Lore of Openheim
Stories, inheritance, and the long memory beneath a young realm
The narrative spine of Openheim — from the Veth and the Giant Stones to 600 AF and a realm fracturing quietly.
Before the maps
What this page is for, and what the realm remembers without understanding.
Openheim is a young country wearing old manners. Its courts, its mail, its cathedral towns — all of it feels like the twelfth century of some other world. But the realm itself has counted only six hundred years since founding. The present year is 600 AF.
Beneath that political youth lies a deeper inheritance: the work of the Veth, who shaped this land long before anyone called it Openheim. They left behind more than the stones. The Giant Stones still mark the horizon like questions no one has learned to ask properly. Artifacts — smaller, stranger, more graspable — sleep in vaults, reliquaries, battlefields, and private hands. Kings claim them. Churches sanctify them. Smugglers die for them. Scholars misread them with magnificent confidence.
This page follows the long inheritance beneath the realm: what the Veth made, what later peoples kept, and how stones and artifacts survive the loss of the language that first gave them meaning.
The long inheritance
From creation to 600 AF — stones, artifacts, and what each age mistakes for truth.
Openheim Lore Timeline
The Veth left behind a world that later peoples could use long before they could understand it. Follow the thread from their age into the present — where players meet that inheritance most often through artifacts, while the stones keep the deeper question alive.
Deep history uses BF (Before the Founding); political history uses AF (After the Founding). Dates in the deep past are approximate — true in shape before they are true in arithmetic. The present year is 600 AF.
BF Before the Founding ·AF After the Founding
If you need the thread in hand: follow the stones when you ask what the world is. Follow the artifacts when you ask what people will kill or kneel for. The books and chronicles linked from this page are doors into specific rooms of that larger house — not the house itself.
Stories
Fiction routes that touch the long inheritance at different distances from the present.
- The Water-Carrier: a stone-tender, her granddaughter, and the slow descending of the Giant Stones. Read on site.
- The First Witness: a hunted boy, a deaf scribe uncle, and the first witnessed claim on buried inheritance. Read on site.
- Veth: the deep past, where a civic artifact answers before the state can explain it away. Read on site.
World Knowledge
History
The ages, turning points, and forgotten events that shaped Openheim.
Creatures
The beasts, spirits, and horrors that stalk the wilds and ruins.
Religion
The faiths, cults, and divine powers that move people and kingdoms alike.
Ethnicities
The peoples of Openheim — their cultures, origins, and place in the world.
Notable Figures
Kings, warlords, scholars, and outcasts whose lives left a mark.
Provinces
The lands, their character, and the forces that define them.
Cities
The settlements — from towering capitals to desperate frontier outposts.
Setting
An overview of the world: its age, its politics, and its atmosphere.
Stories
The Water-Carrier
A stone-tender speaks to her granddaughter across forty years of carried water — and the slow descending of the things she kept warm.
The First Stone
Roughly 180 BF — a hunted boy, a deaf scribe uncle, and the first serious claim on a buried inheritance older than either of them.
Veth
At Veth’s imperial height, a civic artifact may already be carrying an answer the state cannot explain away.