A persistent grimdark text MMO on wilds.ai
Calder
Powder & Bone
The year is somewhere near 1799, though calendars are no longer trusted. A century ago Hell became a military fact, and the world learned to kill demons by milling its saints into gunpowder. The kingdoms have survived by spending their holiness — and the saints are running out. Calder is the sealed city said to keep the last unspent reliquary. One shared Quarter, alive while you are away: named figures remember what they witness, duels leave bodies on the stones, and the Hollows below pay in kind.
Walking the Quarter is free. The city takes its tithe in other coin.
- 1 in the Quarter now
- The Vigil holds at 70
- Dusk gathers
The Old Quarter
Calder is grimdark played straight: an old city, and the Old Quarter is its oldest wound. The powder-sworn keep court in a dead bank, trade favors where the music is loud, and glean grace where the lamplight thins. The Vigil is the one duty every charter agrees on: the wax must hold.
The plague set the world back centuries, and the centuries never quite caught up: flintlocks hang beside crossbows, gaslight gutters over tallow, and relic-powder shares a pocket with minted coin.
Saintshot, Cinder, Reliquary Black
Three names for one substance: powder milled from the bones of saints. A tooth kills a lesser devil. A martyr’s ash burns a plague angel. A powdered knuckle makes a cannonball remember Heaven. What is left of holiness is dug up, weighed, stamped, taxed, counterfeited — and fired. Every grain spent is a grain gone, and the city that keeps the last of them knows exactly what it is sitting on.
Three charters, one Vigil
The Crown Powder Office
Holds the Quarter under the Crown’s law. Stamps, taxes, ratified deaths; the Provost speaks its will from a dead bank. Its motto is an accusation: no relic unused while the realm yet bleeds.
The Church of the Unspent Host
Believes a saint given to God must not be spent by men. Every fired grain is a martyr killed twice. Its Confessors are austere, paranoid, and sometimes genuinely heroic.
The Red Powder Guild
Swears every miracle has a recipe and every recipe a price. Powder-smiths, grave chemists, counterfeiters — they know more truth than priests or provosts, and sell it cut with ash.
Standing with each charter is earned and spent. They remember whose side you took — and whose wax you cracked. Below them all, the Beggar Reliquary gleans what holiness the gutters still give up.
Six grounds inside the wax
Court of Ashes
The dead bank made a tribunal. Ash falls. Nothing is burning.
The Cloister
A hush of old books and older bones.
The Gallery
The Guild’s salon. Powder moves between songs.
Lantern Square
Criers, miracle-sellers, and bells that count the hour wrong.
The River Docks
Cargo comes in at night. Not all of it is cargo.
The Cathedral Ward
The Host keeps its candles here, and its unspent dead.
The work of the Quarter
A living terminal
One shared city in a command terminal. Speak and the room hears; walk and the world notes it.
Fate on ten dice
Every contested moment resolves on d10 pools — wits, grace, and nerve against the odds the city sets.
Four ways down
The Hollows, the river-caves, the catacombs, the barrows. Fall, and your effects wait where you fell — for you, or for whoever finds them first.
Duels on lawless ground
Throw a gauntlet where no law holds. Three exchanges, witnessed; the winner lifts a spoil.
Petitions and standing
Named figures ask favors and remember outcomes. Reputation with each charter is earned, and spent.
Coin and the market
Scavenge the streets, sell spoils at the stalls, buy steel and wards in the locked engraved style.
The terminal, as it runs
Straight from the terminal — the Court convening, the sheet, the city in one hand.
The terminal — speak and the room hears.
The sheet — dots, banes, and what you carry.
The whole city, one hand.
The Vigil is the only duty. Profane clumsily where the living can see, and every charter will hear of it — the meter on the wall is the city deciding how much wax it has left.
Who keeps the Quarter
Named personae with witnessed memory — what they see you do, they keep. Every player presses the same eight figures; none of them forget.
Provost Ashbel Quay
The Crown Powder Office
Provost of the Court of Ashes and the Crown Powder Office’s hand in Calder.
Confessor Brial
The Unspent Host
A Confessor of the Unspent Host keeping the Cloister’s long vigil.
Mara Veyl
The Red Powder Guild
The Red Powder Guild’s broker, holding court in the Gallery where the music runs loud enough to bury a price.
Warden Sull
Unsworn
Keeper of the Undercroft and the sealed stair beneath it.
Tansy, the bell-cryer
Unsworn
The Quarter’s cryer, who reads the hour off bells that no longer agree.
Candle-Deacon Maul
The Unspent Host
The Host’s deacon in the Great Cathedral, keeper of its thousand candles and the tiers of dead beneath.
Quartermistress Brack
The Red Powder Guild
The Guild’s hand on the river — fence, smuggler, and self-appointed quartermistress of Calder’s black wharf.
Mother Rooke
Unsworn
A witch of the roads and gallows who gave up the city for Blackpine and the old bargains.
How it works
- One persistent world, shared by every player. No instances, no resets.
- The world heartbeat ticks about once a minute: meters drift, NPCs live their own lives.
- Named NPCs remember what they witness. Reputation is earned, and spent.
- Grace is gleaned, rites are trained, and the Vigil pays for every public mistake.
- Ten-sided dice resolve what matters; the engine owns the canonical state.