Jump to content

Recommended Posts

The Thousand Realms

In the Beginning, the Rulers spoke, and the Realms of Being were shaped from the primordial Chaos, awaking the intelligences that dwelt in the Void. To them, Eil All-Father and his soul-sealed Ashyr offered the gift of power, covenanting with them that there would be a place made that they could grow one day to have power over the Chaos, and order it according to their will. Thus were born the beginnings of the Thousand Realms. In the uncounted eons since that event, innumerable stories have been told, and innumerable stories remain unsung. Here, the interested and curious can find information on the Thousand Realms, their structure, and the beings that inhabit them.

This worldbuilding thread will serve as the repository for all publicly released information on the Thousand Realms, including Edassa, Starnet, Hatharin, and the City of Mortals settings. This information is under copyright - please do not use, modify, publish, or otherwise disseminate it without prior permission.

 

Cosmology

 

The cosmology of the Thousand Realms begins with the primordial Chaos. It appears to be a simple feature of the landscape, as it were, always existing and able to be influenced. From this Chaos is formed all of the Realms of Being. The oldest is the Realm of the Unmanifested (also called in various places the Spiritual Realm, the Traveler’s Realm, and the Gates of Heaven, among a whole host of other names). It most closely resembles the Chaos from which it was formed, but it has been stabilized such that even intelligences of the lowest ability can exist and experience safely within it. It is a far more benign place, connecting all of the other Realms, and serves as the base material of the other Realms - Chaos tamed so that other things may be formed. Realms so crafted are often called subsidiary realms or mindworlds.

The second, and most important, of the Realms of Being is the Realm of the Manifested (also called the Material Realm or the Realm of Mortals, among other names). It is the most stable of the subsidiary realms - requiring no supporting maintenance, as far as can be discerned. It was created by the Rulers as a place for mortals, where the unembodied intelligences could gain experience in ordering brute matter to their will - the same techniques that enable one to impose their will upon Chaos. It is the only Realm inherently fit for long-term inhabitation by mortals, although a few of the Outer Realms have been crafted in such a way that mortals can live in them for some time.  Because this realm seems to be permanent, unlike the others that fade away unless they are maintained, it has historically served as a baseline for measurement both in n-space and time.

 

The remainder of the Realms are the Outer Realms. These are uncounted in number and vary wildly in their nature, based on the personality of their creator. A number were originally created by the Rulers themselves, but of those, many are now defunct, and some have wholly faded away into the fabric of the Realm of the Unmanifested. This is the eventual fate of all of the Outer Realms - they require periodic maintenance by their creator in order to remain, and without it, they begin to fail.

 

Chaos

 

 

The primeval Chaos is the basal strata of existence. It is wholly dynamic, with wild variations in energy levels, and unpredictable relationships between place. It is largely beyond the experience of intelligent beings, and as such, definitive description is difficult. To approach a description, however, let us consider conditions as they occur in the transition between the Realm of the Unmanifested and the outside Chaos.

The first observable difference is in the behavior of the energy levels. Far from the grounding stability the interior of the Realm provides, local energy levels begin to behave erratically. While such behavior can be observed over extraordinary small times or tiny amounts even in the center of the Realms, on the edges of Chaos, such behavior becomes far more noticeable. Such surges make maintaining the stability of a mindworld extremely difficult, and only the reckless, the skilled, or the recklessly skilled attempt to do so for any length of time. These surges can be dangerous, and in the furthest reaches of the transition zone, they can overwhelm the drawing abilities of even the most powerful intelligent beings.

As one proceeds further from the border of stability, the next observable condition is the erratic behavior of space-time. Spatial relations fail to remain constant, paths that once led to determinable places become unstable or even completely disappear. New spatial relationships appear without warning, and may disappear as quickly. Time, while maintaining a definite arrow, experiences radical shifts in the rate of progression.

Further into the Chaos, space and time ceases to behave at all. The perception of normal space-time remains only in a limited area around the traveler, and such ideas cease to maintain any meaning outside of that area. Techniques similar to those used to maintain time differentials between various Outer Realms can be used to maintain a connection to the Realms while in Chaos, but they are far more difficult to utilize, and any slip can mean unpredictable changes in the temporal connection.

In the deep chaos, movement is a matter of riding the unpredictable shifts in energy and imposing will upon the surrounding foam to lead where you want to go. However, there exist places where doing so is easier, whether due to some underlying structure to the cosmos or to millions of intelligences following the same trajectory with the same will. These regions form the basis of what passes for society in the Chaos, being able to support the traffic of individuals who otherwise would not be powerful enough to impose their wills to travel.

Chaos is also home to vast, uncounted numbers of intelligences. Most are not powerful enough to maintain a bubble of spacetime or some similar construct around them, and their perceptions are thus largely overwhelmed by the vast energy surges and other chaotic phenomena. It is theorized that all intelligent beings in the Thousand Realms were once like these - powerless against the Chaos, drifting endlessly, only partially aware of their surroundings, forever existing but never living. Others are more powerful, and project auras of stability. Some of these are bonded to a material shell, others have never left the deep Chaos. These beings move through the Chaos, never being overcome, and eking out their existences as suits their whims. They often acquire a retinue of followers, weaker beings who drift along in the stable regions around these powers and serve them in exchange for not being left to the Chaos.

Others, some of them beings of great power indeed, become predators in the darkness. They maintain stable places, but have mastered using the chaos to assault and maim other intelligences. Although intelligences cannot be destroyed, their power can be leeched, and these predators seek out the unwary - of which there are uncounted many - and take from them everything they can. Although these seem to be of the same class of being as other intelligences, they appear to have forgotten their common origins - if they ever cared at all. The path of violence has turned them into monsters scarcely recognizable as once having been a person.

Still others, of great power, and all bonded to material shells, are able to create regions like the Thousand Realms. Of such is Eil All-Father, and his soul-bonded Ashyr. Such beings invariably find themselves involved in the advancement of other intelligences. It is known that Eil and Ashyr were once of the weakest class of beings, nurtured to their present state by powerful tutors like the ones they later became, and thus it is highly likely that there are myriad other multiverses like the Thousand Realms created by such beings, each providing a safe space for the weakest of intelligent beings to grow and develop.

 

Realm of the Unmanifested

 

 

The Realm of the Unmanifested (hereafter called the Spiritual Realm, for conciseness and clarity) was the first of the Realms of Being to be formed. From a technical standpoint, it appears to be an overlay over basal Chaos, flattening down energy fluctuations and imposing spatial and temporal relationships between regions. In fact, the wild energy surges that characterize Chaos are restricted to infinitesimally tiny temporal periods, or to much smaller amplitudes, due to the nature of this stabilizing overlay. The energy thus damped is stored in the fabric of the Spiritual Realm, where it is then available to be drawn on by intelligent beings. Near the edges of the Chaos, the energy stored in the realm is extremely high, and it is theorized that this high-energy state is the source of the transitional behavior observed in the passage to the outside Chaos. If this is the case, then theoretically, the Spiritual Realm could revert back to the Chaos from which it was formed, after drawing off enough energy to remain in such high-level states. At the current levels of energy usage inside the Realms, however, this seems a highly unlikely event for the foreseeable future.

This realm shares a number of characteristics with Chaos - including the fact that all things that happen in the Realm are manifestations of will. No deterministic processes exist, merely the imposition of will. Where will has been imposed in a certain way by a large number of individuals over a large time, residual echoes make copying the exertion much easier, but will is still required. Such places make up the most well-travelled paths between other realms, and are widely used even by very powerful beings, who are capable of creating their own path.

Correspondingly, biological life - mortals, and lower life forms - do not handle the conditions well. The particulars of their coil-binding make the exertion of will difficult, so travel is exhausting where it is even possible, and obtaining proper sustenance for their bodies - in the forms of the various physical chemicals that their forms have evolved to require - is extremely difficult. To overcome these difficulties, some mortals have developed techniques to send their native soul into the Realm, separated temporarily from its mortal coil. This bypasses a number of the difficulties, but is dangerous in its own right, as too long a separation can lead to their coil perishing from deprivation, if not properly cared for. In addition, the bonds can weaken over time when strained in this way, leaving the traveler unable to find their way back. Also, in the conditions of the Spiritual Realm, the bonds that connect the traveler to their mortal coil are quite obvious, and a malintentioned being could easily sever them, leaving the traveler a dead spirit - with all of the loss that implies. Other mortals use their ability to access the power of other intelligent beings to create conditions in which they can survive for a time, and so travel through the Realm.

The Spiritual Realm pervades the Realm of the Manifested (again, hereafter called the Material Realm for conciseness and clarity) completely - there is a one-to-one dimensional correspondence with every point in the Material Realm and a corresponding point in the Spiritual. Therefore, in the Material Realm, one may transition into the Spiritual or back again from any point. This is not the case with the Outer Realms - one must leave the Spiritual Realm to enter the borders of one of the others. As with leaving this Realm into the Chaos, there is a slow fading of the Outer Realm into the mists of the Spiritual Realm. Unlike in the Material Realm, however, even normal travel in most of the Outer Realms will take you into the Spiritual Realm if you go far enough in the right direction. Because of this, entry to an Outer Realm from the Spiritual Realm happens along a known boundary, and travel to another part of the Realm through the Spiritual is impossible.

Travel in the Realm of the Unmanifested is done by will - you may will yourself to move in any given direction. Eventually, through this method of movement, one may arrive anywhere in the Material Realm, and may even be able to gain access to a large number of the Outer Realms. However, this method is time-consuming and fraught with error, and a number of the Outer Realms are closed against such mundane forms of travel.

To reach such closed realms, or to travel quickly through the Spiritual Realm, a different imposition of will is required. Like in the Chaos, though on a much smaller scale, spatial relationships are not definite in the Spiritual Realm. By will, one can create a path to your desired destination. How much time it takes is dependent on how well you know your current location, and how well you know where you intend to go, but it is much quicker than moving in n-space to the proper coordinates. For inexperienced travellers, or for those who do not know their destination well, or at all, a trained guide ranges from extremely helpful to entirely necessary.

The Spiritual Realm is also the base stuff out of which other Realms are formed. These mindworlds are created by first inducing a powerful energy surge, and then harnessing that energy into an expanding bubble of n-spacetime. Into this is eventually brought the bulk matter, although sufficiently high energy surges can be used to create matter by symmetry breaking. Any laws that govern the nature of matter in the mindworld are imposed upon creation, and a successful mindworld creator must understand enough about the matter they intend to manipulate in their Realm to form consistent laws. Many mimic those in the Material Realm, but the complex interactions there are not always obvious, and a great deal of the Outer Realms only resemble the Material Realm superficially.

The Spiritual Realm is also a timeless place. Not in the sense that the temporal dimension of n-spacetime ceases to exist - as in the Chaos - but in the sense that time there is not a monolithic construct. It maintains a definite arrow - no being ever finds themselves in their past - but time does not so much pass there as it simply exists. Each of the Outer Realms maintains its own rate of time flow relative to the Material Realm, but because of the peculiarities of the Spiritual, a being may leave one Realm, spend a long time traveling and interacting on other Realms, and return to their own only slightly after they left. The law of conservation of causality enforces limits to this, of course, and these are more easily seen in the Material Realm where spatial extents are far vaster. But, as long as one knows the proper techniques, then within those limits the progression of time ceases to present any obstacle to a traveler until one is very nearly to the borders of Chaos.

 

Realm of the Manifested

 

 

 

The Realm of the Manifested is unique among the subsidiary realms. Unlike the Outer Realms, it does not require periodic maintenance for its upkeep, and appears to be eternal. The laws that govern it are simple in nature, although quite complex in their interactions. These laws are fixed, and implementations of power into the Realm are constrained by them. It is possible that the All-Father or Ashyr could override them, but such an event has never been observed, and the opinions of the prevailing scholars on the subject are mixed.

Although it began in a roiling fire of energy - obtained from an induced surge in the Spiritual Realm so massive it has not been duplicated since - the Material Realm today has become largely empty space. The vast amounts of energy present at its creation largely precipitated into light and matter, slowly forming into the structures that now occupy it. The evolution of the Material Realm has been largely naturalistic, left to the interactions of physical laws, but not wholly so. Many of the more powerful original intelligences had an active hand in the creation of astronomical bodies, largely practicing their abilities to order matter to their wills. It is widely accepted that the laws that govern the Realm would have led to their formation anyways (and have led to the formation of numerous stars and galaxies since), but the specific structure of a number of systems and even galaxies may have been significantly different without such interference. Likewise, the evolution of biological life, after the initial instantiation that starts the process, is largely self-sustaining. Of course, a number of beings have interfered with the adaptive landscape on a number of worlds in order to sate their own desires for creativity, and the transition from animal life to sentient mortals is strictly overseen in every instance, but almost all biological processes are left to naturally work themselves out. Except where influenced by the actions of intelligences, and discounting quantum effects at extremely small resolutions, physical and biological processes in the Material Realm are wholly deterministic in nature.

The Material Realm is almost unimaginably vast compared to even the largest of the Outer Realms. To provide proper comparison, few of those Realms contain even a single solar system, instead maintaining the illusion of sun and stars and orbiting satellites instead of their reality. In contrast, the Material Realm contains uncounted galaxies, each swirling with billions of stars or more, each governing a planetary system. These galaxies are sprinkled lightly in the vastness of the empty space between them, such that the vast majority of all places in the Material Realm are actually empty, despite it containing the largest amount of standard matter in all of the Realms.

The primary distinction of the Material Realm is the existence of mortals. While beings with material shells exist in most other Realms, mortals are unique in their relationship to their coil. In the first case, the bonds that connect a mortal soul to its host are temporary, unlike any other coilbonding in use, except for those that bind low-powered spirits of the Manifested or Unmanifested into their non-sapient coils. With the passage of sufficient time, these bonds decay - paralleled with a deterioration of the mortal coil. It remains an open question whether the bodies decay because of the deterioration of the bonds, or vice versa. Similar questions can be raised about the bonds that hold other spirits to non-sapient forms of life.

The second unique observation about mortals is that their coilbondings are end-negative. The vast majority of a mortal spirit’s ability to draw and shape energy is sunk into the bonds that allow the spirit to interface with the body - especially the ones that maintain sentience and sapience. This power is effectively lost when a mortal dies, leaving an intelligence markedly reduced in power. This is entirely unique, even among other Material Realm bonds. The Manifested intelligences that inhabit non-sapient life in the Material Realm return unchanged after their coil fails, except for whatever shaping effect their experiences have upon their personalities. The Unmanifested do not even show that change from their coilbonding. But a mortal in the Material Realm ends their coil with a burst of power leaving them.

Perhaps because of the conditions of mortality, the Material Realm remains the Realm that has the least interaction with sovereign intelligences. Granted that the Realm is filled with mortals bonded to their shells, and various spirits of the Manifested and Unmanifested in their non-sapient coils. And it is true that the Realm finds itself flooded with intelligences of the Unmanifested drawn by their insatiable curiosity to the matter of the Material Realm, as they are in other Outer Realms. But other than these, comparatively few intelligences deal with the Material Realm directly, and even fewer acts of power are done there.

 

The Outer Realms

 

 

 

The Outer Realms are a highly diverse set of subsidiary realms. At inception, the physical laws governing matter are laid down by the creator. These laws arise from the interaction of various properties at the moment of inception, and cannot be changed afterwards. Since the most complex laws - and therefore those with the largest number of creative degrees of freedom - are present in the Material Realm, most of these Realms follow the patterns there closely. Those who do not tend at least to approximate them. The basic conditions among the Outer Realms, therefore, tend to be similar to the conditions in the Material Realm.

The similarities stop there, however. Few indeed of the Outer Realms possess mortal inhabitants, although Manifested and Unmanifested spirits may inhabit the coils of plant and animal life. Instead, they are populated by wide varieties of Immortals, bound to material shells specifically created in order to thrive in the conditions of their home. These races vary as widely as the Realms they inhabit.

Each of the Outer Realms is the sovereign realm of a god - the workings of power there are keyed to its ruler. No other being may alter conditions there without the ruler’s permission. This actually seems to be a constant of the use of power. If one being has created something, it takes either a being of much greater power to overcome the lock, or a bond with the creator that gives access to the structure of the Realm.

Outer Realms are troughs in the energy landscape of the Realms. As the Spiritual Realm is lower energy than the surrounding Chaos, a mindworld is a lower energy state than the Spiritual Realm, with a great deal of the energy locked up in matter forms of one kind or another. The same processes that draw energy into the Spiritual Realm also feed energy into mindworlds, rendering the structures that make up the fabric of the Realm unstable over time. A ruler of such a realm must perform periodic maintenance in order from preventing the realm from unraveling, reverting back to the initial state of the Spiritual Realm from whence it came. As doing so requires an intimate knowledge of the Realm, its origins, and its laws, it is very rare that anyone other than the sovereign of a Realm is even capable of performing its maintenance. And so, the Spiritual Realm is littered with the remnants of once-flourishing realms, now abandoned by a creator who has moved on - or, in more recent cycles, who has been displaced by conflict.

 

Intelligent Beings

 

Among the Thousand Realms, uncountable numbers of beings work out their existences. Powerful gods manage planes of wonder and beauty, mortals are born, live, and die, and vast numbers of intelligences cycle through lives of non-sapience. But all of these beings are, at their core, of the same substance. In the primordial Chaos, ancient beyond the reckoning of the Creators, dwelt and still dwell intelligences, beings of will and spirit. All who inhabit the Thousand Realms were once as these, and all who will yet dwell there will come from the Chaos in the same manner.

It is unknown what the origin of these intelligences is. Some believe that they are simply an artifact of the Chaos, and have existed eternally along with it. Others assert that these beings are created, either by some natural process within the Chaos or by some greater being, transcendent beyond detection or knowing. It is very likely that the question will remain forever open - however, the fact that no known process is capable of destroying the core of an intelligent being may lend weight to the hypothesis that they were not created.

 

 

The Heynes-Laurel Scale

 

Intelligent beings exist at a wide range of power levels. Over the eons, scholars studying the base nature of intelligence have developed a number of classification systems in order to organize them. One of the first popular systems was the Heynes classification, which ordered intelligent beings based on thresholds of capability. Widely adopted because of the clearly defined nature of its categories - an intelligence was either capable of achieving the referenced use of power or not - it eventually became clear that the the ability to perform certain feats, such as maintaining a mindworld, was a function of both skill and power. The Laurel Scale was proposed as a competing model, ranking beings by the amount of energy they could draw in and channel. This, too, had a number of flaws - not least the difficulty of actually performing tests on how much energy could be safely drawn. Several influential scholars adapted the Laurel Scale as an extension of the Heynes classification, and the resulting Heynes-Laurel Scale is the current standard of measurement.

The Heynes-Laurel Scale sorts intelligent beings into classes by power level - a logarithmic scale from 0 to 8 (so far), and then assigns them a subclass, running from A-G, each associated with the ability to perform a particular use of power. An additional subclass - A` - was added after later study. The classes and their associated abilities are given below:

 

Class G: Characterized by not being able to perform any of the tasks of higher classes

 

Class F: Characterized by the ability to travel by imposing will on the Realm of the Unmanifested

Class E: Characterized by the ability to maintain a mindworld in the Realm of the Unmanifested

Class D: Characterized by the ability to maintain a region of spacetime in Chaos

Class C: Characterized by the ability to create immortal bonded shells

Class B: Characterized by the ability to initiate and guide the evolution of new biological life

Class A: Characterized by the ability to initiate new species of mortals

Class A`: Characterized by the ability to tame Chaos over a wide area, resulting in the formation of a region similar to the Realm of the Unmanifested. This class was added to the scale in order to extend it to include Eil and Ashyr. It remains controversial, because it is known that the process requires a paired soul-bonding, and is thus difficult to describe a single being as being of this class. Despite the controversy, it remains a useful shorthand to refer to beings of the class of the Rulers.

In addition to the more exact classification scales, intelligent beings are also colloquially classified on the basis of other, less formally quantifiable traits. The most common distinctions are given below, with descriptions of what characterizes a being of that kind.

 

Gods

 

 

 

The gods are the masters of the Thousand Realms. Under their careful and watchful gaze, the immortals, Ascended, mortals, and Manifested all carry out the business of their existence. At their head stand Elyr and Enniah, Chosen of Iahel, the current Stewards of Eil and Ashyr, who are charged with maintaining the work of the Rulers in the Realms, especially with safeguarding the progression of mortals to Ascended, and from thence to the Realm of the Ascended, where they are taken under the wings of other teachers.

The origin of the gods dates back to the Creation itself. Eil and Ashyr, upon observing that the vast majority of intelligences who had accepted their covenant were wholly incapable of manipulating either the matter of the Material Realm or the substance of the Spiritual, appointed several among the most powerful of their covenanted children to be teachers and guides to the weaker. Later, others were appointed to shepherd the first mortals in their experience, and to model and teach the altruism and charity They required of those who would receive their power.

This served as the model for a growing system. Although the original gods were what would now be classed as manifested spirits, each of them eventually passed through a mortal experience, Ascended, and passed on with the Rulers into a far-off region of Chaos, there to learn the highest art They had to offer. The last few of this kind Ascended during or after the Great War, and since that time, all gods in the Thousand Realms have come from the ranks of the Ascended. These put their own advancement on hold for a time, instead engaging in the necessary work of watching over the Realms.

The most powerful of the gods maintain vastly complex and beautiful Realms, populated with numerous unique species of life, along with a number of Immortal races. Beings of lesser power find service in the courts of these powers, or else as stewards and rulers of their own lesser Realms. But all gods participate in creation - this is the line that distinguishes between a god and other Ascended mortals. The Ascended may serve in the courts, remain away from the Realm of Ascension, but the gods create new Realms and new life. The power levels of these beings can vary, from as low as 3D to as high as 7A - the highest known power level in the Realms. Only a few beings are this powerful, among them the Stewards. (The power level of 8 is the hypothesized placement of Eil and/or Ashyr on the Heynes-Laurel scale. Since no direct observation of their maximum power has been made, this remains theoretical.)

But regardless of power, all the gods owe allegiance and service to the Stewards of the Thousand Realms, at least nominally. The War of Mortals put a severe strain on the bonds of loyalty, and Elyr and Enniah are proceeding cautiously to rebuild a broken community of trust.

Conflict among the gods has historically been nearly non-existent, with the exception of the two rebellions led by Heylel. Since the severing of the Nameless, much effort has been expended into making the Realms a reflection of the unified community that was shared before the great schism. For much of the history of the Realms, this was successful, but in recent cycles, intrigue among the Realms has increased dramatically, eventually leading to the War of Mortals, a wholesale conflict that left none of the Outer Realms untouched, culminating in the fall of the Steward Elanna and her soul-sealed Muishe in battle at the gates of Illyse. The echoes of that strife reached even the Material Realm. Since the end of hostilities, tranquility has been slow to return - it takes time to rebuild trust and to heal old wounds.

 

Mortals

 

 

 

Mortals are the most distinct class of beings in the Thousand Realms. The decaying bonds that connect them to their material coil are uniquely end-negative, leaving the intelligence with the majority of their power sunk into the bonds, unavailable for other uses, and then wholly separated after the final failure of the coilbonding.

On the surface, such an experience seems profoundly disappointing, and not at all in any intelligence’s best interest. Yet countless numbers enter the process every cycle, and many more queue up to await the experience. A mortal lifetime is a prerequisite for Ascension - the process that both reverses the power loss after mortal death as well as potentially priming the spirit to receive higher power, moving towards godhood. In addition, the mortal experience is generally understood to be the most effective way to teach the altruism and benevolence that are prerequisite for the bestowal of godhood. Finally, the experience of a mortal bond advances the matter-shaping and will-imposing skills of an intelligent being faster and more thoroughly than any other teaching method, and the techniques learned during the experience are indispensable to further growth.

The bonds that link an intelligent spirit to a mortal shell are complex, but they do something that no other bond is capable of doing (although the most sophisticated Immortal bondings approach it) - they create a fully integrated sapient biological being. The consciousness of a mortal is formed from the interface of brian and spirit, and is not wholly either, but ends up as a blended property. The body is possessed of biological urges and instincts, but these do not control the behavior, as they do in non-sapient creatures. The spirit is connected to the body far more intimately and closely than any immortal bonding could achieve, actually receiving direct sensory input from various organs. After Ascension, this intimate bonding is key to the foundation of the power and shaping ability gained through that process.

Mortals almost exclusively inhabit the Material Realm, though a number of magic-users and clients of magic-users periodically travel through the Outer Realms, following various whims. Some few Outer Realms are even set up to allow mortal inhabitation, though this has until recently been discouraged among the gods. Most prominent among these is the City of Mortals. Uniquely among mortal settlements in the Outer Realms, the City was built by mortals who traveled there under their own power, colonizing it themselves rather than being brought to the plane by a god. This colonization was what led to the relaxation of the restrictions of mortal settlements in the Outer Realms, as it was determined that interfering with the natural actions of the mortals would create more negative side effects than allowing them to perpetuate mortal society outside the Material Realm.

Most mortals rank between level 1G and 2F on the Heynes-Laurel scale (after correcting for the power sunk into the mortal bonds), though some few manage up to 3E. These are rare, and where they happen, they are often the result of investiture from a higher being during the mortal experience. Naturally growing this far during mortality is vanishingly rare.

 

Ascended

 

 

 

The Ascension process ameliorates all of the negative side effects of a mortal coilbonding. The severed remnants of the mortal bonds are rebonded to a new, immortal coil - highly similar to the mortal one, and using the same bonding techniques. These new bonds restore the lost power in all cases. Where the subject is willing, interested, and has shown themselves to be of the appropriate character, these bonds are strengthened, and form the foundation for far more power and ability than the original intelligence possessed.

All or almost all mortals receive Ascension - some few find themselves caught in abusive bonds to higher powers, and therefore unable to become Ascended until they are freed, but these abuses are rooted out wherever they can be found, and such conditions have not been historically widespread. During the turmoil of the War of Mortals, they rose dramatically, but since the return of Elyr, the practice is again being rooted out.

Many Ascended beings remain in the Outer Realms for a time, serving in the courts of some god or another, and of these, many who wish it - and qualify - eventually become gods of their own. Those who remain uninterested in advancement generally serve in the courts in the same manner as the Immortals do. Others leave the Thousand Realms entirely, searching for fulfilment out in the Chaos. Few of these ever return.

The vast majority of Ascended beings who qualify for advancement, however, move to the Realm of Ascension. Little is known of that Realm, even by the Great Steward, though it is rumored to be run by Iahel himself, the First Steward of the All-Father. From what little is known, the Ascended there are taught and trained in advanced techniques for manipulating Chaos, creating and shaping matter, initiating life, and higher covenants. From there, it is said that they graduate and leave the Thousand Realms through a hidden way, to be trained by Eil and Ashyr themselves in the art of forming Realms from Chaos itself, so that in a future time each pair of soul-bonded Ascended may themselves create multiverses like the Thousand Realms, and offer to the intelligences there the same choices and covenants that were offered to them.

 

Immortals

 

 

 

Immortals form the bulk of the inhabitants of the Outer Realms. Generally intelligences uninterested in assuming a mortal coil, their service to one of the gods or stewards have resulted in the offer of a less weighty bond to a material shell. Unlike the bonds that tie mortals to their bodies, immortal bondings are permanent - unless destroyed or voluntarily severed - and result in no loss of power. Depending on the god offering the bond, and the type of immortal, it may involve a significant investment of power into the spirit, potentially raising their power level by a full point or more on the Laurel scale.

There are as many varieties of immortal as there are gods ruling Outer Realms, and more. Each constitutes a distinct race of being, and a number of them even reproduce on their own - the parent or parents having sufficient power to create a new immortal bond for their new child. In a not-insignificant number of the Outer Realms, these races of immortals actually have biological functions, and seem to function almost as mortal inhabitants of the realms, without the burden of responsibility or potential for advancement that comes with a mortal bond.

Also found among the Immortals are some few mortals who, through dedicated service to their god, have had their bonds altered in such a way that they no longer age, and can continue their service forever. These tend to be few, and more transient, generally remaining in response to some specific crisis that they desire to be of help during. Since they must have their mortal bonds severed in order to receive an Ascended coil and move on to higher glory, they seldom remain as servants forever - the impulse and desire that led them to desire mortality drives them to take the steps beyond it in time.

At times, some immortals have been used as messengers from the Outer Realms to mortals in the Material Realm, but the gods generally prefer to perform those responsibilities personally. Still, many immortals find themselves involved with their god’s plans for their portion of the Material Realm. The interaction with mortals leads many of these to eventually voluntarily sever their bonds in order to take up a mortal coil.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of immortals, some few races of immortals find themselves living prisons. Although the agency of a free intelligence cannot be abrogated - in that no intelligence ever makes a choice that did not freely come from within themselves; such mind control is not possible - an intelligence tricked or compelled into an bond with a material shell can find the body they inhabit hijacked by an external force, eternally bound to involuntary servitude. Such a being is a powerless observer to the actions taken by their body.

None among the reigning gods condone this behavior - indeed most condemn it harshly, but their eyes are not everywhere, and unsavory powers and rogue demigods have at times created hellish servants to staff their hellish realms. Such is a state to be pitied indeed, and in the wake of the War of Mortals, such horrors have multiplied. As stability is slowly returning to the Realms, however, the practice is again being sought out and ended.

Immortals can have almost any power level on the Heynes-Laurel scale, but most of them lie between 1F and 5C. Higher power levels tend to be Ascended mortals (though a few immortals occupy those ranks), and no Immortal has the skill to create biological life. That requires a familiarity with biological processes that, except for a few of the ancient Stewards, no being who has not experienced the mortal coil firsthand can possess.

 

Manifested

 

 

 

The Manifested are a widely diverse group. The term has historically been used to denote any intelligence that accepted the First Covenant with Eil and Ashyr or their Stewards. Thus, in the broadest sense of the term, gods, mortals, ascended, and immortals can all be properly thought of as Manifested intelligences.

However, as currently utilized, the term Manifested is generally used to describe an intelligence who accepted the First Covenant but has hitherto declined any further advancement. It can also describe an Immortal who has voluntarily surrendered their bond, but this use has seen some slight controversy.

From the ranks of the Manifested, as understood in modern parlance, are drawn the volunteers for various races of Immortals in the Outer Realms. Many choose to inhabit these Realms, experiencing the creative efforts of the god they have chosen to serve. Others wander the Spiritual Realm, endlessly exploring in bids to see ever-new vistas.

Huge numbers, however, inhabit the Material Realm, bonded to various non-sapient life forms - almost always animal, as most plants and all microorganisms are too simple to properly create bonds with a Manifested intelligence. Many others reside there, waiting for an opportunity for such a bond to catch their interest. Others observe mortals with varying degrees of curiosity - some eventually going so far as to form familiar bonds with mortal sorcerers, becoming the source of their powers. Many of these find their curiosity so intense that they eventually seek out the opportunity to become mortal themselves. Those who do not find themselves periodically participating in the cycle of animal rebirth until they tire of the experience, if they ever do.

The Manifested beings are generally low in power, ranging generally between 0G and 2F on the Laurel-Heynes scale. Higher powered Manifested overwhelmingly tend to become Immortals or to choose a mortal coil. Those few that do neither find little place for themselves in the Thousand Realms, and most wander the Chaos solitarily.

 

Unmanifested

 

 

The Unmanifested are intelligences from the Chaos who have never accepted a bond from the Rulers or their Stewards. Without such a bond, they are unable to interact meaningfully with the Realms of Being, at least as far as expressions of power are concerned. However, ancient contracts permit them to be bonded with certain forms of life - from microscopic, single-celled organisms to towering trees. These contracts hold both in the Material Realm, and in those Outer Realms which contain similar organisms.

Many of them periodically take advantage of these contracts, bound into the coil of such life forms until they pass away, but there are countless more of the Unmanifested than there are available life forms for them to bond. So they simply inhabit the space, anxious to avoid returning to the Chaos and intensely curious about matter of all kinds. The number of these beings in the Thousand Realms is vast, multiple orders of magnitudes larger than all of the Manifested taken together - mortals, gods, ascended, and immortals included.

When mortals practice the use of power, it is largely through the medium of the Unmanifested - all incantations or spellforms involve offering the opportunity to interact with the material world to these intelligences by using the mortal’s own bonds as a hack to briefly enter the system. The incantation, to be successful, must contain specific instructions for the exercise of power, but there are nearly always Unmanifested present to provide the raw source for the spell.

The Unmanifested encountered in the Realms of Being are almost all of class 0G, with very few attaining any higher level. Unmanifested of higher class overwhelmingly tend to, over time, accept a covenant with a Steward and become Manifested, and perhaps even enter into a mortal coil. Those who do not tend to remain in the borders of Chaos, disinterested in the goings on of the interior Realms. These, especially when they are of great power, are sometimes classed with the Nameless, though properly they are different kinds of beings.

 

Nameless

 

 

 

The Nameless are the most sinister of the classes of beings inhabiting the Realms. Ancient, powerful intelligences, they were stripped of their names - the bondseal of the First Covenant - after the Great War. Without a bond connecting them to the Rulers, they no longer have the ability to directly affect the substance of the Realms with their power. But most still remain within the borders, subtly attempting to influence the course of history.

These influences are generally small, though these beings are powerful, they are careful to avoid drawing the attention of the Stewards or the high gods - they no longer desire all-out war unless it is on their terms, and can guarantee a victory. Instead, they attempt to sow strife and discord among the Realms, seeking for proxies to fight their battles for them.

Most unnervingly, a number of them have been known to form bonds with their unwitting dupes, hijacking their bonds to the Realms and Rulers in order to hack around the consequences of their punishment and exile. Such bound beings are immensely dangerous, and there exists no easy way to combat them. It is heavily speculated that some of the Nameless were behind the War of Mortals, and a few eyewitness accounts seem to indicate that at least one had formed a bond of this nature. If true, this is worrying news for the continued stability of the Outer Realms.

Edited by Seonid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Power and Bonds

The Thousand Realms are awash in energy - it surges and ripples through Chaos in vast storms, unpredictable and powerful. Intelligent beings can draw on this power, using it to affect the substance of existence, to create new things or to destroy. The measure of power in an intelligent being is how much energy they can draw from the Chaos, how much they can hold and use safely. Too much drawn, and the wards that protect the region of spacetime around the intelligence risk failing, overwhelming the being with raw exposure to the Chaos, reducing them to a drifting mote of experience, until their will can reassert itself, reawakening from its languor. Worse, overdrawing can put the bonds that connect the being to others at risk, potentially severing them, leaving the being painfully damaged as well as drifting.

 

The Spiritual Realm tames the surges of the primordial Chaos, dampening them out as they pass through the transition region, storing that energy in the very fabric of the Realm itself. By doing so, it makes the energy available to draw upon for even the weakest of intelligences, who otherwise would risk being overwhelmed every time they drew on Chaos - as the energy surges there are neither predictable nor constant - and makes it possible for Realms to exist.

 

The exercise of power requires three things. First, it requires a source of energy. Among the scholars of the Thousand Realms, one of the most contentious debates is the total amount of energy inherent in the Chaos. These arguments hinge on the grand structure of the cosmos - if the Chaos is boundlessly infinite, then the amount of energy available to draw on is likewise infinite. If, instead, it is finite but unbounded, then the energy available, though unimaginably vast, is likewise bounded. In either case, the scholars argue, it is possible that there exist regions in the Chaos where no energy surges. Without that source of energy, no power could be exercised. It should be noted that energy is, at all places, conserved - it can be neither created nor destroyed. Additionally, in the Material Realm, it is apparent that the law of entropy holds - that is that matter tends towards more and more disorder, over time. Though the energy in the Material Realm remains conserved, over time more and more of it ends up in forms that cannot be harnessed by physical processes. For intelligent beings, however, there is no unharnessable form of energy. Therefore, though the use of power is a strict zero-sum game, all uses of energy can break even, with none going to waste. All energy sunk into some creative act is fully recoverable by the reversing of the creation. In the Thousand Realms, the energy stored in the fabric of the Spiritual Realm forms the source of energy for almost all acts of power.

 

The second requirement for the exercise of power is will. Both in the Realms and in the Chaos, the imposition of will is the mechanism by which energy - drawn from whatever source - is channeled into new designs and constructs. Without will to direct it, no power can be exercised. This is why no power is exercised spontaneously in the Chaos. The energy may surge dramatically, and in places, there is enough available to create the Thousand Realms a hundred or a thousand times over. But nothing is spontaneously created. Only the will of an intelligent being can guide energy into forms and constructs.

 

Third, the exercise of power requires knowledge. The many ways in which energy can be manipulated, and the wide variety of tasks that can be accomplished with it, are not innate knowledge to a being. They must be learned. Without knowledge of how to use it, both energy and the will to impose it are near-useless.

 

As has already been noted, the vast majority of intelligences do not have the native capacity to channel significant amounts of energy, nor the will strong enough to shape it for most ends. However, by consistently drawing at the edge of their power, an intelligence grows used to channeling that level of power. Over time, this results in growth along the Heynes-Laurel scale, as the being becomes more comfortable with higher and higher levels of power. This is a risky proposition, however, as drawing at the edge risks being overwhelmed and potentially injured. The quickest, most consistent, and safest way of increasing the power of an intelligence is to create a bond with another intelligent being. In fact, such bonds are the foundation on which the entire premise of the Thousand Realms is built.

 

Bonds between and involving intelligent beings play a host of functions in addition to increasing power, and are divided into three broad schools of bondings. These schools, and representative types of bondings within them, are discussed below.

 

Formal Bonds

Formal Bonds are bonds formed between intelligent beings that deal directly with the power-accessing ability of one or both of them. All formal bonds increase or decrease another intelligent beings ability to access power from the Spiritual Realm, and ultimately from the Chaos itself. Some formal bonds may be incorporated into coilbondings, but other than that, there is no overlap with other schools.

 

Investments

The most common type of formal bond that can be created between the inhabitants of the Realms is an investment. This bonding allows one being to offer a stabilizing influence on the power-drawing of another, directly increasing the amount of power that can be drawn by the recipient of the bond.

 

Investment bondings can be either open or closed. Open bonds are used to directly enhance the abilities of another, directly affecting their power level on the Heynes-Laurel scale. These bonds have no restrictions on how the power can be used, and are generally employed by gods to help elevate their servants into greater ability. A form of open bonds are also employed in a number of Ascension bondings.

 

Closed investments are restricted bonds. Although the bond allows increased drawing of power, the way it is structured restricts how the power may be used. These restrictions may range from prohibiting a single use of the power all the way to only permitting a single form of the power use. The exact nature of the restrictions are decided at the instantiation of the bond. Closed bonds are most often granted to Immortals - who require higher power levels to perform their duties, but are not interested in advancement or cannot be trusted to exercise power indiscriminately - but are sometimes given to mortal servants of a god. The natural ability of an intelligence under a closed bond increases far slower than one who receives an open bond.

 

Because the more an intelligence draws at a given power level, the higher their natural power level grows, investment bonds become superfluous over time. As the recipient of a bond grows, the stabilizing benefit given by the bond becomes less and less of an increase over the natural ability. Most bonds are set to release when the recipients natural ability reaches the same level given by the bond.

 

Soul-Bonding

The most encompassing form of formal bonds is the soul-bonding. This bond completely intermeshes the energy drawing capacity of two Ascended beings, linking them almost inextricably together. As a result, each of the beings can use the bond as a stabilizing influence on their capacity, resulting in a huge increase in power.

 

A soul-bonding can only be performed between two Ascended individuals, and is intended to be a permanent bond. As the two so sealed will be working together for the entirety of their foreseeable existence, a great deal of preparation is recommended to ensure compatibility in the working relationship. Many soul-bonded couples were emotionally close as mortals, and a great deal of these were mated pairs. Although soul-bonds can be performed between any two intelligences, the most difficult feats of magic, such as creating new mortal races, or taming regions of Chaos, require a bonded pair of opposite genders.

 

These bonds are capable of being severed, but not without extensive emotional and spiritual damage to the beings. It is therefore never done intentionally without urgent and critical reasons. Under circumstances of battle with a being of equivalent power, the bond can be placed at risk for damage or severing as a result, such as the fall of Elanna and Moishe at Illyse. The loss of the bond under such circumstances is debilitating. The damage done can be repaired by someone skilled in such healing, but the process is long, and full recovery is not guaranteed.

 

Inversion Bonds

Formal bonds can also be used to drain an individual’s ability to access power. These leech bonds are the reverse of investment bonds. Instead of granting stability while a being draws power at far higher levels than they would otherwise be capable of, they destabilize the use of power even at much lower usage levels. This type of bond has seen limited use in training regimes, used to help develop skill and precision with the use of power - by forcing the user to work with a more limited amount of energy, before releasing the bond to translate the skill gained to the higher powered uses. A form of these bonds are also used in the process called Severance, through which a powerful being is removed entirely from the ability to use their power. This is formally done as a punishment for flagrant violation of codes of conduct, but the process has also been weaponized for use in the conflicts of the gods - especially the Great War and the War of Mortals. Severance, whether as a formal act of punishment or as the consequence of a conflict, can be repaired, but it is almost as difficult to recover from as the loss of a soul-sealing.

 

Another, more horrifying, use of such bonds involves the involuntary siphoning of another being’s power. These so-called ‘leech’ bonds are a complicated structure that deny another being access to their power, and using it instead as a stabilizing agent for the bonded being’s workings. In the most horrible of these bonds, the unwilling participants own power is sunk into the bond, and is dispersed when the bond is severed, in the same fashion as a mortal coilbonding. The use of such bonds as these is strictly forbidden under pain of Severance, but the first stroke of the Great War involved the unknowing subjection of an entire race of mortals to a perpetual set of these bonds, and the Steward Iahel fell in the act of reversing it.

 

Informal Bonds

Informal Bonds are bonds between beings that do not directly affect either of the beings power. Instead, they involve relationships - both the formal relationship markers such as naming and sealing bonds, as well as the informal bonds that naturally form as beings develop relationships with each other.

 

Naming

One of the consequences of the smoothing process that turned a region of Chaos into the Spiritual Realm was that the ability to access the energy stored there was restricted. As the Rulers had initiated the process, only they could access the energy. Similarly, in the Material Realm, only they were able to interact with the matter there - formed of energy drawn out of their own Spiritual Realm. In essence, creative acts put a sort of seal of ownership on the things created by that energy. These seals can be overcome with sufficient power, but doing so risks damaging or destroying the things built by that power.

 

Naming bonds are designed to precisely and effectively allow an intelligence to interact with and use energy expended in a creative act by another without having to overcome the seal of ownership. Specifically, they give permission to act in a Realm, to use the energy there - whether tied up in  The nomenclature derives from the First Covenant, where the Rulers offered their vision of life in the Realms to the intelligences that had just awoken from the Chaos. Those who accepted - either at that time, or through the Stewards at some later time - became the Manifested, and the mark of that covenant was a new name. The bond that marks a Manifested spirit includes a structure that mimics the ownership of the Rulers, so that a Manifested being can utilize and shape and change and do all manner of things with any energy and in any creation made by the Rulers.

 

One who has been given a naming bond can, from there, use energy gathered by its help for further creative acts, imposing a second seal of ownership. These conditions are evident in the Outer Realms as well - only the Creator of the Realm, or the one who gave the Creator the permission to access the energy in the first place, can draw upon the energy and matter and structure of their Realm, unless that creator forms naming bonds with other beings. These seals of ownerships - and naming bonds corresponding to them - can be nested to any degree, and in the oldest of the Outer Realms, the communities of rights and permissions are complex indeed.

 

Those who possess no naming bonds at all, generally the Unmanifested spirits, do not even interact with the energy of the Realms. They do not interact at all with matter in the Material Realm or the Outer Realms - unless temporarily given access to a bond, usually by a mortal sorcerer - and do not shape or disturb the energy in any Realm. To them, the Realms are made up of ephemeral constructs of energy, and the only solid thing in them are other intelligences. With these, they may interact, but seldom do, except for the occasional trick played on an unwary mortal.

 

Limited naming bonds can be formed, that restrict certain uses of the energy made available, but these are rare. Even more rarely, it is possible (though difficult) to create Realms with unique sets of permissions, such that even beings that have a naming bond with the Creator may not interact with it. The only known example of this is the Realm of Ascension, which cannot be affected by beings who only have the naming bond of the First Covenant. For those who enter there, a new naming bond with the Rulers is required.

 

Relationship

As intelligent beings come to know each other, bonds between them form naturally. Unlike any other type of bond, there is no formal instantiation process for this, it is wholly organic. The more closely two beings become involved, the stronger these bonds become. Like other informal bonds, these do not affect the power or capacity of the beings involved, but they do serve to bind them together. As the bond grows stronger, the beings awareness of each other grows as well, so that two who are very close can sense feelings and emotions across great distances, even between Realms. As these bonds arise organically, they may also decay organically as well. Causing harm, deception, and even neglect can cause these bonds to wither. Such bonds can be strengthened - even being made permanent - through a process known as sealing. These sealings can be used for additional effects - most notably, overturning the captivity imposed by Heylel on mortals during the Great War was accomplished by spreading the liberation accomplished by the Steward Iahel through sealing bonds.

 

It is said that, among the Ascended who pass into the Realm of Ascension, each individual in their society has a sealing bond with every other individual, resulting in a grand communal awareness of every being.

 

Possession

The coilbondings that create mortals and Immortals have a glaring weakness. Although the free will of an intelligent being cannot be subverted, when such a spirit is implanted into a material body, the interface between that free will and the actions taken by the body can be hijacked by another being. Under these circumstances, the original inhabitant of the body is removed from control, and a large number of the bondings are rerouted to receive input from their new master. This possession bond does not function on an Ascended being, but for those who are vulnerable, it is a terrifying prospect. The body does not even die under such treatment, but keeps functioning, sometimes even long after the bonds should have decayed. The original inhabitant is locked in it as if in a prison, watching their body act without their control. This practice is forbidden by edict of the Stewards, but some among the powers of the Realms do not heed them, and the Nameless are bound by no edicts.

 

Material Bonds

Material Bonds are a specialized form of bonding that includes all forms of bonding that interact with basic matter. In the case of Ascension bonding, there is overlap between this form of bonding and both formal and informal bonds, but outside of this limited area, material bonds are unique in that they do not have to involve another intelligence, and may not include any intelligence at all. The most studied form of material bonds is coilbonding - the art of embodying an intelligence in a material shell, or coil - but there are a number of other types of material bonds. This school also includes the natural bonds between matter from the field forces. These field forces arise from the interactions of the physical laws in a Realm - although it may be that the potential space of physical laws is limited in some way by the geometry of Chaos. Details on these physical laws vary, but for most of the Outer Realms, they tend to be mimicry of the physical laws which are present in the Material Realm. For more information on those particular physical laws, an elementary physics textbook is recommended. Readers already accomplished in that field are advised to study advanced field theory, group theory, and cosmology for insight into the deeper relationships between geometry, symmetry groups, vector field forces, and how these physical laws arise from them. Experience with tensor calculus is highly recommended.

 

Coilbonding

One of the most important type of bonds that can be created in the Thousand Realms is the coilbond. A coilbond invests an intelligence into a material shell, or body, creating a new complex creature. These bonds are exceptionally important to the Thousand Realms - a material form is required for a great many acts of power. There are a number of different types of coilbondings, including the ones used to create Immortals of varying types, Ascended, and those attaching intelligences to mortal bodies.

 

Mortal coilbondings incorporate a unique type of formal bond that sinks a being’s capacity to impose will on the fabric of the universe into a complex and elaborate set of bonds that bind perception, awareness, and even consciousness into a partnership with a material body. When these bonds dissolve, usually due to the death of the mortal being, the capacity is lost. Many experiments have been done to refine mortal coilbondings into objects that do not have these drawbacks, but the limitations are clear. Any coilbonding capable of creating sapience in a biological entity results in the animating being’s capacity being sunk into the bonds, evaporating upon their dissolution. No exceptions to this rule have been found.

 

The dissolute remnants of a mortal coilbonding, however, form the only basis on which a bond of Ascension may be formed. The exact reasons behind this are unknown, and proposed explanations vary. But Ascension bonds - the ones that are required in order to perform the greater feats of power - can only be built on the remnants of mortal bonds. All attempts to bypass such restrictions have failed.

 

There are several different kinds of Ascension bonds, depending on the aspirations and character of the deceased mortal. Those who failed to adequately develop the minimal moral character that the mortal experience was supposed to teach receive a bond that only restores the being’s existence before the entrance into the mortal state, with no power or permissions granted. Such a being has derived little benefit other than the Ascended coilbond itself from the mortal experience.

 

Those who showed more than the minimal moral character, but less than the stringent altruism and benevolence required of those who would be gods, receive a coilbonding that is joined with a formal investment bond. These beings are greatly increased in power, and are capable of many things out of the reach of unembodied intelligences. They are left to the Outer Realms, to serve and grow and, if they will, increase in moral character until they are prepared to enter the Realm of Ascension.

 

Those who showed sufficient moral development to surpass the requirements laid on godhood are given the same sort of coilbonding joined with investment, but also receive a naming bond keyed to the Realm of Ascension. The paths to that Realm are closed to all but those who have received this naming, but entrance there marks the first step on the road to becoming like the Rulers themselves. Not all who are given this enter there immediately; some remain behind and become gods, assisting in the development of their fellow beings toward that goal, and others are disinterested, content to remain forever in the Realms or to travel the Chaos.

 

Other, less potent forms of coilbonding are used to join lesser beings among the Unmanifested or the Manifested spirits to non-sapient life. These bonds leave the power and perception of the spirit untouched, but also allow for very little influence by the spirit on the material form. So a life form created in such a way tends to be dominated by instinct, with much less capacity for making choices. Those forms given to the Unmanifested - almost entirely microbial life or plant-like life forms - are wholly incapable of choice. These simply inhabit their forms of life.

 

Attempts to bypass the limitations of mortal coilbonding - either through creating the effects of Ascension without the foundation of a previous mortal bond, or through creating sapient mortals without needing to sink the power into the bonds - led to the creation of Immortal races. Immortals are not biological in nature, and are therefore freed of a number of restrictions on biological coilbonding. As a result, Immortal coilbonds are as loosely connected as those of non-sapient life, with no power sunk into the bonds, and are fully in control of the body, unlike non-sapient creatures who cannot maintain such control. However, unlike mortal and Ascended coilbonding, the result is not a composite being, intelligence and body meshed inextricably by the bonds. Consciousness and awareness in an Immortal are obviously separate from the material shell that is bonded to the being, unlike the integrated consciousness mortals and Ascended experience.

 

Immortal bonds, like Ascended ones, may incorporate investment bonds into the coilbonding, but these strongly tend to be closed bonds rather than open ones. Immortals may be powerful beings, but they are almost always limited in how that power may be applied. The restrictions depend on the race, but few have freedom to use their increased power anywhere approaching that of a nonbonded being.

 

A further consequence of the non-biological nature of the shells is the inability of Immortal beings to naturally reproduce. Except for those few races granted the power to bond new beings to immortal shells (or powerful enough to perform those bonds on their own - a circumstance even more rare than the first), Immortals cannot create more of themselves. For this reason, the population of various immortal races tends to be much, much less than comparable mortal populations.

 

Technological Bonds

Unmanifested intelligences are well-known to have a vast and inordinate curiosity about material things. Uncountable numbers flit through the Material Realm, examining matter and observing the mortals who live there. Others do the same through many of the Outer Realms, except for those where such is forbidden.

 

Using techniques similar to those employed in coilbonding, it is possible to create bonds joining these Unmanifested to material objects - in fact, a number of mortal disciplines do so often. These constructs allow for objects that, due to the Unmanifested held within, can access the energy of the Spiritual Realm and apply it to some larger effect.

 

Among mortals, these techniques are used to make all manner of tools, weapons, compendia of knowledge, and many other things. Among the Outer Realms, where beings may access the Spiritual Realm directly, almost the only use for such devices is warfare. Among the weapons in the Outer Realms are a number of relics of the Great War, including a number with effects that are now unknown.

 

Some few of these devices have been used as prisons, keeping powerful and dangerous beings locked away from those who might otherwise be vulnerable to them.

 

Mortal Use

Mortals find themselves in a unique situation with regards to the use of power. Most of their ability to affect the substance of the Realms, including drawing energy from Chaos - either directly or through the mediation of the Spiritual Realm, is sunk into the bonds that make them mortal. However, a number of techniques have been developed to work around these rather significant limitations. The abilities gained by such hacks are extremely varied, and many have extremely technical classification schema. Colloquially, however, all of these widely varying abilities are referred to using the popular term ‘magic.’ Magic is the exclusive province of mortals - no other beings have the limitations that require such workarounds, and direct manipulation of the Spiritual Realm is far more efficient and effective than mortal methods.

 

Scholars in the Realms divide magic into two broad classes, corresponding with how the power is accessed. Type I magic is magic made available through a bond with another being - always made after incarnation into mortality - thus providing a modicum of power with which to influence the world.

 

Type II magic relies on peculiarities in the bonding process. Some mortals, for a variety of reasons, end up with mortal coilbonds that are not as tightly woven as most. This can, if exploited, provide enough leverage to begin exerting power.

 

Each of these broad classes is divided into two further subgroups, based on how the power is used. Type A magic affects the universe directly, causing specific effects based on the practitioner's will. Type B magic utilizes the power of Unmanifested spirits, bonded briefly to one of the Realms to allow them to use their power to affect it. More detailed information on each of these categories is given below.

 

Type IA Magic

The simplest bypass of mortal limitations on the use of power is to create a new investment bond, not associated with the mortal coilbonding. This method is primarily used by gods who have stewardship over a portion of the Material Realm, granting a particular mortal power to act on their behalf. As mortals have little experience with manipulating the stuff and energy of the Spiritual Realm, and strong tendencies to get themselves into trouble by interfering with things that they don’t understand, these bonds are almost always closed investment bonds. The restrictions on the bonds are highly variable, depending on what the god wants their servant to do in the Material Realm.

 

In addition, there are a few known instances of a god creating a mortal species where the whole species was given a closed investment bond, and structures were set in place to grant such a bond to all members of that species in perpetuity. These instances are rare, but as the gods of the Outer Realms become more and more creative with mortal life, they may become more common.

 

Type IB Magic

Not all investment bonds given to mortals come from a higher being interested in intervening in the Material Realm. Manifested spirits are also capable of forming investment bonds with mortal beings, and a number do so. Some do so because they are interested in a cause or a movement that the mortal is a part of, some because they are attracted to the personality or moral character of the mortal. Some, even, are assigned to do so by a god, as an alternative to that god instantiating a closed investment bond of their own. The investment bonds initiated by the Manifested tend to be open. However, since the Manifested generally have drawing capacity on the same order of magnitude as the mortals they bond with, the mortal gains little extra direct energy shaping ability from such a bond.

 

However, the mortal recipient of these bonds have found impressive ways around these limitations. The most common of these are referred to by scholars as spellforms or incantations. A spellform is an informal bond almost unique to mortal use - though some Immortal races have picked up the practice, especially those with heavily restricted closed bonds. Spellforms offer a permission bond to Unmanifested spirits, allowing them to temporarily interact with the energy of the Thousand Realms. That permission bond is bundled in with a set of instructions on how that power can be used - similar to the most restrictive of closed investment bonds. The Unmanifested accepting the bond finds themselves locked into following the set of instructions. It seems that the Unmanifested do not resent this locking, especially as it is temporary. Given their boundless curiosity about all things Material, it appears as if the use of their power is an acceptable cost to being able to interact with the Realm.

 

The applications of spellforms are theoretically boundless. In practice, however, the major barrier to their implementation is the vast difference between the way mortals perceive the world and the way Unmanifested spirits do. If the spellform fails to give specific enough instructions, its effect may be unpredictable and dangerous. In addition, all instructions of a spellform must be given at once, with the end result that even simple tasks require complicated thinking through.

 

So a mortal practitioner of this type of magic must study a great deal to know the spellforms that produce the effects they wish. For this reason, recipients of such a bond tend to live in communities where the crafting of spellforms can be studied, and pass down their knowledge through generations. In these communities, the Manifested forming the bonds may also tend to reform such bonds with the descendants of their original bonded partner, ensuring the perpetuation of the community and its knowledge.

 

To aid the memory, spellforms are often associated with ritual phrases and incantations, movements, and sometimes even material focuses. Since preparing a spellform can take a great deal of time to accomplish, a practitioner often tends go through all of the preliminary preparations early in the day, holding the spellform nearly-complete in their mind until they are ready to instantiate it. The more experienced they are with such workings, the more forms they can hold like that. In addition, the more complex forms require more concentration to hold in the mind.

 

This practice tends to limit what a practitioner can do to just the forms they have prepared, as the effort of will required to hold forms nearly completed in the mind often precludes the crafting of new spellforms. In addition, many complex spellforms are far past the ability of any mortal to hold nearly complete in their mind. As a consequence, many practitioners prepare only the simplest forms while at their home, leaving their mental energy free to create spellforms as they please, without restriction. While traveling, however, they prepare many more forms, even up to the limits of their ability, in order to provide the quickest reaction time for unforeseen circumstances.

 

Type IIA Magic

The bonding process that ties intelligences into mortal coils is not always uniform. Intermeshed as it is with biological processes, the exact pattern of bonds can differ wildly from individual to individual. In some genetic lines, these coilbonds are looser than others - that is, less of the animating intelligence’s native ability to influence the substance of the Realms is tied up in them. This looseness causes two notable changes to the practitioner. First the mage is capable of perceiving the spirits that pass through and inhabit the Material Realm. By peering into the Spiritual Realm, their senses become attuned to the presence of other intelligences. The world becomes a wash of other beings, constantly in motion.

 

With sufficient practice and concentration, it is possible for such a mage to step partially into the Spiritual Realm. In this halfway state, their perception of the Material Realm changes drastically. Instead of receiving input through sensory organs as most mortals are accustomed to, the mage is able to perceive the energy of the Realm directly, as non-mortal intelligences do. From this perspective, they can perceive the bonds that make up an intelligent being, the energies that bind matter together, and the fields that pervade material space.

 

Second, they gain the ability to draw small amounts of energy from the Spiritual Realm. Though the mortal coilbonding still restricts the mage’s ability to use this energy to affect the Spiritual Realm directly, as the energy threshold is far too high for the mage to effectively reach, the mage can easily channel the energy drawn through such methods into effects in the Material Realm. A practitioner of this type of magic can also draw energy from other sources, whether from thermal differences, the breaking of material bonds, or even - as unethical as it is - the severing of spiritual bonds. A common practice is to see such a mage draw enough power from the Spiritual to break the material bonds holding some matter together, then to use the energy from that severing to create some desired effect in the Realm.

 

This type of magic is sometimes referred to by Outer Realms scholars as bridging, because the practitioner uses their mind, and the looseness in the coilbonds there, to bridge the gap between a source of energy and a desired outcome.

 

This type of magic also requires much study, as the mage must know exactly what to do in order to achieve the correct effect. Knowledge of the interactions of the laws that govern the Material Realm directly translates into power - the power to alter the structure of reality.

 

Type IIB Magic

Not all individuals with coilbonding irregularities are able to perceive far enough into the Spiritual Realm to see the energetic makeup of the Material Realm. Some only see the spirits that inhabit the world. This turns out to be sufficient for Type IIB magic, however.

 

As with type IIA magic, the looseness of the coilbondings allows the mage to draw a small amount of energy from the Spiritual Realm, as a non-mortal intelligence would. This energy is small enough not to directly affect the world, and the mage would not know how to apply it if it were. But it is enough to offer temporary bonds to Unmanifested spirits, in almost the exact same manner as a practitioner of Type IB magic. The difference - and this is an important distinction in theory, although the effect on the practice of magic is minimal - is that the Type IB mage uses the bond formed with a familiar spirit to supply the mental power and energy to both see the spirits and to offer temporary bonds to them, while the type IIB mage uses their own inherent power to do so.

 

The actual practice of the magic is almost identical to Type IB. The mage prepares an incantation or a spellform, holding it in their memory. When they wish to perform the magic, they draw the form out from their minds, extending the offer of the inherent bond to the Unmanifested nearby. If the instructions are clear and the spellform prepared correctly, the Unmanifested provide their power to the structure, performing the magic.

 

Cosmological History

Through eons of counted time, the Thousand Realms have stood as a beacon of light in the primordial Chaos, inviting all to enter. None of the beings remaining in the Realms were present at their inception, and few indeed remember the earliest eons. But records exist - in Alraen, Illyse, Asteros, and other major Realms, that present their history since the Word of the Rulers spoke. Though the accuracy of these records on specific points has sometimes been disputed by scholars, these accounts are regarded as largely reliable, if not entirely objective. The following historical outline has been drawn from the records publicly available on Asteros, seat of the High God Taris.

 

Creation and the First Covenant

In the beginning, the Rulers spoke, and Chaos conformed to their will, and was tamed. This was the foundation of the Realm of the Unmanifested, for as yet no intelligence had accepted a  covenant at their hands. And in that Realm, the intelligences that dwelt in the Void awoke. Then the Rulers, Eil All-Father and the Mother Ashyr, came to them and offered the First Covenant - the covenant of naming.

 

All intelligences that dwelt there were offered this bond, wherein they would be given ability to walk the Chaos freely, without fear, and would be given power to interact with the Realms that would be yet formed from the inchoate energy. And many did not accept this covenant. These are the Unmanifested, who dwell in the Realms without power. And the great among them dwell always in the borders of the Chaos, for they remain of it, and accepted not the gift of Order.

 

Among those who chose the covenant were two of the greatest of the intelligences that had dwelt in the Void. These the All-Father named Iahel and Heylel. And to all the intelligences who accepted the gift of naming, the Rulers promised growth, and power, and opportunity. To those who fulfilled the proper conditions, it was promised that they would be given the chance to become as the Rulers themselves. And the Rulers spoke again, and by the power of their word a new Realm was formed. And this Realm was named the Realm of the Manifested, created to be a place where the intelligences who had accepted the gift of naming could learn to order and control the matter and fabric of existence.

 

Because many of the intelligences were not yet capable of ordering matter, Iahel and Heylel -  under the directions of the Rulers - created the Realm of the Morning, where lesser beings could be taught how to impose their will on the fabric of existence. And Ileya and Avie and Miheil, who were great among the Manifested, were chosen to instruct them. And so the first of the Realms were ordered.

 

The Incarnation of Mortals

With the Realms set in order, the Rulers and their students began to create in the Realm of the Manifested. Heylel became adept at creation on a grand scale, charting solar systems and galaxies, and projecting their interactions. Over time, he became known as Starmaker, whose creations were breathtaking in their glory, and who was widely known as the greatest among the Manifested. Iahel devoted himself to the creation of planets, forming countless worlds to orbit Heylel’s suns. Many others among the great ones followed them, forming stars and planets and greater patterns, until the whole Realm was one great riot of creation.

 

These creations drew the attention of many of the Unmanifested, and some returned and begged a name and a covenant so that they could be a part of the great work, and it was given to them, and they were numbered among the Manifested. But others were enthralled by the material Realm, and desired to be a part of it, but were too frightened to ask a name and a covenant, for the vastness of power seemed to them a gulf they could lose themselves in. And the Rulers looked on, and saw the desires of their hearts, and granted unto them that they might have forms of matter, without being bound to them. Thus sprung up life on thousands of the worlds Iahel had shaped, around a thousand thousand of the suns Heylel had formed. And life was given rein to grow as best suited it.

 

In course of time, the Rulers came to the Manifested and offered them material forms, fashioned after the same pattern of the Rulers themselves. And it was made known that this mortal coil would be a test of character, to see if the Manifested could learn charity and benevolence and altruism towards others. Many shouted for joy at the prospect of growth, and many feared the test, and would not participate. To these was given the option to join the Unmanifested in the cycle of life, taking on forms as it pleased them in cycle after cycle until the end of time, but only such forms as were not suitable for a mortal testing. And thus came higher forms of life, moving under their own power but not yet sapient.

 

And the Rulers and the great ones who served them watched over life, and guided its growth to ever greater heights of intelligence, until at last there were shells fit to be given as mortal coils to those who accepted the Second Covenant. And so mortals came into being. For them was crafted the Realm of Mortals, where spirits who would become mortal stood in waiting.

 

Now it was known that the power in a mortal coilbond dissipated after it was severed by death. And Ileya, chief of the teachers in the Realm of the Morning, came to Ashyr the Mother and asked if mortals would be forever left in this state, for she had come to love those she taught, and desired to shield them from harm. Then the Mother showed her the bonding of Ascension, and Ileya offered herself to go down and Ascend again, so that all mortals bound to her might have their severed bonds made whole again, and be healed of the damage of the mortal coil. To her also was given the charge of instruction, that mortals should be taught during their time to seek after goodness and truth, and behave rightly toward each other.

 

After passage of time, Heylel came to the All-Father, and brought accusation against the new-formed mortals, for their minds were veiled, and they were filled with all manner of violence towards each other. And the All-Father approved these words, and gave Heylel charge of inspection, that each mortal be held accountable for the deeds done in life. So he formed the Halls of Judgement, where those who did not meet the high standard of the Second Covenant could be taught the benevolence and charity they had not learned in life. Those who would not accept such teaching would not be given advancement.

 

Iahel stood by, and asked how they should know to seek benevolence, since their minds were veiled by a mortal coilbonding; and he pled for them before the Rulers, and they accepted his words. Thus was Iahel was given charge of advocacy, that each mortal be held responsible only to their level of knowledge in life. And he crafted the Halls of Waiting, where those who had not knowledge could be instructed fully before they came before the judgement. And thus Iahel became the Advocate, and Heylel the Prosecutor, and between them the mortals grew and prospered.

 

And the Rulers smiled at these things, for they had foreseen them. And so Ileya and Iahel and Heylel passed the tests placed before them as well.

 

Ascension and Heylel’s Rebellion

For the mortals who had grown into the character of godhood, the Realm of the Ascended had been created. None could enter except those who were given a second naming bond, written into their Ascension. There, they would be taught the mysteries of power, and bonding, and the ordering of matter and the laws pertaining to it. And the Rulers took ownership of this Realm, and named Iahel as the Steward over all things in the other Realms.

 

Eons passed after this fashion, and as mortal races grew old and died, new races were fashioned after them on world after world after world. And for each new race, one of the great ones went down with them, and Ascended up again, binding the whole race to their Ascension. Upon these great ones was also laid the responsibility of teaching, that the race of mortals for whose welfare they were responsible would know how to choose goodness and godly character. And so, the perils of mortality were overcome for the Manifested. But many who might have entered the Realm of Ascension remained behind for a time, to aid other mortals in coming to their stature.  And so Realms began to proliferate, for those who so remained were eager to test their abilities.

 

In course of time, Iahel began to work closely with those called up to the Ascension, and he began to learn many hidden things. Thus it came to be that he left the stewardship in preparation for mortality, and Miheil was chosen to be Steward in his stead. And Avie followed him, for they had grown to love each other in their time as teachers in the Realm of the Morning.

 

Heylel watched these things, and began to grow envious, for he had long prized the strength of his mastery and it gnawed at him that any being should be given preeminence over him. But as yet he kept these feelings contained, and became expert at hiding them from the mind-thought of others, for he refused to be shamed by them in front of his peers. It was then that the first shadow was felt to fall across the Halls of Judgement, for though none could fault the justice of the Realm, still it seemed that the strictures grew colder and sharper, and less concerned with the reformation than with punishment.

 

But the envy of Heylel was not hidden from Eil and Ashyr, though he sought long and hard to do so. And although they counseled with him a long time, his envy grew only stronger, and he began to work with his mastery among the spirits of those who had yet to become mortal, showing them tools of his power. Many followed after him then, for he was still known as the greatest among the inhabitants of the Realms, and none could see the envy that cankered him. And many among the Unmanifested were drawn to the First Covenant through his work, and served him faithfully.

 

In time, a cohort of mortals from the Realm of Ascension was prepared to depart the Realms, and to be taught the mysteries of the Chaos. In preparation, Miheil gave up the stewardship to Jivreil, who had become distinguished among the Manifested for teaching and for power, for he and Iahel were to take on mortal form, and depart the Realms with them.

 

Then the Rulers called the great ones into council along with the spirits of those who would come down in the newest race of mortals, as they had done before, to ask of them who they would choose to go down and Ascend with them, that they might be freed from death after their life was finished. Heylel stood before the council, and put himself forward, promising that he could teach and lead in such a way that no mortal would fail in their duty. All who heard him wondered at the strength and eloquence of his arguments, and even more at his offer, for he had never spoken of it before, even to those who were closest to him. Behind him, Iahel entered his offer, but made no argument to support himself nor to contest Heylel’s claim.

 

And the Rulers looked on and saw into Heylel’s heart, how it had grown dark and cold and cankered with envy, and they wept for what must surely come. But they accepted Iahel’s offer, and declined Heylel. A second time Heylel stood forward, and offered to lead the race into mortality, to be the first example and accept the bond on their behalf. And Ashyr rebuked Heylel, calling out the anger and envy in his heart, and asked him if he could pass through his own Hall in justice as a petitioner. And though the rebuke was gentle, Heylel’s wrath burned hot, and he made no answer. After silence had prevailed for the space of a time, Miheil made his offer to lead, and was accepted. In his wrath, Heylel spoke out rebellion against Eil and Ashyr, and such was the strength of his wrath and the force of his argument and his glory that many followed after him in anger, forsaking the Rulers.

 

And there was war in the heavens, and the power of the great ones was unleashed on other beings for the first time, and the Realm of the Morning was laid waste, and Iahel mourned for the fall of Heylel the Starmaker. But the strength of Miheil and Avie drove the rebellious ones out, and they were forbidden from the Second Covenant, and there was peace in the Realms for a time.

 

The Great War and the Intercession of Iahel

Now Heylel had retreated to the Halls of Judgement, where his wrath had cooled. Knowing this, the council was disposed to approach him with reconciliation, that by any means he and his followers might be brought back into fellowship and further violence averted. And Heylel received them, and spoke fairly to them, and they were encouraged and brought the tidings back to the council. But in his heart, the wrath and envy had beget cold hatred, and he lusted for revenge. So the Halls of Judgement fell into shadow, and even justice no longer held sway there. But no tidings came yet from that Realm, and none yet on the outside could see past the fair words Heylel had spoken. But Eil and Ashyr counselled with Iahel and Miheil, distrusting that Heylel could be so easily dissuaded. And Jivreil left the stewardship to go down into mortality with Iahel and Miheil, for with the Rulers returned, the Realms needed no steward.

 

Now Heylel was familiar with the bondings that instantiate a new mortal race, for he had been involved with many before, and he watched the newest worlds with intensity. And in process of time, Miheil and Avie undertook the first of the coilbondings that would make them mortal. And these were the first of the race, and their bondings would not be only for themselves, but would create the process through which the race would be perpetuated. In that moment, Heylel entered the Realm of the Mortals, where they prepared to accept the final coilbond, and offered them an endowment of power. And their vision was veiled, that they did not recognize him, and by guile they were induced to accept it. But the gift turned into cancer, for the endowment of power was in truth a bond of submission. So Heylel became master of an entire race of mortals, their power leeched away to strengthen him.

 

Thus began the Great War. And Heylel and his followers waged battle across the Realms, drawing on the power stolen from the mortals, and Iahel and his followers fought against them. The battles of that War were great and terrible, and the inhabitants of the Realms feared. Many great deeds of valor were wrought then, and many foul deeds of treachery, and many rose to great distinction. But the power that Heylel had stolen was too great to be easily overcome.

 

Seeing this, Iahel went to Eil All-Father, and counseled with him to sever the foundation of Heylel’s power. And so, Iahel entered mortality, and assumed the bondage that Heylel had laid upon the race. There, he set a working so powerful that its echoes remain in the Thousand Realms to this day. And when it was done, the bondage that enslaved the mortal race was ended, and the power of Heylel and his followers was broken. But Iahel was fallen, for Heylel had expended all his strength against him in the final moments of the working. And all seemed dark to the followers of Iahel, for though the stolen power had been cut off, still Heylel and his followers held much power in their own right, and their greatest hope was fallen, and lay still in the Halls of Judgement.

 

Then Ashyr went veiled into the Halls of Judgement, that none would know her. And she found the being of Iahel, rent and tattered from battle, and touched him. At her touch, he awoke, though his pain was nigh beyond bearing, and he gathered together the power that was left to him, and worked the bonds of Ascension.

 

It was long ere he was healed from his wounds, but with his return, those who had remained loyal to the Rulers took new heart. Slowly, they drove Heylel and his followers from the Outer Realms. When Iahel was finally healed, he gathered them together and made the final assault on the Halls of Judgement. And that day was great and terrible for the rebels, and many fell in battle. But Heylel was taken captive, and many of the great ones who followed him, and they were brought before the Rulers. And Eil and Ashyr stripped the bonds of naming from all those who had followed Heylel, and from henceforth, they were ever Nameless. And Heylel was placed under a bond of severance, that his power might never more harm others. And so the Great War ended.


The Age of Mortals

With the end of the Great War, peace returned to the Thousand Realms. The Rulers spent a great while returning order to the ravaged Realms, but eventually all had been restored to its proper place. And the ways were closed to the Realm of Mortals, that none of the Nameless could find their way there again to enslave a mortal race, and its secrets were closed to all but the Stewards.


And they and Iahel, along with Miheil, and Avie, and Jivreil, and a host of the Ascended who had remained to assist them, departed for the Realm of Ascension. It was made known that they would pass out of the Realms with the cohort of Ascended who had been prepared, there to teach the mysteries of Chaos. And it is rumored that Iahel became the Steward in the Realm of Ascension, but only one being has passed that way and returned since the Rulers passed out of the Realms.


In their stead, they called forth one of the great ones named Elanna to be their Steward, and she and her soul-sealed Muishe ruled from their realm, which was called Illyse. Thus was the beginning of the Age of Mortals, for Elanna was the first of the Stewards to have once been mortal.


And eons passed away in peace, and the Realms grew in number as more and more of the Ascended remained behind to serve the mortals who came after them. And each ruled as a god in their own Realm, aiding mortals as best they saw fit. And uncounted numbers of mortals passed into the Realm of Ascension, and uncounted of the Unmanifested came in from the outside Chaos to accept the First Covenant at the hands of the stewards.


And many new great ones arose, and Elanna set them to governing the gods and mortals alike. And new Realms arose, and many of the gods began to fashion beings to serve them, drawn from the Manifested who had not yet chosen the Second Covenant. And these are the races of the Immortals, varied in number and in shape and in power and in function, each race fashioned by a god to serve their purposes. And some few mortals, too, began to be found in the Outer Realms, both those brought in by a god to serve some purpose, and those who had found their own way out of the Realm of the Manifested. And though this was discouraged, the number of mortals there began to grow ever greater.


But it came to pass that rumors of conflict began to come to the Stewards from the farthest of the Outer Realms. Rumors of an Immortal waylaid and hurt by an unknown enemy, or of some standoff between opposed gods on the edges of Chaos. And so they fashioned Immortals of their own, to observe the Realms, and to maintain the peace. But little came to their attention, for evidence could not be found. As time passed, the whispered stories grew in scope. Tales of empty Realms, littered with ruin and slowly fading back to the Realm of the Unmanifested from which they were formed. Rumors of fallen gods, rent and tattered in the mists. Even rumors of Immortals of the Stewards themselves, waylaid and broken as they passed on their duties. But though the servants of the Stewards searched far and wide, and though the Stewards themselves watched the movements of the Realms closely, yet they found nothing.


The Realms began to reflect the growing unease of the Stewards. Where once they had been open and trusting, now the borders began to be watched sharply. Gods who had been paragons of benevolence and altruism began to look at each other suspiciously, wondering if rebellion was fomenting among their peers - for the lessons of Heylel’s revolt were not easily forgotten. Reports of missing travelers began to be commonplace, and even servants of the Stewards began to disappear. And finally, information began to come in. Injured Immortals who had been ranging the edges of Chaos returned to Illyse with firm reports of rebellion and war among those Realms that had taken root there.


The Stewards gathered together a host of Immortals that served them, and set out to the far reaches of the Realms to intervene and restore order. They returned with only a single company of their servants uninjured. For as they had come upon the conflict, the warring legions of both sides had turned on them. And from the Chaos outside had come a horde of ravening monsters, predators who had forsaken all vestiges of goodness, driven by bestial hunger and rage.


In the face of the growing threat, the Stewards called together a council to assess the threat. But with the tension growing, and suspicions high, a number of the high gods refused to leave their Realms, and refused to send their Immortals and Ascended to the defense of the others. Then Elanna appointed Elyr, who ruled a great area from his seat in Alraen, to be the warleader of the gods, and he went out at the head of the great host to battle. Against him were arrayed a host of the monsters of Chaos, brought into the Realms by some treason yet unmasked. And with them stood Immortals and servants of a legion of minor gods from the forsaken reaches of the Realms.


For a time, the defense of the Thousand Realms held firm, even in the face of such rebellion among their own. But slowly, one by one, Realms began to fall. And in that day, the full face of the threat was revealed, for there was treason among the council of gods, and Armand the Warrior was struck down by treachery in the council itself. So high gods began to withdraw their forces for the defense of their own Realms against the traitors, leaving the others to their fate, until all were withdrawn from the defense of the Stewards save four - Vessian, Lady of Stars, Irion the Shining One, Meredian the Kind, and Riverwind of the Greenheart - and even Elyr the warmaster had left them after a heated argument. And the ways between Realms began to be shut, as the enemy closed them off. But Elanna herself came out to battle, and the strength of her arms kept the inner Realms open and free while her forces fought to stave off the darkness.


But the forces of the Stewards were driven back to the innermost of the Realms, and it was purposed that they should make their last stand at the gates of Illyse itself, where the power of Elanna was at its highest. The fighting was dreadful, and traitor and loyal alike fell in vast swathes. Muishe himself fell in a desperate hour, rallying against a breach in the lines. But though the tide of enemies pressed ever closer, none could overcome the goddess Elanna, and her power decimated her foes. Then came the captain of the dark host, and he called out Elanna to battle. And she came forth, and met him before the gates of Illyse, and their conflict was awesome, and both hosts shrank back in fear from the sight of it. But Elanna was weary, and her soul-sealed had fallen, and the weight of her fell foe’s power fell hard upon her, and she was overcome.


Now when the fell host saw that their enemy had fallen, and that the host that opposed them faltered, they surged forward around their captain in triumph. And it seemed that Illyse would fall, and the Realms be thrown down utterly. But at that moment, triumph turned to despair, for trumpets sounded to call warriors to battle, and Elyr, Lord of Light, fell upon the rear of the advancing host. And with him came a vast host of Immortals, forged in secret for a battle such as this, and brought to Illyse by means of a hidden way. For Elyr had never abandoned the trust of the Stewards in truth, but had feigned his falling out, so that he could strike an unexpected blow at the heart of the enemy. And his ploy had been successful, though the cost had been higher than the Realms could bear.


In the face of that assault, the dark host scattered, their will lost and their fury spent. Few ever found their way out from the heart of the Realms after that battle, and most were hunted down and their threat ended. And when the captain of that host saw the overthrow of his ambitions, the dark power that had aided him abandoned him, and he fled in terror, and was cast down by a servant in the Steward’s Guard.

Now the hurts that Elanna and Muishe had taken were beyond the power of any healer in the Realms to restore, so Elyr took them, and passed with them into the Realm of Ascension, whence had gone Iahel and Ileya and many others of the great ones who had great knowledge of healing. And with him came many of the Ascended, who were weary of the war and desired to find peace with those who had passed before them. And they traveled through the hidden way to that Realm, passing the guardians that stood there, and passed beyond the ken of any in the Realms. And of Elanna and her soul-sealed Muishe, there was never heard anything in the Thousand Realms anymore. But Elyr came back down the hidden way from that Realm, with the bond-sigil of the Steward high upon his brow, and Vessian met him at the gates of Illyse, where such sorrow had befallen. And there the high gods and their servants welcomed the new Steward of the Realms, and Elyr and Vessian were soul-sealed together, and from that place they began the long task of returning order and peace to the Realms. Thus began the reign of Elyr, fifth Steward of the Thousand Realms.

 

Edited by Seonid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Starnet: An Historical and Cultural Overview

Eons ago, an alien race spanned the galaxy, exploring world after world in an unbroken chain. To bridge the black void between the stars, across whose vast reaches even the most advanced stardrives seemed to creep slowly, this civilization built massive gate stations, through which a ship could pass and find itself light-years away in another system. Though these aliens have long since faded away, their network of gate-stations remains, connecting thousands of star systems in a vast web - the Starnet. These, along with other technologic relics left behind by this precursor race, form the basis of modern interstellar society.

 

Gate Stations

The gate stations are marvels of mega-engineering. Each station has a diameter measured in kilometers, and the largest are more than 40 kilometers across. A gentle spin imparts artificial gravity in the interior, and the pressurized interior is fully breathable. Micrometeorite impact measurements estimate that the stations have been exposed to outer system space for nearly 1.5 million years. Despite the vast span of time since their construction, most of the stations are still fully functional - a technological feat that often strikes awe into the human scientists who study them

 

At the core of each station is a wormhole - hundreds of meters across - stabilized by some sort of exotic matter. The configuration appears highly robust against minor deformations, and even head on impacts by mispiloted spacecraft have failed to render a wormhole permanently inoperable - although several of these incidents have resulted in wormhole configurations that cannot be traversed until the station’s automated systems complete repairs on the stabilizers. The wormholes anchored by the gate stations are single-tunnel, so each station connects to only a single end-point, a counterpart station in another star system.
 

As a result of this, almost all of the systems in the Starnet have at least 2 of these stations orbiting in their outer systems, and some have many more than that. A few dead ends do exist, however, systems on the outer edges of the network.

 

Terraforming and Manufactoria

The same precursor race who fashioned the gate stations also left behind other relics of their civilization. The most telling signature is the prevalence of habitable worlds among the network - all of them with a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, liquid water, and fully functional ecosystems. Genetic analysis of the flora and fauna of these worlds indicate that the plants and animals are all related to each other, and possibly descend from a common source.
 

These worlds, while still comparatively rare, are nevertheless far more prevalent than theories of planetary distribution predict. In addition, many more systems show signs of attempted terraforming in the past, and a number of these still have ancient terraforming equipment and installations - now inoperable due to the weight of years - indicating that at one time there was a massive push to create a garden of inhabited worlds.

 

This massive terraforming initiative indicates an incredibly large industrial capacity, to create and maintain so many large-scale mega-engineering projects, not to mention the construction of at least thousands of gate stations. The exact number may be orders of magnitude larger.

 

Although to date no industrialized world inhabited by this race has been found, a small handful of manufacturing complexes were established in the Starnet. These seem to have been regional production centers to support various local projects, rather than large-scale industry; however, the scale of even these small regional complexes is staggering. Each of them was provided with at least one space elevator, and massive automated surface and subsurface mining operations. In orbit, built up around the terminus of the elevator, these complexes support dozens of massive refineries and manufacturing plants. Over a thousand millennia, most of these have deteriorated past the point of functionality. However, a small number of this already small handful are at least partially operational.

 

These working manufactoria are the single most coveted strategic resource among the Starnet, and their presence has shaped the rise and fall of the political entities that have expanded through it. Some of these are so damaged that they function largely as mere resource collection operations, lifting millions of tons of raw materials into planetary orbit. Even these are incalculably valuable, allowing human refineries and construction yards access to an embarrassment of riches.
 

But even the most intact manufactorium is mostly silent, the automated systems that ran most of the orbital refineries defunct or damaged beyond repair by a thousand millennia of exposure to the harsh orbital environment, and resource collection operations on the surface are sporadic. In the most well-preserved examples, though, some of the orbital fabrication complexes still run, producing advanced stardrives that function on technology beyond the ability of human researchers to understand, let alone replicate. It is not known whether most manufactoria were dedicated to turning out stardrives, or whether the stardrive manufacturing centers proved more robust over a thousand millennia than those dedicated to other artifacts. But of the 6 known manufactoria that still have functioning orbital production capacity, all are producing stardrives.
 

Although the technical details of these drives are beyond modern engineers, the overall effect is well understood. The stardrive creates a region of warped spacetime, and then accelerates it to somewhere near 0.2c. The spacecraft inside is dragged along, although it experiences no relativistic effects. When the gravfield encounters a sufficiently steep gravitational gradient, the field collapses, and the ship re-enters normal space. The gravfield appears to impart no momentum vector to the craft inside, though external gravitational and other field effects appear to propagate normally on the interior. Therefore, when the ship reverts to normal space, it has the same velocity relative to the rest of the system as it had when it began, plus the influence of any forces it encountered along its journey and any thrust it applied while in the field. The rapid transit that these drives permit has enabled interstellar colonization and trade, and so the manufactoria that produce them are strategic resources beyond compare. Thus, the production and control of these stardrives is the foundation of human politics in the Starnet.

 

Human History in the Starnet

The origins of the human presence in the Starnet are lost to the mists of time. Many records were destroyed in the collapse of the First Empire, and the records of refugees from that event are spotty and inconsistent. As a result, historical research into the prehistoric eras of human occupation is fraught with speculation. Nevertheless, a few propositions are accepted as axiomatic by most researchers. The first is that humanity spread from a single point of origin. Tradition holds that the lost capital of the First Empire was that location, but historians differ on the matter. It is certain, though, that none of the worlds currently known are the primordial homeworld of mankind, as distinct and clear records exist of the first human settlement on every world currently in the sphere of the great powers. Second is that the entirety of human spaceflight in the Starnet has lasted between one and two thousand years. The nearly eight centuries since the collapse of the First Empire have seen the advance of human technology from being barely capable of spaceflight after the collapse to the present era of grand warfleets, inhabited deep-space stations, and large-scale interstellar trade. After correcting for stagnation during the ossification of the Second Empire, and for the jump-start provided by archival data brought by refugees to their new homes, the best estimates for the length of time needed to reach the supposed technological levels of the First Empire range from 500 to 1400 years, depending on the assumptions made about political and social stability during that era.

 

The First Empire and its Fall

Of the First Empire, little is known. Records recovered from archaeological sites describe technological feats beyond the capability of modern engineers and other scientists. Reaction drives and power generation powered directly by antimatter annihilation, experimental creation of micro black holes, and large-scale genetic engineering and longevity treatments seem to have been standard. Although such feats pale in comparison to Precursor technology, they represent a high-water mark of human technological achievement that has not been met again since.

 

Politically, the Empire seems to have been remarkably unified. Analysis of recovered records yields no signs of political instability until shortly before the fall. Even those references are cryptic, seeming to indicate that whatever unrest occurred was not widespread until after the cataclysm. All signs point towards Empire-wide contentment up until the last five years that the excavated sites were occupied. Prevailing theories place the abandonment of these outposts at around the same time as the refugee exodus, although it is hard to tell for certain.

 

The reasons for the fall of the First Empire are unknown, and theories range from widespread cataclysmic warfare to a plague of surprising virulence, to invasion by an advanced alien race. Unsurprisingly, the reports generated by the outposts available for archaeological study are sporadic and inconsistent. References to dire events are dropped casually, leaving few clues as to their nature, and it is hard to distinguish reporting from rumor. The accounts left by refugees in the vaults of the oldest colonies - Sigil Prime, Chimera, and Beiratus - do not match up with each other or with the outpost records. (The traditional belief that the colony of Luxor was founded by a group of religious refugees well before the final collapse is generally discredited, although the theory does have its proponents.) All describe a terrible fear that the refugees fled from, but the nature of their terror varies from planet to planet and even from personal account to personal account. All of it is hearsay, as well - none of the refugees were eyewitnesses of the terror.

 

Whatever the cause, however, the effects are well documented. The collapse of the First Empire led to a mass exodus of humanity. Colonies were established on terraformed worlds as exhausted refugees finally ceased their flight. Successive waves of refugees colonized further and further out into space uncharted by the First Empire survey teams. The current inhabited worlds include dozens of terraformed planets that were likely never entered in the records of the Imperial Star Charts - though the fact that not a single complete star chart has survived makes such an assertion difficult to prove. However, the majority of the territory controlled by the First Empire remains beyond the edges of currently charted space. No ships have come from that area since the waves of refugees stopped, indicating that whatever happened left behind a civilization unable or unwilling to step out into the stars. Or perhaps even more ominously, whatever happened left behind no civilization at all.

 

The Great Collapse

The refugees from the terror that destroyed the First Empire originally hoped to rebuild the civilization they had left behind on their new worlds. Some of them even had had experience running colonization operations during the final years of the Empire. But, as they found out, trying to reproduce the entire production chain of a civilized world with no outside help was a far different task establishing a high-tech colony with the support of the Empire’s massive industrial base.

 

Year after year, more high technology brought from the ruins of the First Empire fell apart. Without the deep industrial base of the Empire to rely on, repairs were either sporadic or impossible. Starship engines failed, fusion reactors went cold, automated resource extraction operations shut down. Many colonies reverted to an agrarian state, relying on subsistence farming to survive. Some maintained an industrial-level society, tapping hydrocarbons for power generation and building small-scale factories. And a few of the most populated were able to manufacture chemical-powered rockets for rudimentary space travel.

 

But even among these, interstellar trade and travel was nearly dead. Travel time to gate stations using chemical rockets was measured in years, and to reach another inhabited system often required traversing several other empty systems. Gravfield drives on the few derelict spacecraft that remained required more power to run than could be supplied by the rudimentary space technology of even the most advanced worlds. Within 20 years of the last wave of refugees, almost no ships remained that could travel between the stars as a practical matter. The few expeditions that left the confines of their home systems were massive undertakings, comprising nearly the full industrial output of the worlds that sponsored them. Of the worlds that attempted such things, only one built a sustainable interstellar initiative - Chimera.

 

The Awakening

Uniquely among the worlds initially inhabited by refugees, the Chimera system contained both a habitable planet as well as a manufactorium capable of producing stardrives. Uniquely among known manufactoria sites, the facilities were located on the inhabited world - in all other cases, the resource collection and processing facilities were on an uninhabitable world. Interestingly, although the Chimera manufactorium does maintain resource collection facilities on the surface, the mining efforts seem to have been much less extensive - possibly in a bid by the Precursor builders to maintain the habitability and resource base of the planet. Instead, the orbital production facilities are served by an advanced network of automated mining drones that tap the resources of the trojan bodies at the lagrange points of the gas giant in the inner system. Modern modeling indicates that the collection of asteroids is too large to have been a natural consequence of the system’s formation, and the current working theory is that a large number of the bodies in the trojans were repositioned there so that the drones would have easy access.
 

Like the rest of the refugee worlds, the population of Chimera was not able to maintain a high standard of technology. Long after a sustained space program was established, the majority of the Chimeran populace were still agriculturalists. The early development of Chimera was likewise unremarkable. Planetary hydrocarbon reserves were tapped early in the settlement process, and when the technology the refugees brought with them failed, the newly built generators managed to maintain an electrical grid and a rudimentary computer network. The presence of the manufactorium, however, created a divergence from the trajectory of the other refugee worlds. The facility was activated within the first decade of the colonization, either by engineers familiar with the details of other such installations in the First Empire, or through the use of instructional records. With the space elevator providing easy access to space, and the newly operational orbital facilities turning out space drives, the initial hurdles to creating and maintaining a functional interstellar program were swept away.

 

Still, it took nearly two centuries before the colonists made any real attempt at venturing out of the orbit of their new homeworld. This was spurred by the development of sufficient industry to manufacture fission power plants, which also enabled the construction of ships with enough onboard power to activate the gravfield drives produced by the manufactorium. By the 218th year since planetfall, a dozen interstellar craft had been completed, and began surveying the surrounding systems. Although costly, the manufactorium made these expeditions economically feasible, and they almost immediately began to pay dividends.

 

Within a single gate-transfer from Chimera was the terraformed world of Mieracin. The inhabitants of that world were technologically advanced, and had even established orbital space installations and a colony on it’s exceptionally large moon, Vox. Diplomatic relations were established quickly - despite early tensions that nearly erupted into an orbital conflict before cooler heads defused the situation - and luxury goods soon began to flow back and forth between the worlds. Chimeran foreign policy in the early decades of the Awakening was to trade gravfield drives to the new worlds they encountered at highly generous terms. Not only did such policies foster tremendous amounts of goodwill, they jumpstarted interstellar trade as new worlds acquired the means of traveling between the stars. Prices for goods imported from off-world were still exorbitant - as transit was still expensive, but the market for luxury items was large enough to tempt entrepreneurs into the business of transportation.

 

Many of the inhabited worlds discovered by Chimeran survey teams were fully agrarian - the old electric power generation facilities were derelicts and the population was so caught up in subsistence farming that there had been no time to try to build lower-tech infrastructure. These were claimed as protectorates - Chimeran officials were sent to supervise massive infrastructure projects aimed at improving their standard of living. For a few decades, the system worked admirably. New worlds were quickly added to the growing network. The gravfield stardrives that the Chimerans traded came home in the ships of their new trading partners, and a low-volume but robust trade economy began to prevail.
 

Soon, survey teams began to encounter worlds who had already acquired stardrives from other Chimeran trading partners. These worlds were much less welcoming towards Chimeran trade envoys, and seemed to resent Chimeran economic dominance. But even in the face of mounting tensions, Chimeran diplomats were confident of peaceful negotiations.

 

The discovery of a second manufactorium at Chezh in the 56th year of the new Chimeran reckoning - counted from first contact between Chimera and Mieracin - changed everything. The Chezh manufactorium was unable to produce stardrives, but it was only one orbit out from a terraformed world, on the third planet orbiting the star. The Chezh colonists had - at some time in the past - developed enough of a space program to reactivate the manufactorium. A rudimentary colony had sprung up around it, both on the ground and in orbit, overseeing the collection of resources and the Chezh-built shipyards that utilized the materials brought on-orbit by the space elevator. Although the manufactorium could not produce new gravfields, the locals had apparently salvaged a few drives from the ruined orbital infrastructure.

 

The Chezh had apparently developed a strong xenophobia, and the Chimeran envoys were fired upon by the orbital missile defenses. The surviving envoys quickly retreated. The team of trained negotiators sent a few months later fared little better. In response to the new contact, the Chezh began to prowl the spacelanes using the few gravships they possessed, pirating their neighbors’ ships to acquire more gravdrives. Alarmingly, the system was only two gate-transits away from Chimera itself - the survey ships had not discovered the Chezh gate in the first survey of the intervening system. To add to the growing discord, tensions were rising between many of the other systems that had acquired gravfield drives, as the new wave of violence began to cast trade disputes and other interstellar incidents in a graver light. Paranoia began to set in among many of the smaller systems, and small-scale skirmishes began to break out as new threats - either real or perceived - began to endanger the security the community had become accustomed to.

 

In response to a wide spectrum of new threats, Chimera and several other heavily industrialized worlds began to commission dedicated warships to escort their trading vessels, and even civilian starships started mounting heavy weapons for self-defense. Chimeran warships began to patrol major trade lanes, and for a time, their shipping losses were greatly reduced.

 

However, many of the outer fringe worlds refused to allow Chimeran ships to police their space - seeing it as a thinly-veiled excuse to leverage the economic dominance into political sovereignty over them. Some even openly questioned whether the piracy was a false-flag operation to make the offer of Chimeran protection seem more inviting. Diplomatic negotiations to ensure trade security failed, and Chimeran trade convoys began to stop appearing in the outer fringe.

 

To ensure trade security in the fringe worlds, a number of independent traders began to band together - first in convoys for mutual protection, but many quickly acquired heavy weaponry and took it upon themselves to take the fight to the pirates. Although it was often costly, piracy losses in the fringe began to be greatly reduced. By CY 60, they had become a loose organization - funded by the pooled efforts of several fringe worlds that had rejected Chimeran protection, naming themselves the Starguard. Over the next several years, the Starguard became more and more organized as Chezh piracy intensified, and more and more independent traders and captains joined their ranks, and increasing numbers of fringe worlds began offering financial support. Quickly, the organization became somewhat of a peacekeeping force in addition to an anti-piracy guard, and several charismatic captains gained notoriety for negotiating the end to long-running hostilities.

 

Although Chimera and the worlds most closely aligned with it did not grant official recognition to the Starguard for more than a decade, individual core world warship captains often cooperated with their Starguard counterparts. Although unsanctioned, several joint anti-piracy and reconnaissance operations were performed. One of these, late in CY 63, brought to light covert protection agreements between the Chezh and a dozen fringe worlds. In exchange for immunity from commerce raiding, these worlds would acquire stardrives secondhand and pass them around the Chimeran embargo to the Chezh navy.

 

In response, a more strict embargo on Chezh space was put into place, and interstellar trade with the colluding worlds was interdicted. This embargo was enforced by both the Starguard and the core world navies, and was remarkably effective within just a short time.

 

Seeing their only reliable supply of interstellar drives drying up, Chezh warships began raiding more frequently, and the rulers of the world began to lay plans for an outright invasion of Chimeran space.

 

In the face of expanding Chezh aggressions, Chimera and Mieracin signed a mutual defense pact in CY 65. Although the traditional view is that the Empire came into being after the battle of Caminara, more modern analyses mark this treaty as the beginning of what would become the Second Empire.

 

The Chezh War

Even by this early date, much of human interstellar civilization perceived itself as centered on Chimera. Chimera had been the world that reached back out into the stars after the great collapse, and it was Chimera that controlled the production of the gravdrives that supported interstellar commerce. Within months of the Mieracin-Chimera pact, all of the core worlds became signatories to the mutual defense agreement. Although the worlds remained independent, Chimera was widely seen as their leader, and political institutions to make joint decisions were quickly put into place.

 

Still, the increasing presence of Pact warships met with a great deal of political resistance. Many worlds on the edge of the Chimeran sphere rejected their authority, and many were wary of falling under Chimeran sovereignty. As tensions over violations of sovereign space, the economic impact of the embargo in the fringe, and other hot-button issues rose, relationships between the independent worlds of the fringe and the core worlds continued to worsen. Only the dedicated efforts of the Starguard prevented these tensions from spilling over into conflict. Over the course of the 5 years of their existence, they had come to be seen as a reliably neutral party, interested only in keeping the peace in space. Many of their captains were shrewd negotiators, and all of them maintained extensive personal relationships with a wide variety of government officials on many worlds. Many Starguard captains began to run missions in independent space on behalf of the Pact military strategists, to avoid triggering even more hostile reactions among the independent worlds. Between the joint operations of the Starguard and Pact forces, Chezh raids were largely blunted, and piracy began to be brought under control.

 

Even so, by CY 75, tensions were at an all-time high all around the new interstellar sphere. The legitimacy of Chimeran sovereignty over the low-tech agrarian worlds was challenged from many sectors, the authority of the Pact among independent systems was at an all-time low, discredited by various internal political machinations. Even worse, fault lines between Pact member worlds were deepening as powerful industrial worlds like Denhara and Mieracin questioned the need for Chimeran leadership. The lack of a major act of Chezh aggression in 8 years had pact members and outside parties alike questioning trade embargoes, and conflicting visions about just how independent the various pact worlds were of each other had relationships strained almost to the breaking point. Prominent voices on many worlds had begun to call for a dissolution of the Pact’s political machinery in favor of something more directly responsive to the governments of the individual worlds, and some even called for an end to the treaty.

 

In retrospect, that would have been disastrous. In CY 76, twenty years to the day of first contact with the Chezh, a massive strike fleet emerged from the Chezh-Khiramet gate. The few Pact patrol ships that were enforcing the embargo were swept aside before reinforcements could join the battle. The in-system reinforcements - already enroute - were engaged and destroyed piecemeal. The world of Khiramet was subjected to orbital bombardment sufficient to level the cities and industrial centers.

 

The fortifications protecting the Chimera-Khiramet gate held, barely. Pact warships were recalled from assignments across the sector, but many found themselves cut off. Among the independent systems, several of the worlds which were most dissatisfied with the Chimeran political order announced their allegiance to the growing Chezh Dominion; the fringe worlds within striking distance of these systems quickly surrendered to the Dominion or fled to the safety of the Chimeran Pact. Starguard resources were stretched thin protecting civilians across the fringe, their lightly armed patrol ships quickly proving no match for the dedicated Chezh warships. Still, the captains risked their lives to evacuate civilians from space stations and bombarded worlds alike, while trying to defend themselves against superior firepower. Despite heavy pressure from the increasingly unified pact, the Starguard refused to take part in offensive actions against the Chezh.

 

Chezh atrocities continued as the war went on. Isolated agrarian worlds, many with no understanding that there was a war going on at all, were wiped clear of colonists with surgical precision. Losses of soldiers and materiel mounted on both sides. Non-military interstellar travel nearly shut down, and commerce was dead, except for the transfer of gravdrives from the manufactorium at Chimera to shipyards across the sector.

 

Eventually, the industrial weight of the Pact began to score telling victories. Although the Dominion managed an offensive that resulted in two fully industrialized worlds being orbitally bombarded to rubble, the escalating atrocities began to drive subject worlds out of their control, and the cost in lives and ships was Pyrrhic. In a last-ditch, desperate effort, Chezh warships launched a concerted assault, focusing their remaining forces in a retributive strike against the defecting world of Caminara, a highly industrialized world that had been one of the original worlds to sign a protection agreement with the Dominion, and the largest ship production center outside the manufactorium at Chezh itself.

 

Pact forces met the Dominion warships in a decisive battle in CY 84. When it was over, more than 80% of the Pact warships in the defense fleet were beyond repair. But the Chezh Dominion no longer had a battlefleet. Within two months, the high orbits of every Dominion world were occupied by Pact blockade ships, and the assault on the Chezh shipyards had ruined the Dominion’s orbital industrial capacity. Although isolated Chezh warships-turned-pirate vessels were hunted throughout the next three decades, the war was over.

 

The many atrocities committed by the Chezh Dominion led many voices in the Pact to call for the orbital bombardment of the world - retributive justice for Khiramet, Denhara, and many other worlds. The alternative - a full-scale ground invasion - would be costly in lives and coin, and could prolong the war indefinitely. After all, the entire military strength of the Pact would hardly suffice to occupy an entire planet of hostile natives. And even a siege would require starships to remain on station for an indefinite period of time, eating up massive amounts of resources in fuel and supplies.

 

In the end, Marcus Vareis - interim commander of the Starguard, after his predecessor was killed evacuating orbital habitats at Caminara - offered an attractive alternative. The Starguard would locate their central offices in Chezh orbit. No long-term siege would be required - the Guard’s normal operations would, by nature, interdict traffic to and from Chezh. Limited ground insertions would secure key industrial centers and spaceports, and only a defensive presence would be required from that point. The motion was accepted by the Pact Senate, and reconstruction of the destroyed orbital infrastructure began.

 

The ground assault never happened, although other operations did seize the manufactorium on the third planet in the system. Constant delays due to unfavorable simulations, unpredictable weather, funding diversions, and other obstacles ensured that the operation would remain on paper. Stark divisions in Chezh society, culminating in a planet-wide civil war that began in CY 86, eventually rendered the point moot.

 

When the dust settled, the Starguard were on the scene helping with rebuilding the shattered world, and Pact assault troops were pressed into duty as engineers, construction workers, and day laborers. These humanitarian efforts were received graciously by the populace, and by CY 95, the former Dominion leadership and their xenophobic followers were nothing more than terrorists fighting a guerilla war against a citizenry and government that was happily negotiating membership in the Senate. Over the next ten years, their following dwindled, until finally the last token fighters surrendered themselves to a populace that had largely forgotten they existed.

 

Rise of the Second Empire

The war had a marked effect on politics in the Starnet. Although the individual core worlds still retained a strong sense of independence, as a block, they had accepted the Pact Senate as a binding institution. As the war concluded, however, many of the fringe worlds which had entered military support treaties with the Pact began to talk about either demanding their own representation in the Senate, or leaving the Pact altogether. Without the spectre of Chezh aggression to bind the fringe systems together, many returned to their suspicious view of the core worlds.

 

For two years, negotiations between the Pact core worlds and the fringe systems failed to reach agreeable terms to both sides. As negotiations dragged on, system militaries began to act in increasingly territorial manners, and confrontations increased. Although none of them had yet flared up into full-fledged conflict, many politicians on both sides were convinced that another war was around the corner.

 

The crisis was averted by Marcus Vareis. By now the official commissioner of the Starguard, he personally oversaw a vast web of negotiations with all parties. Determined to prevent another war, and convinced that welding the disparate factions into a single political body was the best way to achieve that goal, he pursued his vision with tireless energy. Core worlds were persuaded to open up the membership in the Pact Senate to all systems by the vision of the vast fringe markets. But even with guaranteed trade equality and individual sovereignty for each system, fringe worlds remained skeptical until Vareis proposed that the Starguard be adopted as the official peacekeeping and diplomatic arm of the new interstellar order. After several months of heated debate in the Pact Senate, Vareis’ proposals were accepted by the core worlds, and most of the fringe worlds followed suit within a year.

 

The new Senate convened in CY 89, and included representatives from almost every world except the still-occupied worlds of the Chezh Dominion. Even there, provisions were included to rebuild the infrastructure and institutions of these worlds, and representation in the Senate soon followed. Although the old core worlds of the Pact still represented a powerful voting bloc, it quickly became apparent that many political factions had influential voices in the Senate, and a new, unified interstellar society began to take shape.

 

At the inauguration ceremony for the new Senators and the body they were to join, the Prime Minister, Armand Daschai, gave a speech in which he praised the assembled delegates and the worlds they represented for coming together in unity to form a Second Empire of humanity. Although the claim was laughable on its face, as the new government was largely impotent, it tapped into deep cultural memories of the First Empire, now some 300 years past. The phrase stuck, and within a decade, the United Congress of Star Systems had been officially renamed the Imperial Senate for the Second Empire. The change in terminology did not bring any change in jurisdiction - in fact, direct intervention in local politics was largely restricted to diplomatic negotiations for trade and territorial disputes and sanctions against worlds which had violated established norms - but it conferred a surprising sense of legitimacy. Even the most skeptical of fringe world senators could not help but feel a sense that they were part of a grand project to restore the glory of the fallen First Empire, even as they fought to maintain their own personal independence against interference by the governing body.

 

By CY 100, orbital infrastructure had largely been rebuilt across the war-ravaged worlds and interstellar trade was more than double the highest levels it had hit before the war. Survey teams from various planets continued to explore the Starnet, first new colonization efforts were sent out. As new inhabited worlds were discovered, they were generally added to the political orbit of the system that had funded the expedition, mimicking the Chimeran annexation of agrarian worlds decades earlier.

 

As more and more conflicts began to arise over who should administer these newly discovered worlds, the Imperial Senate deliberated incessantly on how to solve the problem once and for all. Several prominent Senators advocated for imposing a strict ban on independent surveying, and for consolidating all survey missions under the auspices of the Senate. New worlds would be immediately offered membership instead of being represented by a parent system.

 

The proposal was extremely divisive, as none of the worlds wanted to give up the potential for increased influence and prestige that new protectorates represented. The loudest opponents were the most successful of the one-time fringe worlds, who viewed the measure as a means for the core worlds - which, due to their deeper industrial base, had managed to fund large-scale survey programs much more effectively - to permanently enshrine the status quo in their favor. After a great deal of negotiation, a compromise was reached in CY 136, allowing member systems to adopt newly contacted planets as protectorates if they fell below a certain technology level, while also offering full membership in the Senate to any newly discovered planet with sufficiently advanced technology, or to a protectorate which later developed such levels of technology.

 

The compromise molded foreign policy for Imperial worlds for the next century. Large-scale infrastructure projects ended within a decade, as member worlds scrambled to retain as many protectorates as they could. Although the provision granting full membership to developed protectorates was intended to disrupt existing political voting blocs and bring a semblance of equal footing to the Senate, in practice many of the new member worlds maintained strong political ties to their former patron systems. Over the next decade, newly contacted or colonized worlds became little more than backwater fiefs of the powerful senatorial systems. Rumors also began to spread of deliberate sabotage of infrastructure and industry on new worlds, to ensure that they fell below the level that guaranteed full representation.

 

In CY 154, evidence came to light that the worlds of Chiron and Hammur had both committed blatant atrocities against several newly discovered worlds, leaving formerly industrialized planets in a subsistence agrarian state. In response, the Senate authorized military reprisal - in the face of overwhelming evidence, even the most vocal opponents of Senate interference relented. The planets that were then held as protectorates by the two systems were stripped from them.

 

Negotiations on new patrons stalled, and for eight years those nine systems remained in legal limbo, lacking representation or a patron system. In CY 161, a reform-minded faction introduced legislation allowing the Senate to adopt protectorates of its own, not tied to any one world. The bill included appropriations measures to fund official Senate survey projects to find new worlds and adopt them as Imperial protectorates. Although the companion measures attempting to ban or at least limit the adoption of new protectorates by individual systems failed, the original piece of legislation was approved the following year, and the Senate began to send massive survey projects out, exploring a dozen systems at once. Senate protectorate worlds proliferated quickly.

 

As newly funded survey missions began exploring many systems, the number of newly discovered inhabited worlds dropped precipitously. Although habitable worlds were still found at roughly the same rate, those with existing populations - or even signs of past habitation - became few and far between. Scientists tasked with studying the patterns suspected that Imperial survey ships had passed the frontiers of where the majority of First Empire refugees had fled. The sudden scarcity of worlds to adopt as protectorate led to some instability and internecine strife in the Senate, but the conflicts were resolved quickly after the courts ruled that new colony worlds supported by a patron or the Senate should be treated under the same legal constructs as existing protectorates. Although, with one exception, no new contacts were made past CY 187, the proliferation of protectorates continued apace through colonization efforts.

 

Some of the new Imperial protectorates were given directly to the Starguard, providing additional bases along with trade and tax income. The perennially overstretched organization accepted stewardship of these worlds only grudgingly, but they would come to allow a massive expansion of ships and an increased local presence among the fringes of the Empire.

 

Appointment of representatives in the Senate for these new protectorate worlds was assigned directly to the office of the Prime Minister, dramatically increasing the power and influence of the office. Overnight, it went from being a largely ceremonial office whose function was largely to break tied votes to being the sole appointer of a large bloc of representatives who could significantly influence policy and debate in the Senate. Although the earliest Imperial protectorates were the beneficiaries of infrastructure and technology investments, the office of the Prime Minister soon began to engage in the same sorts of practices as patron worlds had done, restricting growth and technological advancement to maintain its political influence in the Senate. Within a decade, the Prime Minister's office had commissioned a private fleet to provide security for its protectorate worlds, in parallel to the security fleets operated by patron worlds throughout the Empire, before legislation limited the number of ships the office could control to the same number of ships as any single world was allowed to maintain.

 


The Great Secession War and the Fall of the Starguard

 

By CY 230, the relentless ambition of a series of Prime Ministers - who, through the representatives-in-trust of the Imperial Protectorates, directly controlled nearly a quarter of the seats in the Senate - had forged a powerful political bloc with several core worlds and their constituencies, and this coalition ruthlessly exploited any signs of perceived weakness or disunity in the traditional political alliances. Through backroom political deals, outright bribery, and other secretive methods, the voting of the Senate rarely, if ever, went against the Prime Minister’s will.

 

Although a number of watchdog groups raised strident concerns about the growing unresponsiveness of the Senate to the needs of their constituents, the growing injustices done to the protectorate words, and the increased corruption among the Senators, few with any decision-making power paid any attention to them. The election of CY 232 brought [Last Prime Minister name], former Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, to the seat of power. During his twenty years in the office of the secretariat, [name] had coordinated the efforts of the last three Prime Ministers to consolidate and expand the power of their station - aided by their personal ambition. In that position, he had also set a number of plans in motion, setting up shell corporations to take actions and make purchases without revealing his involvement, establishing foundations - both publicly linked to him and ostensibly independent - to build diplomatic and political relationships with various political factions, corporations, and other interests, and augmenting the Prime Minister’s intelligence-gathering network with highly-placed agents of his own. As the result of his schemes, when [Last Prime Minister name] rose to the highest office in the Empire, he controlled more power and influence than his predecessors could have only dreamed of. The only organization to remain indifferent to his influence was the Starguard, and he quickly formed an antagonistic relationship with their commander, [starguard administrative commander]. Over the course of his first few years in office, high-profile Starguard investigations prosecuted several key individuals among his staff for corruption.

 

[Last Prime Minister name] inherited a troubled nation, however. Abuse of protectorate worlds overseen by both the Prime Minister’s office and the powerful core worlds was common, and unrest was growing among many of those worlds - some of whom had been denied full Senate membership for over a century. The decades before his ascension saw dozens of protectorate complaints against their patron worlds, although Starguard investigations seldom found enough evidence to bring governors or their home systems to trial. Despite rising tensions, few of the powerful officeholders foresaw any serious difficulties in the future. In fact, many of the worst perpetrators seemed to believe that the system could go on forever.

 

However, a few far-sighted individuals understood the implications of the increasing unrest, among them [starguard administrative commander], commander of the Starguard. Investigations by his subordinates had revealed disturbing patterns of poor conditions on protectorate worlds, with economic resources monopolized by interstellar corporations from the core worlds, with the patron worlds getting enormous kickbacks in exchange for suppressing competition. Hard proof of collusion was almost impossible to find, however, and complaints died in the Senate. [starguard administrative commander] joined forces with a like-minded bloc of Senators to try and address the issue before things spiraled out of control. Their efforts were strongly opposed by the Prime Minister’s office and other powerful coalitions, however, and failed to get any traction. As tensions rose ever higher, other disturbing trends began to emerge.

 

Between 230 and 238, eighteen systems attempted armed revolution against their patron worlds, with ten of them occurring in the last 2 years of the period. All of the revolutions were crushed, although the Starguard refused to participate. Official investigations found no common link, although private Starguard evidence files showed suggestive connections between the revolutions and a secret coalition of powerful industrialized worlds. By the election of 238, many of the individual commanders in the Starguard had become sympathetic to the protectorate worlds, as they had seen first-hand the results of the abuse but did not have sufficient evidence to force the issue in the Senate. Despite the tireless efforts of [starguard administrative commander] and his Senatorial allies, the Empire had become a powder keg, waiting for only the smallest spark.

 

The spark that ignited those tensions appeared little different, at the outset, than any of a dozen of its fellows. In 234, the protectorate worlds of [troubled protectorate 1] and [troubled protectorate 2] had entered formal complaints against their patron world, [patron world name]. Coming shortly on the heels of a half-dozen other formal complaints to the Senate, the reform faction was able to propose an investigative committee to take the now-massive number of reports of corruption and see what merit they held. Although the bill held broad popular appeal, the special interests that controlled the Senate were able to kill the bill before it ever got to a popular vote. In reprisal, [patron world] secretly funded a covert blockade of the system by a corporate fleet supposedly “protecting their interests from piracy.”

 

After the election of 238, which saw the reform faction gain more seats than they had ever before held, [Starguard administrative commander] secured support for an investigative committee from one of the powerful core blocs, who saw it as a tool it could use against rival factions. With the possibility of the issue being brought to a vote in the full Senate, where increasingly high profile Starguard investigations made opposing the measure a suicidal position for many representatives, a group of [troubled protectorate 1] expatriates renewed the complaints, using nearly the same text as the 4-year old petition, as a pretext for re-introducing the bill. The bill passed the committee in less than two weeks, and a full vote in the Senate appeared likely to pass the legislation, despite the opposition of the Prime Minister. As a last-ditch effort to derail the law, a number of the Prime Minister’s surrogates filed a challenge to the bill, attempting to redirect the issue to the courts. The bill stalled in the face of the challenge, finally dying after [last Prime Minister] covertly called in sufficient favors to break the alliance between the reform faction and their core system associates. The specific case that sparked the bill was referred to the courts, where it was expected to die a long, slow death.

 

By 240, almost a year after the filing of the court case, that prognosis seemed to be accurate. However, in the early months of that year, Starguard commander [starguard commander name] intercepted a group of refugees who reported running a blockade of the [troubled protectorate 1] system, and informed the patrol group of horrific conditions on the surface of the world, including forced labor, life support rationing, and even breeding programs aimed at isolating genetic adaptations to the high-gravity environment. According to the refugees, these had been imposed as harsh reprisals to the complaints brought before the Senate, and conditions were only growing worse.

 

[Starguard commander name] brought his patrol group to [troubled system 1] to investigate the accusations, but was trapped by blockading forces, who were attempting to keep a complete communications blackout on the system. After a running battle, [starguard commander name] sacrificed himself and the majority of his patrol to get two light ships out, with the refugees onboard and instructions to ensure that the Senate found out about the whole affair.

 

Pursued by corporate raiders and cut off from communications routes, the fleeing ships followed a circuitous route to avoid being cut off by ships aligned with their enemies. After several narrow escapes over the course of months, they finally re-entered space with dedicated communications links to the rest of the Empire. When the news finally broke in the Senate in the waning months of the year, it sparked a fire that would consume the Empire.

 

In the ensuing months, outrage and anger spread from world to world, resulting in calls for justice for the suffering inhabitants of [troubled system 1], reform to prevent similar abuses elsewhere, and increased oversight to enforce it. Deftly managing the public mood, and with the explicit cooperation of a number of powerful core systems, the Prime Minister focused attention on atrocities and stoked outrage at the perpetrators through his public appearances and other activities. When the Senate voted for swift and harsh repercussions against the offending worlds, nobody batted an eye, and again when they quickly passed an aid bill to relieve and rebuild the suffering worlds. Raising a fleet to accompany a Starguard police action against the blockade was just another logical response to an extreme situation. When the flames of outrage inevitably cooled, satiated by punishment and humanitarian missions, only dedicated activists realized that the potential for reform opened up by the opportunity had been deftly averted. The resurrected bill for an oversight and investigative committee to conduct a wholesale overhaul of the protectorate system was soundly defeated in early 241, and other attempts to reform the system were similarly stymied.

 

Against this background, Starguard investigators finally concluded an investigation that conclusively linked one of the largest of [last prime minister] shadow corporations to systematic abuses across protectorates of multiple core worlds, confiscating four dozen secret warships hidden across several different systems in the process. Despite their heroic efforts, however, the investigators were unable to prove any link between the corporation and the Prime Minister or the political apparatus of a core world. Further investigations found obstruction from many sources, many quietly killed by political influence well outside of official channels. In the face of powerful interests entrenched in the support of an aggressively abusive and sometimes murderous system, the reform attempts finally broke.

 

The reform faction had been divided for years between a radical wing, which had advocated for arming the protectorate worlds to defend themselves against their patrons, along with other judicious applications of force to remedy the situation, and a moderate wing, which was intent on currying alliances with the powerful core worlds and creating a solution from within the existing system. The radicals were further divided into squabbling factions with competing priorities, and for years, the moderates had exercised complete control of the faction. However, by 230, the radical factions had formed a political alliance, although they kept the pretense of squabbling in order to deflect suspicion away from themselves. In secret, their worlds had built warships to arm protectorate rebellions, and had funded - and in some cases instigated - nearly all of the protectorate rebellions since then. By 238, some of the most radical cells had begun a campaign of targeted violence against the corporate targets most closely tied to the abuse of protectorate worlds, and against the patron worlds that colluded with them.

 

After the defeat of the investigative committee bill in 241, the radical wing began gaining the support of many formerly moderate senators, and more worlds began producing ships in secret. The assassination of [senator], the de facto head of the reform faction, and the most articulate and influential moderate in the Senate, lead to a massive shift in the party’s representation in the Senate during the election of 242, and the majority of the reform-minded worlds explicitly aligned with the radical wing.

 

The political process deteriorated from there, and in late 242, preparations were underway for formal secession from the Senate. Negotiations with [starguard administrative commander] ensured that the Starguard would remain neutral in any conflict that came from secession - as they had in previous revolutions, asserting that their role as the peacekeeping arm of the Senate required them not to take sides in an internal civil conflict, so that they could be unbiased negotiators of a peace settlement. This secured near-parity between the covertly constructed warships and system defense fleets of the secessionists and the system defense fleets, armed corporate vessels, and the defense fleet of the Prime Minister.

 

The original plan was to peacefully secede at the New Year, presenting a fait accompli to the Senate, forcing any military response to be a public display of force against a target that had taken no aggressive acts against the Empire. Furthermore, the new government would have military power sufficient to fight the existing warships available to the Senate to a standstill. Worlds currently under protectorate status would be invited to join the new government, where they would be given full representation and protection against reprisal. With the Starguard officially neutral, and unofficially sympathetic, the secessionists hoped to prevent a civil war and end with a peaceful divorce from the Imperial Senate. These plans were derailed, however, when a small handful of the most radical worlds broke with the main faction after the secessionists refused to adopt requirements of restitution from core worlds for abuses perpetrated on their protectorates. These radicals seceded well in advance of the rest of the bloc, and immediately started fighting a guerilla war against the security fleets of every patron world in the sector. Several protectorates accepted their protection, and the Senate convened to adopt a state of emergency to force the rebel worlds back into the fold.

 

The majority of the reform-turned-secessionist faction was unwilling to authorize full-scale military intervention on secessionists, and a month before the end of the year they formally seceded from the Senate. Three months later, the Senate voted to consider the secessions acts of treason, and declared martial law in the rebel areas.

 

Although the war started as only a series of skirmishes in the outer systems of protectorate worlds, it quickly turned bloody as the Empire attempted to bring its wayward systems back by projected force, and the [insert new nation’s name] attempted to destroy its ability to project force. Despite increasing pressure from both sides to enter the conflict, the Starguard remained completely neutral for over a year, although individual captains started to render aid to one or the other side in increasing quantities as their political preferences started to shape their policy. As the war went on, the Starguard grew increasingly unpopular among both sides as they steadfastly refused to pick a side. In the Empire, public smear campaigns branded them rebel sympathizers who weren’t willing to give the service that loyalty required, while in the [new nation’s name], they were derided as cowards who weren’t willing to back up their high-sounding moral code with action when the time came.

 

In early 244, a fleet of corporate warships arrived in [troubled protectorate 3] to re-assert their control over the system after a revolt had destroyed the corporation’s presence there. When the low orbitals and their landing ships were violently contested, they withdrew to the high orbitals. Several Starguard ships were in-system, commanded by a high-ranking commander in the organization. As the attack was repulsed, they assisted in evacuating civilians both in orbital habitats and on the ground.

 

Frustrated with their inability to land their superior forces on the ground, the corporate ships ever more desperate. After several weeks, they decided to bombard the planet and destroy the little colony as punishment for their resistance.  As per their training, the Starguard ships in system converged on the corporate fleet, attempting to prevent it from carrying out the bombardment. Although they failed to prevent the action, they did engage and destroy many of the ships that took part in the war crimes.

 

The move was immediately derided as a partisan identifier, and public trust of the Starguard, already low, waned even further as the months went on. Seeing his chance [last prime minister] made preparations for a move against the Starguard, removing the last real obstacle to controlling the Empire as a whole. Within two months, a large flotilla of warships had amassed in the Chezh system, striking and capturing the Starguard administrative headquarters. The whole organization was charged with treason, and the actions to seize the headquarters was authorized by the courts. A week later, the Senate had voted to strip the Starguard as an organization of its right to maintain and operate warships, and denounced the organization as a rebel group.

 

Suddenly deprived of their senior leadership and their strategic headquarters, the majority of the Starguard patrol commanders defected to the rebels in protest of the high-handed actions of the Senate. This gave a much-needed boost to the rebel fleet, which had suffered severe losses in a number of key battles, and were hard-pressed by the warships built in secret by the Prime Minister before the war.

 

The defection of the Starguard provided the pretext needed by [last Prime minister] to create an Imperial Navy, nominally under the Senate’s control, but controlled in practice by the Prime Minister as the commander-in-chief. At first, the Senate commandeered the system defense fleets of various worlds, welding them into an official Navy, but as the war progressed, they were replaced by purpose-built warships constructed under the authority of the Senate.

 

The strategic situation by the end of CY 244 was grim for the rebel worlds. The influx of veteran Starguard captains into the rebel fleet had allowed the [nation name] to make major gains in a number of sectors, recovering several captured industrial worlds and liberating dozens of protectorates. However, the powerful dedicated warships of the new Imperial Navy were beginning to press the rebels hard, and the strategic momentum was beginning to shift. To disrupt the momentum of the Imperial war machine, the rebel strategic command planned a massive multi-pronged assault, aimed at disabling or destroying several important shipyards in the core worlds, thus preventing new warships from reaching the front lines. The Starguard, now reconstituted under the leadership of [new Starguard commander], agreed to participate - the  first offensive action their ships had been involved in since the beginning of the war.

 

The initial stages of the assault were crushingly effective. Three of the four major orbital shipyards targeted were completely obliterated by the surprise attack, and the fourth suffered damage sufficient to force a complete shutdown until repairs could be completed. However, the offensive was costly, and the Navy counterattack drove the rebel fleet back hard through their own original defensive lines and several system jumps back before the Navy’s spearhead could be blunted. After a few months of skirmishing and small engagements, a sustained push by the rebel fleet returned the battle lines to something near what they had been at the outset of the offensive, but their fleet had been hammered. When a new Imperial offensive began at the end of the year, the defensive fortifications crumbled, and the rebel fleet was scattered.

 

For a time, it seemed as if the final collapse of the rebellion was inevitable. But in early 246, a terrorist attack on the Senate killed [last prime minister] along with nearly a quarter of the Senate, and the chaos this engendered in the Senate delayed authorization for military operations for months. In this moment of indecision, [empress], [last prime minister]’s daughter and one of the highest ranking officers in the Imperial Navy, assumed complete control of the fleet, and carried out the operations that blunted the last major rebel offensive. Bringing the largest portion of her fleet home to Chimera, she assumed the Prime Minister’s office, and declared herself Emperor over all of mankind’s scattered worlds. Over the course of the war, a great deal of power - including almost all of the strategic and tactical management of the war itself - had been ceded to the office of the Prime Minister, and although [empress]’s actions caused a great deal of resentment in the Senate, formal proposals for her removal never gained enough traction to threaten her politically. Several worlds did offer resistance to her extra-legal ascension to the highest public office in the realm, but their concerns were quickly allayed by the presence of a powerful fleet in orbit over their worlds. Her impressive charisma and the ease with which she slipped into senatorial politics eased the transition, and within a few months she had been officially confirmed by the majority of the Senate as Prime Minister, and the office of Prime Minister had been renamed as the Emperor.

 

Under [empress] leadership, the regrouped rebel fleet was again pushed back, and by the end of 247, most of the major rebel worlds were either under siege or occupied, and the rebel fleet was scattered among the protectorate worlds in the outer fringes of the empire.

 

For the next three years, scattered squadrons of rebel ships conducted raids on Imperial supply lines or garrisoned worlds, while some of the more cohesive elements of the fleet attempted to regroup and strike more important targets. The largest portion of these rallied in secret around the free world of Cyaxar, the most heavily industrialized world in the Starguard holdings. For a time, its distance from Chimera and the core worlds sheltered it from the attention of the Navy, and the rebel fleet slowly began to rebuild. Across the fringes of the Empire, skirmishes were fought in the orbits and skies of protectorate worlds as the Imperial Navy hunted down bands of rebels with mixed success. Other rebel cells struck at high-profile targets in the core worlds, even rescuing [starguard administrative commander] from prison to serve as a leader in and inspiration for the movement.

 

But in 250, even this brief reprieve was rescinded. Information provided by captured rebel agents pinpointed Cyaxar as the control center of the entire rebel movement. Over the course of the next few months, the net began to close as Navy task forces started skirmishing with rebel elements in nearby systems. Finally, the Navy managed to assemble a strike force sufficient to assault the world’s defenses. The battle was fierce, but although the Navy took heavy losses, their weight of numbers was too telling. The last of the rebel ships took up defensive stations near the primary inhabited world, only to be swept aside as the attackers began bombardment of the surface and orbital infrastructure. When the battle was over, the Starguard and the rebel fleet alike were no more. Although resistance would continue for years, the civil war was essentially over.

 

The Denvali Emperors

 

Through the course of the war, [last Prime Minister] and later [Empress] had slowly been consolidating political power. Various emergency measures passed by the Senate granted power to the Empress’s office that had been traditionally reserved for the Senate, and [last Prime Minister] had worked tirelessly to normalize the situation. After the fall of Cyaxar, [Empress] continued to do so, leveraging the continual threat of the resistance to maintain the current state of affairs, and constantly working to normalize her ascension to the office. The complete personal loyalty of the Imperial Navy was a significant persuasive factor in these affairs. In addition, she ordered that all loyal protectorates be given full representation in the Senate. This served to advance her own political power - by giving her many friends in the Senate who could be counted on to support her agenda out of gratitude - and by diluting the political power of her opponents by stripping them of many of the members of their voting blocs. Many of the emergency powers were returned voluntarily to the Senate, although [Empress]’s work allowed her to retain many of her special privileges.

 

Despite the return of these emergency powers, [Empress]’ rule marked a major shift in Imperial politics. For the first time, the office of Prime Minister - now called the Emperor - was arguably more powerful than the Senate itself, even though the current holder of the office was adept at letting the Senate feel like they were in control. In addition to the informal power that had accrued throughout the course of the war, the former rebel worlds were administered by the same bureaucracy that had once managed the Imperial protectorates. Those same protectorates, though they now had representation in the Senate, remained governed in many ways by the old political apparatus, and back-room political deals ensured that senators from those worlds supported the new power structure.

 

But beyond the influence in the Senate gained from the war, the Emperor’s office had slowly begun to exercise power over the bureaucracies administered by the Senatorial committees. Although committee heads and high-level functionaries were still chosen by the Senate, the Emperor’s office had assumed the prerogative to fill empty positions in the committee structure during the war, to avoid the gridlock and chaos that had allowed the rebels to regroup. Unlike other emergency powers, that one was never laid down, and by CY 260, [empress] wielded significant power over the committees that actually did the work of running the Empire. In addition, the Imperial Navy remained - by and large - the private warfleet of the Empress, and contributed heavily to the power of the office. Over the course of the war, it had become a solid fixture of Imperial policy, and few senators remembered how things had been before the war, and fewer still had the political will to actively try to roll back the clock.

 

This state of affairs continued in much the same vein until the retirement of [empress] in CY 268. Her son [son] had been a fixture in Imperial politics for more than a decade, and when she nominated him to succeed her in the Emperor’s office, support was near universal. Over the course of [son]’s rule, the Senate became more and more ceremonial as the Emperor exerted more and more control over the bureaucracy run by the Senate. In CY 284, [son] introduced a measure into the Senate making the office of Emperor hereditary. Against stiff opposition from a faction of traditionalists, the measure passed, and when [son] retired in CY 288, [Senate dissolving emperor] ascended to the office.

 

Although he was an experienced politician, having served as governor of several worlds in turn before becoming a governor of an entire sector, [senate dissolving emperor] lacked several crucial skills of his predecessors. Unlike his father, he had little experience in dealing with the Senate and even less patience for the schemes their factions and political blocs used to acquire power and influence. Where [empress] and [son] had played the different factions off each other, keeping the entire Senate off-balance and either incapable of or uninterested in interfering with Imperial matters, [senate dissolving emperor]. Within a year, he had antagonized the entire body to a sufficient extent that they began to block every political move he made. Appointments to low-level bureaucratic offices were challenged and sometimes removed, proposed legislation was voted down by the entire Senate in symbolic measures, and they even passed a motion of censure. Smarting from political humiliation, [senate dissolving emperor] struck back by tightening his grip on the worlds held by Imperial power, and leveraging the power of the Imperial warfleet to resolve disputes in his favor wherever possible. Crucially, despite the opposition of the Senate, he enjoyed nearly the full support of the military - in his youth he had commanded a squadron of warships exterminating pirate bands in the fringe, and had seen combat in minor fleet actions against rebels or pirates under several different fleet admirals before being appointed governor.

 

Many of the powerful core worlds objected to increasing Imperial interference in their affairs, and the opposition in the Senate only increased. By CY 290, the situation reached a head. After learning that the Senate was preparing a resolution to strip him of his office and power, [senate dissolving emperor] reacted by dissolving the Imperial Senate during the opening exercises of its mid-year session. Military police escorted the senators into “protective custody,” and Imperial warfleets stationed over the most belligerent core worlds acted as a damper on what could have been a spark of rebellion. Although a few of the most aggrieved worlds entered open rebellion, mostly mid-tier industrialized worlds and a double handful of fringe worlds, the wave of resistance they expected never came. The power of the Imperial warfleets was too ingrained in the memories of most worlds to be willing to challenge it. By 295, it was clear that no individual or organization was capable of standing in the way of the Emperor, who now asserted complete and sole rule over all human-occupied space.

 

Dynastic Wars and the Bureaucratic Districts

 

The dissolution of the Senate had surprisingly little short-term impact on the Empire. Although there was resistance to the move, the reputation of the Imperial warfleets kept full-fledged rebellion in check. And among the functionaries that ran the Empire’s massive bureaucracy, very little had changed. Instead of reacting to directives given by senatorial appointees - the visions and long-term goals of which could change dramatically in any given election year - the committees were run by appointees of the Emperor, whose careers would tend to last about as long as they could keep the Emperor pleased with their performance. But the nature of running the Empire didn’t change.

 

The long-term impact, however, took time to see. [senate dissolving emperor] died - still in office - in 317, without having named an heir. Although he had had four children, none of them had been groomed for the office. After a brief struggle, the oldest ascended the throne, only to be assassinated after only four weeks. Although the remaining three formed a ruling council and jointly administered the executive power of the Empire, they remained at odds, and all three were ambitious, cunning, and willing to resort to any means to establish themselves as the sole ruler. The ensuing war was waged mostly in the shadows, using covert agents, knives in the dark, and dismantling political and intelligence-gathering networks. Several worlds attempted rebellion, seeing weakness among the Imperial leadership, but the ruling council maintained enough cohesion to prosecute successful campaigns against rebel worlds.

 

After two years of a shadow war, it became apparent that the remaining claimants to the Imperial throne were each well-ensconced enough in their power structures to be invulnerable to a swift assault. Although disputes and power struggles continued to mark their interactions, they settled into a sort of uneasy peace as they navigated various political crises and managed the work of running the Empire. This state of affairs lasted for nearly a decade, but in 328, unknown forces began attacking the information networks of [son], the youngest of the triumvirate.

Edited by Seonid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting. I was expecting rather more questions and/or comments on the setting than I have so far received. Feel free to ask! That's what this thread is for. I've reserved enough posts at the beginning of the thread to cover everything I can foresee wanting to elaborate on.

 

Over time, I plan on filling out each of the empty, reserved posts with information on various bits of the setting. The Thousand Realms covers a fair bit of ground - in fact, I intend it to be broad and expansive enough for me to tell all the stories I could ever want to tell within its expanse. So far, I've posted the background cosmological stuff. I know that a lot of you are waiting for me to get back to Edassan stuff, and that's the start of the next phase of this project.

 

I'm posting now just as an update - I've added a rather extensive section on power, it's uses, and how it translates into mortal magic. I've also added the structure for the cosmological history, although the historical sections haven't been written yet. That's the last bit I have to do to finish this phase.

 

So go ahead! Ask away! Questions, comments, criticism (preferably constructive) and the like is always welcome!

 

I'm also going to use this post as a compendium to keep track of any Thousand Realms stuff that gets posted elsewhere on the Shard. If I write a short story piece, or do an AMA with an Edassan character, or even start another RP, it will be linked here, in a convenient place to find.

 

Stories of the Thousand Realms:

Adventures in Edassa - Information Thread

Adventures in Edassa - RP Thread

AMA - Chaod Leu Priest

AMA - The Edassan Lorekeeper (Me!)

Hearthstide - Short Story

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The structure and workings of the Realms are fascinating, but I must say that there are things I need help understanding.

For exemple, the Nameless: you say their lack of a bond to the Rulers makes them unable to affect the substance of the Realms, but they still have great power. Is their influece then dependent on bonds to mortal sorcerers? If so, can they power spellforms from type IB magicians, or only provide type IA magic? If the first, does the magic user have to be willing? Can they communicate with mortals? How?

And, on the matter of magic, can beings other than Gods create lasting investment bonds to mortals? Can a Unmanifested do so, instead of simply powering a spell temporarily?

Is the ocorrence of "loose" coilbinding that allows type II magic associated only with certain genetic lines, or can it have other origins?

Edited by DreamEternal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The structure and workings of the Realms are fascinating, but I must say that there are things I need help understanding.

For exemple, the Nameless: you say their lack of a bond to the Rulers makes them unable to affect the substance of the Realms, but they still have great power. Is their influece then dependent on bonds to mortal sorcerers? If so, can they power spellforms from type IB magicians, or only provide type IA magic? If the first, does the magic user have to be willing? Can they communicate with mortals? How?

That is correct - the Nameless are heavily dependent on finding other beings to either influence the Realms for them - like mortal sorcerers - or to give them access to bonds, either through investment or possession. Nameless invested by a god only have access to the fabric of Realms the god has created, but it is still a step up from nothing. It should be noted here that although Nameless and Unmanifested are incapable of drawing energy from the Spiritual Realm, they can still do so from the Chaos - and that, even in the center of the Realms, the Chaos can still be drawn upon. The energy surges that characterize the Chaos are damped out by the Spiritual Realm, their energy slowly drawn off to be stored in the fabric of the Realm. But even in the center of the Realms, some part of the energy surges still ripple, low enough that it does not present a threat to the stability of creation, and this energy can be drawn on by any being - no permission bonds restrict it. On the edges of the Realm, where the influence of Chaos is far heavier, much more energy is available.

 

Nameless can indeed power spells from type B magic (both IB and IIB) - and most of them are powerful enough to break the restrictions built into the spellforms. This means that it is exceptionally dangerous for a mortal to perform this type of magic around and especially against a Nameless, as they can take the offered bond, hijack the spellform, and use it for their own purposes. Fortunately, their access to the Material bond expires quickly, as spellforms are not long-term bonds. The magic user does not need to be willing to let this happen, in fact, most are not. It is possible to build spellforms with restrictions that prohibit Nameless from powering them, but that requires a great deal of specialized knowledge.

 

Nameless, like all unembodied beings, communicate mind to mind. The experience of an unembodied being is that of floating in a sea of awareness, including awareness of what every other being nearby is thinking or feeling. In such an environment, it is hard to hide or protect your communications, and most beings are aware - at least at a general level - of all conversations happening nearby. It is possible to hide your thoughts, and the Nameless are very practiced at this - deception on this level comes naturally to them after all these eons.

 

Of the embodied beings, Immortals - along with Manifested and Unmanifested bonded to non-sapient life - are loosely bonded enough that such mind-to-mind communication is still their preferred method, and Ascended have their awareness opened enough that they can communicate with bodily speech or mental links with equal facility. But mortals are unique. Their bonds have caused their awareness of things in the Spiritual Realm to be veiled, and they cannot innately perceive the standard mental communication of other beings. With some effort, another being may initiate a mind-to-mind communication with a mortal. Under the most ideal circumstances, this is perceived by the mortal as a voice speaking inside their head. More commonly, the mortal gets a series of feelings, intuitions, or similar phenomena. These can sometimes be difficult for them to distinguish from their normal thought processes.

 

And, on the matter of magic, can beings other than Gods create lasting investment bonds to mortals? Can a Unmanifested do so, instead of simply powering a spell temporarily?

Is the ocorrence of "loose" coilbinding that allows type II magic associated only with certain genetic lines, or can it have other origins?

 

Tehcnically, any being could make an investment bond with any other. However, it is just about useless to make an investment bond with a being of greater power than you, because you won't be able to increase their abilities by any appreciable amount. And mortal and Immortal coilbondings (and animal/plant ones too...) tend to interfere with doing so, so they are out. Ascended can certainly do so - the gods are all Ascended, after all. Non-god level Ascended could, but almost every Ascended interested enough in the Material Realm to do so is a god already. That leaves Manifested, Unmanifested, and Nameless. Manifested do so on a semi-regular basis - this is the foundation of Type IB magic. Nameless can do so in the same manner (either Type IA or IB, depending on their power), though they must cover their tracks - they may be powerful, but even the most powerful Nameless does not approach the power of the highest gods, or the Stewards themselves.

 

An unmanifested being could create an investment bond to a mortal, but it would be restrictive for the Unmanifested and not very useful for the mortal. Most Unmanifested are not concerned enough with mortal affairs to be willing to tie themselves to a mortal like that.

 

The loose coilbinding is a genetic mutation, although it is possible to replicate the effects through genetic engineering - in fact, a number of advanced races in the Material Realm have done so. It is also possible for a higher being to loosen the bonds of an individual - it has been known to happen on a number of occasions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the Cosmological History is complete! Some of you might remember my earlier creation myth - this builds upon it and expands it, bringing the history down all the way to the present day. All of the settings I've created in the Thousand Realms so far happen during the Age of Mortals.

 

As always, feedback is much appreciated.

 

This completes phase 1 of the worldbuilding process. The background cosmological structure and history is now complete, pending any questions, of course. (Which I would love to answer, if any of you intrepid readers have any.)

 

The next phase remains slightly unclear. I'm either going to port over the extant info on Edassa - which would be a lot of work, but good to have it all in a single place and organized - and then work on expanding it (there are still a large number of cultures not explored yet). The other option (and more appealing to me right now, because that's what I've been worldbuilding on the most, recently) is to explore the City of Mortals setting. Which I think is rather cool.

 

So, to the one or two folks who are still following this, which one are you more interested in seeing next?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just skimming this broke my brain. Congratulations!

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Disclaimer: Thousand Realms, Inc. cannot be held liable for any damage to brains that may occur as the result of reading the information contained in this thread. Costs for brain repair are the sole responsibility of the consumer :P

I do have a question: how did this come to be? Where did you start? I'm thinking of making something similar, so any tips?

Well, in the beginning, the All-Father Eil and his soul-sealed Ashyr...

jk :P

Edassa (one of the settings in this multiverse) started when I was in junior high school (about 12 years ago now, probably. Maybe 13. Give or take a little bit). It started with a couple of characters - I had always loved telling stories, and I had always loved books, especially Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. This was the time when I really started to get into modern epic fantasy. I read the Wheel of Time and was hooked (which is weird, because I started on book 8, because that's all they had at my junior high library - there's no way I should have gotten hooked from there, but I was). I read Dragonlance, Earthsea, Riddle-Master of Hed, and a number of other classics. I'm pretty sure I worked my way through most of the fantasy section in my public library. And I decided that I wanted to join authors like that. I don't remember whether or not I started the characters before I got into these fantasy series, but they were definitely outgrowths of the same impulse.

Anyways, these characters turned out to have a story. So I started writing it. I got 3 or 4 chapters into the book by the time I was in 10th grade - I actually turned in a copy for a creative writing class. That was the year I started drawing maps for the world these characters lived in, and plotting out a history for it. The book flopped. It wasn't bad - especially not for a 14-year old - but it's not great. Maybe I'll come back to those few chapters, but so much has changed since then I'd practically need to start over. The maps were what really started it for me. I began to put together a world - a real one, not just a backdrop for a story, but a world that lived and grew and existed after a story ended.

Several years later, in my first year of college, I got sidetracked by some cool ideas for a science fiction setting, because I was beginning to develop my love for physics. I wanted realistic science fiction - interstellar battles that could happen in the real world, FTL that wasn't ruled out by real science. Then I realized that the science fiction series could easily be the future of my fantasy one, and I started thinking about that. I always wanted the link to be tenuous - no recognizable continuity, I thought it would be distracting. Just enough to have cool easter eggs for readers without needing them to read a whole different series of an entirely different genre if they didn't want to.

Then I served a mission for the LDS Church, and a lot of those ideas started to crystallize together. I told my stories to some of my companions, and they wanted more. So I started thinking and planning and plotting. I got home, and graduated from my community college, got married, and moved to attend University. (This was the general time period when I found Brandon...) For a while, my stories stayed kind of in the background, because I was so focused on school. I spent my creative time working out exact science for my science fiction series - energy yields of mass driver rounds, released energy of antimatter or fusion explosives, etc. My senior research project is on wormholes - chosen because I wanted to understand how they worked well enough to put them in a story correctly.

I added a Religious Studies degree along the way, and that changed everything. Learning about real-world religions sparked my interest in writing about societies and people again, not just technology. So I started to develop the cultures that inhabited my worlds, and it quickly became important to know their religions. But I couldn't really write their religions unless I knew what the truth about the cosmology was. What parts of their religions were true, and what parts were cultural tradition that didn't match reality? That was when this project started. This was about the time I started the Edassan Roleplay, too, which was really helpful in a lot of ways. The questions people asked made me think about my settings in ways I hadn't done and from angles I hadn't considered. I recommend it.

The ideas for the particular cosmology started with Mormon theology fused, oddly enough, with the cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons. Ish. At least, the idea of the planes came from there. I knew I wanted a number of planes of existence, and I knew I wanted to start with Mormon theology. I incorporated into that a lot of cool tidbits I'd learned over the years about ancient Hebrew and Canaanite religions, especially the concept of the divine council, and tried to think of how the speculative Mormon theologians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the Pratts, Brigham Young, B.H. Roberts, etc) might have incorporated these into their worldviews. I took what came out of that process and altered it further, making changes to it to allow for more drama. I knew I wanted pantheons of gods for my setting, and Mormon theology doesn't flow naturally in that direction, so I made alterations enough to make pantheons make sense in the setting, without feeling forced and awkward. I knew I wanted the High God of my setting to be absent, almost in the sense of Deism, and Mormon theology balked at that, so I changed things in my setting enough to make that make sense.

I wanted credible threats to various planes of existence, and Mormon theology really didn't like that one, so I think I broke a few points there. But I got it working, I think. I had to think through issues of gender identity, and how that interacted with mortality - I wanted a yin-yang sort of thing going on at a cosmic level, perfect binary, but I didn't want to write out whole classes of people who don't have that experiences in their lives - that is, I didn't want them to feel invisible, even with a cosmic binary. So I had to figure out how that worked in the setting.

And I had to figure out how the magic worked. From the RP I'd done, I'd gotten a couple of good starting ideas. Some came from D&D, because I wanted to be able to use this as a campaign setting without drastically changing the rules there. I altered it to make sense for the setting, and because I wanted magic to follow the laws of physics. Mostly, that is. When I got the idea about magic users being able to grab the energy from chemical bonds, I realized that I could do the same thing on a larger scale. Make all of the power of the gods based on bonds between people. And things just started falling into place. Plot points I knew I needed but didn't know how to explain started to fall together naturally. New interactions arose that offered newer and more exciting ways of doing things, and offered solutions to problems I didn't know I had.

The rest is (almost) history.

Sorry for rambling on and on and on about this. Hope you find it useful.

Edited by Seonid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow. This is awesome. Way better than my universe, called the 99 Galaxies.

 

Yours sounds awesome too, and I've only heard its name!

 

But I'm glad that you like my setting so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Disclaimer: Thousand Realms, Inc. cannot be held liable for any damage to brains that may occur as the result of reading the information contained in this thread. Costs for brain repair are the sole responsibility of the consumer :P

Well, in the beginning, the All-Father Eil and his soul-sealed Ashyr...

jk :P

Edassa (one of the settings in this multiverse) started when I was in junior high school (about 12 years ago now, probably. Maybe 13. Give or take a little bit). It started with a couple of characters - I had always loved telling stories, and I had always loved books, especially Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. This was the time when I really started to get into modern epic fantasy. I read the Wheel of Time and was hooked (which is weird, because I started on book 8, because that's all they had at my junior high library - there's no way I should have gotten hooked from there, but I was). I read Dragonlance, Earthsea, Riddle-Master of Hed, and a number of other classics. I'm pretty sure I worked my way through most of the fantasy section in my public library. And I decided that I wanted to join authors like that. I don't remember whether or not I started the characters before I got into these fantasy series, but they were definitely outgrowths of the same impulse.

Anyways, these characters turned out to have a story. So I started writing it. I got 3 or 4 chapters into the book by the time I was in 10th grade - I actually turned in a copy for a creative writing class. That was the year I started drawing maps for the world these characters lived in, and plotting out a history for it. The book flopped. It wasn't bad - especially not for a 14-year old - but it's not great. Maybe I'll come back to those few chapters, but so much has changed since then I'd practically need to start over. The maps were what really started it for me. I began to put together a world - a real one, not just a backdrop for a story, but a world that lived and grew and existed after a story ended.

Several years later, in my first year of college, I got sidetracked by some cool ideas for a science fiction setting, because I was beginning to develop my love for physics. I wanted realistic science fiction - interstellar battles that could happen in the real world, FTL that wasn't ruled out by real science. Then I realized that the science fiction series could easily be the future of my fantasy one, and I started thinking about that. I always wanted the link to be tenuous - no recognizable continuity, I thought it would be distracting. Just enough to have cool easter eggs for readers without needing them to read a whole different series of an entirely different genre if they didn't want to.

Then I served a mission for the LDS Church, and a lot of those ideas started to crystallize together. I told my stories to some of my companions, and they wanted more. So I started thinking and planning and plotting. I got home, and graduated from my community college, got married, and moved to attend University. (This was the general time period when I found Brandon...) For a while, my stories stayed kind of in the background, because I was so focused on school. I spent my creative time working out exact science for my science fiction series - energy yields of mass driver rounds, released energy of antimatter or fusion explosives, etc. My senior research project is on wormholes - chosen because I wanted to understand how they worked well enough to put them in a story correctly.

I added a Religious Studies degree along the way, and that changed everything. Learning about real-world religions sparked my interest in writing about societies and people again, not just technology. So I started to develop the cultures that inhabited my worlds, and it quickly became important to know their religions. But I couldn't really write their religions unless I knew what the truth about the cosmology was. What parts of their religions were true, and what parts were cultural tradition that didn't match reality? That was when this project started. This was about the time I started the Edassan Roleplay, too, which was really helpful in a lot of ways. The questions people asked made me think about my settings in ways I hadn't done and from angles I hadn't considered. I recommend it.

The ideas for the particular cosmology started with Mormon theology fused, oddly enough, with the cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons. Ish. At least, the idea of the planes came from there. I knew I wanted a number of planes of existence, and I knew I wanted to start with Mormon theology. I incorporated into that a lot of cool tidbits I'd learned over the years about ancient Hebrew and Canaanite religions, especially the concept of the divine council, and tried to think of how the speculative Mormon theologians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the Pratts, Brigham Young, B.H. Roberts, etc) might have incorporated these into their worldviews. I took what came out of that process and altered it further, making changes to it to allow for more drama. I knew I wanted pantheons of gods for my setting, and Mormon theology doesn't flow naturally in that direction, so I made alterations enough to make pantheons make sense in the setting, without feeling forced and awkward. I knew I wanted the High God of my setting to be absent, almost in the sense of Deism, and Mormon theology balked at that, so I changed things in my setting enough to make that make sense.

I wanted credible threats to various planes of existence, and Mormon theology really didn't like that one, so I think I broke a few points there. But I got it working, I think. I had to think through issues of gender identity, and how that interacted with mortality - I wanted a yin-yang sort of thing going on at a cosmic level, perfect binary, but I didn't want to write out whole classes of people who don't have that experiences in their lives - that is, I didn't want them to feel invisible, even with a cosmic binary. So I had to figure out how that worked in the setting.

And I had to figure out how the magic worked. From the RP I'd done, I'd gotten a couple of good starting ideas. Some came from D&D, because I wanted to be able to use this as a campaign setting without drastically changing the rules there. I altered it to make sense for the setting, and because I wanted magic to follow the laws of physics. Mostly, that is. When I got the idea about magic users being able to grab the energy from chemical bonds, I realized that I could do the same thing on a larger scale. Make all of the power of the gods based on bonds between people. And things just started falling into place. Plot points I knew I needed but didn't know how to explain started to fall together naturally. New interactions arose that offered newer and more exciting ways of doing things, and offered solutions to problems I didn't know I had.

The rest is (almost) history.

Sorry for rambling on and on and on about this. Hope you find it useful.

 

...wow. That's awesome! :D

 

Actually reminded me of the book my uncle is writing. He has a bit of Mormon influence there too.

Edited by Slowswift
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Here. The RP has been defunct for a long time now, but this is what we got through. I was quite happy with it.

 

As a slightly more general announcement - I'm (kind of) back! I won't be posting often in other places until December or so (after my wife has the baby and things have calmed down), but I've done a great deal of new worldbuilding work in this setting, and I'd like to get some feedback on it. I don't have time to post any of it at this exact moment, so consider this post a gauge of interest. In a day or two, or over the weekend, I'll post the new worldbuilding work for the City of Mortals setting.

In essence, the City of Mortals setting is a place where I explore how the abstract cosmological theory in the first couple posts actually looks like at the ground level - in a high-magic setting (unlike Edassa, which was intended to be almost like our own world, with magic as a rare exception, the City of Mortals has magic as - if not commonplace, at least very well-known). Also, it was made to be compatible with the Pathfinder RPG, so there's that. I'm actually running a City of Mortals campaign with my brothers right now. If there's interest, I might even do write-ups of our (hilarious) games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

I've decided to start posting my creative work here again. Currently, my efforts have been mostly focused around the Starnet setting (you might notice that I jump back and forth between settings as my attention gets pulled elsewhere!). I'm in the process of formalizing and setting down all of the setting information, so that I can start writing an actual novel in the setting.

This is big for me, because I haven't actually written non-worldbuilding efforts in a long time. So I'm quite excited about this.

Today's update (linked just in case somebody's too lazy to scroll up to find it, and also because visitors might not know what's new and what's not) is a general overview of the setting and what makes it special, and the beginnings of a historical introduction, covering the prehistory of the setting. Stuff is portrayed as it would be in-world, so things that scholars in the Starnet don't know, the article doesn't know. I as the author might know, and if you're really curious, I might even tell you :D

Tomorrow, look for more updates to the history of the Starnet, and how the dozens of refugee colonies ended up forming the Second Empire!

And, as always, if you have questions about anything (including about how anything I wrote in the cosmological information posts relates to the setting), feel free to ask! I love answering them.

If I get any interest, I may post samples or works in progress of the story I want to tell to the Shard. We'll see how that goes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

@Seonid, have you drawn up a map of Edassa  with political borders and names of things like rivers, mountain ranges, etc. yet? Because the map and geographical information in the Adventures in Edassa was a bit hard to understand with a purely geographic map. If you're still updating this thread, could you please do a geo-political map of Edassa?

P.S. This is amazing worldbuilding. I'd love to read more.

Edited by SilverTiger
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/8/2017 at 9:57 AM, SilverTiger said:

@Seonid, have you drawn up a map of Edassa  with political borders and names of things like rivers, mountain ranges, etc. yet? Because the map and geographical information in the Adventures in Edassa was a bit hard to understand with a purely geographic map. If you're still updating this thread, could you please do a geo-political map of Edassa?

P.S. This is amazing worldbuilding. I'd love to read more.

Thanks!  I'm glad you like it so much!

I have early drafts of political maps, but they are decades old,  and the shape of the continent had changed significantly since then.  I actually lost the original to the map in the RP thread, but I can probably redraw it without too much trouble.

But more than that, I could just print it off and add in a rough political map.  I'll see what I can do for you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...