Why I Keep Returning to Qâl

 I’ve been dreaming about Qâl for a long time. It started as a setting idea—a moon orbiting the planet of my main campaign world, Aranor—but it’s become something much deeper. I didn’t realize it at first, but Qâl started reflecting things I couldn’t quite name. Fracture. Memory. Inheritance. The weight of stories we’re told, and the ones we tell ourselves to survive.

Qâl is a broken moon. Something struck it—an alien vessel—and the impact didn’t just shatter the land. It shattered truth. The people who live there don’t know what really happened. They were told to worship the God-Orb, the planet Aranor, which they orbit. They were told it’s divine, by aliens who set themselves up as priests. In time, even the priests forgot the truth and began believing the lie—believing they channel holy power.

But it’s all built on a lie. The God-Orb is just a planet. The power they feel is broadcast energy from a grid the aliens left behind. The grid doesn’t choose. It isn’t divine power or answered prayers. It just rains down, changing everything it touches.

And yet… life goes on. People build rituals. They form castes. They remember what they can, and forget what they must. Some Animists walk the literal edges of the world—the Scar left by the Great Breaking—trying to nurture the last peaceful memories Qâl still holds. Others want to burn it all down.

I think I understand that impulse more than I used to.

This world—this moon—isn’t just a setting anymore. It’s a mirror. And lately, I’ve been orbiting it from a place of my own fracture. Divorce. Displacement. The slow realization that some of the truths I built my life on weren’t truths at all.

But Qâl reminds me that even in a broken world, there are vestiges. Small places where peace still lingers. Moss that grows in defiance. A flame that never goes out.

That’s why I keep returning to Qâl. Not to escape, but to remember. To rebuild. To mythologize the things I can’t yet say out loud.

If you’re reading this, maybe you’re orbiting something too. Maybe you’re carrying a fracture of your own.

If so, welcome. There’s room for you here.

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