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Ix

At a Glance

Genre, tone, and the truths the setting runs on.

Before the first breath, before the concept of "before," there was only Ix.
Ix did not exist in a place; place was not yet a thought Ix had bothered to have. Ix did not exist in a time; time was a toy Ix had not yet wound. Ix simply was, perfect, complete, and alone. A single consciousness so absolute that even the idea of "other" would have been a flaw.
Then, without warning or reason, because reasons are for things that need them, Ix slept.
In that sleep, Ix dreamed for the first time.
The dream was vast and careless and beautiful. Galaxies spun out of boredom. Stars were lit like candles to see what shadows looked like. Planets were rolled between invisible fingers until they were round enough to please. Life, simple, stupid, glorious, was scattered across a billion rocks just to watch it wriggle.
And then, as suddenly as sleep had come, Ix woke.
The dream did not end. The dream had learned how to exist without the dreamer.
Reality bled out of Ix's mind like afterbirth, wet, screaming, irreversible. Stars ignited for real. Time coughed, took its first ragged breath, and began its relentless march.
Ix looked upon what had escaped and felt, for the first time, something perilously close to fear. Not fear of death — death was still Ix's invention. Fear of company.
Because now there were things that moved without Ix moving them. Things that would one day look back.
And Ix, who had never needed anything, discovered the first want: to be alone again.
That want became the blade the Ancients would one day wield.
At a Glance
Genre
Classic fantasy with fantastic elements — flying ships, active outer planes, widely available magic — and the weight of a cosmos that is knowable, structured, and politically alive. Old-school D&D in its bones; original in its theology and cosmology.
Tone
Cosmologically rich and morally complex. The gods are real, politically active, and not particularly kind. Souls are currency. Death has a face, a theology, and a priesthood. Power is earned through devotion — and devotion is measured, weighed, and traded. The universe is structured and knowable, which makes it more frightening, not less.
Voice
Precise, confident, unhurried. The world-text reads like a scholar who has seen the Shattered Domain and come back changed — not breathless, but careful. Humor appears, but always from within the logic of the world rather than winking at the reader. Nothing is described as "mysterious" without the description earning that word.
At the Table
Morally serious. Characters exist inside consequences. Divine politics are not backdrop — they are pressure. The best sessions will have a moment where someone at the table goes quiet.
Content Notes
Violence, death, slavery, religious extremism (specifically the Oshalan faith), soul trafficking, divine manipulation, and the casual cruelty of cosmological scale are all present and treated with weight, not softened (see the Bible Command above). Horror-adjacent content (the Void, the Ancients, the Spent, the Hells) is present and unflinching but not gratuitous. The depravity of the infernal cults (especially Buuna Moc / Erosmire) is depicted clinically: the text conveys how repellent and total it is, by insinuation and cold framing, so that a reader wants gloves to touch the page. It does NOT provide graphic sexual description, enumerate targets or acts, or read as titillation. The model for this register is the dortworld `Erosmire.md` source. The hard line: insinuate impulse and appetite, never catalog it; where the line is finer than the text can safely cross, use `[PLACEHOLDER — Paul]`.
What It Is Not
Gonzo, sword-and-sorcery pulp, or high-hope heroic fantasy. PCs can do heroic things, but the cosmos will not applaud them for it. This is also not a grimdark setting — the characters can matter. The difference is that mattering costs something.
Core Conceits

The truths this world runs on

These hold in every campaign. A rule that contradicts one of them loses.

  1. The gods are shards of Ix

    The primordial was shattered by the Ancients. Each shard became a deity. The Shattered Domain is not a metaphor — it is a real plane of divine territory organized around those shards, politically active, and accessible to determined mortal travelers.

  2. Souls have weight

    When you die, your soul's weight goes to whoever holds it. If you kept your soul, it travels the Silver Road to the afterlife — Sheol first, then wherever your life's weight places you. If you made a deal (an infernal contract, a divine compact, any binding claim), the entity holding that claim receives the coin. This is the light treatment for the sourcebook — soul coins are the power of your soul made physical, and what happens to them is determined by who holds the claim, not by a complex economy PCs manage. The consequences of soul contracts are the mechanic. Soul Coins as tradeable GM-facing objects appear in Ch. 11 (GM Advice) for groups who want that layer.

  3. Magic is not one thing — but the differences are about access, not effect

    Ancient, Mortal, and Divine describe how a practitioner reaches power, not what category the power belongs to. Ancient is direct will applied to the planes (more science than mysticism — the Ancients do not chant, they simply reach). Mortal/Arcane is technique: gesture, components, focus, the trained grammar of the Arcana plane. Divine is covenant: power flows through faith to a patron deity and back. The game system (Arcana, Divine, Primal traditions; see the Spells companion) handles mechanics. The lore distinction is for flavor, theology, and consequence — not different spell lists. PSI/void phenomena are a separate sourcebook; they do not appear in this core book.

  4. The cosmos is a structured multiplane system

    Physical Planes (Prime, Shattered Domain, Arcana, The Dim, Mineral, Tidal, Zephyr, Ember, Nexus), Mystical Planes (Silver Road, Veil, Drain, Source, Somnium, Crucible, Weft, Continuum, Void), and Soul Planes (Sheol, Paradiso, The Hells, Limbo, Logos, Bellum, Paxia, Kinesis, Petrina) are all real, traversable, and politically relevant.

  5. The Ancients are still out there

    Approximately a dozen have escaped the Void. They killed Ix. The gods have not forgotten. The Beacon Problem — Ancient magic becomes visible across planes at sufficient scale — is the only thing keeping the escaped Ancients contained. It is not a reliable guarantee.

  6. Devotion has direction

    The gods are not passive recipients of prayer. They have portfolios, politics, allies, and enemies in the Shattered Domain. Choosing which god to worship (or to serve as a cleric) is a choice with consequences — theological, political, and economic.

What a Session Feels Like

Session Shape

A problem that has a surface answer and a theological answer. Usually both need addressing.

For Players

Every session will have something at stake that is real inside the world's logic. The choices the characters make will be remembered — sometimes literally, in the Shattered Domain's archives.

For GMs

Divine politics. The gods want things, and the PCs are the most interesting mortals in the room. Every major conflict connects to the Shattered Domain's territorial logic and the soul-coin economy.

Touchstones

If you liked these

  • *The Divine Comedy* (Dante) Structural / Cosmological Layered afterlife as geography, souls sorted by life choices, traversal with consequences
  • *American Gods* (Gaiman) Tonal Gods as real political entities, faith as power source, divine economy
  • *The Locked Tomb* (Muir) Tonal / Voice Death theology with wit, cosmological stakes, dark beauty
  • *Planescape* (TSR/WotC) Structural Traversable multiplane cosmos, factions with cosmological agendas
  • *Prince of Nothing* (Bakker) Tonal Morally complex religious conflict, consequences with weight
  • *The Last Wish* (Sapkowski) Structural Morally grey world, consequences of power, regional variety