Long ago, when the kingdoms of Verenthia were but a dream, and the stars themselves had not yet been fashioned into the majestic dance they are today, the land was one intimate and endless field of magic. Wooden glades sang stories to the wind, mountains jutted up and over carpets of verdant, living ripples and the rivers glinted with living arcane light. At the centre of it all, there stood, an ancient relic called the Shattered Compass. It was a device of incalculable power, crafted by the First Cartographers, beings of unparalleled insight and unbelievable skill, who were said to have mastered the divine power of navigating the arcane. This celestial fragment contained, they said, at its core, the magic of navigation itself: not just the wayward traveler, but of the rise and fall of kingdoms.

According to legend, the Compass was allowed to know the byways that lead to worlds unvisited; enabled its needle to point to destiny Itself, so that an adventurous soul equipped with a Compass could find treasure, artefacts, or unseen worlds and hidden realms supposedly inaccessible in the limits of reality. It was an emblem of human hope and endeavour, uniting the myriad peoples of Verenthia – artists, philosophers, seekers, scientists and mystics – through their common quests for knowledge and adventure. But power draws attention, and Malakar, another user of the Compass, was an ambition-driven necromancer of malevolent intentions. Lusting to use the Compass's magic to transform the world to his warped image, he raised dark forces, and the spectre of war appeared on the horizon.

The two sides were locked in mortal combat in the final battle of a great war, known as the Shattering, upon the peak of the spiritual mountain range of the Celestial Mountains. The good army of light, led by the five guardians of the Compass of Ages, fought with the evil army of Malakar's spectral forces over the course of several days. As the battle raged above the clouds, with shared ground points amidst clouds of magic and bashing of weapons, Malakar muttered the words that would not only curse the defenders of the guardians of Ages, but shake the essence of the entire world of Verenthia into disarray. Malakar seared his dark curse upon the world when he ran a finger across the Compass, smashing it into hundreds of shards that scattered across the lands of Verenthia.

With the land shattered, magic broken, the shards of the Compass of a Hundred Societies became tokens of disunity and personal greed, each one harboring the potential for creation... or destruction. Guardians fell and fell, kingdoms split, Malakar banished to the depths of the shadows and swearing that, one day, he would reforge the shards for himself and return the Compass to its rightful form.

Over the next few the Compass became folklore, and the, always lost to someone, but never truly lost. The shards remained, always just out of reach, their locations protected by an ancient magic and the whispers of lost leagues and thwarted hordes. Many sought them out over the coming centuries, amassing empires or building massive fortunes, or they pursued the Compass to end the darkness that had settled over Verenthia, but none of them succeeded. Now though, with whispers growing that Malakar is once again returning, and with night creep¬ing back over Verenthia, the scattered pieces of the Shattered Compass lie waiting for everyone willing to search for them. Searching for those shards, those who dare will find, in their hands, not just the ability to trace the paths that weave undetected through the island's foliage, but the fate of a world. It is here that their destinies and that of the Compass will collide, in that fragile moment of history: Elara Windroider, Bram Ironfist, Lyra Starshadow – their epic saga is about to begin. The journey ahead could change Verenthia for eternity.