A Broken World
On one side, the scorching fire of a never-setting sun. On the other, freezing cold born from eternal night. Between them, a broken landscape still showing the scars of devastation nearly two and a half century later. Between the lethal poles, civilization has clawed its way back from the brink of annihilation.
The world of Tessam has an ancient history, though most of it was lost in The Cataclysm 233 years ago. This event brought about the end of the old world, forever changing the landscape of the planet and leaving it tidally locked to the sun. One pole is now a barren landscape of deadly heat, while the other is covered in endless ice. Thanks to lava-filled ravines all around the planet, some of this frozen land is habitable, though civilization mostly exists in eternal twilight along a narrow band around the planet’s equator.
However beautifully history might describe the world, it is now a husk of its former self. The old forests have been swallowed by burning ravines or perished when the climate changed. Storms have levelled mountains and torn fields apart. Oceans that once covered much of the world have retreated underground, leaving the earth dry and cracked, towns and villages settling near deep caves where the new bodies of water can be accessed.