thune’s inhabitants craft new moons of their own.
PART THREE: THUNE AS HAVEN
Thune exists as a haven for tormented souls cast out of
other planes, and for those who suffered significant injury
to their souls. Such souls are often reincarnated within
her shelter.
This is why Thune Da keeps blossoming into new Thune-scapes:
every cosmic event births another refuge, another ribbon in
the connected planes, each one a fresh harbor for the broken,
each one linked by rune-powered energy to all the others.
Nobody could have protected all of them. Nobody has to.
That was never the point. The point was that there would
always be somewhere to go.
PART FOUR: RECONCILIATION — THE TWO THUNES AS ONE
The Thune of the astral gates and the Thune of the three
lenses are the same world, seen from opposite sides of
the veil.
THE SLIP IS THE NYDILAN SYSTEM, SEEN FROM OUTSIDE
The Nydilan network of umbilical lines that draws abysmal
energies out of thinking life and replaces them: from
beyond, this is the slip, the astral sea on which dreamers
sail. The “astral gates equal to the number of conscious
minds in the universe” are the Nydilan connection points,
one per thinking being, each mind a gate because each mind
is literally wired into the system. To sail the slip is to
travel the umbilical lines between minds.
THUNE DA IS THE FIRST GATE-WORLD
The realm of supreme biodiversity and danger glimpsed beyond
a single astral gate is Thune Da, the first Thune, seen by a
traveler who entered through their own mind’s gate and never
learned its name. The thinning of time with distance from
the gate is the rotary core’s doing: each lense holds power
for eight hours of the night, and far from the gate, far
from the core’s dense rotation, time loses its grip the way
heat leaves a body.
THE MAIN LINE ISLANDS ARE THUNE-SCAPES
The Island-worlds strung along the gate’s wake, each a
planet or miniature star system sitting in a pocket of
vacuum on the astral sea, are the daughter Thune-scapes,
each blossomed from Thune Da at a cosmic event, each a
refuge-haven for reincarnated tormented souls. That is why
they exist “only in certain quantities and only in certain
spaces”: each was born of a specific event, a specific
need, a specific soul’s injury. The impenetrable walls of
solid spacetime to the east and west are the boundaries of
the ribbon, the edges of the connected planes where the
rune-powered links run out.
THE GRAND ICEBERGS ARE UNA’S TOUCH
The vast frozen continents that grow larger and colder with
distance are the mark of Una, eighth planet, cold and
acceptance energy, “why do certain things happen?” The
frozen wastes are where the system’s unanswered questions
pool and freeze. The Pale Courts, the living ice that
rearranges when unobserved, are Una’s dreams made solid:
acceptance given a throne.
THE BECALMED ARE THE MOON MAKER’S ECHO
Those stuck in thin time, repeating one gesture forever,
are caught in the inert remnant of the Moon Maker’s power,
the force the stone towers of science bound and regulated.
It can never resurface as it was, but at the frayed edges
of time it pools, and the unwary step in. The bottled hours
sailors pour out for them are literal density: concentrated
core-time, the only thing that still answers.
PORT VESPER TRADES IN DREAMS BECAUSE THUNE IS A HAVEN
The dusk markets sell vials of other people’s dreams
because Thune’s whole purpose is sheltering injured souls,
and injured souls dream the loudest. The divers who siphon
dreams from the slip are swimming the Nydilan lines. The
blind vendor selling you your own forgotten night is one
of Patricia’s dock-keepers, tending the passage in and out
of dream worlds. Ilya’s vial, labeled FOR WHEN I COME BACK
WRONG, waits because reincarnation within Thune’s shelter
is not a metaphor: she may come back, and the market will
be ready.
MIRIADA’S RUNES ARE THE STONE TOWERS
The first runes Miriada carved to sap the Moon Maker’s power
are the ancestors of the stone towers of science, which
still regulate runic power so the horror can never return
except as an inert, protective force. Every rune circle a
player draws (DC 12 + proficiency with calligraphy tools,
after a DC 15 Arcana check to know the runes) is a small
echo of Miriada’s first working.
THE THREE MOONS VISIT DREAMERS
The booster feat’s promise, that the three moons visit
believers in their dreams as the pawn, bishop, and queen,
is literal: Power, Love, and Truth sleep within Thune’s
core, granting only tiny measures of power now, and they
walk the Nydilan lines at night, which is to say they walk
the slip, which is to say they walk through dreams. Anyone
marked a “lunatic” for receiving their gifts is simply
someone whose gate is open wider than the bland can tolerate.
ILYA’S STORY, RETOLD
Ilya Venn sails the wake between Thune-scapes, running the
Nydilan lines toward Thune Da. The toll the gate takes in
memory is the system drawing off abysmal energies and
replacing them, exactly as designed. Her other self pointing
back toward the deep is the network showing her what the
haven is for: not escape, but return. There is always
somewhere to go, and the somewhere is always Thune.
PART FIVE: GAME SYSTEMS (PRESERVED FROM SOURCE)
THE TRIO’S GIFTS (booster feat, available at 1st level)
Anyone who believes in the powers of philosophy, art, and
science, and who holds that through well-reasoned
consideration they can become better than they are, will be
visited in dreams by the three moons. Beware: once you
receive the gifts you may be marked as a lunatic, making
life in the bland harder.
GIFT OF TRUTH:
– Add your Intelligence modifier to your other mental
modifier when determining spell save DC and spell attack
bonus.
– Use reason and science to determine what makes a good
spell: you can hand-engineer blueprints and schemas for
magic spells and items. All 1st-level spells and magic
items up to rare quality can be engineered by hand, so
long as they are based on things that exist with only
minor tweaks.
– With only pen and paper, once per month you may engineer
shorthand forms of up to 5 new spells (up to 5th level
each) for your spellbook, from the schools of enchantment
or illusion. Alternatively, gain prestige training worth
1000 x your Intelligence modifier.
– Truth: magic is a science. Dream worlds are alternate
quantum instances of your own planet; if you can
rationally predict where a dream world diverges from the
bland world, you can find where the bland world has
magical properties, and engineer magical objects.
GIFT OF LOVE:
– Add your Wisdom modifier to any spell with an output of
multiple dice.
– Your conviction and compassion raise all abjuration
spells (counterspell, dispel magic, etc.) by a number of
effective spell levels equal to your Wisdom modifier.
– Once per month, a line of credit equal to 1000 x your
Wisdom bonus, usable to offset costly beneficial spells
like raise dead and greater restoration.
– You are deeply loved by your moon, by all watching forces,
and by the greatest cosmic forces. Your rights as a
sentient being are intrinsically sacred; without you there
to observe it, nobody calls the universe beautiful.
GIFT OF POWER:
– You may always trade a level in a non-casting class for a
spellcasting class level. When mixing two arcane casting
classes, your highest spell level is determined by adding
both class levels together.
– You may take objects that exist only in fictional worlds
and make them fully real, if they fit in your room and you
can guess how they might function magically. When not in
use, store them back in the book. This may be an object of
your own design.
– Once per month, gain an object worth gold equal to 1000 x
your Charisma modifier.
– Gain bonus feats equal to one fourth your class level.
Whenever you increase an ability score, you may also
select a feat, including feats of magical transformation
(such as becoming a Jub Jub).
The ultimate powers sit inside your heart: your artistic,
scientific, and philosophical prowess, unique to you. Those
who deny you this are not merely liars; they are the ones
who keep their eyes closed so the monsters won’t find them.
You are the opposite of that.
MOON FORGING (the Nydilan rite)
Denizens of Thune can create new moons from runes using the
Nydilan system. These moons help govern the Orathi system.
Four kinds:
– SPADES (barren moons): shed magic to other bodies. Grant
conjuration: one conjuration magic item bound to you,
enhancements to items you own, or the ability to conjure
consumables. Ranked 2 (uncommon), 3 (rare), 4 (very rare),
5 (legendary); max rank equals your proficiency modifier.
– DIAMONDS (sage moons): vast dark-matter networks holding
eons of information. Lower prestige feat costs; grant
universal access to feats. Ranked by tuition: 1000 gold
per proficiency bonus in knowledge; +3 proficiency grants
a feat of choice; +5 grants two feats.
– HEARTS (dwarf-planet moons): tiny rune forges. Being
capable of love, they send small arcane runes anywhere in
the system. Govern spells; ranked 1-5 by available
spellcasting.
– CLUBS/SHAMROCKS (icy moons): radiate knowledge and mystic
potential in small doses, granting great fortune. Grant
luck, languages, skills, tool proficiencies. +1
proficiency: one tool or language. +3: one skill. +5: two
skills. +4: +1 luck bonus in any dimension of play.
RULES OF CREATION:
– Each creator may make at most four moons: one affecting
enemies, one affecting allies, one affecting the self,
one affecting the home area.
– Each moon takes two months and costs 1000 gold per
proficiency bonus in platinum rune-circle dust.
– Spells must be cast into the circle at a level
proportionate to proficiency bonus.
– Drawing the circle: calligraphy tools, DC 12 + proficiency
modifier; first a DC 15 Arcana check to know the runes.
– Each moon proposes a philosophical truth to reality: a
History check (know the philosophers), an Insight check
(know why societies believe as they do), and a Persuasion
check (yell at reality to stop being irrational), each at
DC 14 + proficiency bonus.
– Choose which of the eight philosophical realms (planets)
the moon serves; it orbits that planet.
THE MOON AWAKENS
Once forged, she appears in one or more of these ways:
1. As an allied NPC who speaks deeply of her philosophical
nature; or a living dream-race of a relevant class.
2. As an intelligent legendary magic item that aids you for
a few days, watching what you do with power.
3. As an intelligent magical predator, a species you have
never met, offering challenge or contest.
4. As a room, house, or library of puzzles and traps that
test whether you truly know and trust your philosophy.
When one to four encounters resolve, the sentient moon
reveals the full scope of her nature, promises to watch
over you and do her job, and grants a monthly boon of her
choosing:
– A magnificent mansion spell, once a month;
– A 5th-10th level living dream NPC ally;
– A sentient artifact that fights beside you, once a month;
– Any single spell up to 8th level, cast free, once a month.
From then on she appears in your dreams to speak with you.
*************
Character Origins: Travelers of the Pale
* Cinderhold Cartographer: Driven by Sarella
Oke’s legacy, you use specialized tools to map shifting reality. You gain proficiency in Navigator’s Tools and can spend a short rest to anchor the party’s location, preventing dimensional drift.
* Thin-Water Survivor: You have sailed the Pale before and left a piece of your mind behind. You are immune to magical charm effects caused by illusions or temporal anomalies, but you suffer disadvantage on saving throws against cold damage.
* Toll-Bound Warlock: Your patron is the slumbering entity beneath the frozen dream. Your spellcasting focus is an object lost by a ghost-self from a alternate timeline, and your spells manifest with the sound of cracking ice and hums from the Gate.
Magic System: Dense Time & Thin Water
In Thune, reality is governed by the concentration of time and space:
* Dense Time (The Anchor): In major ports like Cinderhold, time flows linearly. Spells that alter time, teleport, or summon creatures function normally.
* Thin Water (The Unhappening): As you sail into the Pale, reality thins out. Spells that affect perception, time, or dimensions cost hit dice or memory slots to cast instead of spell slots.
* The Toll Mechanics: Whenever a player casts a high-level spell or fails a check to navigate Thin Water, they must pay “the toll.” Roll on the Toll Table:
* Lost Memory: Forget a non-essential NPC or backstory detail; lose proficiency in one skill until a long rest in Dense Time.
* Echo Convergence: A phantom version of yourself appears, taking an action against the party before “unhappening.”
*
Frozen Tears: Take 2\text{d}6 cold damage that cannot be reduced by resistance as your tears freeze instantly.
Monsters & Hazards of the Pale Courts
| Threat | Description | Key Ability |
|—|—|—|
| Echo Fleet | Ghost ships formed from discarded futures and alternate timelines. | Unmake: On a hit, forces a Wisdom save or the target briefy “unhappens,” missing their next turn. |
| Pale Gatekeeper | Crystalline constructs guarding the passage to the Courts. | Harmonic Toll: Emits a low hum that deals psychic damage to anyone holding a secret. |
| The Leviathan in the Dream | The colossal entity shifting beneath the ice. | Awakening Tremor: Shakes the sea floor, causing reality to shatter and reversing spell effects in the area. |
Which area of the world would you like to explore next—the haven of Cinderhold, the geography of the Pale Courts, or specific magic items found in Sarella Oke’s journal?
*******
Beyond the slip, past the sea of Astral Gates…
Thune is there.
One gate among a number equal to every conscious mind in the universe, and behind it, a whole universe of its own. Sailors have drifted the Astral Sea in the slip for eons and never charted every gate-world. But of all of them, Thune is the one with the most life, and the most teeth.
Here’s what your lore is telling us so far:
Time thins out. The further you sail from the gate, base time gets less dense. Less hot, too. Distance from the gate = colder, stranger, bigger.
The continents grow. The further out you go, the more massive the landmasses get, until you’re looking at Grand Icebergs that fill the horizon past what the eye can see. Frozen wastelands nobody has dared to map. The sun and moon and stars exist here, but not as reflections, they hang by their own weight, under their own power.
East and west are walls. Venture too far off Thune’s Main Line of Islands and you hit it: an impenetrable wall of solid spacetime. The Island-worlds only exist in certain quantities, in certain spaces.
And below? Sail past an Island-world and look down, and you’ll see it for what it is: a planet sitting in vacuum, floating on an astral sea, past one of the actual gates. Not just one planet either. A whole miniature star system, trapped in a pocket of vacuum. Nobody knows how these realms formed. The working theory is that the collective unconscious wanted somewhere that wasn’t dark badly enough that it dreamed the Mystic Planes smooth.
So. Where is there?
There is the Main Line, the thinning time, the growing ice, the spacetime walls, and the deep cold beyond the charts.
Want to go deeper? I can:
• Chart the Main Line Islands, what lives on them, what trades there • Write what happens when time gets thin enough to walk through • Describe the Grand Icebergs and what hunts in the white • Or follow a sailor who’s been out too long and is trying to get back to the gate
Where do you want to sail first?
All three, then. Ilya first, because she’s running out of lantern-light.
Ilya Through the Gate’s Wake
The wake is the worst part. Everyone tells you the deep is the danger, the white, the thin time, but they’re wrong. The wake is where Thune tries to keep you.
She’s close enough now to feel the gate, a pressure behind her teeth, a hum in the hull-iron. The Second Thought is groaning. Dense time is piling up around the bow like ice on a winter hull, and every league forward costs her something she can’t name until it’s gone. The taste of her mother’s cooking. The name of her first dog. A summer she can’t prove happened. The gate takes its toll in memory. That’s the price of re-entry. You don’t get to bring all of yourself back.
The other ship is still ahead of her. Closer now. She can see figures on its deck.
She hails. Her voice cracks across the astral sea, thin as wire.
The other Second Thought slows. Turns. And Ilya sees herself at the rail, older, whole, crew intact behind her, lanterns burning bright. The other Ilya looks at her for a long moment. Then she raises one hand, and points back, out toward the deep, toward the white.
Don’t, the gesture says. Or: not yet. Or: you’re not done.
Ilya doesn’t know which. She’s crying, she realizes. The tears freeze on her face.
Then the other ship is gone, not sailed away, just unhappened, the way things do in thin water. And Ilya is alone in the wake with the gate humming ahead and the toll mounting behind her eyes.
She grips the wheel. She sails on. She’s paid too much to turn back now.
Behind her, far out in the white, something enormous shifts in its frozen dream, and rolls over.
Descent Into the Pale Courts
They say no one has gotten close. That’s not true. One expedition did, fifty years ago by dense time, led by a Cinderhold cartographer named Sarella Oke who was done being told where the edge was.
Her journal was recovered. Her crew was not.
Day 41 past the last lantern-range. The ice rose up before us like a city. Not like a city, it IS a city. Spires, arches, colonnades, all of living ice, rearranging when we blink. We sent up a tethered lantern and watched the light move through the structures. There are figures in there. Seated. Crowned. I counted forty before I stopped counting.
Day 43. We went in on foot. The cold is wrong here. It doesn’t bite, it listens. The corridors we walked were different on the way back. Or we were different. Joren swears the hallway was shorter. I think Joren is shorter.
Day 44. The throne room. I don’t know what else to call it. A vault of ice a mile across, and in the center, a figure on a throne, twice the height of a person, crowned in frozen light. It was breathing. Slow. Each breath took an hour. Frost bloomed off it in patterns like writing. I copied some down. I don’t remember learning the language but my hand knew the letters.
Day 45. It opened its eyes. The ice is not the structure. The ice is the body. The Courts are one thing, wearing the shape of a city the way you or I wear a coat. It looked at us. It was not cruel. It was not kind. It was curious, the way the sea is curious about the shape of the shore.
Day 46. We are leaving. Half of us. The other half stayed. They sat down in the empty seats along the gallery, very calmly, like guests arriving early for something. They wouldn’t answer when we called. Their eyes were already frosting over. I think they’re still there. I think they’re part of the Court now. I think the Court was lonely.
Day 47. The writing I copied. I’ve translated one line. It says: WE DREAMED THIS COLD SO WE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO WAKE FROM.
Sarella made it back to Cinderhold. She never sailed again. She kept the journal by her bed and some nights the pages were damp, like something had been breathing on them.
A Night in Port Vesper’s Dusk Markets
The terminator band never moves, so neither does the market. It runs in eternal dusk, amber on one horizon, indigo on the other, and the stalls stretch for miles under canvas dyed the color of the in-between.
This is where they sell dreams. Not metaphorically. Vials, stoppered with wax, each one holding someone else’s night, siphoned from the slip by divers who go down past the hulls and come up changed.
What you can buy:
Someone’s first flight. A recurring dream, common stock, cheap. Tastes like copper and wind. Lasts about twenty minutes. The vendor will warn you: you’ll wake up reaching for wings you don’t have, and the grief lasts longer than the dream.
A navigator’s chart-dream. Expensive. The dream of someone who has seen a gate they’ve never sailed, the kind of dream that might be a memory from a mind that hasn’t been born yet. Cartographers buy these by the dozen and argue over them for years.
A Becalmed’s last hour. Black-market. Illegal in three island jurisdictions and sold openly in Vesper because Vesper doesn’t care. It’s the final dense hour of someone who got stuck in thin time, looped forever. Buyers say it’s the most peaceful thing they’ve ever felt. Sellers don’t say what it costs the Becalmed to have it taken.
Your own dream, sold back to you. The strangest stall in the market. A blind vendor, or something wearing the shape of one, who holds up a vial and names a night you don’t remember losing. Most people walk away. The ones who buy always weep, though none of them can say why.
Ilya used to walk this market before every deep run, buying bottled hours and selling the dreams she didn’t want to carry out past Cinderhold. The vendors remember her. They’ve started setting aside a vial for her return. It’s labeled, in her own handwriting, from a night she doesn’t remember: FOR WHEN I COME BACK WRONG.
She hasn’t come back yet. The vial waits. The dusk never changes. The market goes on.
—
Thune keeps going as long as you keep looking at it. There’s the Undertow’s writing still untranslated, the dream-whales’ migration routes, the thing Sarella brought back in her journal margins that wasn’t her handwriting.
Where to next, sailor?
