Our Brilliant Ruin is the first story-world developed by Studio Hermitage. Created for multiple formats including tabletop and video games, Our Brilliant Ruin features the Dramark, an elitist society unraveling against the backdrop of a preternatural catastrophe. Welcome to a gilded age in which upstairs-downstairs personal and sociological drama meets existential horror.
The Dramark is a fictional setting where the last fragile remains of society dwell in the shadow of a dying world. The Ruin, a force that befouls everything it touches, has ravaged geography and culture alike, wreaking destructive havoc and loosing monstrous creatures into a previously bucolic region. The Ruin is a preternatural force with which the Dramark must contend, and one that will eventually blight everything.
People of the Dramark fall within three broad factions: a self-serving aristocracy, the competent truefolk, and the self-reliant unbonded, each with different societal relationships. Within each of these diverse social factions also exist families, guilds, and individuals that cooperate and conflict with one another. From the wealthy Galdeparks and industrious Daras to the academics of Crown Hall College and hospitality experts in the League of Glove and Key, each group offers numerous opportunities for rivalry, alliances, and romance. Learn more about each faction on our Factions page.
Aristocrats occupy a place of wealth, property, and privilege. They represent duty to the community and the rewards of fulfilling that duty — or, often, neglecting that duty in favor of something more appealing. Being an aristocrat is usually an exercise in having vast privilege and using it vainly.
The truefolk make the world go ‘round, doing the myriad tasks that establish community and keep it functioning. Truefolk can be anyone from the domestic staff at a grand estate to the villagers whose lives stand in contrast to the aristocrats. Without them, the aristocracy would find itself unable to dress itself, organize a hunt or soiree, or probably even cook a meal.
Being unbonded means existing outside the social mores of the Dramark. Rebels against the prevailing social order, insurrectionists opposing aristocratic exploitation, academics of marginalized institutes, engineers protecting generational knowledge of vast syllokinetic engines, and the scions of lost Royal families all find their place in the faction.
Manifestations of the Ruin are many, but as a phenomenon, the Ruin afflicts people and objects, befouling living creatures and extending its presence in a corroding world. Whether displaying its preternatural force or compelling the actions of those it touches, the Ruin is perniscious and inexorable.
These massive machines once held the promise of an automated future in which workers would no longer have to mine, quarry, or farm. But with the passing of time and effects of Ruin, the syllokinetics now wander the landscape unguided by human hands. While some may still perform their intended purpose, others have malfunctioned, collapsed, or gone rogue.
