The Players
Power in Raptoraem is never faceless. Every riot, routing, and reckoning has its architects.
Some are sovereigns, some are outcasts, some only rumors. But each casts a shadow as long as the Pit.
And none step away without scars.
Powerbroker of the Pit.
Once a firebrand fighting for sovereignty, now its darkest keeper, Erik Mordiger survived the Cull as a child conscript, and the black markets as a fixer.
Gangster by trade, gamester by instinct, he founded the Vertex Consortium: a vast network of freight lines, bonded warehouses, and salvage crews that move more contraband than coal.
Now he is the Black Maw, ruling from the Pit with a blade in one hand and the city’s throat in the other. His gang, the Raptors, enforce his rule—recognized by the iron jaw-guards they wear into battle.
Under his law, they keep the city's streets orderly, the coin flowing, and the ledgers bleeding red with every Strutlord’s tithe.
Many ask: Is the Maw a tyrant or a savior?
The answer depends on who's still breathing...
Erik Mordiger
“The Black Maw.”
Vira Mitra
“The Tigress.”
The sharpest fang.
Daughter of the Wharfside Devil and sister to Nandi, the Loommistress slain on Bloody Sunday, Vira Mitra was forged in blood before she ever saw true battle.
She lost her right arm on the Hexing Night and now wears the Hasta-13—a gun-mount cybernetic gifted to her by Mordiger to replace the shoddy scrap they fit her with.
Soldier, survivor, and rumored accomplice in Leopold Lang’s murder—no one dares discuss details—Vira serves as the Maw’s XO: consigliere, confidante and oldest comrade all in one.
Called the Tigress for the silver-striped raptor mask she wears into battle, Vira is both blade and balance—keeping the city’s gears turning, its debts tallied, and the Maw’s sharpest edges pared smooth.
Shryke Blaskova
“The Exile.”
The Black Maw's Reckoning
Ward of the beloved warrior-poet Leopold Lang, Shryke Blaskova earned her name for her deft knifework and razor tongue. At the Black Wake—when Leopold was cut down mid-parley at the Vesper Gate—she was taken captive by Erik Mordiger with her younger sister Starling and little brother Rabe.
Shryke carved out their escape by slashing Mordiger’s face. However, Rabe was killed in the fighting and Starling was swept away in a rising Gnasher storm, and believed drowned.
Shielded from the toxic rains by young Keeper Tristan Accipiter, she was handed over to Synod Proctor Aurea Pallas. There she became a political hostage—paraded in public as a token of the Synod’s mercy, confined in private as a bargaining chip.
Before her betters, Shryke smiled, bowed, and kept her claws hidden. Behind the mask, she plotted: sharpening every grudge into a blood-debt.
Now, in the wake of Raptoraem's independence, she stands on the line between worlds—too Solarium for the Drowned Star, too Pitbound for Shining Citadel.
Part-castaway, part-traitor, all survivor: Shryke vows to return to the Pit not as prisoner, but as the Black Maw’s reckoning.
And when she comes for his throat, she won’t miss.
Aurea Pallas
“The Golden Architect.”
Heiress to the old Imperium dynasty, golden child of matriarch Xanthe Pallas, and the youngest Proctor appointed to Solarium’s High Synod.
Polished, brilliant, and cold as cut diamond, Aurea Pallas is lauded as the crown jewel of Solarium—resplendent in public, ruthless in private.
Born into power and bred for legacy, Aurea speaks five tongues, negotiates in six, and has rewritten trade law more times than most legislators read it. Behind the marble façades of the Shining Citadel, she is the driving force behind Solarium’s most lucrative mercantile expansions—from licensing harbors to rewriting maritime privileges.
But Aurea's brilliance casts long shadows.
Those closest to her whisper of private griefs: a twin sister dead under unsettling circumstances, a mother whose ambitions outrival the Empire, and a fire raging wildly beneath the gold. Her rise came fast—and cost dearly. Some claim she no longer sees a difference between love and leverage.
Others say she never did.
Since Raptoraem’s declaration of independence, Aurea's name has resurfaced in dangerous proximity to the Black Maw. Reports hint at midnight talks regarding mineral rights to the Drowned Star's rare ore veins: resources critical to the production of the Heliometer, a civic timepiece Aurea brokered as both invention and ideology.
Whether she and Mordiger are striking a bargain, brokering peace, or scripting something darker—no one can say for certain.
Perhaps the silence, like the gilt, is only a front for the secrets nobody dares speak aloud...
Tristan Accipiter
“The Keeper.”
Nephew to Proctor Cassandra Accipiter, Tristan grew up under the stern gaze of the Synod’s Judicial Guard. His father—once a decorated servant of Solarium—died by suicide after a failed speculation in Raptoraem mining shares, a gamble rigged by Mordiger’s Vertex Consortium.
The shame stained the family name. Only Tristan emerged untarnished, taken under his aunt's wing as ward.
Fair-haired, broad-shouldered, and built like the warriors of old, Tristan seemed destined to restore his family's honor in armor and sunlight. He rose quickly through the Keeper ranks: loyal, methodical, and unflinching in the Synod's service. To his superiors, he was a model recruit. To his peers, a quiet stanchion.
But beneath the polished discipline lives a softer calling—Tristan sketches, volunteers, and believes in the possibility of love as much as law.
That philosophy was tested the night he met Shryke Blaskova at the Vesper Gate. Against protocol—and the will of his superiors—Tristan shielded her from the Gnasher Storm.
In the years since, her presence has unsettled everything he thought fixed: order, loyalty, and the nature of right vs. wrong. She is fury where Solarium demands Serenity. Rage where it preaches restraint.
And Tristan cannot look away.
Some say he watches her because she’s dangerous. Some say he Watches her because she burns where he cannot. Most believe he’s trying to save her.
But in the aftermath of revolution, faultlines cannot hold. And if Shryke falls to vengeance, it may be Tristan who has to choose:
Protect the girl he loves.
Or preserve the city he swore to serve.
Stryx
“The Witch.”
The girl left behind
Stryx, formerly Starling Blaskova, is the middle child of the fallen warrior-poet Leopold Lang. During the Black Wake, when Leo was cut down mid-parley by Erik Mordiger, she was taken prisoner alongside her siblings—Shryke and Rabe.
During their escape, Rabe was killed in the chaos. Shryke vanished during the rising of a Gnasher storm, swarmed by Solarium's Keepers. Alone, Starling should have perished.
She didn’t.
Starling survived the storm without a scratch. Her only souvenir is a strange shard—a luminous blue crystal—which she now wears on a cord around her neck. The shard seems to interfere with natural laws, stretching time like spiderweb... or snapping it to the quick.
That same night, Starling sought out Erik Mordiger. She planned to kill him. But during the blast she’d rigged, Mordiger did not strike her down. He shielded her.
No one can say why.
Since that night, Mordiger has kept the child close. Some say close like a daughter. Others say closer still. But most agree—it’s the kind of closeness that cuts too deep.
On her thirteenth birthday—when Pitbound children take their grown names—she chose Stryx as her new moniker.
No one calls her Starling anymore. No one dares.
During the Siege of the Vesper Gate, it was Stryx who turned the tide. Her spells cracked Solarium’s front lines and won Raptoraem its first real taste of independence.
Now half the city calls her a savior. The other half holds their tongues... and their breath.
Whatever Stryx conjures next, it's bound to rip the world at the seams...