No one arrives in Vashrath: here, one awakens. The exile opens their eyes with a pounding head and light stabbing at their sight, with no memory of how they came to these lands — only the certainty that a new life begins. There is no memory of the crossing, no account of the far side of the portal. There is only the first breath, drawn on ground one does not recognize.
No One Arrives — One Awakens
The Awakening is the one experience every dweller of the Forgotten Realms shares. Whatever a person was in the world above — soldier, merchant, thief, even royalty — is gone the moment their eyes open in Vashrath. No lineage precedes the awakened, no deed comes before them, no title survives the crossing. All they carry is the body they woke in and the will to press on. In the forgotten lands, that is at once very little and all that matters.
It is this shared beginning that makes the realms what they are: a world where every crown was earned after the fall, never inherited before it. The awakened are equals in the only way that counts — each starts from nothing, and each will be measured by what they build.
The Forward Camp of Cripta
The first ground the awakened treads is not a city, but its antechamber: the forward camp of Cripta, a frontier post raised before the gates of the mother-city, on the watched coastal reaches. Around it there are always soldiers, horses and a clamor that never ceases. It is usually early morning when someone wakes, and in the distance rise hills and slopes wrapped in mist.
The first voice the awakened hears is most often that of Sirius, commander of the camp — "finally, you're awake." A soldier of hard speech, Sirius keeps the order of the post and decides who is ready to move on toward the gates. For no stranger enters Cripta without first bearing a name and a record.
The First Steps of Every Hero
In the game, the Awakening Rite is how every hero's journey opens. Each newly created hero wakes at the forward camp and walks the same three thresholds before the walls of Cripta part:
- The reception — Commander Sirius receives the still-dazed exile and points the way forward.
- The record — the scribe Cassius sets down the hero's name in the Ingress Document, the parchment that turns an anonymous exile into someone the realms will know.
- The oath — before the gates open, every newcomer must declare a side in the Faction Oath, swearing loyalty to one of the Three Forces.
Only then does the road lead through the gates, into Cripta and the open world beyond. The rite establishes the promise the whole game keeps: no guaranteed throne, no inherited name — only the steel you manage to forge and the legacy you carve out among everything the world chose to forget.
Figures of the Rite
- Sirius — commander of the forward camp; the first voice the awakened hears.
- Cassius — the scribe who records each newcomer soon after.
- Cripta — the gate-city whose walls stand just beyond the camp, first of the five cities of Vashrath.