The riven land

Riventale means "the riven land": the tale of what was torn. The game never tells its story outright. It comes in torn pages found in old chests, in the titles of the bosses, and in the wordless opening of every new world.

The Crystal

Riventale was once whole. At its heart floated a crystal that held the four elements as one, Water, Fire, Earth and Wind, with a white light at its core. The land around it was calm. The Riventale crest shows that crystal: four elements round a white core.

The Vael

An older people, the Vael, lived in the east. They were makers. They built robots of tungsten, cut moonstones that could carry a traveller across the land, and ground lenses that could see through things. Their robots still wander the world without masters, and tungsten, their makers' metal, still calms them.

The Riving

The Vael wanted the Crystal's power, and built an engine to drink it. When it was lit, the Crystal shattered. The elements tore apart and fled into wild lands where no map reaches. The blast burned the Vael homeland into a smoking wasteland of broken giants, and the Vael were gone. That moment is called the Riving.

The four Keepers

To stop the elements tearing the rest of the world apart, the last of the Vael chained each one inside a temple, bound by crystal towers. The chained elements became the four Keepers, the elemental bosses of Riventale. The towers still feed them, and the chains always pull them back: that is why a Keeper rises again after it falls.

• The Frost WraithKeeper of Water · the Frosted Lands
• The Magma ColossusKeeper of Fire · the Volcano
• The Thorn GuardianKeeper of Earth · the Overgrown Jungle
• The TempestKeeper of Wind · the Cloud Kingdom

Each Keeper has its own moves and a second phase when it is badly hurt. Each guards an elemental ore, and each ore makes one piece of elemental armour. Where the temples are, and how to reach them, is for you to find.

The Robot Titan

In the burned wastes, the Robot Titan, the Last Engine of the Vael, still guards their altars. Its body is made of obitite, a dark metal.

Rivet

Rivet is a tiny Vael scout robot with one big glowing lens for an eye. He is the story's narrator.

You, the Wanderer

You wake in the calm middle lands and find the first torn page. From there the path runs from Wanderer to Adventurer to Champion. Some say the last page hints that the Crystal could be made whole again.