Glossary
Species
Humi: like humans but with a completion like a charcoal drawing. They also can be tall, short, hairy, have tails, pointed ears, etc.
Drake: Dragons! But with horns like dead trees and wings with feathers of flesh in the shape of leaves. They are far more varied in shape, size, amount of limbs, and more than most other species
Muzoval: Probably the strangest looking creature, so I’ll do my best here: Dolphin shaped body, beak with teeth like a canines inside, four eyes (two looking forward, two looking to the side), light scales in the shape of thick feathers called scaethers, tentacles on their but that act as tails, tentacles on their shoulders with long scaethers that act as wings, and are quadrupeds.
Tsohtsi: Raptors the size of a human child. Males have colorful feathers on the inside of their wings.
Solumkerd: Imagine an elephant mixed with amole. They have large shovel-like claws and two short nostrils.
Gorgon: like you’d think of a gorgon but without a mouth on their face (the mouths are from the snakes). Their snake hair also has no eyes, that’s on the front of their face, silly.
Alsow: A deer with long bioluminescent fur and very pointy hooves.
Concepts
Aura: an organ of one’s soul (yes souls are a “tangible” thing) that both professes one’s emotions and can be sensed with that same organ. The long of that is that everyone has an aura or a field around them that contains their emotions. Everyone can sense other’s auras as long as they are touching (like you can feel another person’s hand if you’re holding it). When sensing another aura, you get the jist of their current emotions (or what they may be professing as their emotion). One can shrink, grow, and manipulate, and sense auras with enough practice.
Ethereal Limbs: Another organ of the soul are ethereal limbs. For ease of access, they act as telekinesis. In practice, they are spaces one can interact with by force of will to apply pressure. This can be on a wide area like lifting a boulder or complex, like turning a key from the other side of a door, or multiple places at once. Just like all other organs, these can be strengthened, causing some people to have a far stronger ethereal limb than others.
Mind Reading: While the surface can be expected, enter one's mind, read their thoughts, there’s a bit more nuance here. When you “enter” someone else’s mind (also an organ of the soul), you overlap, so they also enter yours. So you can find information on them, but they can do the same if you aren’t wary. This is invasive and not comfortable for most life, so another organ, the mental gate, keeps people out.
Enchantments: In short, it’s putting one’s will into an object by means of wards. In practice, it’s become a commercialization of runesmithery to mass produce technological advances. You’ll see this in a stone of holding Yaro has, her tattoos, a sheet, a crystal ball, and a lot more. The concept is just that an object can do more than it’s physical form would let on.
Climate (Sayk, Zuyg, Sea of Fire): Firstly, there is no sun nor moon in the sky, but a band of light encircling the planet. The sun side (sayk) is the half of the band that is whole. The night half (zuyg) is shattered where the pieces form stars in the sky, the reduced band not strong enough to light the world like it’s other half. And underneath that, high in the sky above the air, is a sea of fire. The sea of fire is a bubble of flame, electricity, and heat that encapsulates the world.
City of Sornata: The ancient city expands the size of a continent. Relics of a people forgotten by time where their megacity still stands as white buildings like bones. The city, and for that matter many modern cities, have underground portions where subterranean creatures live, like solumkerd. The city is so old and so vast, most of it is unexplored and considered the wild.
Republic of Kexist: While not mentioned in name in the story, this is the primary location of the story. It is a unity of eleven nations at the center of the megacontinent that is the current world superpower. The common tongue is Lald and the majority religion is Kanulu. The entity of the Republic of Kexist was formed after the War.
Discuss this chapter