> "The world does not forget. It simply folds its memories into the cracks."
—Unknown Cartographer, before vanishing into the Black Meridian
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They say the world was once whole. A single realm, drawn with perfect lines by the First Cartographer—a being neither man nor god, who mapped not just land, but thought, time, and fate itself.
No one knows their name. Only that their maps could shape reality. Cities rose from sketches. Empires fell from erased borders. Monsters were sealed with symbols.
But hubris is the ink of ruin.
The First Cartographer tried to map everything—even the void between worlds. That was the last line they ever drew. What followed was called the Inkfracture.
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🕯️ The Inkfracture
The world shattered. Not like glass, but like a scroll torn and rewritten in panic. Lands now float in Shards—fragmented domains adrift in a chaotic sea called the Murk. Time flows differently in each. Gravity bends. Logic mutates.
Maps lie. Compasses spin. Memory fades.
And yet… people survive.
Each Shard clings to what it remembers—gods, languages, creatures—but none can see the full picture anymore.
Except one kind of person.
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📜 The Cartographers
Few are born with the Sight—an inherited or cursed ability to see the world's "true" outlines. Even fewer can wield Ink, a living, sentient substance drawn from the bones of the world itself.
Those who can do both are called Cartographers.
They don't just draw maps.
They carve reality.
They seal portals, rewrite terrain, and walk through forgotten doors.
But every stroke has a cost. Ink feeds on memories. On truth. And sometimes... on the soul.
There are whispers that Cartographers go mad not from what they see—but from what the Ink shows them before it's ready.
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🔮 The Five Laws of Inkcraft
1. What is drawn, can be real.
2. What is erased, is forgotten.
3. Ink remembers. Always.
4. Maps are alive. Treat them as such.
5. Never map the Black Meridian. (Do not ask why.)
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🗝️ The Present Day
Now, in the 7th Age of Fracture, Cartographers are hunted and needed in equal measure. Kingdoms trade Map Shards like relics. Some worship old maps like scripture. Others sell them on the black market.
The Ink has grown restless.
Maps have begun to lie.
Whole Shards are vanishing, consumed by an unseen hunger.
And somewhere out there, a young man—an untested Cartographer with a forbidden map—is about to uncover a secret that will redraw the world once more.
Whether he wants to or not.
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> "Ink is not for writing. It is for remembering what should have been forgotten."
—Excerpt from Codex Obscura