Obsidian Gate

The Story of Obsidian Gate

Obsidian Gate began as a guarded threshold in Underkingdom, not as a place for Champions to test one another. Its gate form reflects the purpose of its builders: every approach, boundary, and vantage was shaped around the needs of the people who once used it. Locals still tell stories of the disappearance of its keepers, the event that gave the site its present reputation and left marks no restoration has entirely concealed.

Long before the Convergence, travellers treated the location with a mixture of necessity and respect. It controlled routes, rituals, knowledge, or resources that could not simply be moved elsewhere. When the first stable Threads touched Underkingdom, they anchored here because generations of attention had already made the place a knot in the world's memory. That made Obsidian Gate strategically important without erasing what it had been before.

Contests here reward power first and spirit second. The emphasis feels inevitable once combat begins: shifting sightlines force challengers to commit in ways that suit those qualities. Yet familiarity offers no complete protection. The Arena retains moods, mechanisms, and old scars that can turn a confident advance into a lesson in humility.

Its recognised effect—First ability-based score bonus each player gains is reduced by 1.—is the living consequence of that history rather than an ornament imposed upon it. Competitors learn to read the site as carefully as they read an opponent. To prevail at Obsidian Gate is to understand why Underkingdom preserved it, what the old event changed, and which part of the past is still moving beneath the present.