Tamir

I have nothing interesting I can think of to say, and today I've decided not to say it.

The three gods of Tamir have been, since before the world is made, locked in an unending cold war. Each god hates the others, but no god dares move against any of the others, for fear of the damage that would be done to all of reality.
This, in itself, is not anything particularly unusual. It is in the nature of beings such as gods that any conflict which cannot be resolved almost instantly in a display of incomprehensible might, is probably impossible to resolve directly at all. There are a thousand worlds where the relations between deities are governed by a complex system of rules and treaties each enforced by the threat of mutually assured destruction. What makes the gods of Tamir unique is what they decided to do about it.
The three of them agreed amongst themselves to make a world. Each would invest in that world all but a fraction of their power. And, over time, that power would grow, and it would change, until on the final day, the three would reclaim their power from the world, and see who it had come to belong to.
The first, mighty Primus fashioned th entire physical world in a single instant. He made everything, from the mountains and the seas, down to the smallest pebble. And too, he made all living things - which are, after all, also physical. All things, he thought, which walked upon the world must be molded by the form that he had given it, and so all things would ultimately come to be his.
Then the second, wise Dhaila looked at this world which Primus had made, and picked out humans, and gave to them minds, and the power of reason, by which they might turn Primus’ world to their own ends. All things, she thought, however mighty they might seem, would come to be shaped by human minds. And so, the world would come to be hers.
But the third, Regal, tricked his siblings. For he had been to create culture for the humans, the social context in which they would swim. And he had agreed with the others to pour his power into the world.
And he did both those things - he created for himself a mortal body, and walked the world as a living god. He taught the humans writing, and metalcraft, and all the other tools of civilization. But too, he made himself their king, ruling over them, commanding them, making all things his not by the indirect means the other two had used, but by force of arms.
Now, in many ways, Regal does not resemble what one might expect of a living god. It was not given to him to create the physical world, and so, he is barred from interfering with it directly. He cannot smite his enemies, nor reshape the world to his will. Nor was it given to him to create the minds of humanity, and so he cannot interfere in these things, either. He cannot control someone against their will, or force them to obey. Nor, indeed, is he permitted to kill.
But he has been the ruler of all of humanity since the beginning of time, and few rulers indeed can do any of those things. His enemies are defeated not by any show of godly force, but by those who serve him. The law is his to write and rewrite as he chooses. Armies march at his command, and to most of humanity, he is simply the rightful king - for that is what he taught them.
Still, Primus and Dhaila were not fools. Primus’s world is unkind to empires - it shifts and changes as though it were alive, shaking and splitting, making travel impossible, and leaving parts of humanity cut off from Regal for years or decades at a time.
And Dhaila did not make human minds to be humble and obedient, to simply bow to the whim of those above them. She made them to be independent, and willful, to rebel against any thing which might seek to constrain them. From birth, every human belongs to Regal, to shape as he sees fit. But he finds them a particularly stubborn material to work with, unwilling to bend as he would wish, struggling against him at every step. Although Regal has retained his position, barely a year goes by in which there is not some kind of rebellion against his rule. And the tighter he grips his subjects, the more they struggle against him. Though worship of Regal is the only official religion, both Primus and Dhaila are worshiped in many places, particularly further from the capital. And towards the outskirts of the empire, in places which have been cut off from direct contact, it often seems that Regal’s control is entirely nominal.

The Market of Mals-Sviim

I'm pretty sure most of my posts are apologising for being bad at routines.
To be fair, I am incredibly bad at routines.
At some point, it can probably be taken as read.

Anyway, yes, the word count is intentional. So there.

At the market of Mals-Sviim, anything can be bought and sold. There are mundane goods, gold and jewels and valuables of every kind, from the gross to the exquisite. There are wonders, things seen nowhere else in the world - one might find a butterfly, that moves and breathes and lives in every way like a living insect, save only that it is made entirely of some unbreakable metal. Or a quill which, upon command, will write a story never before told, and yet true in every detail. And then, there are things which one should not be able to buy or sell at all. Memories. Faces. Strength, and cunning… Anything that any person has ever wished to possess can be found in the market.
That’s not hyperbole, either, it is a literal description. Noone is entirely sure how it works, but whenever someone wishes for a thing - however briefly - it will appear in some form in the market. Even the truly impossible can be found there, although it is never bought.
It’s too expensive, you see. Everything in the market has a price, and that price is never an easy one. In exchange for riches, a sculptor might be asked to give up his hands, or an orator his voice. In exchange for the answer to her question, a scholar might be compelled to answer honestly every question she will ever be asked, or might have to give up half the years she would have lived. The price is tailored to the individual, it is always high, and the more exotic the item, the higher that price is. Although only things which are entirely impossible are ever impossible to pay for.
Noone is sure who runs the market, any more than they know how it works. It’s not that the owners are never seen - far from it, they are everywhere, always pushing you to buy this ware or that, jostling and arguing with each other. Unfortunately, no two people ever seem to see the same owners. To one person, they might be tall, figures crafted of gleaming metal, who speak in slow, flat tones. To another, they are hunched figures entirely concealed in robes, whose voices are like the buzzing of flies. And to a third, they are people no more than two feet high, with skin every colour of the rainbow, as long as all those colours are assumed to be sickly and vaguely unpleasant.
Given the prices the market exacts for its services, one would have to be insane to visit it. Given that visiting the market is illegal in every country in the world, one would probably have to be stupid too. There is simply no good reason to go there, and everyone knows this.
Unfortunately, everyone is also very quick to forget it. The market, one must remember, sells everything. It is human nature to want things, and almost everyone has something for which they would be willing to pay any price (and several more things for which they believe that they would be willing to pay any price, until they see what the market is actually charging them - at which point, Mals-Sviim usually already has its hooks in them). And so, it is bustling at all hours of the day with people who really ought to know better - with the desperate, and the selfless, and the overwhelmingly ambitious. With everyone from wannabe kings in search of a kingdom, to parents who want to buy their children a better life.
Despite the draconian penalties for its use (for there has never been a government in history that does not wish to restrict the buying and selling of something, even if that thing is, in fact, the country itself), keeping people out of Mals-Sviim has always been a losing proposition. When someone is truly desperate for it, they will be given passage there. It’s the only thing the market ever gives away for free. And so, business continues to boom.

Xilmir

For the record, the principle I’m referring to here is a specific (and simplified because this is fiction, not a textbook) case of Noether’s first theorem, which is probably my favorite mathematical theorem. This is important because it means that I am the kind of person who has a favourite mathematical theorem.
Not only that, I’m the kind of person who had to consider for a moment whether or not I actually preferred the Folk theorem.
This is another world I may come back to. One post seems kind of inadequate for a setting the whole point of which is that it is far too large, and too diverse, to meaningfully describe.
For the record, it is significantly bigger than our observable universe. An empire controlling ten or twenty galaxies would be an insignificant portion of our universe, but it would at least be large enough to measure as a portion. It would show up on your calculator screen. This is a world in which an empire spanning ten or twenty thousand ‘galaxies’ is still small enough to be almost entirely obscure.
Yes, I am aware how large even a single galaxy is. When I say things about 'not knowing what you'll find', I bloody well mean it.

It is a fundamental mathematical principle that in any world with unchanging physical laws, energy will be conserved over time. And, for the most part, it is. But in many worlds, there is an exception - magic. Indeed, in many worlds, magic is magic because it breaks this fundamental principle - there not only does not, but can not exist any constant set of physical laws to describe the behavior of an isolated system in which magic is happening, because the energy of such a system is not constant.
This, as has been noted, is true on many worlds. But in few places is it more intimately weaved into society than on Xilmir. Because on Xilmir, wizards pay their taxes in lightning.
Every source of energy, save magic, requires the exhaustion of some resource or other. Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress - however efficiently a machine may be powered, some of the energy used to keep it going will end up as waste, impossible to recycle. And so, little by little, every mundane resource has been used up. The planets have been mined dry, and the stars have burned out - indeed, in recent years, many of the stars have been mined out. And yet, the world of Xilmar is thriving with life. It is a place where nations can span not only across planets, but across entire galaxies. Because magic does not care about the conservation of energy, and spits in the face of the ‘heat death of the universe’.
Almost every one of the myriad people of Xilmar know some magic - if for no better reason than that in a world where technology is almost universally powered by magic, it is often more convenient than finding somewhere to plug something in.
But there are ordinary citizens, and then there are wizards, capable of calling forth vast energies with no more effort than it might take most people to snap their fingers. And wizards are woven into every aspect of life on Xilmir, because they have to be - it is they who are the difference between civilization, and the end of everything. It is them upon whom many of Xilmar’s technological marvels rely, it is they who allow ships to fly at superluminal speeds, they who are able to rewrite the very nature of reality when it is convenient. And it is for this reason that wizards, regardless of what other differences might exist between civilizations, tend to be held in very high regard. In many places, indeed, they are the rulers.
Xilmar should, by all rights, be a rather boring world. The entire universe is explored. There are no horizons left. Science has advanced beyond what other worlds could dream of, technological progress has slowed to almost a complete halt simply because there is so little left that has not been tried, and even magic is about as advanced as it is ever going to be. There is even a near-complete lack of war, because there is so little to fight over. There are no natural resources left, what empires need, they can simply make. Ultimately, war is simply no longer worth it.
But the thing is, though all the universe may have been explored in a general sense, an explored universe is not really anything like an explored planet. You might not know everyone on your planet, but it is at least possible to have a general idea of the kinds of things that might be going on.
An entire universe isn’t like that. It’s simply too big. Even were one to spend only a few seconds on each one, one might spend centuries studying the wonders of the universe, and still be entirely assured of being able to fly to a random point in space, and find something entirely new. There are planets that have been made into spaceships, and spaceships constructed entirely from scratch that make planets look like grains of sand. There are species which are so closely blended with machines that it is impossible for even them to tell any more what is natural, and what is not. And there are species which think that such a thing is blasphemous. There are cretures made of pure energy, and wizards capable of feats that those only a few galaxies away would swear entirely impossible - even things that other wizards can definitively prove are impossible.
Xilmar is peaceful, but only on from a long way away - there are more individual dramas than there are numbers to count them. And, whilst with the size of the population involved, any quantifier would be almost meaningless, it is common for people to spend their time exploring the vastness of it, toppling tyrants and writing wrongs. Because with a whole universe to choose from, there is no shortage of either.

Viti

Wow. Started up again, and near immediately missed like, what, two weeks? That’s awful, and I’m only thankful that I don’t think I’d actually told anyone I restarted it. But the voices in my head are very disappointed.

They think I should burn things, but that’s their solution to everything.

In my defense, I spent some of that time (amongst other things) in hospital. Not all of it, but I’m counting that as a pretty good excuse for going into a tailspin for a little bit.

Still, I’m back now. For at least one post that is, as per tradition, on something that can vaguely be called ‘Monday’ in certain parts of the world.

The world of Viti is alive.

By this is not meant that there is some nebulous planar spirit, or that in some sense the inhabitants of the world give it a form of life. What is meant is that the world itself is a sapient creature, with wants and needs and desires.

And chief amongst these desires is entertainment. Being a planet, it transpires, is incredibly boring. And although Viti is omnipotent, the problem is that conflicts it has created for itself are generally not of any particular interest - they are nothing more than playing with toy soldiers to it, even if the soldiers are breathing, thinking beings. It is simply not interested in any scenario it created, because the stakes then mean nothing to it.

And so, Viti has allowed life to develop upon its surface, almost unhindered, watching and gaining its entertainment from the struggles of its people.

But that is not to say it does not interfere. A promising story being cut short in mere moments, simply by bad luck? That is hardly interesting. And a thumb on the scales here and there is quite different, to Viti, to contriving the whole situation.

Needless to say, the people of Viti have learned its ways. Most notably, there are the talesingers. Viti cares about its children as entertainment, and nothing more. It cannot be persuaded by compassion, because it does not care. It cannot be reasoned with, because there is nothing its mortal children could give it.

But, as noted, it loves its entertainment. And so, the talespinners frame the narrative. Make out what is happening as an epic tale of revenge, of love, of good against evil - of whatever they can make it, that will catch Viti’s interest. And much of the time, they fail. Viti remains unmoved. Things proceed as normal.

But sometimes, they are able to catch the interest of the planet themselves. To convince it that their story is of interest, that it should not be cut short. And what to a creature such as Viti is merely a finger on the scales, to mortals can change the course of history. Wars have been won and lost at Viti’s capricious whim. Empires have fallen, and great kings have been brought low.

But, of course, not everyone seeks Viti’s favour - not everyone is willing to worship such an indifferent god. There have been many attempts, indeed, to bring down Viti. It doesn’t care - it sees no danger of actual harm. It plays along, even, sometimes allows itself to be ‘killed’ and withdraws from the world for a while, watching passively without active interference. Or, at least, without making that interference obvious.

Most nations simply ignore Viti, in everyday life. People know, certainly, that it exists. They know that it can solve their problems, and they act accordingly - everything from court cases to martial arts have a degree of drama built into them, in the vague hope that Viti’s attention might be piqued. But mostly the activities of everyday humans, no matter how dramatically they voice their ‘Objection!’ to the latest evidence, no matter how dramatic the fight to save the Dojo from being shut down by real-estate developers, do not catch Viti’s attention. It has a whole world to choose from, after all. And so, life goes on much as it does in other worlds, although somewhat more dramatically. People, for the most part, rely on themselves, not an indifferent god.

And they have achieved rather a lot without such help - even with a degree of hindrance. For although Viti does not prevent people from building things for themselves, it is known to actively interfere with the spread of technology, preferring to keep parts of itself trapped in eras it finds particularly interesting.

Despite this, in parts of Viti the people have begun to develop gunpowder, electricity manned flight, and a thousand other wonders which, a scant few dozen miles away, would probably have the inventors burned as witches.

And in one part of Viti, the Medriis Academy, a particularly interesting technology has been discovered - known as the ley-bore, it can tap into Viti’s own power and make it usable for humans. It has even been theorised that the same technology could be, with some work, adapted into a weapon capable of hurting or killing Viti itself.

The researchers have tested the ley-bore several times, and so far have not attracted Viti’s attention, Viti’s attention having been occupied elsewhere (as it most often is) on each occasion. Thus, Viti itself has no idea that this device exists, let alone that it might be in danger. Still, the researchers know that it is only a matter of time before they are noticed, particularly if they try and siphon off any significant amount of power. As such, they are preparing carefully, both to avoid drawing Viti’s attention for as long as possible and, when the inevitable finally happens, to attempt to survive the wrath of the world itself.

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.

Procidos

It was, ultimately, a matter of simple mathematics. There was a finite amount of drinkable water accessible at any one time. The population of needed more than that if all of them were to survive. And so, some of them, inevitably, had to die.
At first, it was a minor problem - the discrepancy was small, and deprivation is hardly an unknown problem in any world. But people stubbornly continued to be born, and so the problem continued.
It was not very long, of course, before a legislative solution was proposed. Regardless of distribution, there wasn’t enough water to go around - but that was no reason to allow the situation to be any worse than it had to be. The Conference of Masoel set down rules as to the division of drinking water, so that none would be wasted, and so that as few people as possible would have to die.
But the rate at which people were being born showed no sign whatsoever of slowing down. And worse, the quantity of usable water seemed to be steadily decreasing - noone knew how. The people of Procidos were facing a slow, but seemingly inevitable end.
And that is when the Conference of Masiel made an important decision. There simply was not enough water to distribute it to all of the population. And so, thy gave up on trying. Instead, large sections of the population were not given any water. Instead, they were painlessly euthanised - it was considered better than allowing them to die slowly of dehydration.
And, with this decision, came one important change - that someone had to decide who the water went to. Someone had to decide who lived and who died.
The Conference was desperate to prevent a mass panic. The world was unstable enough as it was, and this policy was unlikely to be popular, to say the least.
And so, a strict policy was agreed upon, according to which the water would be distributed throughout the world. A test was designed - one which was intended to test who was most likely to be able to contribute in some way to solving the problem of the water shortage - those with an aptitude for science, engineering, or magic.
It was, as has been said, simple logic. The number of people who could be kept alive was finite - but if the water problem could be solved or slowed, deaths would be prevented in the future - which was clearly desirable. It was common sense that no human life could be considered more valuable than another. That was the principle upon which their society was built. And it was precisely because no person was more valuable than any other, that some people had to be valued more than others.
And it worked. Generations later, hough noone has been able to solve the problem, the reduction in the amount of drinkable water has significantly slowed due to magical and technological advances. At four or five years old, children are tested for their aptitude in areas considered important to the water-preservation issue. The tests have evolved - they test the children not only for and aptitude for the 'main three' diciplines, but for all the needed infrastructure, from leadership to manual labour. The best in each category are spared and allowed to grow up, the rest are euthanised to spare them from the slow death of dehydration.
Adults, too, are often weeded out of the population - those who are lazy, or ill, or injured, those who can't or won't do the work they have been assigned, are denied water, and their lives end. The simple mathematics is that the better the population works, the more water can be provide, and the fewer people will have to die in the future. To save lives, people must be killed.
Needless to say, not everyone is particularly happy with an arrangement in which children and the disabled are regularly murdered by the state. Utopia itself, they  claim, is not worth the spilling of innocent blood - let alone the authoritarian regime of the New Council of Masoel, which claims authority over the entire world.
The rebels have organised, into a group called Spera, and their actions have progressed from legal protests, towards terrorism. Attacks on euthanasia centres are becoming commonplace, though they are most often at night, and the casualty rate is generally low.
Except, for the tragic attack at Modios. Instead of an attack on the equipment at midnight, rebels stormed the building in the middle of the day, The storming itself is not something which will be described here, but the workers there were branded as mass murderers, and executed.
In response to that attack, the government has introduced new measures against terrorist activity - increased phone-tapping, armed guards, all of the traditional paraphernalia of a state which feels itself under seige by forces it cannot identify. The sides are preparing for war, and not only iis the cost likely to be astronomical, the damage to infrastructure and the deaths of talented people is likely to lead to the end of uncountable future lives - with few actual soldiers having  been selected, it seems likely that they will soon have to draw upon those who were assigned to a different role. The Council of Masoel is worried about this fact enough that it eager to achieve peace, and is willing to offer concessions to Spera. But they will not budge on the issue of preserving the lives of those most useful to society, because that is, they believe, the only way society will progress.
To their credit, the members of Spera are not lacking their own plans - though many joined Spera because of horror at the mass murder the government carries out on a regular basis, and though there is no official party line on the issue, a number of factions have developed within the Spera, each with their own idea of what should replace the the current system, and between which there are... occasional clashes.
There are two factions which are:
Firstly, the Amaoros who believe that the current system is overly elitist, and that the government should not have ultimate authority on the issue of who lives, and who dies. They suggest the introduction of a lottery system.
And as secondly, the Zalen, who believe that the government should stop water rationing at once, believing that, regardless of the potential benefit, no government should ever participate in the killing of its own citizens, especially on such a massive scale.
The newest recruits to the Spera, tend to have an opinion on the matter, being constantly exposed to the various philosophies of the factions - whether they want to be, or not.

The worlds of Yoth.

I remain awful at scheduling.
I had legitimate and probably obvious difficulty focusing on writing yesterday, but Monday and Tuesday were just me continuing to be incompetent.
Now, I am kinda tired.

In the beginning, there was nothing save Yoth. Then Yoth, from the nothingness, created the heavens and the earth. And he looked upon his work, and was proud.
But as time went on, he began to question it. Sure, it was a very nice world. But it was flawed. He could do better.
And so, he swept that world away in a wave of fire, and all who lived there, were no more.
Again and again, Yoth recreated the world. And again and again, he wiped it away. By water or by ice, by plague or by drought.
Until the twelfth world. In that world, lived the Monae. And as the world ended, the Monae looked about themselves, and saw that the ground was cracking, and falling into nothing. And they knew that their end was coming.
And so, by combining their powers, the magi of the Monae created a tutelary spirit named Sophia, who would endure from this world, into the next.
And Sophia did survive. And taught to the people of the thirteenth world the secrets from the twelfth. And learned, in turn, the secrets of the thirteenth.
But Sophia did not know of Yoth, and so could not save the people of the thirteenth world from Yoth's boredom.
And so, the thirteenth world came and went. And so did the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, and so on, and so on, for world after world. And as the worlds passed, Sophia endured, and Sophia learned more and more of the nature of the world. Until, in the twenty-eighth world, Sophia and the Pleromae who were its people had learned enough to put together a reasonable picture of the nature of Yoth. This was too late, ultimately, to save the twenty-eighth world. But once again, Sophia endured. And so, what Sophia had learned, the people of the twenty-ninth world came to know.
And so, knowing of the worlds that had come before them, and under the guidance of Sophia, the people of the twenty-ninth world sought to keep Yoth diverted with his creation, so that he would not decide to wipe it away as he had those he had made before.
The twenty-ninth world lasted longer than had any world before it. But they were imperfect. And so, in time, [] did indeed become dissatisfied with this world, and its time passed, and the thirtieth world came to replace it. But still, Sophia endured, and still, Sophia learned.
The world is now in its thirty sixth incarnation, and Sophia has become a master at the art of satisfying the whims of Yoth - and so has shaped the society of the thirty-sixth world. Yoth is vain, and so they worship him as savior. Yoth requires entertainment, and so, in a thousand ways, they entertain him. They fight great wars, planned out decades in advance. Their politics is designed not to help the people, but to provide theatre, their art is writ large. The word is, in short, a great endless play, performed under threat of death, for a mad, genocidal god. Who will, in time, inevitably grow bored with them once again.
And what’s more, the endless years have weighed heavily upon Sophia, punctuated as they have been by the ends of so many worlds. The faithful spirit has, at last, succumbed to madness, and seeks at times not only the end of this incarnation of the world - but of all worlds. And though the people of the thirty sixth world can hope, at least, that Yoth shall remain as undeterrable a creator as he is a destroyer, they still cannot ignore Sophia's madness.
For, terrible as Yoth might be, he has, indeed, always acted according to his nature. Though worlds may come and go, from Yoth will always come new life, and new hope. It is Sophia whose whim might doom a hundred future worlds, simply by withdrawing from them. Neither is Sophia powerless in this incarnation of the world - for that spirit knows every thing which happens, and may talk with mortals of these things - or lie to them about them.
And so, the people of the thirty sixth world must attempt not only to appease their cruel god, but also to ease the suffering of the spirit who has guided them - even as that very spirit swings wildly between working for their destruction, and for their salvation.

Phantia

I think I finally managed a reasonably short one!
Mostly because I'm tired, which really cuts down on the 'constantly thinking of stuff to add' issue.

The Hall of the Dead is, metaphorically, the center of the world. More literally it is (unsurprisingly) where one can find the dead (or the important dead, anyway - the rest are scattered across the infinite featureless .  plane beyond the Hall).
The dead, in one sense, are completely unable to influence  the world - that sense being the physical sense. The dead can’t even communicate with the living without help from someone on the outside. But the thing about the dead is that there are a lot of them. And some have been around a very long time.
And so, the dead have money, they have experience, and they have knowledge. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that they’re in charge of the state of Phantia (which escapes being called a continent-spanning empire by dint of the fact that it doesn’t have an emperor). Few governments are able to take on the entire rest of the country in an all out brawl, so their physical limitations are less of an issue than they might be.
Instead, necromancers exist as a kind of civil service in Phantia, communicating to the people the wishes of the dead.
One might expect, given what normally happens when a small group claims to speak for the rulers, that their decrees might be a little… diluted. However, it is a fact of the universe, and no less so in Phantia, that everyone dies eventually. Fear of what might come afterward seems much more immediate when ‘what comes afterward’ is a few seconds of simple chanting away, and capable of informing you exactly what it is going to do to you if you don’t start listening.
Not that they can do much directly. For the spirits of the dead to hurt each other, or even to cross the barrier that separates the Hall of the Dead from the plains beyond, they need to be empowered by a necromancer. But death lasts an eternity, and the dead can hold a grudge that lasts eons. The chances of them finding someone to carry out their threats eventually are high.
Of course, not everyone is deterred from infinite worldly power by possible future consequences. So until a few hundred years ago, the necromancers would occasionally quietly launch a coup, and start substituting their own orders for those the dead had been giving.
The problem each time was that not all necromancers work for the government. And whilst one might be able to trust one's own students and heirs to ignore promises of wealth, and protect one from the wrath of the dead, independent necromancers were less certain. And attempting to get rid of them was not only impractical, but made what was being done rather obvious.
So the coups never lasted very long, in the grand scheme of things. A few decades at most, before the current crop of necromancers were gently reminded of their place by the agonised screams of their predecessors.
But a few hundred years ago, things changed, and not in favour of the necromancers. A newcomer to the Hall, named Alexos came up with the idea of splitting the service into branches. Now, there are nine such branches, each with a grudge against all the others, and kept in a kind of working harmony only by the threat of mutually assured destruction. An alliance between all of them has so far proven impossible, and lies about what the dead have actually said tend to be interpreted by the other branches as attempts to seize power.
As for the dead themselves, their main concern is power. For the simple reason that those whose main concern isn't power, tend to be ejected from the Hall by those who are more focused on it. They rule well enough - to avoid being overthrown, to gain favours from the living, even to satisfy their own egoes. But this is not their main concern. Their main concern is the Byzantine politics of the dead - it is making gains in their own positions, whilst weakening their enemies, or even throwing them from the Hall entirely. They seek power, not for any purpose beyond this: that they need some way to pass eternity.

Eirthe

The weekend was Thursday/Friday this week.
I have decreed it.
I feel the ndeed to once again remind people that having started thsi blog to try and get better at writing to a schedule, and I know I'm probs beating myself up about it more than any of my readers, but I'm still really sorry. To be fair, yesterday *was* St. Patrick's.
Anyway, this one was really hard to write, because I'm pretty sure it needs illustrations. I can see it in my head, and I haven't described it very well. I may actually come back to it.

The gnomes and the gnomes have been at war for years. One of the great mysteries of the world is exactly how this started - the gnomes live underground, and the dragons spend most of their time airborne. But they hate each other a lot, and at this point, that is enough.
As one might expect from two races who have been at war for generations, the societies of both dragons and gnomes tend to be highly militaristic - at least in those areas where encounters with the other species are reasonably likely.
Beyond this, one might think that it would be difficult to characterise an entire species, any more  than it is possible to characterise humanity. But if one thinks about it, there is quite a lot one can say about humans in general. For example, they tend to live in buildings made of stone which are planted firmly on the ground. Whereas the aerie-cities of the dragons are built in mid-air. Or, to be more precise, they are  built of the lightest available materials,  in the jet stream.
Now, anyone with even a passing familiarity with… really any of the concepts involved will probably realise that the process of building a city which will be held aloft by the wind without breaking apart, falling, or crashing into something must be a ludicrously complex feat of engineering, bordering on the impossible, and that being constantly in motion probably makes the cities rather difficult to. One may wonder exactly what benefit could possibly be worth such an extravagance.
One might point out, of course, that such cities are safer from the actions of the dragons who, living as they do underground, might be expected to collapse any structure built upon the surface by their mortal enemies.
However, although this may indeed be the case, it is ultimately incidental to the real reason, which is one which it is unfortunately one which tends to be difficult for humans to understand. The fact is, the dragons detest the ground, with an intensity and universality that goes beyond mere ethics or religion, and  into the realm of of the biological. It is simply anathema to them - most spend all their lives  without touching base Earth.
Thus, building cities on the ground was never going to be acceptable to them - and so, they had to be airborne.
Their distaste for the surface also extends to those who dwell there - although their hatred of the gnomes is unique, they consider those who live on the ground - whether they be humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, or anything else, to be scarcely better than animals. Though they have never really warred with the surface races, they certainly shed no tears if their war against the gnomes leads to collateral damage.
And it would be remiss to end this without describing what the dragons look like. They are vast, lizardlike creatures, with great, powerful wings, and sharp jaws. Their back  legs are short and rarely used, and their forelegs have developed to be used mainly as hands.
They are also very nearly lighter than air. You see, a dragon’s body is riddled with sacs. The heavier parts of the air are naturally filtered out by the dragon’s metabolism, and the lighter elements then stored in these sacs, which are made even lighter by the heat of the dragon’s body. The dragon, thus, acts most of the time essentially like a blimp -  although they do not in themselves provide enough lift to stay airborne, they allow the dragon’s wings to keep her airborne essentially indefinitely.
When hunting, they can expel the heated gasses from these sacs, a process reminiscent of the fire-breathing of the dragons of other worlds. Having done so, they are capable of diving at nearly a hundred miles an hour, and snatching an entire cow from the ground. At which point, they are forced to land while they eat, and whilst their air-sacs refill.
They are, frankly, less than pleasant creatures, but given their ability to swallow me whole, I have neglected to mention this to them.
Then, there are their enemies, the gnmes. They live in great caverns gar below the ground - if they can’t find one, they build one.
Their cities, vaster even than the great aerie-cities of the dragons, are some of the most spectacular sights in the world, if one ever has the chance to see them.
Because the gnomes are obsessed with art. They carve the rock into shapes which seem almost impossible to the human eye, their streets are lined with sculptures, their homes things of beauty. Where it seems some magic must be involved in much of what the dragons do, I am certain that the process by which the structures of the gnomes must be constructed by magical means. Certainly, both are able to use powerful sorcery, because they regularly do  so in their war with each other - in general they aren’t otherwise able to even touch the cities of their enemies.
And they take great interest in the surface races. They are in theory, benevolent. They will help those who are in need without question, share what they have, all those things one would expect from a race with nothing but good intentions.
Except for one thing. To the gnomes, cities are unbearably ugly things, scars upon the world. And though they attempt to be understanding, a city which grows too big will almost certainly incur their wrath -  in  general, most such cities find the earth beneath them has been dug away, and collapse into the ground.
It is for this reason that the surface races have never been able to develop as a power in their own  right. They are no match individually for either the strength of the dragons, nor the magic of the gnomes, and so they scrape out a living clustered in small villages, attempting always to keep out of the way of the more powerful races.

Erset

I would like to state for the record that
a) It is hard to find any Sumerian online.
b) The words Google does give me look really odd written in English script - which they are slightly wrong.

They call them the rakbene. One human in ten thousand, who is born with the favor of the gods upon them.
When grown, they stand eight feet tall, with silver skin, and eyeless faces. Around their heads, are horns in the shape of a crown, and from their back sprout great golden wings (both horns and wings grow at puberty). They are, in short, hard to miss.
And they are kings and queens, in almost every case. No human can stand against them, and in almost every case, they are cursed with overwhelming ambition. If they cannot rule, they die in the attempt.
And once they have become rulers, their ambition drives them towards conquest. Their gaze falls upon the land beyond their borders, and they war with each other.
As they grow older, they also tend to grow calmer, and subtler. They forge alliances, make treaties, and even groom heirs. Everything, however, remains ultimately in service of their ambition - few of them will not break any agreement they have made, if that is the course that will most benefit them.
This is not to say, of course, that there are no exceptions. Beings with free will have an annoying tendency to deviate from the norm. But the weight of expectation is a powerful influence, and those who still choose to act differently tend not to be of particular historical significance. Or, indeed, to be live very long - their more ambitious kin regard them as potential threats to their power.
This, indeed, is the fate of most of the rakbene born. For most of the word is now ruled by rakbene, and most are not fond of threats. Thus, those who they are not grooming as their successors or vassals, they often have executed.
But some, whether because they are useful tools whilst they can be controlled, because they are not quite willing to kill helpless children, or for any other reason, do not hold such a policy. And so, rakbene do exist who are not (or are not yet) rulers in their own right. Such kingdoms, naturally, often become havens for those who have given birth to a rakbu child.
As has been noted, the rakbene rule most of the known world - they are stronger and faster than a human, steel breaks against their skin, and many have supernatural powers. It is rarely possible for anyone who is not a rakbu to stop them from doing anything much. And those nations who are not ruled by one, tend to be conquered rather quickly by a neighbour who is.
But they do not quite rule the entire world. There, are, of course, the Unknown Lands, which lie beyond the horizon. They have not yet been conquered, or even mapped, for the simple reason that shipbuilding has not advanced to the point where it is possible for ships to reliably reach them. The occasional ambitious rakbu sends a fleet out with ambitions of spreading their reach to an entirely new land. But, invariably, the cost will either quickly dissuade them, or make them easy prey for their hungry neighbours.
And then, there are the Masku republics, the human nations which have retained their independence by the simple method of hiding the entire country.
As one might imagine, the process of hiding an entire country is more easily said than done. Traditionally, the Masku republics are located in the mountains in the most literal sense - they are dug into excavated holes in the rock, connected to the outside only by cleverly concealed doors in the rock. But some are in other places - Masku republics can be found both in the desert and the deep forests. These tend to be nomadic in structure, to make up for the simple fact that they are not as well concealed as are their mountain-dwelling brethren.
Despite this diversity, there are significant similarities between most of the Masku republics.
Firstly, that they are indeed republics - almost universally. Those who hate the rakbu enough to be willing to live in mountains and forests to avoid their rule, tend also to dislike the system of government they represent. And so, Masku culture is strongly opposed to monarchy, and any Masku nation which does adopt a monarchy tends quickly to become diplomatically isolated from its brethren.
Secondly, they are heavily reliant on trade. Although they tend to be just about able to feed themselves (noone outside the Masku is entirely sure how they manage this), the environments they tend to live in makes trade vital for anything beyond survival. Thus, Masku merchants can often be found throughout the world. Needless to say, many of the rakbu would absolutely love to capture such a merchant, so they could find the republic they hail from - which is why such merchants universally carry poison, and will kill themselves upon arrest. And, as a result, rakbu monarchs rarely bother to arrest them, and they are allowed to move freely. In any case, most of them consider it better than allowing their own citizens to leave the country.
Thirdly, they are very small. Despite all their precautions, Masku republics are occasionally discovered by outsiders - and so, they tend to divide themselves as much as possible, in order to survive such things.
And finally, they kill babies. Rakbu are still born in the Masku republics, and they would not have remained republics if they had been willing to let such people grow up. And so, they are euthanised when they are still babies. Needless to say, mothers often object to this practice, and so most republics are very careful to ensure that newborns are not hidden from them (which is made much easier by their small size. Nevertheless, rakbu born locally are the leading cause of Masku republics being conquered.
There is little else to say about the world of Erset. Economic and technological progress is slow - as is population growth - thanks to the warlike tendencies of the rakbu, and their aforementioned unwillingness to allow their subjects to travel. Countries rarely last more than two or three generations, and there are very few great thinkers who have had a chance to do anything of note - fewer still who have been remembered.

Munda

I haven't given up on this, yet. I'm aware that taking my second week off wasn't exactly ideal, but honestly it wasn't really an ideal week.

So far, this is, I believe, the first time I've used names that aren't derived from somewhere else.

Sometimes, it can be hard to see how abstract theory could be relevant to anything at all. People ask awkward and unreasonable questions like ‘why should we spend our entire GDP on trying to detect this stuff, when the whole reason we can’t detect them is that they affect us in no meaningful way whatsoever?’
But one answer is that you can’t put a value on you might find, until you’ve done the research. Certainly, it might be exactly what you expect. But at least sometimes, you strike gold.
There are other answers one might give, of course, but none give so pat a segue, so we’ll pretend they don’t exist.
Because, on the world of Munda, alchemists in the Republic of Qellim discovered something… odd. It could be shown mathematically that there should exist a certain mathematical relationship between spells, and the effects they would produce. That is, after all, how new spells are invented.
But as technology advanced, measurements of spell effects became more and more precise. And that was when the alchemists of Qellim made their great discovery. Magic wasn’t quite strong enough. Somewhere, somehow, some of the power that should be in spells was going missing - too little to really notice but some, nevertheless. It wasn’t the maths that was wrong, and by the normal method, it was eventually accepted that the problem wasn’t the measurements, either. Which is to say, everyone who thought that it had been a measurement error eventually died. And so, the hunt began for where, exactly, it was going. And, as with all worthwhile pursuit of knowledge, it was extremely expensive, and the average person wasn’t entirely sure what it was for.
But nevertheless, the alchemists persisted. And, in time, they made a discovery - Xamini, the great wall. It was, as far as anyone could tell, entirely natural. In that it didn’t seem like something that could have been made. It was a kind of magical wall, between reality and… something. And it stole from every spell ever cast, to strengthen itself. Which led to an obvious question - what on earth was on the other side?
Of course, the people of Qellim had some concept of fiction. They were, at least, reasonably cautious about the idea of drilling through the fabric of reality to see what might be on the other side. But, as time went on, noone was having any success finding out what might be on the other side. As time went by, it started to occur to certain people that, there being no evidence whatsoever of anything on the other side, it didn’t seem sensible to base one’s decisions upon popular fiction.
But what eventually tipped the scales was what has driven human advancement since the dawn of time - the idea that if one doesn’t do it, someone else will do so first. And if the choice was between destroying the world, and letting those bastards in Fensimi do it first, the alchemists of Qellim knew that that was no real choice at all. And so, the machinery was constructed, and readied. And a blow was struck at Xamini.
It probably goes without saying that there was, indeed, something on the other side. Strange, alien gods lashed out at them, with terrifying strength, and within an hour, the lab was in ruins. Within the day, nearly a hundred square miles had become what are known as the broken lands, from which strange and misshapen creatures regularly emerge.
But it is at this point at which the story stopped following the traditional script. For as powerful as these alien gods might have been, Munda is a world in which magic has essentially been solved, in which the perfect spell for a particular situation can be calculated to hundreds of decimal places using a mobile app. Whilst the alien gods are unused to the magic of Munda, and are forced to act through the crack in Xamini. As such, their ability to actually use their power is extremely limited. In truth, they are more a diplomatic nuisance for Qellim, than a true existential threat.
But that they are not a threat yet, is not to say that they could not become one. Limited as they are by the lack of easy access to the world, the alien gods have, quite sensibly, been trying to widen the crack in Xamini. A task which, unfortunately for them, appears only to be possible from the human side. And so, they have been recruiting human allies. It is a slow process - few people are eager to bind themselves to horrors from outside of space and time.
But the world is full of all kinds of people, and some of them have rather… interesting… motivations. And so, cults have arisen following these alien gods, who seek to give them more of a foothold in the real world.
It is these cults which are considered most threatening by the governments of the world - not least because, freedom of religion and the rule of law being a value shared by most of the civilized nations of [], it is generally considered somewhat uncivilized to place restrictions upon who one can worship. Which is not to say that people aren’t willing to ban world-ending cults, but rather that such cults tend not to be open about who exactly it is that they worship, and that the state has as yet been unwilling to introduce more general restrictions.
Of course, there are citizens who are less dedicated to individual rights, and religious groups suspected of secretly following the alien gods are often attacked - especially in Qellim, where the threat is more immediate.
Noone is sure exactly how often these vigilante groups make mistakes - it’s almost impossible to prove someone doesn’t secretly worship a world-destroying creature of pure malevolence and hatred - but mistakes have, surely, been made.
And finally, lackimg an entirely appropriate segue, there are the Bridge Projects.  For although humans have so far been holding their own, they have as yet been unable to strike back at their attackers. And so, they have started the Bridge Projects - a series of projects related to Xamini, and named after the most ambitious of them.
There are several such projects, of course, dedicated to healing the crack in Xamini, and thus to barring the alien gods forever from the world. But the main Bridge Project comes from an apparently solid theory by the alchemist Derimi, who determined that it should be possible to use the nature of Xamini to create… well, a ‘bridge’ over the realm beyond, allowing human explorers to learn what else might exist in that place, without making themselves vulnerable. Indeed, it should be possible for such explorers to act upon the realm beyond Xamini, without anything from that realm being able to act upon them in return. The Bridge Projects are multi-national initiatives, and are, needless to say, something in which a number of factions in Munda have a significant interest. Even those nations who otherwise have no interest in the alien gods are interested in what might be gained from the other world if they were not a threat, and are worried about what advantage other nations might gain from such a ‘bridge’.

Riabor

Why is this going up now, rather than yesterday?
Because I am easily confused by schedules and complex things like 'the day of the week'.
This is why I started off not taking weekends off.


It is a tragic fact in almost every world, that eventually, the blank spaces on the map are all filled up, and there is nothing new left to discover.
The world of Riabor is different, though in that it is (as far as anyone can tell) an infinite flat plane. Where exactly the sun goes at night is one of the many questions about this situation to which noone has yet been able to give an adequate answer.
The world is one in which exploration and discovery are a way of life.  The civilizations of the known world are constantly hungry for resources, and so they send out teams to uncover new lands, and send back what they find there. Slowly, as more and more people follow those first pioneers, and as the infrastructure there becomes more and more built up, the new land becomes more and more a part of the known world, and the pioneers who first discovered it move on, to find yet more places to settle.
Civilization in Riabor thus has a strange, sloping structure - at the center, the people of the world have built wonders that on most worlds, where resources are ultimately finite, would be simply impossible. And as one travels further from that center, civilization becomes sparser and sparser, until at the frontier, one would barely know that one was still in the same century.
The only indication, indeed,  would be the great rails that run throughout the world. The central parts of civilization are almost entirely dependent upon goods from the frontier, while the frontier relies upon goods and people from more developed parts of the world. And so, it is vital that transport between the two be as fast and as smooth as possible. And so in towns where the height of technology otherwise is the spade, there are nevertheless electrified rails, along which come the great trains. The rails run through mountains, and across oceans, able in places to travel at more than twice the speed of sound.
As one can probably guess, there exists a  certain degree of tension between those who live closer to the center of civilization, and those who live on the edge. Indeed, the two groups ultimately have almost nothing in common. And states the size of those in Riabor rarely survive for long at the best of times. Open war would probably have erupted long ago between the center and the periphery, were the two not so utterly dependent upon each other. As it is, they exist in a precarious balance, in which neither can afford to try to exert too much influence on the other.
Wars between can be very quickly ended simply by the disruption of the rail-lines. And as a result, war of any kind is rare - the damage that could be done by even a short war with a weak nation is immense. Instead, conflicts between nations tend to be resolved by more indirect means.
But there is one group which stands apart from these general rules, and those are the true pioneers - the first people who come to new lands and settle there, who go beyond where it is possible to get by train, and so who travel instead by ship, by plane, and even on foot. Riabor is a world in which one really doesn’t know what might lie over the next hill - the valley on the other side could be filled with anything from mountains of precious metals, just lying there on the ground, to swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating insects. Or just a new species of tree. There were a lot of new species of tree.
In fact, the only thing you could be pretty sure you wouldn’t find, was civilization.
To  be  fair, it had happened, exactly once - a group of explorers had found a peaceful group of forest spirits. However, said spirits had had little technology, and no concept of war. As a result, they didn’t count, or at least hadn’t counted for very long.
To the average person in the more developed parts of the world, the life of an explorer is romantic and exciting. Stories of people like Balbin, Liemir and Suel Merson are the stuff of myth. They say you can make your fortune exploring and, indeed, you can. But though many explorers might end up rich, more than half of them end up dead.
Given this, it would be easy to think that those who become explorers are probably mostly those who don’t realise what it will involve. But what people forget is that even though resources are infinite, there is still a limit to the rate at which they can be extracted, and so population growth has led to poverty throughout the developed word. Those with no other way out often travel towards the frontiers, hoping for a better life. And some of those who do so keep going, join up with an expedition, and explore unknown lands. Often, they come from  the more developed parts of the world, and find frontier life intolerable. Sometimes, however, they have reasons of their own for accepting the risk - to try and characterise the whole group would be an exercise in futility.

The three realms

Managed it.
This one doesn't exactly have much of what one would call 'conflict'. I think there is probably enough here that there would be a significant number of stories to tell in this world without one, plus I may come back here at some point.

As every child knows, the world is divided into three realms.
The topmost, is the Realm of Fire, which lies closest to the uncompromising light of creation. Strange creatures live there, short lived things that seem to be made of fire.
The bottommost, meanwhile, is the Realm of Ice, and it is as cold as the topmost is hot, far from creation’s light. Nothing lives there but the spirits of the dead, who roam that endless realm wrapped in an eternal melancholy. It is a slow place, too, each day lasting a full month in mortal reckoning.
And then, there is the middle realm - the familiar world of humanity, and of matter. It is special because it is connected to the two other realms, by means of two great portals in the sky. There is the life-giving Sun, which connects the mortal world to the realm of fire. And there is the pale moon, which connects the mortal world to the realm of ice, waxing and waning with the days and nights of that realm.
Mortal magic depends upon one of the three reams. Those who draw upon the Realm of Fire, are empowered by the presence of the sun, and when it is not in the sky, they cannot do magic at all. Similarly, those who draw upon the Realm of Ice must rely upon the pale moon, and when it is not present, they too are powerless.
And then there are those who draw upon the native magics of the mortal realm, which obviously is not blocked, as long as one remains in the mortal realm. Not only this, it is far closer than the other two realms, so there is no need to go through the difficulty of drawing magic from another realm - those who draw upon the magic of the mortal realm have no need of the unwieldy and inflexible rituals upon which other magi must rely.
But that is not to say that the magic of the mortal ream is always more useful. For the creatures of the mortal world draw naturally upon its power. It is what allows them to accomplish great feats, and to make heroic efforts. Devoid of it entirely, most creatures of the mortal realm cannot even move.
And the mortal realm is far more populated than either of the other two - meaning that there is far more call upon its power than upon the magic of the other realms. The magic of the mortal realms waxes and wanes in strength - and is often weakest when it is most needed.
One might expect the mages of these three schools to be opposing factions, each convinced of their own superiority. In fact, little could be father from the truth - the three schools relate to each other much as different scientific disciplines do, defined more by friendly rivalry than genuine hatred.
In fact, the mortal realm is in most ways like any other human world, divided amongst squabbling mortal nations. The main influence  of magic has been in allowing technological innovations which would otherwise be impossible for a world with its current level of technological development. The most major part of this is the potential for widespread magical destruction which could take place were a powerful enough group of magicians to open  a new portal between the realms. The politics of mutually assured destruction have thus come early to the more powerful nations.
Further, whilst magic drawing upon other realms is difficult to start, it is almost self-sustaining once the spell is cast. Thus, magic is used frequently to replace technologies not yet discovered - the power of the Realm of Fire, for example, is used in transportation, for everything from hot air balloons, to extremely lightweight steam-engines. The power of the Realm of Ice, on the other hand, is often used for preservation of perishable goods - allowing them to be easily transported across the whole continent - though the ability to call up and talk to the spirits of the dead (albiet with great difficulty) cannot be overestimated in usefulness.
The magic of the mortal realms requires the mage to be more immediately present than does the magic of the other two realms, but is useful nonetheless to those who can afford one. Even the most novice mage of that school is able to give to unmoving things that same motive power which humans enjoy, is able to run like the wind  and to create buildings almost out of nothing. Magic, therefore, is ubiquitous amongst those who can afford an education - it is never not in demand.