Lore

The Lore behind Dimensional Rift is especially WIP and completely subject to change.

Races & The World

The world of Valtora is the setting for Dimensional Rift, a relatively small portion of 4 known lands surrounded by wilderness, the ocean, and the unknown. Each is controlled by 4 distinct humanoid races.

Men of Altaria

Men are industrious, city-dwelling and urban; an ambitious people of strength, order, and religion, adepts of divine-based magic granted by their one god, Galadon.

They inhabit many cities and towns sprawling the central and northern fields of Valtora, forming a kingdom called Altaria. It is surrounded by the lands of the other races, except for northward, where their dominion extends until the ocean. While human ships might dwell in the rivers and coasts on their land for trade and commerce, few venture deep into the sea, and none that has dared to go far has returned.

Their Fables Deck can be accessed mostly by paying mana to bring out powerful allies, angels and other servants of their god; while their Main Deck has a mix of clergy and the military, with a supporting backrow of Equipment and Vehicle artifacts.

Fey

The Fey are a short, nature-dwelling, gnome-like people of slim, multi-colored, horned bodies that transform into animals and beasts, while being adepts of nature-based magic.

They inhabit the woods down south, and exactly how deep into the forest they venture is unknown, though there is definitely a limit, as the deeper one goes the denser and more dangerous it becomes.

Fey cards mostly access the Fables Deck via the Transform/Transformed mechanic, but they still have a powerful Scroll, monument and boss that are summoned via other costs. On the Main Deck, they have access to a variety of Scrolls that double down as both powerful one-of effects or sources of Hidden Sacrifice. They are all about movement and having to clean up their spent scrolls via sac outlets.

Telur

Telur are half-hobbit/half-dwarf-like people of the hills, of short stature, stout, and with very large hands, very dexterous, and proud of their advanced engineering and magical contraptions.

They inhabit the hills to the west, until before they start to become dunes and end in a deadly desert where none can survive.

The Telur have Creature Token creation cards and use the extra deck by sacrificing a combination of artifacts and creatures. They are less likely to generate or consume mana (though that ability can be amended to their deck through strategic Draft choices). Their Main Deck is filled with the powerful Artifacts concocted by their engineers, that can be fully unlocked by leveraging their creatures with the Maneuver action.

Wynn

Wynn are purple, soft skinned elf-like people, taller and slimmer than humans, that live on the mountain-tops and tunnels; adepts of elemental magic of primal power their spells come with an unsettling cost.

They inhabit the mountains and peaks to the east, at least until they become too cold and snowy to any survive.

The Wynn access their Fables Deck via deranged creature sacrifices, in which they attach the consumed cards face-down to the summoned Fables to fuel their most powerful effects.

World Features

Note This section in particular is very outdated and does not reflect the nature of the current cards, but still provides some interesting bits of worldbuilding we might recover later on.

Soulrifting

A powerful type of magic, that instead of mana, rends the souls of the recently deceased to power otherworldly magical effects. It's practice is understandably considered a taboo by several people, especially producing Dimensional Rifts, and is often done on the margins of society, or in secret. However, compared to mana-based magic, its powers are much more potent, and can include imbuing mundane artifacts with incredible effects, effortlessly erecting vast monuments, summoning allies to intra-dimensional Rifts or, infamously, opening (inter) Dimensional Rifts.

Dimensional Rifts

Through the power of Soulrifting, experienced casters can (intentionally or not) open portals to an otherworldly dimension filled with both powerful beings, chaos, and manifestations. They can provide the caster with immense power, but at a steep cost. There is some belief that the recent underground proliferation of experiments involving Rift opening (and Soulrifting in general) has weakened the fabric of reality, making the accidental Rifts to be more common. While the later is definitely demonstrable, it is unclear what if that is a reason, or the only reason. These portals are where extra deck summoning comes from. When conducting Rift Summoning, the player is actually opening a Rift.

Constructs and Wanderers

On all 4 lands, enigmatic ruins of an extremely powerful, impossibly ancient civilization can rarely be found, some still inhabited by their ancient defense system: constructs, put together by powerful ancient magic. Unlike the Telur engineering, which is based on scientific principles, these non-sentient creatures are powered by magic itself. Possibly put together using Soulrifting, but the art is long lost to time.

If you manage to pass by the powerful but manageable defense constructs, deep within the ruins one might find a Wanderer. They are basically the remnants of the people of this ancient civilization, that having achieved immortality, and having all their needs fully satisfied by the endless powerful magic and machinery they built into their bodies, have after millennia thus lost the will to live or do anything, but are unable to die or be harmed in any way by the environment or others. So they are left to wander aimlessly until the end of times. Anyone that dares to interact with them triggers their automatic protection systems and finds a swift end to their own (non-immortal) existence.

The Malady

A plague-like disease that swept through all 4 lands some ages ago, causing much death and pain. Little is known of its causes or why it ended, other than the terrible memories still enshrined on the population and the ever-present fear of its return. It caused an apparently random member or part of the body (of varying size and shape) of an infected person to characteristically rot, and eventually explode into a black, slimy goo, leading to either death or amputations. After the “explosion”, had the creature survive, it would be immune from future infections. While all the mechanisms of its spread are unknown, it was clearly contagious, specially through this black goo, but it seemed that even people who had absolutely no contact whatsoever could still contract it. In fact, it seemed that direct contagion was the less effective of its transmission vectors, specially as the people of all the lands start to adopt more and more aggressive quarantine measures, to little avail. Renowned mages and scholars of the time spent their lives investigating the Malady, trying to understand its causes, with little-to-no success. It eventually disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, after a few decades of suffering.

Wars

While currently at a (possibly unstable) peace, subsets of the kingdoms have fought with each other over several different wars through the ages, in particular the Humans. In a few instances, all 4 factions have been involved in a few Great Wars.