Kontheios

One of the things about writing things like these is that it gives me a chance to try to be less verbose (which I have a habit of being). On the other hand, whenever I write less, I just end up either feeling lazy, or like I’ve left something out.
That said, in this case I am absolutely being lazy.

In Kontheios, Castle Atrekei was where the Gods lived. Once. But one day, more than five hundred years ago, the gates opened, and there was no one inside.
Texts were found, written in the language of the gods. As far as anyone could tell, they really had loved the people of their creation, and had sought to do what was best for them. Countless theological and scientific questions were answered in a heartbeat. And nowhere was there any hint as to where the gods had gone, or what had happened to them.
Over the following century, numerous religions sprung up, purporting to have answers. And just as soon, they declared each other blasphemous, and fought. It was a time of great upheaval, and, as with all times of great upheaval, there was no shortage of men willing to make things worse, if it would profit them to do so. Today, only a few major schools of thought remain on the subject of the gods:
The Avessei believe that some great human sin so horrified the gods, that they left the world, disgusted by the evil in humanity. The Omoroi go further, believing that this act was so heinous, that it actually poisoned the gods, who retreated from reality to heal. Meanwhile, the Prossei believe that the gods left their children behind to forge their own path, that the next step in humanity’s development requires them to be without their gods. And the Calanei believe that a being they call Asanelan, the adversary of the gods, attacked them, and that the gods were able to defeat it only at the cost of their own lives.
But in fact, the world today has in large part moved on from the gods. Whilst few doubt they did exist, fewer still believe that they will return soon, or that some clue as to their disappearance might be found. When the disappearance first happened, numerous men dedicated their lives to finding the answer to that mystery,but there is no record that any succeeded.
There have been other changes, too, since the disappearance of the Gods. The souls of the dead, which were once ferried by Xarile to the great beyond, now linger in this world. Whilst only the strongest can manifest as ghosts or spectres, anyone who has died since that day can be called upon by magic. Plants, too, unconstrained by Demmera, have grown wild and unruly. They grow wherever they please, weeds choking crops, and forests ignoring their natural borders. Even the Sun has grown erratic in the sky, now that Heimmora is no longer there to measure out its path. And in a thousand other ways, the world has changed, now that the gods are not there for it.

Merithos

I still have some odd ideas about when days and, yes.


In Merithos, the wolrd is written in the stars - every detail of it. With the proper care, and sufficient knowledge, there is no question about the state of the world in the present which cannot be answered.
Those who study the stars are called astrologers, and what might at first be a surprise is how little one sees such people. The uses of their functional omniscience should, after all, be obvious - the humblest merchant would wish to know what the grain harvest is like a thousand miles away, and the greatest king should like to know immediately what happens in the furthest reaches of his kingdom. And yet, there are no astrologers to be found in plain sight.
This was not always the case. Many generations ago, there were people who made use of them. Never many, but some. But the problem is, that the one thing a merchant wants more than to know his competitor’s secrets, is to be sure that they do not know his. Kings are even less willing to let their secrets be known. Astrologers, and those who employed them, had short lives.
And so, the astrologers banded together, and founded the Academy of the Night under its twelve Grand Magi (the number has varied since, though never for long). Although it is not a traditional academy - it has no buildings, or grounds. It has no physical location whatsoever, indeed. It is simply a name for an organisation of astrologers, working together, and passing their knowledge down from one generation to the next.
Where astrologers were often attacked, noone comes after the Academy, because those who do rarely find anything to speak of, and tend to find that their secrets from that moment forth do not remain secret.
And, of course, the Academy is rich beyond measure. Both from their own investments (which are considerable), and from the high price they charge those who seek them out for their services. And people who would never have employed an astrologer do seek them out. Because anyone who can afford those service and does not buy them, risks what might be done to them by someone who did.
Beyond the academy, there is unfortunately very little in Merithos which is constant enough to be worth speaking of. The Academy, as a result of the abilities of its members, reaches across seas and continents. And the temporal kingdoms of the world are small, brief things, constantly fighting for dominance. It is said that the Academy keeps them that way, using its wealth and knowledge to keep any one kingdom from becoming too dominant. Of course, the Academy is blamed for everything from plague to earthquakes, but this rumor seems plausible - a weak kingdom is a potential customer, whereas there is the risk that an empire might be able to threaten them.
As for astrologers who do not belong to the Academy, the Academy itself tends to see them as a threat to its control, and those who survive spend most of their lives on the run from its enforcers.

The Corcuran Empire

Oh God, someone reminded me today that I have a blog!
I was distracted by writing about Dove.
Anyway, first thing first, so before doing anything else, new world!

The Isle of Corcura is a very special place for one important reason - it’s the only place where griffin eggs will hatch.
A full-grown griffin is a sight to behold. Even carrying a knight and armored beak to tail in thick steel, a griffin can soar through the skies, and reign death down upon whoever might require it.
Because, you see, on the back of the griffins, the people of Corcura built an empire. The island might have been small, but it was rich in ore, and there is, as any student of military tactics should know, significant value in complete air superiority.
Noone in the world had anything to match griffins. They were fast, well armored, and tended to carry archers on their backs. Great armies were left devastated and demoralised before the bulk of the Corcuran army even arrived.
The Empire of Corcura spread across two continents, and ships were being prepared to investigate the claims of  the griffin riders that there was a third.
Then came the Gorsi Rebellion - though it wasn’t much of a rebellion. Oh, armies rose, of course, and there were battles, and there was fighting, that the empire won with almost comical ease. But the real point of interest was inside the palace. A group of conspirators, led by Fiole Gorsi, quietly killed the emperor’s guards, and took the emperor Himself prisoner. An army of griffins is not much help against a palace coup.
In the following days, the emperor was executed, Fiole was named as his successor, and The Red Declaration was signed, severely limiting the power of the emperor, and giving far more freedom to the lesser lords who ruled under them.
Fiole Gorsi lived to the age of eighty, and was succeeded by his son Morie, and he by his son Puri after him.
But Puri, who rules today, is a poor emperor, more inclined to art and philosophy than to the rigorous task of running an empire. There are whispers that it would be better to replace him with a more able ruler.
Meanwhile, there is the third continent, called Ruali By the Empire of Corcura, and by a thousand different names by those who live there.
For it is a wild and savage place, with strange creatures the people of the Empire have never seen before - great serpents, half a mile long, who speak in all the tongues of man, and birds who seemed to be made of living flame. The continent is covered in a thousand scattered kingdoms, with a thousand petty kings, all vying for power. And there are wizards - people capable of things the people of Corcura would have thought impossible, of calling down lightning from the skies, or fire from the earth. Even of creating something from nothing.
Although the Gorsi dynasty has focused mainly on keeping order in its many provinces, an expedition to the continent was ordered by Morie, and so a small outpost has been created there, and the men and griffins stationed in it have begun to explore the continent, and  to trade with the nearest kingdoms for the goods they need to survive.

Creation Mythology

I’m working on the worldbuilding for the new story I’m writing, and I don’t really want to split my attention off it too much, so worlds for the Atlas have… not been happening.
I should probably have just said ‘I’m taking a week off’, come to think of it. That would have been a good idea.
Anyway, I didn’t really want to do this, but I decided to publish some of the mythology I’ve written for that world here.
A few things, before I do.
Mostly, I’ve wanted everything in the Atlas, to be ‘do what you want with this. It’s actually  the main reason I didn’t want to publish this here. Because this one is a bit more ‘mine’. I’m not actually sure how copyright and stuff like that work, practical skills have never been my strong suit - but I’m pretty sure I can still claim intellectual property rights to something I first created here.
Same way, this is not part of the multiverse of the Atlas (I’m assuming that the fact that there is an Atlas multiverse should be pretty obvious by now, but I might be a really bad writer). I kind of wanted to keep everything on ‘The Atlas of Impossible Worlds’ to… well, to the Atlas of Impossible Worlds (Though I may include more reproduction of in-world works in future…). I wanted to give you some kind of content, though, so here it is, three myths from the people of this world.

1

In the beginning, there was naught but chaos. There was neither land nor sea, for those bonds which bind matter to matter, which make things solid, had not been formed. All existence was the incomprehensible dance of titanic energies, bound by no rules the mortal mind could follow.
But change is the nature of chaos. And so, one day, there emerged the first god, Raíli, from the chaos. And Raíli was different than everything that had come before, he had will, and purpose. And too, he had the ability to shape the chaos according to that will.
And the first thing he forged from the chaos was Rihtae,  his staff. And that staff was formed  pure from the raw stuff of chaos, bound to solidity by Raísi’s will.
And with Rihtae as his tool, Raísi forged the world. From the chaos, he pulled Fire, and bound it to solid form, and it became stone. And so Raísi made the ground beneath our feet. But echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And so was formed the Outer Darkness, that is creation’s shadow.
Then from the chaos he pulled Mist, and bound it to solid form, and it became water. And so Raísi made the seas, the lakes, and the rivers. But echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And so formed the great storms, that rage throughout the Outer Darkness, of which the storms we know are mere shadows.
Finally, from the chaos he pulled Decay, and bound it to solid form, and it became life. But echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And so were formed the great beasts of chaos - ravenous, unpredictable things, each utterly different from the next, save only for their savage nature.
And so, the world was made. But Raísi looked upon it, and he was not satisfied. For though he had forged order from the chaos, still in all of creation, and in all that lay beyond, he remained the only being with a mind or a will.
He thought upon the matter for seven days, and seven nights. But there was nothing in creation from which he might forge a being like himself - he was unique.
But on the eighth day, he had an idea. There was something from which he could forge beings like himself - his own self. And so he wove his own divine essence into his creation, and in those parts which that essence touched, awakened minds and wills alike unto his own. And thus, he created life.
But even here, the echoes of his creation spread out beyond where he had reached. And this is how the demons came to be - foul mockeries of humanity, wedded to chaos.

2

When Raísi had made the world, and peopled it, he was content, for a while.
But alas, his world was not secure. Again and again it was ravaged by things from the Outer Darkness - by beasts and by storms, and by demons. He saw that if nothing was done, his creation would soon be undone. And he was weak. He had given so much of himself to his creation, he could not fight them off directly. But still, he had Rihtae. And though  the power of Rihtae is the power of chaos, and though Raísi was loath to use it, it was a tool with which he could command his creation.
And so from the earth and stone, Raísi raised up a great wall, that rose beyond even the clouds*, to bar the even storms from entry.
But the creatures of chaos do not all obey the laws of our reality. They flowed and through around the wall, like a dark tide, through gaps that should have been too small for them.
The wall was useless, and so Raísi let it fall. And in its place, he raised up a dome of water across the sky, deeper than any sea. And when the sky is dark, one may see into the depths of that sea, and see the things that were trapped in the water of the dome when it was raised - and these we call the stars.
But though the dome was solid, demons have a malevolent cunning, and powers which even Raísi lacks. Through arcane paths, from time to time, they passed what had seemed an impenetrable barrier, and brought with them things from the Outer Darkness.
And Raísi was still weak - though the incursions were fewer now, he still could not fight all of them at once.
And so, he once again split off a part of his self - but this time, he did not weave it into his creation. Rather, he broke that part into shards, and those shards he embedded into chosen humans. And it was by this method that the first of the new gods were created, to guard the world from those things which passed the great dome of the sky.**

3

For a time, the world was perfect. The demons were kept at bay, and neither age nor death had cast their shadow over us.
But there was one god, the unnamed god, who was jealous of Raísi, and who wished to rise above the other gods. And so, one day, he stole away Rihtae, and carried it with him to the outside.
The unnamed god was cunning, and he knew that even with Rihtae, he had no chance against Raísi and the other gods. And so, with Raísi’s power, he struck at the dome of the sky, and opened in it a tear, through which chaos was allowed to pour into the world. By this method, he hoped to distract the gods, and to assume supremacy over them.
But Raísi was not fooled. Despite the problems the hole might cause, he knew that if the unnamed god  was allowed to continue to hold Rihtae, far worse would come.
He pursued the nameless god across the world. And, at the far edge of the world, Raísi caught up with him. They fought for fully a year and a day, before Raísi was able to overcome his adversery.
He took back Rihtae, and cursed the unnamed god. That his name would be stricken from him, that he should forever wander the mortal world, and that he should never again have power to command another.
But as they had fought, the hole had remained. And, having remained and widened for so long, even what power remained in Rihtae was not sufficient to close it entirely.
Instead, he narrowed it down to the merest pinprick, and the gods scribed it around with every protection of which they are capable. But still, through that pinprick, chaos pours into the world. Thus was formed the Sun, and it is for that reason that, under the Sun’s glare, water turns to mist, flesh rots, and the fruits of the earth light aflame***.



*Annoyingly, the current President has made anything that sounds like ‘build a wall’ come off as a political metaphor. But honestly, whatever its issues as a way of keeping out migrants, it is probably a reasonable response to marauding half-created things from beyond our reality. I am also willing to consider it a reasonable measure against marauding Mongol hordes and marauding Scots. A highly controversial political stance, I know.
**All of these stories have variants, which are tolerated to varying degrees. For example, this story has a version in which the gods created first and the dome of the sky after them - in these versions, the gods are unable to hold back everything that comes from the Outer Darkness by themselves, and Raísi creates the sky as his third and most successful attempt. This alternate version  is considered less than flattering to the gods, so whilst it is not expressly forbidden (as some stories are) it is rarely told.
***Many people, hearing this, might question why, if this is true, one cannot set fire to a stone. To which there are two answers. The first is that that is what the people of this world consider lava to be - it doesn’t catch alight the way other things do because other things are not pure fire, but merely have fire in them, which escapes when they are burnt. Lava, on the other hand, is stone in the process of turning wholly back into fire. As for why it’s so much more difficult to make lava than it is to boil water, the consensus is that fire, having been bound first, was also bound most strongly.

Sylva

When I'm doing these, I have a whole list of things I want to say. But I never want to make these introduction bits too long, so it usually just ends up being the last thing I happened to think of.
Anyway, I was working on a short story recently, and decide I could probably make it a full novel-length story. And so for the last while or so, I've been world building for that.
I tend to go into a lot more detail in my own worlds than I do here. Say what you like, few of these worlds involve me spending much time worrying about what local councils look like in random countries, because even I know that's kinda boring.


The forest world of Sylva was once a paradise. The gods bent nature itself to their needs, and fulfilled all that was requested from them. The trees themselves grew into homes, exotic food and drink were there for the taking, and even disease was unheard of.
Needless to say, this didn’t last forever. For one day, a tear opened in reality itself - a pinprick at first, but it was growing quickly.
And the gods, as was their duty to their world, fought against them - by magic and by trickery, by every means that was available to them. And to start with, they were successful - they were quickly able to halt the growth of the tear, but beyond that, their power was limited - for fear of what might happen to their wards, they were unwilling to open the tear any further, and so could act in only the most limited way upon the world beyond it. And so, the gods and the things from beyond the tear settled into a kind of stalemate.
But for the people of Sylva, that alone was a tragedy. For all of their existence, they had been looked after by their gods, and now their gods were distracted by other things.
But humans are adaptable creatures - although they had not experienced such things before, they quickly learned to live with their new situation. Though the gods did not have nearly the power to spare they once had, they did not abandon their people entirely. And with the help of the gods, the people learned to build houses from wood, to grow food from the earth, to weave clothing, and to make for themselves all of those products of civilization that had once been given to them.
But no sooner had they adjusted to the new situation, than it changed again. For, somehow, the things on the other side of the tear evaded the gods, and came to the people of Sylva, and spoke with them.
But, though their bodies looked human, their words were strange, and the people of Sylva could not understand them.
And the things from beyond the tear were angry with the gods, who had defied them - and they struck them down. They had done… something. Noone knew what. The gods were powerless against them. And, seeing their gods fall, the people of Sylva fled from what little they had managed to build. And they were glad that they had done so. For, with the gods dead, the things came bodily through the tear. They built strange structures, they scarred the earth with mines, and burned the forest. Some people stayed behind, and fought them - but what hope could humans have, where gods failed? Those who left have not heard from them since.
But for those who left, there was a new life to be built. Having had only a scant few years to learn to fend for themselves, the people of Sylva could not, as yet, build boats that would take them beyond oceans. And so, they became a nomadic people, keeping far away from the buildings and strange vehicles of the outsiders. For their own part, the things seemed content to leave people alone, so long as they were not interfered with. Why should they care about these creatures, who posed no threat to them.
It scarcely mattered, anyway. However adaptable humans might be, the change to a nomadic lifestyle took its toll. Where once they were a teeming multitude, those numbers have quickly been worn away by the everyday dangers of even the safest world - dehydration, starvation, accident and malice.
It has only been a few decades since they took up a nomadic lifestyle, but the people of Sylva are scarcely recognisable. They have lost almost all that their gods taught them, and from birth, children are taught to fear the things from beyond the world.
They are a hard people, and suspicious of outsiders (not that those outsiders can give much explanation for where they came from). And though they may have banded together for survival, the fact remains that there is little people will not do when food is scarce - even with their constantly diminishing numbers, even within the single group that they have mostly remained, there have been wars. Factions, rivalries, and grudges have developed. Small groups have started to split off and make their own way, and it can only be a matter of time before the entire population splits into many parts - and before each inevitably finds that it is easier to find food for a small group, than for a large one.

Dammerung

I definitely have certain... Repeated themes... I come back to a lot. It's always slightly annoying since, even if I'm not always original, I do prefer not to repeat myself too much.
Then again, given the number of worlds I'm writing (even with all the days I miss), revisiting things sometimes is probably inevitable.


For hundreds of years, the world of Dammerung has been bound, more or less, by the strict laws of mundane reality.
But only more or less - because, centuries ago, there was magic. And though that magic has long faded from the world, the artifacts it left behind remain, somehow, functional.
Even the most minor and commonplace of them are able to shape empires. Take, for example, fire crystals. If one sings to them precisely the correct syllables, they do exactly as one would expect, catching aflame without need of fuel or oxygen.
The fascinating thing about the flame crystals is that they violate conservation of energy - to such a degree, indeed, that for the last several decades it has been possible to play a recording of the required song using only a portion of the power that it is possible to extract from the heat of the fire.
Although the power output per unit time is, obviously, extremely limited, this allows fire crystals to be used as portable power-sources, for devices which need to operate constantly for extended periods without the opportunity to refuel.
Other commonplace magical items have similarly important uses. There are flutes which summon small woodland animals from thin air (to be used as a food source), and stones which sing lullabies whenever something near them moves (often used in security systems).
Indeed, commonplace magical items are probably the most useful, even though rarer artifacts might have more obvious power. And there is a very important reason for this - sustainability. Even the newest of these objects are hundreds of years old. Over time they are liable to be lost or broken. Even things like fire crystals, which remain reasonably commonplace, are far rarer than they were a century ago. More forward looking nations have already, on occasion, chosen to start wars to secure abundant supplies of them. It is, generally speaking, unwise to base any particularly vital part of one’s society upon something completely irreplaceable. In Pala, there is a crystal which allows the user to see any thing or place they desire. But a nation which relied upon the knowledge gained from it and neglects more mundane means of information gathering would risk being blinded utterly by a well-placed rock.
Empires have fallen because they were too reliant upon the magic of items they could not replace. Famously, the Ghengi Empire, which fell almost four centuries ago, and which owned the majority of the known world at the time. The Empire was so successful in part because of the ring gates, twelve large bronze ring, the smallest of which had a radius of more than ten feet across, and which allowed people to travel instantly between the rings. It transpired when one was cracked in a riot in the imperial province of Daré, that the rings worked only if all twelve were intact - or maybe the one that was cracked had simply happened to be the ‘master’ ring. Noone knows. But whatever the case, the Empire found itself suddenly deprived of the ability to quickly transport its armies - the majority of which were now stranded oversees, months from home and with limited supplies. The empire found itself unable to prevent its own richer provinces from declaring independence, nor even from expanding their own borders. As more and more provinces declared independence, the authority of the emperor dwindled, and he found that there was little he could do to maintain order. Until only eight years after the riot at Daré, the Empire’s capital city of Ghenn was sacked, and the Emperor Anthony killed.
As a result of this, and of other similar incidents, modern ‘civilized’ nations (defined broadly as those nations which occupy the same land the Ghengi Empire once did) are rarely willing to rely upon any magical artifact they cannot replace. Which, itself, means that the impact they have on society is generally limited.
The world today is esseintially tripolar - as in many worlds, there are a  handful of secondary powers, and numerous lesser nations (most of whom are in some sense dependent upon a more powerful nation), but there are three powers capable of shaping the course of the world. Of these, two claim liniage from the fallen Ghengi Empire - one because it occupies the city of Ghenn, the other because it was founded by the Forlorn Regiment, a group of Imperial soldiers who found themselves stranded in the Reimal Islands when the Empire fell.

Fairies

This is late, but honestly that should be pretty normal at this point.
This, by the way, is the second time I've had to use an idea I had before this blog started.
This one comes from way, way back - I'm pretty sure I'd already written a story about these fairies when I was fourteen.

 They were called ‘fairies’. They lived in hives, and each of their hives was, broadly speaking, a hive mind. Or rather, several hive-minds… there is no entirely appropriate human word for it. Each hive has hundreds of bodies, and each one has hundreds of minds. It is simply that the minds are not connected to the bodies in any way - a single fairy, escaping from a destroyed hive, is enough to carry all the minds that live there away, and to seek refuge in  another hive.
As a fairy hive ages, the minds in it fracture and split, until eventually when the hive has enough bodies, it will split in two, with around half of the minds splitting off, taking about half of the bodies, and setting up a new hive somewhere else.
Fairy minds, not being tied to mortal bodies, can live theoretically forever. Which means that, in spite of limited intelligence and attention span, the eldest fairy minds are more knowledgeable than any other race.
Which often makes people feel rather guilty about killing them.
You see, the fairy minds never die, which means that unless an entire hive is wiped out, the number of fairy minds will only grow over time. And they become what can probably best be described as ‘acutely claustrophobic’ if there are too few bodies per mind.
And so, the fairy hives are constantly expanding across the surface of the world like a cancer - and the term is not random. Despite their small size, the sheer number of resources required by fairy populations, if they are left unchecked, is simply unsustainable, and they inevitably displace other creatures living nearby.
And so, despite the knowledge they carry, the other civilized races are often forced to cull any fairy hives they come across.
Which has, quite naturally, led to incredible hostility from the fairy towards the other civilized races. To them, the murder of the last member of a hive is unforgivable, meaning as it does that one is willingly snuffing out hundreds or thousands of intelligences.
The kingdoms, therefore, which border lands held by fairy tend to be closely allied - working together to hold back the fairy hordes, and to defend themselves from external threats. And there are external threats. Those further from that border tend to be quick to condemn the practice of wiping out so many lives, especially when they are housed in a fleeing body. And whilst the majority are sensible enough to realise that they would prefer not to have to deal with the problem themselves, it is not uncommon  for someone to use this ethical lapse as cassus belli, and to invade. The alliances between border nations helps to discourage this.
For their part, the fairy rarely unite - indeed, they often fight amongst themselves,  considering such clashes far less serious things than would any other race. But fairy can breed unimaginably quickly, and a single swarm can attack with what seem to be millions of bodies - all directed by a single mind, and without the least fear of death. Such great swarms are not common - but nor are they particularly rare, and it is often a struggle for the border nations to drive them back. Indeed, fairy lands have expanded considerably over the last century or so, despite their disadvantage in military technology.
As a result of the fairies, a significant part of the structure of society depends upon how close one lives to the border. A human, an elf, and a dwarf will often have far more in common than any of the three would have with a member of their own species living a dozen miles closer to the border.
Those societies far from the border tend to be fairly typical examples of the societies of their respective races, and the rare fairy who wants to travel in the lands of other races is generally allowed to, so long as they do not try to settle there. It is said that hundreds of years ago, before fairies were considered so much of a threat, they were one of the most integrated races - hives often sent a small number of their bodies to explore the world, which allowed the entire hive to see and experience new things.
The border kingdoms, meanwhile, are very different. They are heavily fortified places, with a patchwork of architecture - each race working together on those things at which they are best. The citizens, too, tend to have weapons close to hand - especially nearer the border - and most kingdoms require citizens to train with those weapons daily.
Although they are constantly wary of the fairies, not only are relations between the kingdoms far closer than they are further from the border, so to are relations between the races - whilst a human elsewhere in the world might be very suspicious of an elf and of elven customs, one living in a border kingdom  would be likely to treat them with just as much respect as another human would.