Anamnesis, Renascents, Arkhe and Other Oddities

It's been suggested that I explain several things about the setting, which sounds like a good idea because, quite honestly, I never got around to put it all together in a more or less orderly fashion.

I believe that the best way to do this will be through posts gathered under a Lore category, so here's the first one explaining some of the most basic concepts inside the setting.

Bear in mind however, that I am not going to explain anything that your character is not supposed to know inside the game, that would spoil much of the fun.


Anamnesis is the main theme of the game. The territory in which the action takes place receives this name, but the Anamnesis is an underlying phenomenon larger than the islands.

As you know, in this cyclic world, several territories and their people vanish during the Amnesia to be recalled in those islands 7 years later. In other words, their own existence goes through an anamnesis of sorts.

As far as the mainland inhabitants know, that's all there is to the phenomenon, but renascents know better. As imperfect immortals, they don't technically die, so they don't forget about the cycles of the world and their previous life experiences. They experience another phenomenon related to the Anamnesis whenever they are killed, which is the alteration of collective memories to fit their rebirth.

In short, the game is not so much about loss of memory as it is about the reshaping of a collective memory for unknown purposes.

Suppose somebody shoots to death a renascent. The renascent will appear immediately afterwards somewhere else doing something else and everybody's memories will be adapted to the new reality. The retelling is perfect, so not even the murderer will remember having killed anybody that day and even the bullets spent will be removed from memory.

To put it simply, something in control of the collective memory refuses to accept the deaths of renascents.

Under normal circumstances, renascents will be given an altogether different life, erased from some peoples' memories and put into others'. But the same forces that draw them into the islands of Anamnesis during each cycle also keep them bound to their task of retrieving the relic's pieces. In this instance, only their deaths are forgotten, but they are still remembered by both enemies and allies and pushed on to continue their work. I believe this is what caused the most confusion because I failed to explain this difference somewhere else.


Finally, there is the concept of Arkhe. Arkhe redirects to Arche, both forms are correct as far as I know, but Arkhe looks kooler.

I've seen many people call this money, but that is only half true. You can call it money if you like, because it pretty much is wealth, but you wouldn't be able to quite explain how you can throw money at things and make magical things happen.

Arkhe is supposed to be the basis of everything. Wealth will allow you to have more of everything, which means you will have more Arkhe available. In this world, gold is a very valuable rarity associated with The Influence because it is the metal with the highest Arkhe concentration, and has therefore been reshaped near to depletion during the ages. Silver is also a valuable metal because of the silver standard monetary system of The Steppes; it is therefore more often associated with The Court.

I'll  leave the details of conjuration aside for now to avoid expanding this post much more. Bottom lined, conjuration is used by those with a deeper understanding of the world (renascents and conjurers) for reshaping Arkhe during days-long rituals.

Of course, similar goals can be achieved by trading goods, and that's why calling it money is half true after all. While influenced aristocrats summon units with Arkhe, stalwart ones sign contracts with it. It is ultimately a way to avoid tedious micromanagement.


I hope that explained most common misconceptions or at least didn't confuse you any further. I'll get into other concepts in detail during the following days as I try to make sense of more notes, since some are well over 10 years old.

Feel free to ask any other questions you might have.