The air thickens before a spell takes hold—like the charge before a storm.

Your skin prickles. Your thoughts twist. You might taste iron or hear whispers in windless places.

The land reacts: shadows stretch, animals go still, water turns cloudy.

The Wyrd is louder in the Flats than anywhere else. Magic here wants to be seen. It demands a cost.

Blood, breath, memory, time

Pain willingly given or ties severed

Sometimes, something you didn’t mean to give at all

The sound of your name when spoken with love.

The warmth in your hands.

A path back.

One honest answer, from someone who mattered.

Charmwrights – Makers of wards and talismans. Practical, protective, often quietly powerful.

Hexslingers – Gunfighters who load spells into bullets, etch sigils into barrels, and duel with both lead and curse.

Dustchanters – Singers of spells and stories. Their voices shape the Wyrd like wind through canyon stone.

Breachborn – Born in places of great magic or trauma. Their power is innate, unstable, and feared.

Runecasters, Bonebinders, Wyrdwalkers – Other names for strange traditions, usually regional or rooted in personal myth.

Bloodbinding – Offering blood to seal a spell or pact

Smoke Scribing – Burning spell-speech into air or over items

Glyphburning – Marking skin or objects with sigils

Dust-Walking – Vision or endurance rite walked alone

Bone Chiming – Hanging bones as divination or protection

Mirror Sinking – Whispering into still surfaces to bury truth

Speak your name when you cast

Leave a token when the spell takes

Burn your failed work

Etch your tools

Cast in anger unless you’re ready to bleed

Let someone sleep in your warding circle

Speak a dead person’s full name aloud

Whistle near a glyph

Blackpowder Weapons – Six-shooters, rifles, and shotguns are widely used. Ammunition is often hand-packed or magically treated.

Steam Power – Used in trains, forges, and some large-scale equipment—but only in areas where the Wyrd is quiet.

Rail Lines – Trains still run, though not always on schedule or entirely by will of man. Some follow ley lines. Others refuse to stop at towns they once served.

Telegraphs – Messages can be sent between major outposts, but magic storms often garble meaning. Entire conversations arrive reversed, cursed, or bound with unintended emotion.

Printing Presses – Used for bounty posters, local papers, and wanted notices. Enchanted inks are rare but sought after for recording spellwork or binding names.

Electric Power – Most complex electrical systems fail. The Wyrd disrupts conduction or warps current. Any place wired too tight starts to hum—and sometimes speak.

Advanced Clockwork – Fine mechanisms go haywire near Wyrd-soaked places. Watches lose time. Locks undo themselves. Clocks tick backward if the Wyrd is angry.

Mass Manufacturing – Nothing stable lasts long in the Flats. Factories are rare, and what they build often breaks in strange ways.

Precise Optics – Scopes blur, mirrors haze, lenses bend light in ways that don’t make sense. Some show things that aren’t there—or that are, but shouldn’t be seen.

Automated Tools – Anything that runs without a hand to guide it tends to wander. Wheels spin aimlessly. Arms seize up or reach for things they shouldn’t.

Hexbound Guns – Firearms etched with glyphs, loaded with enchanted rounds or blood-primed triggers. Some curse the target. Some curse the user.

Spell-Cored Engines – Machines that burn magical residue or relic fragments for fuel. Powerfully unstable, but strong enough to haul through ley-distorted terrain.

Golem Limbs – Prosthetics or constructs built from iron, bone, and enchanted sinew. Often imbued with simple runes—functional, but never entirely obedient.

Relic Tools – Tools scavenged from old ruins or made with pre-catastrophe methods. They work when nothing else does—but no one knows why, and everyone’s afraid to ask.

Sparkwrights – Engineers who specialize in “safe” mechanical work. Often half-mad from the trial and error.

Runesmiths – Blacksmiths who burn glyphs into iron, imbuing weapons and armor with ritual strength.

Wyrdwrights – The rarest kind. They don’t build with science or spell—but with both. Their work doesn’t always work right. But when it does, it changes everything.

Threadwitches – Stitchers of Wyrd-thread and wire. Their coats mend wounds. Their dolls curse names. Some say they sew with their own shadow.

Gritcallers – Crafters who bind spirit to function. They whisper to engines, bribe bullets, and name every nail. If they go quiet, something’s gone wrong.

No organized religion thrives here—but belief is everywhere.

People worship old spirits, dead names, or the land itself—especially at crossroads, graveyards, and ruins.

Superstition is law. You don’t whistle near a warding circle. You don’t take a charm off a dead man. You never bury someone facing west.

Hanging bone charms to ward off storms

Leaving silver teeth at crossroads for luck

Whispering false names in public to protect your real one

Marking doorframes with soot from the first fire of the season

Feeding the wind a breath before travel so it knows you're passing through

Blood means something—but so does chosen kin. Survival makes found families strong.

Towns are built on mutual usefulness. You help who helps you. You protect who protects yours.

Betrayal is unforgivable. In some places, even ghosts won’t speak to a traitor.

Names are power. Most folk go by nicknames, callsigns, or partial names in public.

A person’s true name is sacred—spoken only in magic, vows, or death.

Some take on titles earned through action: Ridgewalker, Bulletwitch, Hollowborn, Ironblood.

Ley-tears are rents in the fabric of the world—places where the Wyrd seeps through raw and unfiltered.

Some glow. Some sing. Some look like nothing until you step into them and come out different.

These places mutate the land around them: twisted trees, floating stones, howling wind with no source.

They're both treasure troves and death traps. Magical relics, forgotten truths, ancient beasts—you might find any or all of them.

Sometimes, they move. What was safe yesterday might gut you tomorrow—and no one’s ever mapped one that stayed still.

Bonewind – Dry, slicing wind that smells of sage and rot. Said to strip flesh if it turns full force.

Ashstorms – Black spirals of soot and ember that roll across the plains like thunderclouds. Often follow battles or large spellwork.

Wyrdfrost – Sudden, magical ice that forms in spirals, mostly near ley-tears. Not cold to the touch—but hungering.

Blood Rain – Rare. Usually heralds something awakening beneath the ground. Farmers pray it passes quickly.

Brimroot – Glows faintly at night. Used in healing charms and poisons alike.

Needlegrass – Looks harmless. Cuts through boots, skin, bone. Often grows in cursed soil.

Glassbloom – Translucent, razor-thin petals that shimmer like broken windowpanes. Grows only where blood has touched the soil.

Whispervine – Repeats words it hears, especially secrets. Found clinging to graveposts and ruins.

Gravetongue – A bitter herb used in old rites. Its leaves grow only on unmarked graves, and some say it whispers names when plucked.

Ridgecrows – Black birds with bone-white beaks and too many eyes. Considered omens. Sometimes talk back.

Dustjaws – Burrowing predators that swim through the sand like water. Hunt by sound.

Lantern Hares – Small animals with glowing eyes. Draw travelers toward ley-tears or haunted ground.

The Gristleback – A horned beast found in the Deep Flats. Flesh like stone, breath like smoke. Kills for territory, not hunger.

Echo Serpents – Long, pale snakes that mimic human voices to lure prey. Rumored to learn the names of those they’ve killed.