"To care, to connect, to create - these are the tenets of rebellion." — Frith Fraywalker, Elder of the Eternal Loom

Threadbare is set in a world unravelling at the seams. A creeping, invisible force known as The Void - born of forgetting, indifference, and the slow collapse of culture and community - is draining the fabric of reality itself. Memory fades. Stories vanish. People are unmade.

The StoryWeaver - that's you - must journey through this fraying world, recovering lost knowledge, weaving new stories, and rebuilding what has been lost. The weapons of this world are not swords and shields, but Memory, Imagination, and Spirit.

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The foundational threads that hold the world of Threadbare together - Memory, Imagination, and Spirit. These Core Threads are what all stories are made of. Both LoreQuests and StoryQuests consist of any one, two, or three of the Core Threads. Rediscovering these stories allow the threads to reweave the world of Threadbare.

➡️ Core Threads

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In the beginning, there was the Great Weave. A vast and luminous tapestry of life, story, and meaning, woven together across long-forgotten ages by those who remembered, those who imagined, and those who believed. Every landscape, every creature, every culture, every language had its thread in the great fabric. Every story told added to its richness. Every voice that sang into the world made it more real. Then came the forgetting.

No one can say when it started. No scripture records the first frayed edge, no Elder recalls the first thread that simply... ceased. What is known is this: when stories are no longer told, they do not merely fade. They are consumed. The Void — that vast, hungry silence born of collective amnesia — began its work quietly, in the margins of the world, in the oldest stories and the most forgotten places. And it has not stopped.

What remains is the world of Threadbare.

A worn and tattered world of scattered settlements and frayed ruins, the last remnant of the once-glorious Weave. Its landscape is divided into regions, each shaped by the elemental fabric of its nature — some woven from dense, ancient fibres that hold memory like stone holds heat; others gossamer-thin, near-translucent places where imagination bleeds through the world like light through silk; still others rough and raw, bound together by sheer stubborn spirit. These regions do not end cleanly. Their borders shift and blend like the edges of old cloth — worn, overlapping, impossible to pin down. No map has ever fully captured them. No map ever will.

At the centre of what remains stands Fray's End: the last city, the last vigil, the last hope. Here, the Elders keep watch over the Eternal Loom — the ancient mechanism at the heart of all creation, still turning, still capable of reweaving what has been lost. But the Elders grow few. The Loom requires more than hands. It requires stories. And stories require Storyweavers.

The Void does not rest. In the outer regions, whole settlements have gone quiet without warning — not destroyed, not abandoned, simply unremembered, as though they never existed at all. The frayed ruins that dot the landscape are its monuments: the hollow settings of great stories that no one can now recall, standing like empty frames where paintings once hung. No one remembers how the world came to be called Threadbare. That story, too, is gone. But the Loom still turns. And somewhere in the unravelling, threads remain — Memory, Imagination, and Spirit — waiting to be gathered, carried back, and woven into something that can hold.

• The Fraying - Cold, barren, and colourless, the Fraying is the ever encroaching borderlands of Threadbare. As the void creeps across the landscape this is all that remains. The fabric and fibres of the world drifting into the nothing. The home of creatures that feed on the Void
• The Ink Well - A damp, dark region of Threadbare. At the centre of this glistening, oily swampland is the Ink Well, a fabled sanctuary for the earliest writers. The place where it is said that written language was born.
• The Song Sanctuaries - Beautiful and fertile land where almost everything communicates in song. Plants, animals, and of course, people. Their earliest tribal stories told through rhyme and lyric.
• The Imagined Isles - A remote archipelago beyond the Fraying, where they say you can will to life anything you can imagine. Mysterious islands floating deep in the void.
• The Forgotten Forests - Dark woodland regions on the fringes of Void influence.
• The Parable Pass - A crossing point referenced in accounts of Void events.
• The Lucent Lakes - Ancient home of the Wisps. Once a place of light, festivals, and community. Now largely consumed by The Void.
• The Remnant Realms A land of crumbling citadels, lost empires, and relics buried in dust. Ancient roads still lead through ruins, where odd remnants of old stories are scattered. Some say these are the stories that were never finished.
• The Allegory Abyss A deep gouge in the landscape, filled with poetry and prose. Once home of the great Bards of Threadbare, this land is said to be riddled now with Word Eaters and Dream Hunters.
• The Memoir Meadows A vast landscape of rolling hills and verdant valleys dotted with huge standing stones. Each stone bears fragments of a life story - personal histories and biographical tales. Watched over by Memory Moths, floating on wings made of books, on winds of whispering voices.

• Fray's End - The starting point of the StoryWeaver's journey. A recurring hub area where time passes and weather changes.
• Linenville - TBC

• The Eternal Loom - Where the Elders are confined, tending to the last books of Threadbare.
• The Lost Library - Repository of ancient knowledge and stories.

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• StoryWeaver - The player character. A weaver of stories and rebuilder of the world.
• The Elders - Ancient story keepers confined to the Eternal Loom, bearing books that contain the last remaining stories of Threadbare.
• KnitWitches - Magical allies that can knit your progress into time and space, allowing the StoryWeaver to continue when unwoven.
• InkKeepers - Purveyors of fine inks, dyes, and the odd trinket.
• The Musician - A mysterious musician wandering the Song Sanctuaries.

• Wish Wisps - Ethereal creatures that emit light and grant wishes. Companions of the StoryWeaver who can grant passive powers and abilities.
• Hushrooms - Sentient fungi that warn the StoryWeaver of danger nearby.
• Memory Moths - Tiny flying creatures with pages for wings, carrying the missing parts of unfinished stories to StoryWeavers.

• InkDrinkers - Mosquito-like creatures that swarm from The Void to drain the ink from books, leaving them blank and empty — draining the Spirit of the world.
• Storyvores - Savage, goblin-like creatures made almost entirely of mouth and belly, that hunt Threadbare in packs, devouring stories in any form.

➡️ World

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The central threat of Threadbare. Not a monster, not a storm, not a tyrant — but the absence of culture, memory, and care made manifest.

➡️ The Void

These in-world documents illuminate the nature of The Void through the eyes of Threadbare's characters. Each is written by Stephen Reid, Creative Director of Threadbare, as a narrative exemplar for contributors.

Document	Type	Author (in-world)	Theme
Frith Fraywalker’s Letter	Personal letter	Frith Fraywalker, Elder of the Eternal Loom	The Void as absence of community and care
The Legacy of Bobbin Blench	Historical account	Noria NeedleNest, High KnitWitch	The slow decay of culture and memory
Observing the Unseen	Scientific observations	Professor Alfeus Allpatch	The physical mechanics of Void propagation
When Fabric Fades	Medical report	Dr. Lint Reweaver	The effects of Void contact on people

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Adventure Packs are the major content expansions for Threadbare, each introducing new lore, new locations, and new mechanics.

➡️ Adventure Packs

Pack	Status	New Mechanics
The Void Pack	First release	The Void Runner, The Grappling Hook
Library Pack	In development	TBC

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If you are creating new lore, characters, or narrative content for Threadbare, these guides will help you match the world's voice and aesthetic.

• Narrative Style Guide — How characters in Threadbare speak and write
• Visual Style Guide — The art direction, pixel style, and visual conventions
• Audio Style Guide — Sound effect and music formats and conventions
• Content Guidelines — What themes and content are appropriate for Threadbare

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