The Auldmere Chronicles

When the dragonkin scourge burned Vashen and the old capital fell, the survivors did not inherit a kingdom. They inherited roads. The land between settlements was suddenly the most dangerous thing in the world, and the powers that endured, Caer Vaneth on its terraces, Thornhold behind its two walls, Sunhaven above its quays, signed the only treaty that mattered: each crown would keep its own roads, and any traveller could swear to one crown and carry that crown's protection wherever its writ ran. The Oath of Roads is that treaty still working.

Each banner keeps the oath in its own voice. Caer Vaneth, the high kingdom, swears you at the Mountain Table, and its oath is defensive to the bone: keep the passes, feed the watch, never open the gate to flattery. Thornhold swears you at the Book of the Second Wall, where Karan's law is written, and its oath is the law itself. Sunhaven swears you on saltwater, an oath sworn on the tide that everything comes back: cargo, ships, favours, debts. And the Old King's Banner is the broken fourth, sworn before the Herald in the ash of Ashfall: the allegiance of everyone the treaty left outside, with no protection, no law, and no taxes either.

You arrive sworn to no one. Individuals have no kingdom until they choose one, and no crown compels the choice: the unsworn road is a legal road, and it costs nothing except everything the oath gives. The deep below swears nothing at all. What the dragonkin were, why they came, and what the old capital knew that the surviving crowns never did, the world remembers only in pieces. Walk it, and the pieces are yours to find.