Brackenwake
Chapter 09 · Cinder and dragonfire
A volcano that is the whole eastern rim, and a fortress with nine dragon skulls on its gate.
A sense of place
The eastern rim is one volcano: black glass slopes, rivers of red, cinder fields, sulphur light, the sea steaming where lava meets it. The Legion's fortress is cut into the crater wall; the throne room is inside the crater.
On the horizon
The Ashen Throne itself: a fortress cut into the volcano's wall, a gate a hundred feet high with nine dragon skulls set above it, and inside, a throne room where the air moves like glass and nine hearts beat in nine iron cages.
The paths within
Town
The Legion's harbour town at the volcano's foot, black sand, barges, a slave market that is not called one.
Legion quartermasters, deserters who will talk, Halessa's last stand if she lived, the way to the outer works
Explore this placeLandmark
The Legion army's lines on the slopes: earthworks, siege towers, ten thousand tents.
The last battle: every ally you earned against the Legion; Tancred's or Ossory's wall
Explore this placeGreat landmark
The gate with nine skulls, opened from inside by Serle Vane or not at all.
Captain Serle Vane, glove off; the fortress beyond
Explore this placeDungeon
The fortress, the crater, the heart-hall.
The Legion's best, bone knights, the Brass Heart if not turned, Malachar in three phases; the three endings
3 dungeon levels · Boss: Malachar, the Wyrmking
Explore this placeWild country
Black glass that rings underfoot, lava rivers, cinder, sulphur.
Wyverns, iron golems, cultists, the Glass-Walker wraith at dawn
Explore this placeMine
The Legion's voidrock mine on the glass, a yard that rings when you walk on it.
Emberite and voidrock, miners who die by forty, the shift bell and the manticore that answers it
Explore this placeLandmark
Where the lava meets the Caldera Sea, a wall of steam a mile long.
Ships lost in the steam, drowned Legion, the way Maravel's fleet comes in
Explore this placeLandmark
Rivers of red dropping into the sea in three falls, crust cooling on the surface between.
The only crossing from Cinderport to the Gate that is not the Legion's road
The crust bears weight while it is dark and breaks when it glows; watch the colour and cross in the dark stretches. Wings cross it in one flight.
Camp
Deserters from the Legion living in the slag heaps below the Works, fires in old furnaces.
Deserters who know the fortress, a way in through the slag chute, Halessa's record if she died
Every deserter you feed is one fewer on the Legion's wall and one more who opens a door; the camps fill from the fortress as the Legion's morale falls.
Landmark
A natural arch of black glass across the crater's mouth, half a mile long, no rail.
The Wyrmking's own way to the Boneyard hunts; wyverns nest under it
Stolen dragon time: near the throne the world already runs slow for everything but Malachar; on the bridge you feel it first.
Landmark
The wall behind the throne, nine iron cages, nine hearts beating.
The ending: free them, break them, or let Malachar keep them
Each cage opens to a roar from a dragon that holds that realm's old oath; nine hearts, nine cages, and Malachar counting.
Out on the road
From the world plans. Encounters and events may change during development.
Lives woven through the land
The characters, secrets and dragon’s journey through the Ashen Throne.
A volcano that is the whole eastern rim, black glass slopes, red rivers, a fortress cut into the crater wall with nine dragon skulls on its gate. Inside, a throne room where the air moves like glass and a man sits with fire coming off him like breath, and behind him, on the wall, nine dragon hearts still beating in nine iron cages.
Volcano and caves: lava, cinder, ash, sulphur light, the Legion's fortress and the crater under it. The end of the world, on purpose.
Everything comes here. The Legion's army stands in the outer works, and every ally the player made across eight realms stands against it: Bram with a rake and the Greenwold behind him, the Court's archers or the Court's traitors, Maravel's fleet or Maravel's absence, the Ashwalkers with the wells poisoned, the Brass City walking or burning, the ghosts of the Eyrie on the wall, the White Pack, the giants, the drowned. Vane opens the door or does not. Inside, Malachar, who has been in dragon time for a thousand years and has not been touched in all of them, and who wants one thing: to be given a dragon, once, instead of taking one.
The Throne of Ash: the fortress, the crater, the heart-hall. The Legion's best, bone knights, the Brass Heart if it was not turned, and Malachar, in three phases: the knight, who fights like Skyward taught him; the Wyrmking, who pulls you into his dragon time so that for once the world moves at your speed and he at his, and you learn what stolen Wyrmsoul is; and the last, where the nine hearts on the wall answer your dragon's roar and he is, for the first time in a thousand years, alone in his own time.
In this fight only, the dragon takes your death and you take its: if you fall, it falls in your place and you stand, once. If it falls, you fall in its place and it stands, once. The Bond decides who, and the player never chooses it.
