The Ballad of the Elements

The world

Seventeen worlds, and five ways to be shaped.

The realm is not gated by locked doors. It's gated by what you can currently turn into. Every form you're taught reopens somewhere you already walked past.

The form ladder

Five animal forms, taught in order by five masters. Whether they teach you or fight you depends entirely on how you've been behaving.

  1. 1

    Monkey

    A treehouse above the Understory

    Climbing. Rungs and spirals that were always there and always too far apart.

  2. 2

    Bird

    The crown of the Emberpeak

    Falling slowly. A door out on the Peaks sits below a drop nothing else survives.

  3. 3

    Bear

    A monastery in the clouds

    Force. Doors that were never locked so much as heavy.

  4. 4

    Turtle

    An aquarium deep in the caves

    Water. Flooded passages stop being walls.

  5. 5

    Racoon

    An amphora on a shelf in the Vault

    The last one. You will know it when you have it.

A hidden reckoning

Nothing in this game shows you a morality meter, because there isn't one to show. There is only a running tally of what you've actually done, and it is quietly adjusting things behind your back.

Shopkeepers price you differently. Creatures decide whether to be caught. Masters decide whether to teach. Somewhere past a certain point you'll notice you are walking more slowly than you used to, and nobody will have mentioned it.

It matters more than it looks like it does. That's all we'll say here.

An enormous ancient tree-creature with a warm sun caught glowing in its canopy, roots for feet, standing in a misted wood.
Moss grows on it because it has never once hurried. Birds nest in the moss.

The seventeen

  1. The Shimmerwood

    A starting meadow with talking signposts and light like honey. Everything here is fine. Enjoy it.

  2. The Great Cascade

    A waterfall you climb rather than admire. At the top, the air tastes faintly wrong for the first time.

  3. The High Peaks

    A crest walk above the cloud line, wind on three sides and a long way down on the fourth.

  4. The Dwarf City

    Carved into the mountain, unhealthily gem-obsessed, and the only place to buy anything.

  5. The Goblin Deeps

    A labyrinth under the city. The goblins were paid to be here. That should worry you more than it does.

  6. The Highwoods

    Canopy country of the wood elves, where the tournament is a tower and you fight your way up it.

  7. Riverwood

    A west road descending between twin rivers, and a signpost with two arms.

  8. The Underforest

    Deep, ancient, slow. The trees here are old enough to have opinions about you.

  9. The Understory

    A forked transition: a staked door in the floor, and a spiral of branches up to a treehouse.

  10. The Ashway

    A diversion off the river road, black underfoot, warm in the wrong way.

  11. The Emberpeak Caldera

    A volcano crown reached by jumping. Two rare fire elementals nest up here and nowhere else.

  12. The Cloud City

    A sky monastery of spirit bears. Fall off it and you land on the Peaks, which is its own kind of mercy.

  13. The Deep Caves

    Crystal tunnels behind a door only something very strong could open.

  14. The Drowned Way

    A flooded passage with no air in it. You will need to not need air.

  15. The Sunken Vault

    An optional deep below the plunge pool, where the oldest and strongest things live undisturbed.

  16. The Delve

    A lantern-lit labyrinth of dead ends between the city and the deeps. Two strongboxes, if you can find them.

  17. Skid Row

    The other place. Bring nothing you are not prepared to lose.

Meet the elementals