Alder's Grove

Welcome to Reiassan.

The continent stretches from the northern ice to the warm southern isles, carved by glaciers into long trenchlike valleys and shoved into high ridges of mountains that act like a spine down the eastern coast of the land.

The history stretches from its first settlers, stranded here by a climate change, through an age of magic and mercenaries, to the peace of ages and the subsequent chaos. It continues on through into the nation's steam era, with the advent of goatless carriages, airships, and the harnessing of what was once called magic, sira, into aether.

The Iron Era, when magic was high and war was a series of dirty skirmishes, is a high-fantasy setting. Warriors ride into battle on war-goats, followed by sira-flinging mages. Armor is simple, magic is wild, and nobody is certain who will win the war, the northern Calenyena or the southern Bitrani.

The Peace Era, when religion binds up magic and war is ending in a series of complicated battles, is a low-magic fantasy setting. The peace has been signed, and much of what remains is politics. Magic is done quietly and subtly, and warriors head home to their farms. The Calenyena have beaten the Bitrani, and nobody knows what will happen next.

The Steam Era, when science has taken over and magic is a distant myth, is a steampunk setting. The Calenyena are firmly in charge, and engineers and scientists, politicians and scholars, adventure where once warriors rode. The Bitrani might rebel - nobody knows - but in the meantime, the aether will flow and the steam will punk.

The Reiassan's landing page is here.

See also Learning the Sira and Learning the Aether. Set in the same era (80 years before Rin/Girey) as Learning the Sira


"Close your eyes. Don't worry about the boat. That is the Captain's job. Worry about the water beneath the boat."

Instructor Aarezhnu's voice was a soothing and melodic chant, one of the reasons Ailetletai considered the ancient woman her favorite Instructor.

Aitai closed her eyes, as she was told to, and thought about the water under the gently bobbing boat. It had a light motion to it; the seas were mostly calm today, but in the Tienbraa sea, nothing was ever truly still.

"Now focus on the blue of the water." Instructor Aarezhnu shifted her tone, just as the water shifted. Back and forth, back and forth. "Feel the way that Tienebrah flows the the world. Feel the way that the sira shifts, moving with the current."

The instructor was the only one Aitai had ever heard refer to the Gods in the same breath as the sira. Most people preferred the buffer of philosophy, but Aarezhnu was old, and set in her ways, however fluid those ways seemed.

"Focus on the water, students. The water is where the sira is. The sira is what we are noticing today."

Aitai didn't know if the admonishment was meant for her, but she took it as such. Sira. Down into the water. Deeper into the water. There were little currents, like tadpoles playing, up near the surface, but the real sira... that should be further down. Down, down, down.

She found a shining beacon of blue and wrapped her mental hands around it. There, there, the brightest sira she had ever tasted.

Unnamed Kink Setting Worldbuilding 2: Inside and Outside

Travel between cities is rare; caravans that do so carry twice as many guards as they do passengers, and are prohibitively expensive. To travel on your own, or with a couple guards, is to risk, in order of likelihood:

* Attack by "bandits;" groups who live in tiny walled settlements and range out as far as they dare in search of prey, whether human or otherwise.

* Death by thirst or starvation if your supplies run out, if you get turned around in one of the wild storms.

* Death by wild storm.¹

* Transformation or twisting - or engulfment - by a Lantern.²

* Attack by a Creature³ or a mundane beast.

* Being shot down by the guards of your goal city.


The cities are the primary population centers; farmers live outside the walls, but close enough to flee within them if any of the aforementioned threats attack. Bandits, too, the occasional marauder, and a few tiny, terrifying settlements also exist outside cities, but they account for less than 10% of the total population of the continent.

Inside the cities, the population follows a structure as tiered as the concentric walls, and, indeed, marked by and inspired by those walls.

1. Wild Storms are just what they sound like, massive storms - dependent on the locale, tornado, hurricane, sandstorm - with the added benefit of sometimes having magic twisted up within them.

2. A Lantern is someone who lost control of their magic, and are now simply a conduit for the power. The power spurts from them in unpredictable bursts, or sometimes just flows out until the human at the core is entirely lost. The only plus is that Lanterns are generally stationary.

3. A Creature is, well, a creature, one that has been warped by proximity either to a place of power⁴

4. A place of power is assumed to be an opening from the magic to our plane of existence, although nothing but magic ever comes through.

See also Learning the Sira

This story takes place approx 750 years after the time of Rin & Girey, in the era of the Edalley Academy stories (forthcoming), also known as Steam!Goats era.

I am not wed to the terms for the different sorts of aether - feedback?

"There is more that we do not know about the aether than we know."

Instructor Posvorrem was a tall, lean man, with ice-and-slate braids down to the back of his knees and the tidiest beard his students had ever seen.

"If we were to put all of the knowledge of the aether that scientists currently hold in a goblet." The instructor picked up the goblet he used for such demonstrations. "Then everything that we still did not know would fill this tower.

"Still." He had a habit of pacing up and down the rows of tables. It made his students even more nervous than they already were. "We will attempt to cram into your heads all that the goblet holds, and hope there is room enough."
( Read more... )

Unnamed Kink Setting Worldbuilding 1

Envision elaborate architecture - arches, steeples, towers - all of it built with an eye to defense.

These are cities which have been under siege before; which have been attacked by human foes and by monsters, by magic and by war engines. War isn't a constant state, but someone might be coming next week is a constant mindset.

Start with the walls: any city in this land is surrounded by at least three tiers of walls; even the smallest town has two tiers. The largest cities have seven to ten, added onto as they have grown over the last hundred years.

Inside the outermost ring is grazing land, crop land. There are these things outside the walls, too; what's inside the walls is a refuge when attacks come.

There are always houses on this land, unless the wall has just been built. When there is no more grazing land, work begins on another wall outside the last one.

Inside this level is cheap housing. These houses, like ancient Pueblo dwellings, have no doors on the first floor - often on the second floor, either. Access is from the third floor and up, via ladder from below.

There are so many wards around a city that, even if you can fly, flying in a city is almost impossible. Almost everyone uses a ladder.

Back to the buildings. These buildings are often adobe-covered. Deeper into the rings, the buildings have often been joined together; three or six one-family homes are used as the foundation for a taller multiple-family dwelling. The further towards the center you get, the more elaborate the buildings get, and the taller. The houses of the elite in the center are said to touch the sky (although generally no more than 13 stories tall, in modern terms).

As you look at the construction, you will easily note that both buildings and walls appear to be made out of a mish-mash of building materials. A great deal of effort has been made to unify the mish-mash into attractive patterns - sandstone spotted with brick in some sort of checkboard, for instance - but the materials themselves, on very close inspection, have very likely been used for something before.

Indeed, the gates that stud each wall look as if they are built from I-beams and odd slabs of wood, shaped into a pleasing form.

Stranded Verse

The world is made of magic.

The world is made of connections, and in the ability to understand and manipulate those connections lies the magic.

The world is made up of the sparks of life, of creation. Every spark connects to others, and that is both magic and the building block for magic.

All of those are true in Stranded World, and yet all are untrue - just metaphors for an existence few understand well at all.

The world has connections, that much we know. Everyone and everything make connections. Those connections are often pictured as multicolored strands, tying everything together until they world is made.

Some people can reach out and tangle these strands, complicating everything. Some can smooth them. Some can tie bows in them, and some simply understand them.

In the RoundTree Family, Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, they have one of each.

In some cities, mothers have stopped telling their children to watch out for ogres in the park. Grandfathers don’t tell about the ways you can kill a goblin, if you have to, and the better ways to make it friends. The hobo on the street corner is just a hobo, and you might lose your life or your wallet, but you won’t lose your soul.

Some cities keep on knowing that the people next door may be annoying, but, in the end, they’re still just human. They know that magic is a lie and miracles don’t happen.

Not this city.

~

A week of Settings - Day One: Fairy Town
A week of Settings - Day Two: Blizard
A week of Settings - Day Three: Stranded
A week of Settings - Day Four: Superheros