Gravenheim is a city that squats on the banks of the River Schaal like a stone gargoyle, half-ruined and half-magnificent, a frontier between the wild and the civilised, the holy and the damned. Its alabaster keep rises pale against a smoke-choked sky, and the bells of the Cathedral of the Veiled Saint toll over crooked alleys where merchants, mercenaries, spies, and pilgrims jostle for place.

It is a principality of the Holy Empire, nominally loyal to a distant Emperor whose shadow falls longer than his hand. Here the Prince rules—part sovereign, part vassal, caught between loyalty and ambition.

The court is a nest of intrigue, where each whisper can weigh more than a sword. Secrets are the true coin of Gravenheim, and spies thrive in every corner. Four great powers hold sway within the city walls and beyond:

• The Crown, seat of the Prince in the Alabaster Keep, struggling to balance imperial demands with local rivalries.
• The Church of the Veiled Saint, half-inspired, half-corrupt, where miracles and heresies walk hand in hand.
• The Guild Compact, the city’s beating mercantile heart, full of craftsmen, miners, and merchants who measure loyalty by coin.
• The Army of the Iron Standard, iron-shod boots that keep order—or break it—depending on who pays their captains.

Beyond the gates lie villages still clinging to old pagan gods, black forests where no birds sing, and borderlands where soldiers vanish without trace. The Schaal itself runs sluggish and brown, bearing trade downstream and corpses in floodtime.

The mood of Gravenheim is one of Gothic High Fantasy: grandeur sliding into decay, hope knotted with dread. Think of Gormenghast’s crumbling halls, the labyrinthine shadows of Gene Wolfe’s Citadel, or the grim realism of the Holy Roman Empire after dusk. This is a place where the stones themselves seem to brood, where every bargain has a cost, and where the line between miracle and curse is perilously thin.

When you step into Gravenheim, you are not only entering a city—you are entering a story of ambition, betrayal, and the long twilight struggle between light and shadow.

Enter the chronicles and discover:

• Lore — history, atmosphere, and institutions of the city.
• Geography — maps and landscapes of Gravenheim and the Schwarzwald.
• Institutions — crown, church, guilds, army, spies, and more.