The World of Dort
The gods are persons. The planes are next door. Your soul is worth something,
and everyone with an appetite knows it.
Dort is a feudal world under strange pressure. It is medieval enough to have lords, guilds, and muddy roads between walled towns. It is also a place where flying ships carry ore, passengers, soldiers, and envoys across mountain ranges, while priests argue over what their gods' latest omens mean.
Ix is the name of the primordial being that was shattered by its own creations before recorded history. Its pieces became the Shattered Domain, the plane where the gods live. Everything in Dort lives downstream of that act.
A death-keeper in a black-painted skull cap is arguing with a city watchman about jurisdiction over a body. The body is not moving, but it is not unoccupied. Ix Player's Guide, Chapter One
The Arcana plane, the four elemental planes, the Hells, and stranger places are real, reachable, and politically relevant. A rift at a crossroads market is a hazard to be managed, not a crisis to be solved. Some have been open so long the local economy depends on them.
The gods are not background flavor. They hold territory in the Shattered Domain, keep alliances and grievances, and hire mortal agents, sometimes through clergy and sometimes through contractors who never learn the client's name.
Souls are real, countable, and valuable. Infernal contracts claim them before death. Necromancers traffic in them. Death-keepers guard a dying person's passage as a practical profession, because an unguarded soul can be intercepted at the threshold.
Your background is where you came from. Your career is what you do now. Together they decide which skills are cheaper for you to advance. They lock you out of nothing. A former temple librarian can learn swordsmanship; it simply costs more, because it was never their trade. Anyone can attempt anything.
Eleven peoples of Dort are ready to play, and magic runs in three traditions, Arcane, Divine, and Primal, with a full spell list from cantrips to High Magic.
Character creation, the species of Dort, backgrounds and careers, skills, talents, equipment, the complete magic system, the gods as the public knows them, and eight ready-made adventurers.
Open the Player's Guide For the game masterThe other half of the world: divine politics as pressure, soul coins and claims, planar travel, factions and clocks, relics and bloodstones, and a first chronicle ready to run. It contains real spoilers.
Open the GM Guide For the tableMore than three hundred creatures in eighteen kinds, from dragons, devils, and the undead to vermin, oozes, and named threats. Each has its ecology, its signs, its tactics, and what it is worth when harvested.
Open the CatalogIx is free to read online, all three books. You need the Exodus NDS core rules and a table willing to find out what is on the other side.
Exodus NDS Core Rules Recommended ยท Compatible with all Exodus NDS Universes