…And so the charming Sonnorae braved crumbling towers in this age of endless night, gobbling up tales and tomes lest they be forever lost. Then into her secret hold she’d wend, to keep them safe forever more. But careless was charming Sonnorae, and once behind her, the door did close. Trapped forever and a day, she stumbled into the darkness of madness and genius and back again, finally taking her beloved tales and whittling mouths so they might speak and legs that they might walk. But beings of ink, not flesh, were they, half-formed and filled with hate… —Excerpt from Varisian folk tale The Legend of Sonnorae

In the Age of Darkness, the Varisian scribes and storytellers of the Imlios family hoarded knowledge while civilization struggled for its very survival. Over the harsh centuries, their line dwindled to a single childless bard: Sonnorae. Fearing her family’s knowledge would be lost with her inevitable death, she sheared off a corner of the malleable Dimension of Dreams and crafted her own demiplane in which she could store the greatest tales of her people, anchoring this extraplanar archive to her ancestral harrow deck; she named the demiplane the Harrowed Realm.

Sonnorae, in her old age, retreated into the Harrowed Realm, where she hoped to live forever with her treasured tales. Over time, the stories she collected took on physical form, but these creatures were trapped within the constraints of their individual stories, ever repeating the
same actions, and struggling to reach the same goals. Sonnorae’s tales ached to be as real as their creator. The most powerful among them conspired to overthrow the bard, murdering her and devouring her body. These eight Conspirators gained power and free will through their betrayal, but remained too insubstantial to leave the Harrowed Realm; instead they became its mad rulers. The blue dragon Zassrion seized Sonnorae’s impregnable castle and with it the Harrowed Realm’s only connection to the real world.

Unable to leave his home plane, the dragon instead exerted his influence over mortals handling the very harrow deck to which the Realm was tethered—the Deck of Harrowed Tales. Zassrion corrupted the deck’s mortal wielders and drew countless humanoids into the Harrowed Realm, grafting their bodies onto his own in hopes of becoming real and escaping into Golarion.