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.

Hespon

This is the one from yesterday. Advantage of being ill, it's shorter!
Hopefully I can get today's done as well.
So:
In the land of Hespon, magic is a finite resource. Something which the kingdom of () would have rather liked to know about in advance. For the kingdom made rather… liberal… use of magic. Floating cities, with impossible architectures. Life-support. Power. Transport. Kratia was the most powerful nation in all of Hespon at its height, and magic was its lifeblood.
Then the magic ran out. It was slow - but ultimately, that didn’t matter much, because it was the big spells which ran out fast. Spells like the ones which kept the great cities of Kratia aloft.
It was, obviously, a disaster. Magic was all but gone from the world, and even those nations who had relied upon it less than Kratia did, had used it extensively. Who wouldn’t, when it could solve so many problems? And so, not only did hunger and poverty returned to the world, but the infrastructure of the world,  unsuited to functioning without magic, were utterly unprepared to deal with them.
But less obvious than the immediate  devastation were the social implications - those who survived  the devastation were understandably bitter, and telling them that it was noone’s fault, and that noone could have known what was coming was, probably understandably, less than satisfying to them.
And those who bore the brunt of their anger, were the wizards. For magic was exhausted, but not completely gone. The cleverer wizards are still able to use the last dregs of it.
But they have lost massive amounts of power, and live in constant fear of their lives. So, naturally, they have banded together, to survive in this new world.
The most prominent of the wizard guilds is Astrothetema. And they have made a discovery - that the overuse of magic really wasn’t their fault.
Studies at the University-Fortress of Loes, where Astrothetema makes its home have, by painstaking research, pieced together what must have happened.
In fact, there must have been some incredible spike in magic usage, far beyond what any mortal would be capable of, to so thoroughly drain the world of magic. Research into what, exactly, might have caused this spike is ongoing, but seems constantly to be plagued by inexplicable bad luck.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the hatred of magic that has been stirred up, the New Empire of Noeta has started to form in the East. It is led by a cabal of fanatics, who rejected the use of magic long before it became fashionable to do so. And they are slowly expanding across the world.
They aren’t the only power in Noeta, though. The University Fortress of Aucha is dedicated to science and non-magical technology. They have provided incredibly advancement to the Empire, and are popular with the common people.  Which the government dislikes, because Aucha considers itself to be above the laws of the Empire, and will regularly flout any they feel impinge upon their status as an independent body. Laws with which they disagree strongly enough, they have even been able to bring down entirely. The council ruling Noeta finds this situation intolerable, but needs the cooperation of the scientists of Aucha to cement its power.

Slight issue.

I'm really, really sorry, I'm feeling really, really sick today.
I've done this twice in nine days, and that's not great, but I honestly just can't write right now. I'm about 3/4 done, but the rest just isn't working out.
I love you all, and I genuinely am sorry.

Some Science Fiction. For Variety.

This one is shorter than normal. I am posting two today (yesterday's is actually going to be a thing.)
I actually tend to try and keep these shorter, I'm just really, really bad at it.
So:
There had been, before the technology was actually created, a not insignificant amount of fiction dealing with the creation of perfect virtual worlds. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that very little of it had dealt with the subject well. People, as it turned out, were not at all prepared for the changes it brought.
The big change, as it turned out, was speed. The interface which hooked one up to the virtual world allowed one alter more than just the user’s senses. For example, if you shunted some of the processing outside the user’s natural biological hardware, you could speed up the user’s perception of time a thousandfold or more.
The consequences of such a change were predictable. Being able to do a decade’s worth of research in the afternoon after tea accelerated technological progress beyond all recognition.
As time went by, people who could afford to spent less and less of their time in the real world. Spending a day visiting friends outside of a computer, was not worth losing centuries for.
But there was a problem, and it was the obvious one. Hackers. Even in a broadly post-scarcity economy, people connecting their brains directly to the Internet was a temptation for a thousand reasons, from lust for power, to activism, to simple sadism. And even in a technological wonderland, the universal truth still holds - there is no such thing as perfect security.
Everyone knew a few tricks, of course - when the world is data, why would you not? But it was, ultimately, a matter of degree. People were, understandably, rather keen not to have their minds forcibly altered by strangers on the Internet.
The hackers, although they have communities for the purpose of learning and teaching, don’t tend to be a particularly organised force - in general, they act either on their own, or in small groups based on mutual interest.
Of course, it is traditional that in such a world, the government should be a tyrannical and oppressive force, opposed only by the hackers. But the government is, in general, a rather inoffensive (if outdated) institution.  Beyond the fact that their terms are still measured in real time, they do very little that is of consequence from day to day.
But that is where the Consortia come in. The Consortia are not governments, in the traditional sense. They are voluntary associations, headed by digital security experts, and concerned with data security. They are on the cutting edge of security research, keep backups of people’s minds behind an air gap, and are, in short, a counterbalance to the hackers. Most people are members of several.
People are not, in general willing to be without the protection that the Consortia provide. And access to digital copies of someone’s mind gives a certain amount of obvious leverage. The Consortia, therefore, are able to wield a degree of pseudo-governmental power over their members. Though the government may be for the most part inoffensive, the Consortia have to a large extent divided the population amongst themselves, and wield their power with terrifying efficiency.
The major conflict of the virtual world, then, is between the Consortia, and the hackers they oppose. The majority of people are broadly on the side of the Consortia, but the prevailing opinion would more accurately be described as a combination of apathy and an undirected loathing for the whole business.
But the virtual world is not the only one with which we need be concerned. For though the majority of resources are no longer limited, the development of an entirely human-free economy has been somewhat slower than expected. The building and maintenance of the high technology required to allow the majority of the world to live in a virtual world requires a certain number of workers who are not plugged into said virtual world.
Then, there is the group who are for moral or ideological reasons opposed to spending their entire lives in an artificial world. They are a diverse group, but few in number - very few people are willing to give up eternal life for principle, nor to forgo the numerous other advantages the virtual world offers.
Naturally, there is a certain degree of… animosity… between the eternal, godlike creatures who spend their lives in a world of their own creation, and those who are still stuck in the mundane world of matter and flesh. And, despite the security that people are sure to have around their physical bodies, more and more attacks are carried out against the machinery that houses the worlds in which the majority of the world.