Ametrine Odyssey takes place in the world of Ximena.
EARTH AND SKY
The planet of Ximena has two distinct spheres. Ora, so named because the vivid colors that once marked its seasons brought to mind an aurora, is Ximena's surface. It is mostly ocean with three large continents (Nereus, Psamathe, and Galatea) and polar ice caps (Galene at the north and Orithia at the south). Helix is a spiral of comparatively small floating islands wrapped around Ora. The islands vary in climate, but are generally colder, especially closer to the poles.
HUMANITY
Due to Ximena's temperate climate and abundant resources, people have been able to form intricate cultures and greatly advance their technology.
When people lived mainly on Ora, each continent was home to many different cultures, their broad flavors suffusing nations on each of the three - cool and opulent Nereus, coarse and minimalist Psamathe, warm and bright Galatea. Now that most of the population lives in Helix, each island is a collage of the cultures people brought in, often grown together into something entirely new.
Technology on Ximena has surpassed that of Earth, but hasn't overpowered humanity. Present advancements include holograms, energy shields, levitating objects, simple robots, transforming weapons, fusion cells small enough to hold in your hand, and a vast internet that unifies Ora and Helix. While the aesthetics of technology are dependent on the cultures that manufacture them, common sights are bright colors, shapes that are either very sleek or very bulky, and glowing pieces (see Gemstones below).
THE THRUM
For most of Ximena's history, people lived on Ora. It was much like a near-future Earth until about a century and a half ago, when a low, pulsing hum filled the air; the bare trees grew green and flowered madly; and a long rain fell. This strange shift, which Ximenans would call The Thrum, locked all but the coldest regions of Ora in an eternal spring. The frequent rainfall and burgeoning plant growth brought obvious problems with existing agriculture and infrastructure, but with The Thrum also came monsters - vivid, colorful, aberrant, deadly.
In the span of fifty years, the vast majority of Ora residents took to the Helix islands, or perished on the ground. The few that remained were able to adapt, and to defend themselves. Several long lines of survivors remain on Ora, but small amounts of people from Helix also come down to mine or collect other resources from the surface.
Nobody is entirely sure what caused the Thrum, but everyone from scientists to natural historians to spiritual leaders has ideas: a culmination of energy radiating from manifold technologies, a geoengineering experiment gone berserk, an act of one of many gods, a cycling and foreseeable climate event.
GEMSTONES
The Thrum did have one positive effect: enhancing gemstones. Gems began to glow after the Thrum, as if to signify that they'd attained properties that could only be called magic. When a gemstone is mined and untreated, nearby electronics will play strange music and display colorful images, and small broken objects will inexplicably move their parts into a repaired state. When treated with prolonged exposure to particular lights or aromas, they can produce many different effects, including:
- recording and projecting 3D video (holograms)
- projecting energy shields (crystalskin)
- disproportionately increasing or decreasing an attached object's weight (levitation; gravity storage)
- Storing and releasing electricity (battery facets)
Gems become adapted to storing and releasing different types of energy with proper treatments. However, this process is expensive due to how difficult gems are to bring up from the Surface, so businesses and governments are the majority of gem users.
While gems react differently to different treatments, something less understood is different effects brought on by different gem compositions - rubies are more suited to gravity storage than ammolite, and similar comparisons exist, but gemologists haven't yet formed a detailed explanation of how or why. Because of different gem varieties' unique properties, and the rarity of certain gems, a handful of gem types (such as angelite, ametrine, and plume agate) are more highly sought after than others and prohibitively expensive.
ELEMENTAL CONTROL
Everyone in Ximena is human. There's no blue skin, no animal features, and no superpowers - except everyone has a small gift like turning handfuls of sand to glass or summoning a spark from thin air. Most people's control never goes further than this, even after years of practice, but yours did.
However your surrounding island responded to your growing powers, you've honed them enough to be useful to you in some way. Now that you're headed down to Ora, they'll definitely be an asset against the hostile wildlife.
Ximena's people have as many explanations for the existence of elemental control as they do the Thrum or the origin of life. From divinity to energy anomalies, people have hypothesized with varying and vague proximities to the truth. The small gifts are as normal to people as arms, though, and studied with a similar absence of novelty.
