Overview of Ozdranis – The Wastelands of Forgotten Selves

🔹 The Aftermath of Excess Ozdranis is the graveyard of The Wanting. It is where those who have been completely drained by the Architects of Excess (AoE) are discarded—beings who once indulged in the illusions of Outworlds but lost themselves entirely.

🔹 A City that No-One Built, but that Grew from the Forgotten No empire claims Ozdranis. No architects designed its sprawling ruins. It was never meant to exist, yet it does—a ghostly metropolis of half-formed structures, endless grey streets, and abandoned districts that stretch infinitely in all directions.

🔹 The Empty Ones Ozdranis is populated by The Empty Ones, beings who have been stripped of their sense of self. Their thoughts are fractured, their voices are mere echoes of words spoken long ago. They walk, they wait, they whisper—but for what, no one knows.

The System of Decay – How The Empty Ones Are Formed

🩸 A Three-Stage Transformation into Nothingness

🔹 1. The Hollowing (The First Loss of Self)

• When someone consumes too much illusion, their true desires are buried beneath endless layers of artificial longing.

• They no longer know what is truly theirs and what was planted in their mind by external forces.

• This confusion fractures them—memories begin to fade, their thoughts grow detached, and they lose attachment to reality.

🔹 2. The Dissolution (The Second Loss of Self)

• As time passes, they forget their own name—not through memory loss, but because their identity no longer matters.

• They become part of The Murmuring, the whispering crowds that fill the endless streets of Ozdranis.

• Their bodies grow pale, translucent, almost spectral—they are neither dead nor alive, but something in-between.

🔹 3. The Unraveling (The Final Loss of Self)

• The final stage is complete dissolution. The individual fades entirely, merging with the ruins of Ozdranis itself.

• Their energy is absorbed into the city, feeding the very fabric of The Wanting itself—trapped in an endless loop of desire without fulfillment.

• No one knows where they go when they fade completely—only that no one ever returns.

The Encounter – The Poet’s Trial in Ozdranis

🌑 Stumbling into the Forgotten

• After barely escaping Vorathis Prime, the Poet finds himself wandering through an endless, grey landscape where time does not exist.

• There is no sun, no sky, no stars—only fog and the distant glow of flickering lights from ruined towers.

• He begins to hear his own thoughts echoing back at him, spoken by distant voices in the mist.

🌀 Seeing Himself in the Lost Ones

• He sees fragments of himself reflected in The Empty Ones—different versions of what he might have become.

• Some are shadows of his past, filled with regret for choices never made.

• Others are echoes of his fears, whispering the doubts that still haunt him.

🗝 The Test of Ozdranis – Will He Forget Himself?

• The greatest danger of Ozdranis is not physical—it is existential.

• Those who stay too long begin to forget—to surrender their struggles, to embrace oblivion rather than face pain.

• The Poet must fight to remember himself, to hold on to his name, his truth, his purpose—or he too will become one of them.

The Gilded Masquerader’s Warning – A Mysterious Guide

🔮 A Shrouded Figure Appears

• As the Poet begins to lose himself, a cloaked figure emerges from the mist—one of the Gilded Masqueraders, the society of illusionists he met on Vorathis Prime.

• Unlike the others, this one has seen through the deception, but instead of escaping, they have chosen to observe.

🕶 Their Message to the Poet: "You are only lost if you believe you are. You are only nothing if you forget that you are something."

🔑 They offer him a choice:

• Take a key—one that can lead him deeper into The Hidden Districts of Ozdranis, where a secret lies buried.

• Or turn away now—leave before he learns a truth that could change everything.

The Secret Hidden Beneath Ozdranis

🏛 A Buried Temple – The Cathedral of the Forgotten

• Deep in the ruins lies a hidden structure, untouched by time—the remnants of a civilization that tried to resist The Wanting.

• Inside are ancient murals, showing the first beings who fell into The Empty Ones.

🔍 The Revelation – The First Victims of The Wanting

• The Poet realizes some of The Empty Ones were not always this way—they were once rebels, seekers, and revolutionaries.

• They tried to fight against the system of illusion, but they were forgotten by history, erased from memory.

🔥 The Final Test – The Poet Must Set Them Free

• A ritual exists to break the cycle—to release the Empty Ones from their endless wandering.

• But to do so, the Poet must sacrifice something of himself—something deeply personal, a memory or truth that he holds most dear.

• Will he make the sacrifice? Or will he choose to escape, leaving them behind?

The Role of Ozdranis in the Larger Story

🌌 The Foreshadowing of the Galactic Council’s Warning

• What happened to the Empty Ones is a microcosm of what could happen to the entire universe if The Great Fracture is not healed.

• The Poet’s journey through Ozdranis is a warning—that forgetting, losing one's creative spirit, is the greatest threat to all beings.