P
Psychoboy
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Original poster
Tellas is a custom fantasy setting, far divorced from our own world. There, magic is as much a part of life as science. Where science can be thought of as order, or the physical laws of the world, magic is a force of pure chaos, breaking the rules and facilitating great and drastic changes.
Spells exist to channel magic into various effects, but these spells come at a hefty price to the caster's sanity. For this reason, almost everyone who deals in magic does so by inventing miraculous devices that channel the magic, instead, through the art of Artifice. Magic when channeled through the complex brains of a human or animal can be unpredictable, but magic channeled through a less complicated object, like a plant, fungus, or mineral, usually has a far more constant effect.
Artificers play an irreplacable role in human society. Due to the latent magical energies that predominate the world, powerful magical creatures rule the wild and untamed lands of Tellas. The only thing standing between them and the human race are the artificers who devise powerful weapons to combat them. An artificer will usually focus on a single invention, developing and refining it over years before introducing it for humanity's benefit once it has been completed.
There are only five major settlements in Tellas, each with its own defense system and culture. Other settlements exist, but they are extremely small and not worth mentioning.
Aljana
Deep in the far reaches of a vast desert on the eastern portion of Tellas, Aljana is especially difficult for outsiders to access. It was founded on the coast of a vast magical oasis by travelers who had only barely managed to stay alive over the course of the grueling trip. Aljana has few natural resources, but recently a vast deposit of oil was discovered nearby that has jumpstarted the city's development. Local artificers use magically hardened "ironwood" from the oasis' coast and oil to craft fast-moving vehicles that serve as their primary means of transportation, trade, and entertainment.
The most popular sport in Aljana is battleracing, where artificers use their custom-built vehicles to attempt to outpace each other on a track that runs the entire perimeter of the city. It's a cutthroat and bloodthirsty sport, but participants and audiences alike adore it for the fast-paced, frantic excitement.
Due to their isolated nature, few monsters plague the people of Aljana, as there is little for the chaotic magic that taints the world to infect. When monsters do appear, they are usually simple spirits of wind or fire such as djinni or efreeti. These are mundane creatures and easily dealt with, and little stock should be put in the wild rumors of an efreeti that was imprisoned inside a magic gas lamp and cultivated until it was able to grant its master's wishes.
Aljana is a sultanate, its people ruled by a small family, and the family in turn headed by their oldest member, the Sultan. The current Sultan is well-liked by the upper and middle class, who see him as a kind and generous man. The lower class disagrees, thinking him too harsh on criminal activity and too stingy with food. But there is always the chance for upwards mobility, if one happens to have a knack for battleracing and a talent for picking the most valuable items out of heaps of discarded battleracer scrap.
Goldhaven
View attachment 203131
By far the biggest and most financially successful human settlement, Goldhaven stands as a shining beacon of what humanity can accomplish when they band together in large groups. Originally founded on the side of a cliff, Goldhaven quickly grew into a sprawling industrial complex due to the high percentage of artificers among the original inhabitants. Goldhaven is presently run by a "Council of Guilds," their preferred system of government being a Guild Socialist system that in theory gives every profession a proportional voice in government based on how many are employed in that profession. In practice, the Artificer's Guild, Publisher's Guild, and Thieves' Guild are all disproportionately powerful (the Thieves' Guild doesn't technically exist, but they maintain a great deal of power through blackmail and bribery), while several blue-collar professions find their voices stifled.
The main form of transportation is the public rail, a suspended train that runs a full circuit around the city. Folks also use horse-drawn carriages to get around, and international travelers usually go by airship; the city resides on the south side of a sheer cliff face, and while there is water below, there's no easy way to get from sea level to ground level, meaning that traditional ships just aren't viable even if they were safe from the massive leviathans that roam the seas.
A vast wall surrounds the city in some areas, though it doesn't cover the whole thing. Beyond the wall's limits are miles of countryside that supplies food to the inhabitants of Goldhaven. This countryside borders a dense forest, and protecting this border takes up most of the Artificer's Guild's time. Within the walls, towards the east, a massive clock tower overlooks the slums, a series of ramshackle buildings that house the less fortunate and seedier citizens. To the west is the Artificer's Academy, the only building to rival town hall in size, though it far exceeds it in sheer ostentatious bravado. To the south is a massive fortress looking out over the countryside, where the Artificer's Guild resides to defend the city from invaders and work on marvelous new masterpieces.
It's not all beauty and progress, though. Strict laws against the use of magic by or on humans has left Goldhaven with a powerful criminal underbelly. The leader of this underworld is a woman by the name of Kay, who has grown an army of loyal followers by using illegal and untested magic to make their wildest dreams come true... for a hefty price. Some alterations are benign; a sex change operation here, a face lift there; but others are of a far more dangerous nature. Several of her servants are powerful mutants with deadly abilities, hitmen bound by crippling debt to do her bidding. But as yet, Kay hasn't made a bid for more power than she presently has, and remains only an urban legend.
As they border the woods, Goldhaven's resident artificers have to contend with by far the largest and most diverse group of monsters in combat. Thankfully, their huge Guild provides them with a number of unique weapons, each one able to ward off theoretically dozens of different monster types. No matter what new threat emerges from the woods, the Artificer's Guild can be counted on to have some new device capable of warding it off!
Fort Apogee
Fort Apogee was once built at the top of a mountain with the same name, the tallest mountain in the world. Its ore was plentiful and its people wanted for little, easily fighting off any monsters able to make it so high. One day, however, their diviners (artificers specializing in predicting the future) foretold the mountain's eruption into a massive volcano that would lay waste to miles of countryside. Unwilling to leave their home and with nowhere else to go, Apogee's people decided to instead take their city with them as they escaped the impending eruption, turning the fortress into a massive flying complex that runs on magic and its people's dedication to stay afloat.
Of course, maintaining a flying fortress the size of a small, extremely compact city is no easy task. Entire generations of families work tirelessly on the huge engines that keep it afloat, either in the boilers supplying them with magical energy, or as pipe workers repairing a vast network of steam vents, or as city planners figuring out where to stick the growing population in such a limited space. Homelessness is rampant, with a great deal of workers (adults and children alike) tending to live and sleep entirely at their jobs their whole life. But it's all worth it, to keep Fort Apogee afloat, and every resident takes pride in doing their part to keep the world's biggest machine running.
Apogee's inhabitants are somewhat full of themselves, considering themselves superior to the "groundlings" who have to contend with beasts and thus cannot make the great advancements that Apogee's elite are capable of, but then most of its inhabitants spend all their time working to keep the city afloat, so they have much fewer true artificers than most other cities. This means that their technology, while stylish and creative, remains about on par with the rest of humanity's.
Apogee's leadership and military are synonymous; the High Commander sits atop his throne, his generals overseeing the work and production of all their subjects. Technically, every citizen over 14 has a military rank, although the vast majority never see combat or even undergo basic training for obvious reasons.
Apogee rarely has to contend with any serious monster threats, their airborne fortress able to avoid any landlocked foes. On the occasion that a winged creature comes to attack, their turrets can usually take care of the threat quickly and efficiently. The only true threat to their way of life is the dragon, Kranos, who resides in the very mountain they fled so many years ago. But Kranos sleeps soundly in his home inside the mountain, and has done so for decades. There is no reason to fear his reawakening any time soon... is there?
Shoto
Shoto is an anomaly among human settlements. It is a nation rooted in tradition, and thus the ingenuity of artifice is typically shunned by its inhabitants. Oh, artificers still live on the archipelago, forging magical swords known as zanpakuto for its noble samurai defenders, but few if any new ideas are indulged by the conservative leadership.
Nevertheless, this constant, unshifting culture has given way to a form of defense just as effective as artifice; through meditation and constant training of the mind and spirit, the samurai and monks of Shoto are able to channel magic in simple yet effective ways without losing their minds to the curse of insanity. This magic can be used for quick, temporary effects, such as hurling a ball of fire or allowing one to jump unnaturally high.
As stated above, Shoto is an archipelago. Traversing the islands by water is a dangerous practice, and most residents distrust airships, so the primary means of communicating between the islands is by "bridge." These are not bridges in the technical sense, but rather magical portals etched into the ground. Each of the seven islands has a hub at the center with a bridge to each of the other seven, and it is by these bridges that people move between the islands, trading and visiting the people of each.
Though nominally a monarchy, Shoto is an oligarchy in all but name alone. A wealthy family known as the Monban have full control over who may use their bridges for transportation, and thus control all inter-island communication. In so doing, the Monban effectively control the flow of information and can indirectly influence the beliefs of the islands' inhabitants. The emperor is little more than a figurehead, forced to do the Monbans' bidding if he wishes for free trade to continue in Shoto. There are seven branches of the Monban family, the patriarch of each one holding the position of daimyo over one of the islands.
Shoto's primary monstrous threats are spiritual and submersible. The islands have been cleared of hostile life for centuries, meaning that the biggest threats are Leviathans and Yokai. Leviathans lurk below the sea, destroying any foolish enough to attempt a traversal into their waters. Occasionally, one of these Leviathan, called a kaiju, will emerge from the ocean and cause a national panic, forcing all warriors to converge and destroy the beast in a truly epic clash. But most of the time, the samurai (pledged to their respective daimyo) and the monks (pledged to their monasteries) protect the people of Shoto from yokai, magical monsters said to be the spirits of long-forgotten monsters from years ago. Some yokai are allowed to live, such as the tanuki, a breed of raccoon mutated to have near-human intelligence. They are prone to mischievous pranks, but are otherwise harmless.
Subterra
Subterra is the most mysterious of humanity's bastions, a civilization that resides almost entirely in a vast underground network of tunnels underneath a huge mountain range. Most of their inhabitants have never seen the light of day, relying on headlamps, glow worms, and magical fungi as their only source of illumination. More xenophobic cultures, such as those in Fort Apogee and Shoto, question if the residents are even human, as their pale skin and bulging eyes give them an almost alien appearance.
But the people of Subterra care not what the surface-dwellers think of them, and anyone lucky enough to view their capital will instantly see why. Subterra is grand, and truly, strangely beautiful. Huge halls lined with fungus light the way as you make your way there, and upon reaching it one can see vast pillars with entire neighborhoods built into the sides, stone spiral staircases leading the way there. The layout is so confusing as to be mind-boggling, but Subterrans have a natural affinity for direction and can navigate it with ease.
Their easy access to boundless ore makes subterrans some of the most prolific and advanced artificers in the world. The huge cave spiders and wurms that they must contend with would spell the doom of almost any other people, but subterrans craft equally enormous mining mecha that can tear through spider flesh as easily as through stone. When not in use, these mecha are stored in a vast hangar full of creative weapons and armor that can be used to deal with whatever they should encounter in the mines.
Subterra is a republic, headed by a council of patricians that oversee mining operations and work towards the common good. This system is remarkably free of corruption; food and water are so scarce in Subterra that anyone who attempts to take more than his due is quickly found out and just as quickly ousted. This means that those presently in power seek the betterment of their people like no other.
The people of Subterra fear the sun and the surface, and it's just as well that they do; were they ever to come up in any meaningful manner, they might realize just how strong a civilization they've become and how weak and easily-conquerable the others appear to be. However, their ignorance and paranoia of the surface remains and leaves them at a perpetual disadvantage to the rest of the world.
Spells exist to channel magic into various effects, but these spells come at a hefty price to the caster's sanity. For this reason, almost everyone who deals in magic does so by inventing miraculous devices that channel the magic, instead, through the art of Artifice. Magic when channeled through the complex brains of a human or animal can be unpredictable, but magic channeled through a less complicated object, like a plant, fungus, or mineral, usually has a far more constant effect.
Artificers play an irreplacable role in human society. Due to the latent magical energies that predominate the world, powerful magical creatures rule the wild and untamed lands of Tellas. The only thing standing between them and the human race are the artificers who devise powerful weapons to combat them. An artificer will usually focus on a single invention, developing and refining it over years before introducing it for humanity's benefit once it has been completed.
There are only five major settlements in Tellas, each with its own defense system and culture. Other settlements exist, but they are extremely small and not worth mentioning.
Aljana
Deep in the far reaches of a vast desert on the eastern portion of Tellas, Aljana is especially difficult for outsiders to access. It was founded on the coast of a vast magical oasis by travelers who had only barely managed to stay alive over the course of the grueling trip. Aljana has few natural resources, but recently a vast deposit of oil was discovered nearby that has jumpstarted the city's development. Local artificers use magically hardened "ironwood" from the oasis' coast and oil to craft fast-moving vehicles that serve as their primary means of transportation, trade, and entertainment.
The most popular sport in Aljana is battleracing, where artificers use their custom-built vehicles to attempt to outpace each other on a track that runs the entire perimeter of the city. It's a cutthroat and bloodthirsty sport, but participants and audiences alike adore it for the fast-paced, frantic excitement.
Due to their isolated nature, few monsters plague the people of Aljana, as there is little for the chaotic magic that taints the world to infect. When monsters do appear, they are usually simple spirits of wind or fire such as djinni or efreeti. These are mundane creatures and easily dealt with, and little stock should be put in the wild rumors of an efreeti that was imprisoned inside a magic gas lamp and cultivated until it was able to grant its master's wishes.
Aljana is a sultanate, its people ruled by a small family, and the family in turn headed by their oldest member, the Sultan. The current Sultan is well-liked by the upper and middle class, who see him as a kind and generous man. The lower class disagrees, thinking him too harsh on criminal activity and too stingy with food. But there is always the chance for upwards mobility, if one happens to have a knack for battleracing and a talent for picking the most valuable items out of heaps of discarded battleracer scrap.
Goldhaven
View attachment 203131
By far the biggest and most financially successful human settlement, Goldhaven stands as a shining beacon of what humanity can accomplish when they band together in large groups. Originally founded on the side of a cliff, Goldhaven quickly grew into a sprawling industrial complex due to the high percentage of artificers among the original inhabitants. Goldhaven is presently run by a "Council of Guilds," their preferred system of government being a Guild Socialist system that in theory gives every profession a proportional voice in government based on how many are employed in that profession. In practice, the Artificer's Guild, Publisher's Guild, and Thieves' Guild are all disproportionately powerful (the Thieves' Guild doesn't technically exist, but they maintain a great deal of power through blackmail and bribery), while several blue-collar professions find their voices stifled.
The main form of transportation is the public rail, a suspended train that runs a full circuit around the city. Folks also use horse-drawn carriages to get around, and international travelers usually go by airship; the city resides on the south side of a sheer cliff face, and while there is water below, there's no easy way to get from sea level to ground level, meaning that traditional ships just aren't viable even if they were safe from the massive leviathans that roam the seas.
A vast wall surrounds the city in some areas, though it doesn't cover the whole thing. Beyond the wall's limits are miles of countryside that supplies food to the inhabitants of Goldhaven. This countryside borders a dense forest, and protecting this border takes up most of the Artificer's Guild's time. Within the walls, towards the east, a massive clock tower overlooks the slums, a series of ramshackle buildings that house the less fortunate and seedier citizens. To the west is the Artificer's Academy, the only building to rival town hall in size, though it far exceeds it in sheer ostentatious bravado. To the south is a massive fortress looking out over the countryside, where the Artificer's Guild resides to defend the city from invaders and work on marvelous new masterpieces.
It's not all beauty and progress, though. Strict laws against the use of magic by or on humans has left Goldhaven with a powerful criminal underbelly. The leader of this underworld is a woman by the name of Kay, who has grown an army of loyal followers by using illegal and untested magic to make their wildest dreams come true... for a hefty price. Some alterations are benign; a sex change operation here, a face lift there; but others are of a far more dangerous nature. Several of her servants are powerful mutants with deadly abilities, hitmen bound by crippling debt to do her bidding. But as yet, Kay hasn't made a bid for more power than she presently has, and remains only an urban legend.
As they border the woods, Goldhaven's resident artificers have to contend with by far the largest and most diverse group of monsters in combat. Thankfully, their huge Guild provides them with a number of unique weapons, each one able to ward off theoretically dozens of different monster types. No matter what new threat emerges from the woods, the Artificer's Guild can be counted on to have some new device capable of warding it off!
Fort Apogee
Fort Apogee was once built at the top of a mountain with the same name, the tallest mountain in the world. Its ore was plentiful and its people wanted for little, easily fighting off any monsters able to make it so high. One day, however, their diviners (artificers specializing in predicting the future) foretold the mountain's eruption into a massive volcano that would lay waste to miles of countryside. Unwilling to leave their home and with nowhere else to go, Apogee's people decided to instead take their city with them as they escaped the impending eruption, turning the fortress into a massive flying complex that runs on magic and its people's dedication to stay afloat.
Of course, maintaining a flying fortress the size of a small, extremely compact city is no easy task. Entire generations of families work tirelessly on the huge engines that keep it afloat, either in the boilers supplying them with magical energy, or as pipe workers repairing a vast network of steam vents, or as city planners figuring out where to stick the growing population in such a limited space. Homelessness is rampant, with a great deal of workers (adults and children alike) tending to live and sleep entirely at their jobs their whole life. But it's all worth it, to keep Fort Apogee afloat, and every resident takes pride in doing their part to keep the world's biggest machine running.
Apogee's inhabitants are somewhat full of themselves, considering themselves superior to the "groundlings" who have to contend with beasts and thus cannot make the great advancements that Apogee's elite are capable of, but then most of its inhabitants spend all their time working to keep the city afloat, so they have much fewer true artificers than most other cities. This means that their technology, while stylish and creative, remains about on par with the rest of humanity's.
Apogee's leadership and military are synonymous; the High Commander sits atop his throne, his generals overseeing the work and production of all their subjects. Technically, every citizen over 14 has a military rank, although the vast majority never see combat or even undergo basic training for obvious reasons.
Apogee rarely has to contend with any serious monster threats, their airborne fortress able to avoid any landlocked foes. On the occasion that a winged creature comes to attack, their turrets can usually take care of the threat quickly and efficiently. The only true threat to their way of life is the dragon, Kranos, who resides in the very mountain they fled so many years ago. But Kranos sleeps soundly in his home inside the mountain, and has done so for decades. There is no reason to fear his reawakening any time soon... is there?
Shoto
Shoto is an anomaly among human settlements. It is a nation rooted in tradition, and thus the ingenuity of artifice is typically shunned by its inhabitants. Oh, artificers still live on the archipelago, forging magical swords known as zanpakuto for its noble samurai defenders, but few if any new ideas are indulged by the conservative leadership.
Nevertheless, this constant, unshifting culture has given way to a form of defense just as effective as artifice; through meditation and constant training of the mind and spirit, the samurai and monks of Shoto are able to channel magic in simple yet effective ways without losing their minds to the curse of insanity. This magic can be used for quick, temporary effects, such as hurling a ball of fire or allowing one to jump unnaturally high.
As stated above, Shoto is an archipelago. Traversing the islands by water is a dangerous practice, and most residents distrust airships, so the primary means of communicating between the islands is by "bridge." These are not bridges in the technical sense, but rather magical portals etched into the ground. Each of the seven islands has a hub at the center with a bridge to each of the other seven, and it is by these bridges that people move between the islands, trading and visiting the people of each.
Though nominally a monarchy, Shoto is an oligarchy in all but name alone. A wealthy family known as the Monban have full control over who may use their bridges for transportation, and thus control all inter-island communication. In so doing, the Monban effectively control the flow of information and can indirectly influence the beliefs of the islands' inhabitants. The emperor is little more than a figurehead, forced to do the Monbans' bidding if he wishes for free trade to continue in Shoto. There are seven branches of the Monban family, the patriarch of each one holding the position of daimyo over one of the islands.
Shoto's primary monstrous threats are spiritual and submersible. The islands have been cleared of hostile life for centuries, meaning that the biggest threats are Leviathans and Yokai. Leviathans lurk below the sea, destroying any foolish enough to attempt a traversal into their waters. Occasionally, one of these Leviathan, called a kaiju, will emerge from the ocean and cause a national panic, forcing all warriors to converge and destroy the beast in a truly epic clash. But most of the time, the samurai (pledged to their respective daimyo) and the monks (pledged to their monasteries) protect the people of Shoto from yokai, magical monsters said to be the spirits of long-forgotten monsters from years ago. Some yokai are allowed to live, such as the tanuki, a breed of raccoon mutated to have near-human intelligence. They are prone to mischievous pranks, but are otherwise harmless.
Subterra
Subterra is the most mysterious of humanity's bastions, a civilization that resides almost entirely in a vast underground network of tunnels underneath a huge mountain range. Most of their inhabitants have never seen the light of day, relying on headlamps, glow worms, and magical fungi as their only source of illumination. More xenophobic cultures, such as those in Fort Apogee and Shoto, question if the residents are even human, as their pale skin and bulging eyes give them an almost alien appearance.
But the people of Subterra care not what the surface-dwellers think of them, and anyone lucky enough to view their capital will instantly see why. Subterra is grand, and truly, strangely beautiful. Huge halls lined with fungus light the way as you make your way there, and upon reaching it one can see vast pillars with entire neighborhoods built into the sides, stone spiral staircases leading the way there. The layout is so confusing as to be mind-boggling, but Subterrans have a natural affinity for direction and can navigate it with ease.
Their easy access to boundless ore makes subterrans some of the most prolific and advanced artificers in the world. The huge cave spiders and wurms that they must contend with would spell the doom of almost any other people, but subterrans craft equally enormous mining mecha that can tear through spider flesh as easily as through stone. When not in use, these mecha are stored in a vast hangar full of creative weapons and armor that can be used to deal with whatever they should encounter in the mines.
Subterra is a republic, headed by a council of patricians that oversee mining operations and work towards the common good. This system is remarkably free of corruption; food and water are so scarce in Subterra that anyone who attempts to take more than his due is quickly found out and just as quickly ousted. This means that those presently in power seek the betterment of their people like no other.
The people of Subterra fear the sun and the surface, and it's just as well that they do; were they ever to come up in any meaningful manner, they might realize just how strong a civilization they've become and how weak and easily-conquerable the others appear to be. However, their ignorance and paranoia of the surface remains and leaves them at a perpetual disadvantage to the rest of the world.
