Spoiler-safe archive note
This archive entry presents Shadows of the Veil as a legend known in fractured forms across Alberenar. It protects campaign-defining secrets while giving players the tone of a world where victory rarely leaves clean hands.
Legend
The Heart of Gloom
Old accounts speak of a dark artefact that corrupted land, memory, and courage. Those who sought it found not only a relic, but a mirror for their own fear.
The surviving tale centres on Aeloria, Tharok, Bryndis, and Liora: companions who entered the ruins of Thal’Gharoth and returned changed, diminished, and bound to a grief they could not lay down.
Table use
What players may know
Bards, archivists, temple keepers, and road-wise travellers may know the Heart of Gloom as a cautionary story about bargains, sacrifice, and the danger of treating darkness as a tool.
GMs can use this page as a public myth, a rumour seed, or a historical echo without revealing which parts of the legend are literal truth.
Below the ink
Some truths refuse the page
The deeper origin of the artefact, the full cost of Tharok’s pact, and the threats still moving in its shadow remain for travellers to uncover.