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Taegwido is the island where TARAE: The Unbound takes place. It did not exist before the events that open the game. The published backstory says an outcast named Agasa shattered the boundaries between the Six Realms in order to break the wheel of reincarnation, and that the island formed out of the fractured lands that were left behind. It is, in other words, wreckage that became a place.

What Is on the Island

Two things are named as being scattered across Taegwido. The first are the Sources, described as the things that can restore the cycle of reincarnation. The second are the rifts, openings that came with the collapse and that the player travels into alongside the island itself. Recovering the Sources from Taegwido and its rifts is the stated objective of the six Seekers, and the route by which the Six Realms are meant to be put back in order.

One line from the published material sets the premise directly: the Sources that can restore the cycle of reincarnation lie scattered across Taegwido. Everything the player does on the island follows from that.

Landscapes

The environments have been described in terms of contrast rather than as a map. Tranquil temples sit alongside fallen citadels. War-scarred land runs into streets tangled with fiendish phantoms. The published material calls this a world where Eastern aesthetics meet mythic imagination, and says that beneath a surface that can be genuinely beautiful there are twisted beings and an older tragedy. The studio has used the phrase beauty and cruelty coexisting to describe the intended effect.

The published material also says these landscapes are meant to be distinct from one another, each carrying its own character and its own story, rather than acting as reskins of a single template. No individual region, settlement or landmark on Taegwido has been named publicly.

Cultural Basis

Taegwido is not presented as a version of any single real place. The studio has said it reinterprets the historical contexts of Korea, China, Japan and Mongolia through dark fantasy, and placed the reference period roughly between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. It also said it was deliberately breaking away from action RPGs that borrow Western medieval culture, and that the East Asian material was intended to be structural rather than a coat of paint. The island's inhabitants and enemies follow the same rule: the creatures encountered as bosses are drawn from Eastern myth and folklore, and the published material says their lore shapes the ground on which they are fought. See Combat.

Relationship to the Six Realms

Taegwido is not one of the Six Realms. It is what appeared when the boundaries between them were broken, which is why the game frames travel there as travel into a place that should not exist. The Six Realms themselves come from the Buddhist cycle of rebirth, and the game's use of them is covered in Story and Setting. The practical consequence for the player is that the island is where the pieces of the broken cycle ended up, and therefore where they have to be collected.

For the overall picture of the game, see TARAE: The Unbound.

Not Yet Confirmed

• Names of individual regions, zones, cities, temples or landmarks.

• The size of the island, or whether it is one continuous map or a set of separate areas.

• How many Sources there are, or what form they take.

• How rifts are entered, whether they are fixed locations, and whether they are randomly generated.

• Whether Taegwido has a settled population, hub locations or vendors.

• Whether any of the Six Realms themselves are visitable.