Umbral Vex

Overview

USA

Once known as the United Kingdom, this region has been reborn in ruin as Crownshale—a crumbling land of steampunk survival, fractured monarchies, and Monicue-tainted air. Shattered by the Collision and cut off from most global aid, Crownshale stands as a symbol of stubbornness: refusing to die, even as the world forgets it.

Named after the crown-shaped sinkhole that appeared during the Collapse in what used to be London, Crownshale is now a land of:

• Rusted steel cities choked in smog

• Abandoned royal keeps overtaken by mutant flora

• Underground bunkers echoing with old-world AI

• Fields where the rain glows blue and the sheep have too many eyes

It is both a graveyard and a forge—for survivors, rebels, and revolutionaries alike.

Geography

Crownshale is split into five major regions:

The Ashbelt (Former Greater London Zone)

• Home to New London and the Crownshale Rift

• Dense urban decay, plagued by acid rain and collapsing infrastructure

• Underground vaults, Overwatch blacksites, and AI ruins dot the area

• Political and economic heart of what's left of human civilization here

The Shardlands (Wales & Midlands)

• Landscape fractured by tectonic shifts and leyline exposure

• Glittering glass hills and jagged obsidian ridges

• Home to scattered nomad tribes, rogue psionics, and illegal rune cults

• Also hides Vault Cinder-8 and other secret facilities

Verdant Verge (The rural outlands)

• Once farmland, now overrun by Monicue-mutated nature

• Forests where trees bleed sap that whispers

• Home to surviving elven enclaves, fringe synthetic communes, and radical Monicue ecologists

The Crown’s Spine (Northern mountain range and sea cliffs)

• Remote, jagged terrain, wind-blasted and treacherous

• Site of old military outposts and Dämmerlicht test zones

• Still houses ancestral vaults of the British Crown

• Believed to contain access points to the Kumokuni Skytrails

Kardiff Ruins (Former Cardiff and surrounding cities)

• Entire urban zones lost to Therax Scorpion infestation

• Monicue storms still flash across the skyline at random

• No government or faction has reclaimed it—now a no-go zone of legend

Culture and Life

• Most people live in industrial tenement blocks, wear layered steam-filtering clothing, and cook food with leftover rune-cores

• Technology is cobbled together: steam + rune + AI, held by duct tape and desperation

• Superstition and faith blur: people pray to AIs, carry rune-script charms, and fear being seen by “The Archive That Watches”

• Music, graffiti, and underground plays are the main form of resistance and hope