The world
Nobody signed that pact. Everyone lives off it. Here is what can be said without giving away the ending.
Kingdom and character names stay in French, that's how they read in the game.
The film
A minute and six seconds. Two ancient gods, a world that held, and the night it split. Original music by Jean-Christophe Martinez. Sound only starts when you press play.
Before the Rift
There was a single territory. The ancient wars tore it apart, and that is to be taken literally: they did not happen inside the world, they are what made it.
What they left behind is called the Crown. Four pieces set in a circle, and a hole in the middle. The kingdoms never drew closer together: they drew apart, each carrying off its own fragment. Between them there is no border, there is void, which is to say whatever was torn away.
A crown is a circle pierced by nature: it has a centre, and that centre is empty. So the world carries the name of its wound.
Where it all happens
Why now
Every kingdom has kept a seal since the ancient wars, without knowing what it holds back, the way you maintain a dyke whose river you have forgotten.
They were not closing the Rift. They were holding the kingdoms away from it, each at the distance its own seal maintained. Then a black eclipse loosened them all at once. Not broken: loosened.
The Rift was opened by nobody. It simply stopped being held.
Another bears a seal, elsewhere. Neither they nor the kingdom that neither is the kingdom that keeps it.
The third player
It tore the world down the middle and it has given nobody back. It drinks the sap of the forests, it swallows whole constellations, it gives a face to every lie. What it takes from one kingdom it does not take from another: that is why they have never managed to unite.
It doesn't only take. It gives, too. Its souls are what you spend to summon a creature or cast a spell, granted after the first exchange, and converted one by one. Every kingdom armed itself with the thing that is devouring it.
On the table, it feeds on what dies and on what fires. At a threshold, it strikes, both sides alike. Neither the winner nor the loser asked for it, and its threshold rises every time: the more you feed it, the dearer it becomes to wake.
"The Rift will choose its heir." It is the one thing the four kingdoms agree on, and nobody ever asked what it wanted.
The one who converts
The souls the Rift grants are of no use as they are. Someone has to convert them, and that someone is the Ecliste: a shard of the Rift, a cut core and two turning rings, set at the edge of the table.
It is also what you call on to end your turn. Where other games have a button, RIFT has someone you address, and the most repeated gesture of the game stops being a click.
It isn't drawn: it is built by the game itself, out of the colours of the Rift. It breathes, it darkens when nothing is ready, and it catches fire when the assault can go.
The language
The world was one before the ancient wars. The land split, not the tongue, and that is why there is only one for all the peoples.
It is called khron. That is how it is written, it is said kron, and its oldest form, kedhron, means « what held ».
Its writing, sixteen signs, one per sound
Nobody has published what each one says. The steles of the necropolises are covered in them, and they are still waiting to be read.
Eight words are enough to follow a duel. They come back every turn, and players already pass them around.
WHO · DOES · WHAT, always, without exception.
Nur oth ked, the beast attacks the king. Reversing it changes the meaning: Ked oth nur, the king attacks the beast. That is the only thing to remember.
The plural is -ar, and nothing else changes. nur, one creature; nurar, the creatures.
The rest is not learned here. It is deciphered.
Those who reign
Not one of the four took their throne the same way, and that is what tells the kingdoms apart best. Another reigns, and has no name here.
❈ The Sylves
the one who never left
The Sylves crown nobody: they watch to see who stays. When the other claimants had gone off to find something elsewhere to last on, he was still there, in the same place, and the stump had grown around him.
At the table, the Sylves lay their cards and wait for them to grow.
▲ The Cendrés
the one who outlived the fire
Among the Cendrés, the throne is taken. Eleven took it after the last king died, and the fire took all eleven back. She never took anything: she kept the last ember alive while they burned, and when the smoke settled there was nothing left but her and what she had been keeping.
At the table, the Cendrés don't know how to lose.
✦ The Astraux
the one the calculation returned
The Astraux do not elect their sovereign: they calculate them. The calculation returned that name, and nobody disputed it, you do not dispute a result.
At the table, the Astraux have already seen how it ends.
◇ The Faës
the one whose crowning nobody witnessed
No one remembers his crowning, and that is proof enough: among the Faës, the one whose lie holds longest reigns. He never claimed the throne. He was there, receiving, and it was never established which of the two had been invited by the other.
At the table, the Faës cheat, and only half hide it.
Each waits for you at the end of their kingdom, after their three generals. What they will say to you, you'll hear in the game.
Those who defy them
They leave because staying no longer means anything. In the game, the one you play is simply called You , here is where they have a name. Another walks too. Neither they nor their kingdom are on this page.
⠈ The Sylves
Saelusa
the one who leaves at an age when no one leaves
Warden of a clearing, then a grove, then a whole forest : a lifetime in one place. She left the day there was no one left to watch over.
« I guarded a forest that no longer exists. I still have my legs. »
▲ The Cendres
Takenda
the one who came out of the fire twice
They remade him once, and he is not counting on a second time. Among the Cendres, surviving the forge is not a feat : it is a debt.
« They remade me once. I am not waiting for the second time. »
✦ The Astraux
Natesa
the one nothing ever designated
The Astraux read the future and stop there. Sixth was on none of their sky charts : that is precisely why they are going.
« You have read the ending. I am going there. It is not the same thing. »
◇ The Faes
Naveth
the only liar who ever said something true
Among the Faes, the truth is a lapse of taste. He told one, only one , and since then none of his own will believe him about anything.
« I lie about everything. Except that. And no one believes me , fair enough. »
The kingdoms
Growth · healing · swarm
Keepers of ancient clearings who turn every small shoot into a threat. They aren't trying to defeat the Rift: they want to close it, and send the sap back up through the wounded kingdoms.
Fury · sacrifice · impact
Smiths of the volcano and beasts of ember: they turn their wounds into power. Their throne stands empty, and the only way onto it is to carry the last ember to the heart of the royal forge.
Control · echo · tempo
Mages of the celestial tides, able to bend time and freeze the battlefield. They aren't fighting for territory but to put three constellations back where they belong, without which nothing will ever unfold in the right order again.
Illusions · cunning · mobility
A court of the dusk where nothing is quite where you expect it. Three impostors have sat on its throne, and the Mirror will not say who the true sovereign is until all three have vanished along with their reflections.
The four kingdoms believed the war was over. Under their feet, something was waiting for its hour, and this page will not open it.
The gates
Three generals hold the road into each kingdom, then its sovereign waits at the end. Each has a name, a hand-painted face, and lines that belong to nobody else.
Four faces out of sixteen. The other twelve are waiting behind their gate.
The waiting list
One address, and you open the first gate on launch day, early January 2027.
RIFT