Art Bible

The full Art Bible — visual reference for illustrators, UI designers, and anyone building imagery for the setting — lives in fates-edge-docs/ART_BIBLE.md. It's long (500+ lines, region-by-region), so it stays in the docs repo as the source of truth rather than being duplicated here. This page is the orientation.

What's in it

• Core visual thesis — genre touchstones, the "one unifying image" (a mosaic of splintered nations in a dead empire's shell), and camera language.
• Region-by-region visual identity — touchstone, palette, architecture, dress/status markers, and a taboo/secret visual hook for every culture in the gazetteer.
• Three rules that apply everywhere: nothing is new (draw wear and repair, not pristine objects), power always costs something and should show, and no chosen ones or perfect kingdoms.
• A setting-wide motif: almost every culture counts to eight and dreads a ninth — use it as a background visual habit.

For UI and web-client work

The Art Bible governs illustration and world imagery. For interface colors, spacing, and components (this portal, the blog, the web client), see Design Tokens instead — the two are kept in agreement (gold as a "something has a price attached" accent shows up in both) but serve different jobs.