The shape of the chase
Every region on Starborne's road follows the same rhythm. There is a town with a problem. Under or behind the town there is a dungeon. Partway through the dungeon you win a Veil Medal, and with it you can finish the dungeon and carry on down the road. Twelve regions, twelve dungeons, twelve medals. When you hold all twelve, the way into the Ministry opens, and beyond it the Black Glass Observatory.
That count is the heartbeat of the whole adventure. The medals you hold are shown together in a case of twelve slots, filled in as you win them, so you always know how far you have come and how far there is to go. Until the twelfth is in place, the Ministry's door stays sealed.
Starborne is in development. What follows is the part of the dungeon design that the story canon and the current browser version agree on. Dungeon layouts, puzzles and bosses are still being built, so they are left out here on purpose.
A medal is a verb, not a number
The most important thing to understand about Veil Medals is that none of them makes you stronger in the usual sense. There is no medal that adds damage or health. Each one is an object that lets you do something you could not do before: carry light, freeze water, see through a lie, cut a thorn wall, cross a gap.
That has two consequences worth holding on to.
- You win the medal before the dungeon is over. The medal is found partway in, not handed over at the end. The rest of the dungeon is built to need it. The Frostbrand Nail, for example, is taken from the warden of the Frozen Cistern, and then you use it to freeze black-water channels into bridges and cross.
- Old places open up again. Because a medal is an ability, it keeps working everywhere. A wall you could not pass in an early region may give way to something you win much later.
The twelve Veil Medals
These are the medals as the canon and the game currently describe them. A few have a second name in the game that may or may not stick; where that is the case, both are given.
| Medal | What it lets you do |
|---|---|
| Lantern | Carry light into darkness the count has made permanent. The first medal of the journey. |
| Mirror Shard | Catch and aim beams of light onto seals. It shows the room you stand in, but never you. |
| Frostbrand Nail | Iron so cold it stills running water to ice, turning channels into bridges. |
| Tide Whistle | A bone pipe that calls the water, raising or moving it where the copper pipe-works hold it. |
| True-Sight Lens | See through illusion. Through it, a painted door is only paint and a false wall is only a lie. |
| Veil Compass | A black-glass needle that ignores the world's north and points true, toward the real seam in any shifting veil. |
| Hush Censer | Breathes out silence. A held note, a chant or a ritual simply stops. |
| Stormnail Spike (in game, the Stormhook) | An anchor that bites far stone and carries you across gaps the wind would otherwise own. |
| Counting Bell | A bell for a world that runs on counting. Rung the right way, it turns the count back on those who use it. |
| Heartwood Hammer | A maul with a living heartwood core, for breaking what the Ministry's black glass has sealed. |
| Reaping Sickle (in game, Bramblebane) | A reaping hook that cuts the life out of living thorn, so thorn walls die where it passes. |
| Concord Key (in game, the Concord Seal) | The twelfth. The Ministry's own master mark, which sets the Observatory's gate. |
Dungeons we can name
For several regions, the canon and the game already agree on which dungeon holds which medal. These are the ones safe to name today.
| Region | Dungeon | Medal won there |
|---|---|---|
| Duskreach | The Lampless Vault | Mirror Shard |
| Cinderhold | The Nailworks | Heartwood Hammer |
| Frostmere | The Frozen Cistern | Frostbrand Nail |
| Ravenmoor | The Mirror Manor | True-Sight Lens |
| Thornwall | The Living Hedge | Reaping Sickle |
Two more are close to settled. The Lantern is won in the Root-Stair Hollow, a dungeon reached down a vein-pulsing stair of roots, and the Tide Whistle belongs to the copper waterways of Harmony. The homes of the other medals are still moving, so they are left unnamed rather than guessed.
Danger inside and out
Fighting in Starborne is real-time and deliberate. You can dodge and you can guard, and both draw on stamina, so a hero who spends everything at once is left with nothing to answer the next blow. Combat is meant to be rare and meaningful in daylight. Under the Blood Moon it is neither rare nor gentle: the dark comes out in force, and town doors are barred against it.
How to think about the road
- Every locked thing is a question. A sealed gate, a frozen channel or a thorn wall is usually waiting for a specific medal, not for more strength.
- Remember what you could not reach. Medals keep working everywhere, so a blocked path early on is often a promise of something later.
- Light first. The Lantern is the first medal for a reason. In a world where the dark is the enemy, the ability to carry light is the foundation every other medal is built on.
- Count the case. Twelve slots, one door. The medal case is the clearest measure of how close you are to the Observatory.
Where the medals take you, region by region, is in The twelve regions. What waits at the end is in The world of Aethel.