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Lazarae
Planetoid
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2020
Constructs, and the Two Types of Settlement:
Ametsera is a world in constant flux, endlessly altered and remade. There are creatures- debatably organic or mechanical but certainly not alive- known as Constructs; faceless, bipedal, and typically massive. They're capable of altering continents, raising entire cities, and creating things humans have never been able to replicate. They're made of a strange black substance, something a little like metal and a little like obsidian, that is utterly indestructible.
Most of the world's population live in Constructed cities, those built by the Constructs. They are unique, each a micro-setting unto themselves; one might be a steampunk style city made of clockwork and powered by steam, one might be a futuristic metropolis, or a fantastical crystal city. Each city is supplied with what technology is needed to make it work, but not the knowledge needed to create said technology. There may be a city with computers and even complex holographs, but the inhabitants have no knowledge of integrated circuits.
The Constructs, as they are not living beings, are generally considered to be working according to orders or instruction of a greater power or powers. Whatever these powers, typically referred to as Those Who Dwell Above (or, simply, Those Above,) are no one has ever been in contact with them. The Constructs do not speak, but when the time comes for a city to die the residents are filled with an awareness of their intent. The common consensus is that Those Above are not part of this world, living either on another plane or otherwise off-planet.
The cities are not, however, permanent, and eventually the Constructs will shepherd the occupants out and 'kill' the city. Once a city is emptied of people the Constructs plant seeds and leave eggs, with only a few remaining to oversee the process. Cities take a long time to die as first the plants grow, massive building-devouring mosses and vines and an entire ecosystem follows, massive herbivores to keep the city-killing plants in check and carnivores to keep the herbivores from eating the region into a wasteland. Dead cities are incredibly dangerous, with everything there dedicated to the destruction of what was built. They are, however, also incredibly profitable, as an adventurous few are able to smuggle out technology that would otherwise be destroyed with the city.
This constant flux of technology, of things given and taken away by the Constructs, is what keeps the rest of the world from progressing. People are rarely able to replicate or even reverse-engineer what the Constructs create, not even their simpler offerings.
The rest of the world's settled population live in human-built towns and villages, none as large as the Constructed cities. The technology level varies, but none of it is past the rough equivalent of our High Middle Ages. This, notably, doesn't mean the cultural equivalent of our High Middle Ages, that's just a rough estimate of the technology.
Finally, there are the nomads, people who refuse to settle; not in steadings raised by their own hands nor in Constructed cities, though they will set up 'great camps,' semi-permanent settlements where multiple nomad groups will gather and trade. Among the nomads are the sea lords, pirate fleets that serve as floating nations, each ship a village unto itself but beholden to a single pirate monarch. Each fleet has a port, though they are far from permanent structures and are prepared to be destroyed and rebuilt elsewhere if needed. These serve the same function as the great camps of the land nomads, a place where ships are repaired, trade is done, and information is exchanged.
Colors, Souls, Spirits, the Spirit-Touched, and Magic:
Colors are the substance of which souls are made of, and the foundation for magic. A human soul holds all seven, but two will always be strongest and two will always be weakest. Among magic users the two that are weakest become 'poison,' and using them for magic increases the toll on their body. The Colors are associated more with ideas, concepts, emotions, and personality more than traditional elements, allowing for a great deal of flexibility in their application, if the user is creative. The seven Colors [admittedly borrowed heavily from The Void:]
Crimson is the Color of righteous anger, aggression, and destruction. It's not necessarily a negative color, however, and has ties to creation as well, mostly in the context of getting rid of the old to make way for the new. It runs strong in soldiers and martyrs, and is associated with forward progress. Among mages its primary use is war magic.
Emerald is its match and inverse, the Color of patience, protection, and greed. Like Crimson, it's not entirely as positive as its associations paint it; it can be an abusive, hoarding Color that keeps close what should be let free. It's primarily used by mages for shielding and wards. It is unusually 'thick' or viscous, and tends to linger where used. Spirits with Emerald souls are often heavier or more solid.
Silver is the Color of luck, fate, stasis, and, paradoxically, change. It's mercurial, sometimes staying still and sometimes shifting rapidly. Very few mages work with it, as it's a bit of a wildcard, but when they do it's either its aspect of stasis, to stop or preserve something, or its paradoxical nature of change, in order to forcibly alter something from its natural form. It's strongly associated with both passion and insanity.
Amber is the Color of hedonism, of delight, of ecstatic joy. Its power is mostly in creation, but it has associations related to consumption as well. Mages primarily use it for more natural growth than Silver, or to alter living bodies.
Azure is the Color of sorrow, and of hope. In the way that Crimson is associated with progress and the future, Azure is associated with the past. Mages rarely use it on its own, typically in conjunction with another Color; Silver or Amber to revert something to a previous form, or with Violet and/or Silver to view the past of an object.
Violet is unkind, suspicious, and inquisitive. It's the Color of secrets, lies, superficial charm, and inspiration. In the way that Emerald is viscous and heavy, Violet is corrosive and its use is incredibly hard on its user's body. Mages will use it to reveal what may be hidden- Like Azure it's typically used with another Color.
Gold is the color of trust and love, pity and jealousy. Like Emerald, it isn't as positive as it sounds- a person who uses Gold may inspire trust and love even if it's unearned. There's a rumor that the Gold of someone who does so is paler. In magecraft it's usually used to influence minds, and people who are known to use Gold are deeply distrusted.
Sometimes Color pools without being attached to a mortal soul, globbing together to form a Spirit. Spirits will typically latch on to something in the environment in which they formed, and become tied- both literally and metaphorically- to it. They may become something like an elemental, or something a little more esoteric, often depending on the Spirit's Colors and the source of what they bound themselves to; a predominantly Crimson Spirit that bind itself to a forest fire might be destructive and cruel, while a predominantly Emerald Spirit that binds itself to a cooking or hearth fire might be nurturing. A Spirit doesn't need much to bind to; a single grain of sand, or only a spark, though as it grows bigger and merges with other Spirits it will naturally accumulate more. Spirits, unlike human souls, can only hold two Colors but is driven much more intensely by them. A human with Crimson as one of their primary Colors may be able to control their aggression, but a Crimson Spirit will almost always revel in it. A newly formed Spirit can anchor to anything that isn't sentient, so they can bond to a stone, or a breeze, or a plant or mushroom, but not to an animal (though some Spirits as they grow in mass may take animal-like shapes, and most god-spirits and near-gods will take either mythological or human shapes.)
Spirits sharing the same Colors and bound to the same anchor will gravitate toward each other, merging into a larger and more powerful Spirit. In the cases of small Spirits, which are only about as intelligent as your average toddler, it's only a merging. With larger Spirits, which are more intelligent, it becomes closer to consumption, as one subsumes the other, taking them into itself. Two Spirits don't need to share the same associations with their anchor to merge, and so as Spirits merge and devour each other they also accumulate associations; if a Silver-Amber windbound Spirit associated with travel merges with a Silver-Amber windbound Spirit associated with freedom the result is a larger Spirit associated with both travel and freedom. As Spirits grow larger and stronger they eventually become God-Spirits, massive, powerful, and highly intelligent Spirits. Some God-Spirits are worshipped, or demand worship, but some are content to be left to their own devices.
Small, weak Spirits are also drawn to humans whose strongest Colors match their own, especially when those humans are experiencing strong emotion. They cannot merge with or consume them, but they can 'ride' alongside a human's soul and share their experiences. It's not possession, exactly, as they have no control over the human, and most humans won't even realize they're being 'ridden.' Sometimes the strong emotion that draws a Spirit is sex, and if a child is conceived while a parent is ridden they are marked by that Spirit, having a sort of third parent.
They are Spirit-Touched, natural channelers and the only ones other than Spirits who can use Colorless magic. They share a conceptual tie to whatever their influencing Spirit was bound to, which allows them unique abilities not bound by Color. All Spirit-Touched are marked in some way, most often by having strange and unnatural eyes or having a sense of eeriness, some undefinable sense of being unnatural or uncanny. More powerful ones, however, may have other much less mistakable signs; horns or fangs, plants growing from their hair, an unnaturally high or low body temperature, or similar. Every Spirit-Touched is unique. Humans are the only sapients in the world but some powerful Spirit-Touched, god-spirits, and near-gods inspire tales of humanoid mythological creatures.
Rarely a god-spirit or near-god will intentionally 'ride' a human to create a powerful Spirit-Touched, though most are instead created by the influence of curious low-grade Spirits. There are also tales that a god-spirit or near-god can alter an ordinary human into a Spirit-Touched, but there are no known cases of this happening and it's largely regarded as a myth.
Some consider Spirit-Touched holy and might even try to create them, inviting themselves to be ridden by Spirits or offering themselves as vessels to gods, but most often they are viewed with suspicion and kept at the fringes of society, where they are allowed at all. They're considered unlucky, unpredictable, and dangerous. It's bad form to kill one for fear of drawing the ire of Spirits who consider them kin, but they're often abandoned as infants or otherwise exiled or kept away. The presence of a known Spirit-Touched tends to make people very nervous, and the rare non-Spirit-Touched channelers are similarly ostracized just in case.
Color is abundant; magic is rare. Both forms of magic use Color as a basis, the main difference is structure and origin. Magecraft is the most common form of magic, though still rather rare, and is learned. It is rigid and follows set patterns, allowing for less flexibility in application. It is weaker in terms of sheer power, but this weakness means that it taxes the mage's body much less. Most mages use gestures to focus their magic, and so disabling their hands renders them useless, magically speaking. Channeling, on the other hand, is innate and cannot be taught; a person is born a channeler, and the only part of it that can be learned is control. Without the careful limiting of magecraft channelers are both much stronger, more flexible, and much more damaged by the constant flow of Color through their systems. While channeling is innate and instinctive most channelers still require some sort of focus for larger workings. Unlike mages, they aren't limited to gestures; some will use gestures, but anything that helps them to maintain concentration will work, and the method varies from individual to individual.
A solid 90% of channelers are Spirit-Touched, who also have Colorless magic. Colorless magic is tied to the nature of the Spirit who influenced the Spirit-Touched's conception, and is both elemental and abstract in the way that Spirits are; a Spirit-Touched has power over both the anchorpoint of the Spirit that influenced them as well as that Spirit's associations.
Convention, Custom, Notable Places:
As the Constructed cities serve as city-states and the rest of humanity is scattered in much smaller concentrations, culture varies wildly from place to place. The main thing that remains consistent are Color associations.
Crimson, and red in general, is greatly associated with soldiers and the military. Generals and, to a lesser extent, other officers will wear crimson and gold as a sign of rank.
Emerald denotes safe places, vaults, or collections, and is a common color for guardsmen's uniforms.
Silver is used as a symbol for bindings, such as weddings, and revolution.
Azure is a mourning color instead of black.
Amber, as the color of hedonism and excess, typically marks such things as brothels and whores. Artists are fond of it, as well.
Violet is associated with places of learning such as museums and libraries, and is often worn by mages. It's also frequently used by spies and saboteurs to mark important information or locations.
Gold is used by leaders. Gold trinkets are often exchanged when pacts or alliances are made- "giving gold" is a common term for making an alliance. Pale gold as a metal and a symbol denotes a false promise or a truce not meant to last. Sometimes pale gold is exchanged when giving gold to mean up front that things are an alliance only because of a mutual threat and they'll go back to trying to kill each other once the storm is clear. Pale gold is favored over darker shades by pirates and certain other criminal groups as a sort of advertisement of dishonesty or untrustworthiness- wearing pale gold is a sort of ballsy way of announcing that you're here to fuck things up.
I just want to post this damn thing and have a nap so I'll get to the rest later but. A couple of places for me to expand on later:
Ules and Ibaea:
Ametsera has two moons- Ules, the summer moon, also the herald moon, is larger, reddish, and rises and sets first. Ibaea is the winter moon, or the aegis moon, is smaller, blue-white, and rises and sets last. They are rather apart in the night sky, though at midnight both are clearly visible.
Constructed Cities:
- Aquardul, the Glass City, a dead city that once existed on a perfectly circular island. Legendarily beautiful, made of glass-like crystal, and unusually short-lived: it stood for only three years. Something of a legend among the scavengers of dead cities- its port's destruction made it incredibly hard to loot, and so it has remained largely untouched.
- Callavea, the northernmost settlement
- Ursova, a port in the north, but still south of Callavea
- Catclaw Cove, or The Cat's Claw, an absolute shithole of a free port
- Atleos, home of the women-sailor zealots
- Sumorcia, one of the largest human-built city-states. Famous for that fact and also for being at war with approximately every sea lord.
- The monastery at Pontagovia, a repository for the world's knowledge that has been strangely unmolested by Constructs despite having been dangerously close to several now-dead cities over the centuries.
- Iyuil, home of a reincarnation cult (the Everlasting Women) who studied the Spirit-Touched.
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