While I was mulling over the FAB fiction for the character tier list article. I realized that the FAB website is a mess. Alright that’s a little overstated. It’s doing fine for a lot of things, but attempting to find all the FAB lore is an absolute nightmare. There is no master list, search terms are hit and miss, the tags aren’t consistently applied, and there is a big chunk of the lore that can only be found via digging though the articles scroll, where picking it out from amongst the non-lore pieces is a time-consuming task. As of the time I type this, they’re over a dozen lore pages that are hard to find unless you know to look for them.
Wouldn’t it be useful if someone went through it all and sorted out all the lore pieces so that you could access them easily? Yeah it sure would, too bad no one did that. Well, no one did it for me. I did it for you. The process of writing my, admittedly weird, medication on my hesitancy to do a close reading of the fiction and the aforementioned character tier list meant that I had to comb over and review as much of the available FAB lore as I could find. In doing that research, I realized that LSS has not done the best job of curating their stories. While some of the pieces tied to the Heroes and regions are available under the heroes tab, many are buried in nearly 40 pages (and growing) of articles arranged only by date and some inconsistent tags. It was frustrating to excavate all the lore that had fallen through the cracks, and with FAB 2.0’s tease of more engagement with the game’s narrative elements, it felt like the sort of stuff the community might want to read. So, as a sort of public service to save others the time I spent searching, I’ve compiled this list of lore articles that exist outside of the “Heroes” section. The ones that are under that section are relatively easy to find on their own, and don’t feel like they need additional curation on my part. Hopefully, at some future date, LSS will go back through and come up with a batter way of cataloging all the wandering lore. Maybe if we’re really lucky, they could finally add an official PDF of the lore book. It’s the biggest chunk of narrative available for the game and it’s pretty much inaccessible to the bulk of the fan base. It would also help out content creators. My PDF copy is kind of janky, but I use it semi-regularly when writing articles, and I can’t justify the price of a hard copy since I would be actually using it as opposed to storing it as a game-adjacent collectable. So, a nice clean PDF direct from the source would be spectacular. (Note: portions of the lore book do already appear on the main site, but it’s far less total content than is available in the lore book itself).
As a final lore note, I want to call out DeadSummer’s YouTube channel. When I got into the game, as far as I know, he was the only person really making lore-related content, and while there aren’t a huge number of videos, the ones that are here usually do a pretty good job of sifting through various sources, collecting hard-to-find info, and packaging it together into something cohesive for the community.
Also, to whoever is reading this at LSS (there are at least a couple of you),
I think you’re doing a major disservice to your writers by making it so challenging for fans to find their work. To that end, I want to clearly note that you are absolutely free to make use of whatever you want from this page. I don’t need attribution or compensation, I just want to see the extant writing get its fair chance in front of an audience. If anything from this page can be used to improve the community’s ability to access the lore, I’ll take that as a win.
Catalog System
Libraries should ideally be sorted; so I’m trying to impose some order. I’ll also strive to update this periodically as more lore pieces are released or until LSS gets a chance to make their lore easier to find. The list will be arranged in order of release. I’ll be including character tags to let you know which important characters appear in the narrative. These tags will be styled as {character} so that they’re easy to ctrl+F if you just want to find all the pieces about a particular character. For our purposes “important characters” are mostly characters that have their own cards (but can include important non- Heroes). I’ll also give a very brief summary of what the article is about.
Current as of: 4/28/22
Building the World of Rathe: This isn’t a lore article precisely, but it was one of the first pieces on the site and provides some brief information on how LSS approached developing the regions of Rathe –we’ll call it a sort of lore “behind the scenes”.
No Smoke Without Fire: {Kassai}{Dorinthea} This one is a split piece with two short independent lore entries. In the first Kassai is introduced mid-battle. In the second we see Dorinthea marshaling for battle from within Solana.
Armed to the Teeth: A collection of short lore snippets connected to some the Weapons released as cards in Crucible of War.
In the Fires of the Forge: A collection of short lore snippets connected to some the Equipment released as cards in Crucible of War.
Harbinger of the Abyss: {Levia} {Chane}{Lord Sutcliffe} A story wherein Levia eats more or less anything and everything, and her connection to Chane and Sutcliffe is established. This piece helps set up the Demonastery’s attack on Solana.
Step into the Light: {Boltyn}{Prism} This is a two part story. In the first half, Boltyn leads a small force against some cultists and awakens his connection to the Herald Bellona. In the second half he seeks out Prism to explain what happened.
Lady Barthimont: {Lady Barthimont} The character profile and background for Lady Barthimont.
Lord Sutcliffe: {Lord Sutcliffe} The character profile and background for Lord Sutcliffe
Minerva Themis: {Minerva} The character profile and background for Minerva
The Librarian: {The Librarian} The character profile and background for The Librarian
The Land of Legends: {Queen of Candlehold} Background on several of the areas within Aria.
A Grand Adventure: {Lexi}{Briar}{Yorick}{Oldhim}{Queen of Candlehold} – Lexi leads a party our of Volthaven to try to figure out what’s going on in Aria. She meets several other Heroes and they go on an adventure but find more questions than answers… then they get drunk.
Morlock Hill: {Minerva}{Dorinthea}{Boltyn} Dorinthea and Minerva fight the forces of the Demonastery, and a heavy cost is paid. After the battle she and Boltyn reflect upon Solana’s precarious situation.
Journey into the Forgotten: {Iyslander}{Shiyana} Iyslander narrates her journey hopping around Rathe, through Aria, Solana, and into Volcor where she encounters Shiyana.
In Flames: {Shiyana} A short little teaser for Uprising where Shiyana notes her impressions of Volcor and how it might fit into Solana’s search for allies against the Demonastery.
* Header Image – The Great Library of Solana by Federico Musetti
FAB with Freyja 