What death takes
- Every level and every skill
- The weapon in your hand and the pack on your back
- The gold in your purse
- Your name, your reputation, your bounty
- The body itself, left for whoever finds it
An open-world RPG of one life
Ex Nihilo
From nothing, a new life begins.
You are not making an immortal hero. You are making a life. It can become a farmer, a merchant, a warlord or a legend. Then it will end, and the world will go on without it.
Begin Life (coming soon)What is this place
Your character is temporary.
Your experience is permanent.
The world remembers.
One life
Death is permanent
There is no respawn. When a life ends its level, its name and its standing end with it, and what it carried lies where it fell. The only thing that crosses over is what you learned.
What remains
- Everything you now know about the world
- The grave, and the epitaph you chose for it
- What you built, banked and left behind
- Your line in the Book of Lives
- The stories other people tell about how it ended
The first time you walk into a dangerous forest, you do not know what is in there. After dying in it, you remember. The next life knows.
- CreateStep out of the Void with nothing
- ExploreWalk past the edge of what you know
- BuildEarn a place, a trade, a name
- RiskTake the chance that is worth it
- DieEventually, something goes wrong
- RememberKeep what the life taught you
- Begin againEx nihilo
The world
One world. It does not reset.
Seven lands ring the last safe hearth, each more dangerous than the one before, and past them a frontier nobody has finished mapping. Everyone shares the same world, and it keeps what happens in it.
Emberfall
The last hearth. Every life begins at the Nihil Stone, and none return to it.
Captured in the game engineIt was built to keep something in the east. It faces west now.
They were not buried here. They lay down.
Follow the lights if you wish to become one.
Sealed from the inside.
He would not die, so he became the absence of a king.
The ash fell for three days. On the fourth, it got up.
She sailed to find where the sea ends. She found it.
A stair going down into black water. The bottom step is warm.
They dug for iron and found something that was already digging up.
Eleven hearths, cold. They left the bread in the ovens.
Five beginnings
Your class is where you start
Every class can wear any armour and swing any weapon. A warrior can die a merchant. A rogue can die a landlord. What you become is decided by what you do.
Warrior
Frontline combat
You stand where the danger is thickest, because someone has to, and because you are good at it.
- Stuns and knockdowns
- Damage while surrounded
- Closing distance fast
Soldier, mercenary, guard, champion, warlord.
Ranger
Ranged combat · exploration
Civilisation is a small, loud place. You prefer the rest of the map.
- Damage at distance
- Escaping a bad fight
- Hitting several foes at once
Hunter, scout, explorer, bounty hunter.
Mage
Magic · area damage · control
Power without preparation is noise. Yours is neither.
- Heavy area damage
- Slowing and scattering foes
- Crossing ground instantly
Scholar, battlemage, enchanter, explorer of thin places.
Rogue
Stealth · assassination
A fair fight is a planning failure.
- Vanishing mid-fight
- Opening from the dark
- Poison and thrown blades
Thief, assassin, spy, smuggler, infiltrator.
Artificer
Devices · engineering
Others destroy things. You make the things they destroy them with.
- Explosives
- A turret that fights for you
- Fixing yourself mid-fight
Blacksmith, engineer, merchant, alchemist, inventor.
No two lives look alike
Build, height, face, age, two dozen hairstyles, beards, horns, ears, scars, tattoos and war paint. You will make many of these. Make each one somebody.
Legacy
Death is where the stories come from
A blade is not legendary because of its numbers. It is legendary because of who carried it, who took it from them, and where it was finally lost.
Your body stays where you fell. Someone will find it. What they take from it now has a history, and you are in it.
The Blade of AureliusOne sword, five lives- A famous warriorForged it, named it, and carried it for a hundred days.
- The one who killed himTook it from the body on the Kingsroad.
- A merchantBought it for more than a house, and never drew it.
- A guild leaderWore it into the Ashen Wastes and did not come back.
- YouFound it in a sealed vault, still warm.
Graves and epitaphs
Every death leaves a corpse to loot, then a grave with the words its owner chose. The Book of Lives keeps them all.
Land and building
Buy a plot beyond the walls and build on it: a camp, a fire, a store for everything you cannot carry.
A player economy
Hunt, mine, fish, craft and sell. Trade with other players on the marketplace, work a stall, bank what you cannot afford to lose.
Guilds that outlive you
Found a company of mercenaries, merchants or thieves. Its members will die. It does not have to.
Killing has a price
Outside the sanctuary anyone can be attacked. Ending a life earns infamy, and bounties are paid in gold.
The world chronicle
First discoveries, great deaths, new guilds and fallen kings are written down where everyone can read them.
The Ex Nihilo Token
A life has a price
The token, EXN, opens the door. It is what a new life costs and what a plot of land costs, and it belongs to you rather than to any one character.
Gold is what the world itself runs on: shops, the marketplace, bounties. Gold is carried, and gold dies with whoever was carrying it. On the marketplace, players trade gold for the token with each other.
During testing, lives are free. Token supply, pricing and distribution are still being decided and nothing on this page is an offer or a promise of value.
Then begin again.
Begin Life (coming soon)