EPILOGUE
This page offers a closer look at what happened during The Fog LARP: Godsend and the many stories that unfolded across the game.
Some of what you find here may answer questions, while other parts may reveal the consequences of choices made during the game. Read on to discover how the world changed, what became of its people, and what the events at the foot of Mount Dion set in motion.
The story may have ended, but its consequences are only beginning.
I. Pyrgos – the City of Gods
The Conduit of the Gods is gone from its sanctuary near Shumnatisa Hut.
After the Republic of Pontus won the Divine Trials, the Conduit disappeared and materialized on a hilltop in the sparsely populated outskirts of Pyrgos. The Pontian capital has now become what the Gods promised: the City of Gods.
Pontus did not win alone. As often happens in politics, careful calculations found their way even into divine affairs. Two major political blocs formed around the leading contenders, and both seem likely to outlive the Trials themselves. Their emergence may mark the beginning of a new era in the political life of the nations of the Free World.
By independent estimates, the final contest was extremely close, with Pontus and its allies narrowly prevailing over the Bdin Empire.
What this will bring to people across the known world remains to be seen. Pilgrims are already travelling towards Pyrgos from every direction, and the authorities are preparing for congestion, shortages and disorder.
What it has brought to Pontus itself is much clearer. The lands of the Republic have been completely cleansed of the poison left by the meteorite. For the first time since the Cataclysm, its farmers are preparing for a harvest without the Substance.
This will inevitably affect the international market. How far the effects will reach is less certain, particularly after the Nations of the Free World Summit unanimously decided to preserve tariffs on food. The Summit itself appears to be here to stay. Its next task is to elect a chair for the coming term and continue making common decisions for nations that have rarely been particularly good at making decisions together.
II. An Island for the Sand Blades
The Gods’ abundance did not fall upon Pontus alone. The Guild of the Sand Blades won the competition that determined for whom a new island would rise from the Pontic Sea and now holds the undisputed divine claim to the new island. They did not secure it alone, however. A large coalition stood behind them, and rumours suggest that some promises concerning the future of the territory were made in exchange for that support. Their exact nature remains unclear.
Expeditions of sailors and cartographers are already heading into the Pontic Sea to locate the new island, chart its shores and, quite literally, put the Guild’s new territory on the map.
III. The Last Dragon
Those gathered at the foot of Mount Dion were also asked to make a decision whose consequences they could not possibly know. The last living dragon egg had been found, and with it came the possibility that dragonkind, the beings that existed before the Gods themselves, might once again have a future. And, with considerable irony, humans were asked to decide whether that future should exist at all.
The choice appeared simple – destroy the egg and remove the risk that whatever hatched from it might become an enemy of mortals, or entrust it to the Prophet of Methumna, who would become its guardian and ensure that it was given the chance to hatch.
The mortals responded according to their nature: some wanted it destroyed, others refused to condemn an innocent living creature for what it might one day become, and most tried to find some way to postpone the decision altogether.
In the end, as so often happens with decisions of great importance, the result owed at least as much to circumstance as it did to deliberate collective choice. The egg was not destroyed. It is now travelling towards its new nest under the protection of the Prophet of Methumna. What will hatch from it, no one knows.
IV. The Pantheon of the Seven
The greatest change did not happen to mortals, but to the Gods themselves. For millennia, the pantheon of the Six had maintained the fragile balance of the world: Change, Time, Death, Dreams, Nightmares and Pathways. Then the comet fell. Its arrival diverted the timeline from its proper course, and the Six could no longer fulfil their task alone. They asked the mortals to do something unprecedented – to raise a Seventh God. One of them would have to abandon their human existence and take a place in the Pantheon,
Predictably, humanity struggled with the task. For a long time the gathered mortals could not agree neither on what the new God’s domain should be, nor on who should bear it. Perhaps fortune favoured them in the end, or perhaps they made their own.
Following the ancient Draconic recipe for the creation of Gods, the mortals forged the domain of Luck. A domain shared by everyone – soldier or merchant, ruler or wanderer, believer or sceptic, everyone eventually has reason to ask for a little luck.
Two mortals accepted the possibility of carrying that burden: Umbra, a man of Ulfheim, and Magma, a woman from the southern lands. Bogom of East Wind had also offered himself as a candidate, but withdrew before the final choice.
And so the first decision concerning the God of Luck was made in the only appropriate way – with the toss of a coin.
Those gathered beneath Mount Dion heard the final beats of a mortal heart. A human died and a God was born. Then the Gods spoke:
Breyta: “Mortals from all corners of the world, thank you for embracing Change.”
Timi: “Through our Trials you determined the Conduit’s Future.”
Aevilok: “You stood between the life and Death of all dragonkind.”
Marthrod: “While enduring our realm’s darkest Nightmares.”
Leid: “Yet you never forgot that every Path should eventually lead home.”
Dreyma: “Thank you for believing in our Dream and turning the Six…”
“…into the Seven. You truly were a Godsend.”
The last words were spoken by Umbra, the God of Luck.
For the first time in millennia, the fundamental forces maintaining the balance of the world have changed. Luck now stands alongside Change, Time, Death, Dreams, Nightmares and Pathways, and mortals have gained something unprecedented: a God of their own making.
On the seventh day after the ascension, something unusual happened across the known world. For that day alone, fortunate accidents seemed to follow mortals wherever they went. A falling roof beam missed a sleeping child by inches; a fisherman pulled from the sea a wedding ring lost years before; a traveller took the wrong road and thereby avoided a bandit ambush; and more than one gambler swore that a coin landed exactly as needed at exactly the right moment.
By the following morning, the world had returned to normal.
Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps it was the new God of Luck saying goodbye to the mortal world.
Either way, people already have a name for that strange seventh day: Umbra’s Luck.