Fragments from
Sa’ Reyen.
Read selected previews from TIDES and Sands of Change, including pieces of lore, atmosphere, character, airship intrigue, desert mystery, and the larger world still taking shape.
TIDES
The World of Sa’ Reyen
The World of Sa’ Reyen is a richly imagined arcanapunk tabletop roleplaying world of airships, ancient sigils, crystal-powered wonders, political tension, and tide-worn mysteries. Across storm-dark skies and fractured kingdoms, players navigate a setting where magic is engineered, alliances are fragile, and every voyage may uncover a secret powerful enough to reshape the world.
The World Below the Sky
In Sa’ Reyen, magic was never content to remain a prayer.
It was measured, cut, soldered, sealed into crystal, etched into brass, and set humming beneath the decks of ships that should have fallen from the sky centuries ago. Every kingdom claimed to understand it. Every guild insisted they could regulate it. Every captain knew better.
The old sigils still answered, but not always to the hand that drew them. Tide-crystals still burned blue in the engine chambers, but some pulsed in rhythms no engineer could explain. In the high ports, politicians spoke of treaties and trade routes. In the lower docks, smugglers, scholars, priests, and thieves whispered about ruins resurfacing from the stormline.
To voyage across Sa’ Reyen was to accept a simple truth: the world was built on secrets, and the sky had a way of returning what the powerful tried to bury.
TIDES, draft lore excerpt
Sands of Change
a TIDES Novel
Sands of Change is a TIDES novel of airships, murder, desert intrigue, arcanapunk mystery, and a dangerous heist at the center of a much larger conspiracy. Framed for a crime she did not commit, Captain Cily Oxset must protect The Wandering Maiden, uncover the truth behind Ambassador Landra Hartley’s death, and survive a trail of forged evidence, old laws, shifting alliances, and secrets powerful enough to change the course of Sa’ Reyen.
The Heist
Cily Oxset had never believed in perfect plans.
Perfect plans were for council chambers, military academies, and people who had never stolen anything worth keeping. Real plans breathed. They bent under pressure. They changed shape when a guard turned left instead of right, when a lock had been replaced, when a storm rolled in three hours early and turned the whole sky the color of old blood.
This plan, unfortunately, was already breathing too much.
From the roofline above the western archive, Cily watched the ambassador’s private carriage roll through the gate below, its lanterns hooded, its wheels wrapped for silence. Three escorts. No heraldry. No official seal. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make the arrival look unimportant.
Which meant, of course, that it mattered.
Behind her, The Wandering Maiden waited beyond the ridge of the city, hidden in the warm dark beyond the watchlights. She could almost feel the ship pulling at her, impatient as a living thing.
“Quick in,” Cily whispered to herself. “Quiet out.”
Then the first alarm bell rang.
Sands of Change, draft excerpt
The Frame
By morning, the city had already decided what kind of woman Cily Oxset was.
Smuggler. Thief. Airship captain. Foreign nuisance. Convenient suspect.
The dead ambassador made the rest easy. Landra Hartley had been found in a locked room with Cily’s calling token on the floor, a sigil-burn on the desk, and enough staged evidence to make a lazy magistrate weep with gratitude.
Cily stood in the center of the inquiry chamber and counted exits while three officials pretended they were still asking questions. They did not want answers. They wanted confirmation. There was a difference, and it was usually where innocent people disappeared.
“You were seen near the archive,” one of them said.
“Half the city was near the archive.”
“You had reason to intercept Ambassador Hartley.”
“I had reason to avoid her.”
The official looked up. “And yet she is dead.”
Cily smiled without warmth. “That does seem to be the part someone wanted you to notice.”
Sands of Change, draft excerpt
The Voyage
The desert did not sleep beneath The Wandering Maiden.
It shifted in long pale backs under the moon, dune after dune moving like some enormous buried creature turning in its dreams. The ship crossed above it in a hush of canvas, crystal-light, and restrained machinery, her hull throwing a narrow shadow over sand that had swallowed armies, cities, and names.
Cily stood at the forward rail with grit in her teeth and the ambassador’s last message folded inside her coat. She had read it six times. She understood less each time.
There was a map hidden in the words, or a warning, or a confession. Maybe all three. Landra Hartley had been many things, but careless was not one of them. If she had left the message behind, she had meant for someone to follow it.
The problem was that every route led farther into the desert.
Behind her, the engine crystals gave a low blue pulse. Ahead, the horizon shimmered.
Cily tightened her grip on the rail.
“All right,” she said to the dark. “Show me what you died for.”
Sands of Change, draft excerpt
A note on excerpts
These excerpts are new draft previews. Names, scenes, lore, and final wording may shift as the world and stories continue to develop.