The Universe of Strings
A collection of rich and varied settings designed for D&D, perfect to drag-and-drop into your game. A shadow for every light, two villains for every hero. The Universe is running on borrowed time. Can you wind back the clock, if only to delay the final tick for a few more decades?
No website blurb will give you a better introduction than the free Ariadne's SRD, but we made one anyway!
The Dying Light of Divinity
The Gods of the Universe have all been killed, leaving a wound in reality that can never be healed. Mortals have been left picking up the pieces of a Universe they do not fully understand, but that must be protected. Eternity—the voidborn entity responsible for the fall of divinity—hungers to finish what it started seven millennia ago: the swallowing of the cosmos into its howling void, a domain of madness.
Mortals... Have proven surprisingly resilient. They have managed great feats of resistance against the timeless Enemy, and some have even managed to wield the Divine Domains the Dead Gods left behind. And yet, each fight is smaller than the last, each resistance less impactful in the grand scheme of things. It has been this way since time immemorial. In the end, Eternity will win, for it is entropy itself, and one cannot vanquish such a foe.
Heroes & Torchbearers
With the Gods dead and most other immortals gone mad, there were hardly any beings capable of carrying the memory of an ancient Universe with them. Thus, much knowledge, wealth and power lies hidden in ruins, within cryptic tomes written in languages thrice forgotten, behind traps capable of felling dragons, or, in the worst cases, entirely erased from the pages of history.
In this Universe, heroes strive to piece back the story of reality, to connect the dots that will reveal the enemies for what they are, and light the way to an unlikely salvation. Relics of legendary importance, spells beyond the ninth category, martial techniques that channel the soul into irresistible strikes—these are all things that have been recovered, lost, and recovered again by the mortals that succeeded the Xildur Gods.
The Power of a Bygone Age
Of all the things left behind by the Dead Gods, nothing is more important than their Divine Domains, aspects of reality made manifest. They divested themselves of them before their sacrificial charge against Eternity, as destroying a Divine Domain is tantamount to erasing the very concepts they represent from existence. Can you imagine a world without Light? Without Love, or Hate? At the very least, it would be unrecognizable.
Though their bodies and souls are not well suited to wield them, mortals picked up the materialized forms of these domains—called Threads of Divinity—and wielded them with the loftiest benevolence and greediest cruelty. The power of the Age of the Gods is up for grabs, and the heroes and villains of every age have taken notice, fought and died in their name.
The story continues on our SRD!
Curious about the Universe of Strings, but still undecided?
That makes perfect sense. That's why we want to give you access to our own System Reference Document, 110+ pages of D&D goodness, for free!