Hi folks, I’m Toby Ragaini, the content director at Proletariat, the developer of Spellbreak. Spellbreak is a competitive third-person spellcasting game where you unleash powerful magic as you battle other players for supremacy. With the launch of the first chapter of Spellbreak, The Spellstorm, I wanted to introduce the fantasy fictional world the game is set in.
The area now known as the Hollow Lands was once a peaceful and prosperous part of Velnor known as the Highlands. Headquarters of the Five-handed Alliance, five kingdoms have united, vowing to protect and defend themselves for the good of their people. But such a unit comes at a cost.
The Vowkeepers, a once obscure priestly order that believed magic to be a destructive and ultimately corrupting influence, convinced the leaders of the alliance to ban all spellcasting. Although there was initially some resistance to this, the Wish Keepers managed to win the hearts and minds of the people. Over the years, the few who persisted in using magic in secret were seen as dishonorable vowbreakers, criminals and pagans with no respect for the sanctity of human life – and life could have gone on that way, without an event that would literally reshape the world.
The fracture was a huge explosion of magical energy so powerful it split the Highlands in two. Huge cracks opened and waves of magical energy permeated everything for miles in all directions. The effects of this energy were unpredictable and inconsistent. Many living things died instantly while others were apparently unaffected. Oddly enough, some objects were affected in more subtle ways… in ways that seemed to challenge the very fabric of space and time itself.
If the rift had been a singular event, the hardy people of the Highlands would have recovered and continued with their lives. But unfortunately it was not. For reasons that remain to be understood, the divide preceded another even more deadly disaster.
The Spellstorm, a huge cyclone of destructive magical energy, descended on the Highlands shortly after the Fracture and in its wake very little would survive. Any living being caught up in the Spellstorm’s fury would eventually succumb to its unnerving effects, leaving nothing but dust.
Banehelm, Bogmore, Dustpool and even the mighty Halcyon were all devastated. In less than a day, the once bucolic Highlands were rendered uninhabitable and the ruins became known as the Hollow Lands.
The few survivors who were there fled to the relative safety of the only surviving kingdom, Longwatch. The Spellstorm never extended into the mountains and valleys of this isolated realm, and that may explain its salvation. Long the center of the Five-Handed Alliance’s military force, Longwatch is now home to an overcrowded and anxious refugee community.
With their future hanging on a thread, the people of Velnor are in desperate need of deliverance. Can a bunch of maligned wishbreakers solve the spellstorm mystery? Find out in today’s update, Chapter 1: The Spellstorm.
