A text-based realm
One shared world. Earth time. Text in a browser. The Reach keeps running when you close the tab.
A persistent dark-medieval text MMORPG.
Dead Kingdoms is a shared continent people still call the Reach. You play in the browser. There is no download, no instance, no private copy of the map. If you take flax from a seam, that flax is gone for everyone until the ground grows it back. Buildings finish while you sleep. Corpses rot on a clock. NPCs keep hours, get sick, and die. Their seats can be taken.
The clock is the Earth’s. One real day is one day in the Reach. Energy returns five points every ten minutes. HP returns five every fifteen, unless you are sick — then nothing returns until you act. Mana returns every ten minutes. Sanity slower, and only if you are not rotting from the inside.
You grow forever. There is no level cap and no end of the book. Skills rise by doing the work. Insight comes from skill ranks and virtues. You spend Insight on the body you have, not on a class tree.
The sun went out in the eleventh year. Nothing has left since.
In the eleventh year the light failed. Nothing has left since: not heat, not the dead, not a rumour of the sun. The ground under the Reach is treated by some as a document. A sentence was signed by something that is not a god. People still farm, still keep books, still hang thieves.
Grimhollow is the first roof most of you will know: peat smoke, a bell that rings for raids, Maren’s tally. Carts still come in. Names still go into the books. Beyond the thatch: black fen, ash waste, glass shore, barrows, a wood that grows doors, and things that used to be kings.
Ash in the pack is dust, cheap and useful. Ash in the header is corruption — the Reach getting into you. Spells and rites add it. It barely fades. At twenty you are ash-marked. That is not the same as a handful of ash in your bag.
What you learn in talk, graves, and books stays on your Lore page. The world has its own chronicle. You are late to it.
The left list is the game.
Leave is in the top bar. It ends the session and puts you on the front door.
The long bars are HP, Energy, Mana, Sanity. The small ones are food, water, warmth, and ash (corruption). Keep food, water, and warmth up. Keep ash down.
Hunger and thirst empty in real time. Cold kills on the waste. Sickness stops HP and energy return. Bleeding will not wait. Eat, drink, sit with a fever, find a healer or an antidote if you want the illness gone.
You arrive by an origin. That choice is permanent. It sets your first place, a trait, a few skill ranks, and one opening scene. It does not lock a class. The six starts are written out on the origins page.
Search the ground for what the last war left. Harvest named nodes (fish, peat, flax, ore). Tools help and they wear. Craft at a station: hands, fire, hearth, forge, bench. Recipes with low skill you can work out; the rest you are taught or you find.
Talk to people. Maren keeps the store and the books. Others teach, buy, send you out. Their trust is a number. Kill the wrong person and you are an outlaw for a few hours.
Hides. Dig a hole with a spade (Here). One hide per tile, three in the whole Reach. Only you know it until someone else searches well enough to find it. Pack: Hide 1, put silver, take it back while you stand on that ground.
Found a settlement if you have the will and the timber. Feed it, wall it, lose it. NPC villages are the same kind of place. Some seats are empty on purpose.
Beasts hunt. A wyrm will usually ignore a weak newcomer. About one time in six it still notices you. A merely stronger thing warns, then the first hit is capped so you can Escape or Hide. Stay, or strike first, and it hits full. Rats and dogs do not care how new you are.
Players can kill players. Murder makes you outlaw for hours. Killing an outlaw is lawful. Newcomer protection is for PvP, not for beasts.
Hide in cover on Here before the charge. Escape is on Fight while it has you. A beast death leaves the pack more often than a human death. Search the body. Butcher for meat and hide.
You die. You choose a contract. There is no bloodline save.
A share of the pack stays on the ground where you fell until it rots. Sign, stand up, go get it if you still want it.
There is no class. You pick one of six starts, and after that anyone can learn anything. A gravedigger can become a smith. A serf can learn death-magic. The start only decides where you wake, a mark you cannot take off, and one opening story that does not play again.
You get stronger by doing the work. Each new skill level gives Insight. You spend Insight on your body, and later on Virtues: named gifts such as Master Smith, Grave Tongue, or Soul-Eater. Soul-Eater is the only way to consume a fresh corpse, and it asks for very high Necromancy and Blood Lore. The Ashen Crown is how one person is allowed to hold more than one settlement. Any start can reach these. The full account of each life, including what the opening can teach you, is on the origins page.
The map is dozens of places. Villages are already standing. Shops run out of silver. Quests do not draw you a path. Other players use the same roads. One world, in the browser. Dead Kingdoms v1.0.0.
A banner is a player house. Raise one at your hall or in Grimhollow. It costs 80 silver, and you need a Seal, a Charter, or Leadership level 3. Invite people and swear them in. The lord names a war. Everyone has twelve hours to answer. After that, a fight at the enemy’s hall is not murder. A fight on the road still is. The war ends when one side yields, or after seven days. One house each.
What you can wear, eat, fill, craft, or sell is in the item manual.