| Setting: Fonts |
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| Owner | Aevylmar |
| Description | (The setting of my unfinished novel Daughter of Wood and Steel and my novella Algebra On The Frontier, unpublished as of yet.) There is a galaxy, and in this galaxy are multiple multiplanetary states, often-warring, all humanity-descended that we know of, and in one tiny planet of that galaxy (where our story takes place), magic works. The magic is drawn from fountains of magical power scattered across that planet's surface. Each fountain provides a different type of magic, and each type can only be wielded by someone attuned to that font; you get attuned by being descended from someone attuned, or by managing to make it to the heart of a chaotic magical fountain spewing destructive out-of-control magical energy and seizing control of it, which is the state of a font that nobody is attuned to. It's usually the former. "The person who attuned to the font" and "the founder of our nation" are usually the same thing, since vast magical powers are both really useful for taking over countries and much stronger if you're closer to the font, and so each font is the center of its own state or state-like entity. The magic is stronger for: Women, people near the source, if it's divided fewer ways. There are a few people who have weird unique magic, thanks to some fluke; the general term for them is 'witches', and most of them are faking it. The fonts on the continent where "Daughter Of Wood And Steel" and its spinoffs take place are: The Empire of Qalmir: Qalmir is a vast empire centered around the present Empress of Qalmir, whose country is run for her by an endless bureaucracy, riven with factional politics. Tremendously rich (the Empress controls an empire, but the borders of Qalmir proper are defined as 'the range in which the Empress can directly control the earth', and while the country is encircled by a mountain range, everything inside the mountains ends up looking like a six-year-old Civilization player got loose with the map editor), but is also politically hidebound and corrupt; all magic is reserved to the Empress by keeping anyone else descended from Qalmir's founder imprisoned on boats, unable to use their powers, but the Empress herself is a superweapon in a gilded cage, either unaware of or indifferent to half her ministers' decisions and regularly replaced.
The Empire of Karakral: The Triple Queen of Karakral was once one of Qalmir's vassals, but today, Karakral bows to no one. The descendants of its founder make up the entire feudal aristocracy of Karakral, who elect a new Empress (or occasionally Emperor) whenever the old one dies, which is really very often. Karakrali knights are nigh-invincible in battle, and whenever Karakral isn't fighting a civil war, it's fighting at least one foreign war.
The Kingdom of Viranatu: A land of noble lords, prosperous peasants, rich lands, and a benevolent mage-queen ruling to the best of her ability, Viranatu has only recently recovered from a catastrophic series of bloody civil and foreign wars that left it with, shall we say, lots of room to grow. The royal family is down to two members, and if anything happens to them, the volcano at whose base the capital is built will go off, obliterating the city and depopulating the country.
Lemrysh Forest: Land of those who live in peace and harmony with nature! Or, if you prefer, an anarcho-primitivist cult that refuses to have any dealings with other states and murders anyone who tries to chop down their trees or build too many houses in their territory. The Mother of the Forest has an unknown number of daughters, and more regularly appear without her ever becoming visibly pregnant. She is also very, very immortal.
The Republic of Laukera: The power in a bloodline is divided among all members of a bloodline. Laukera is the oldest of any of the dynasties and decided to give all princes of the royal family a vote. Laukera is now a functioning merchant republic! The definition of a citizen is 'someone with enough of Laukera's water-magic to breathe underwater', which is good, because Laukera City is underwater. They have abused their absurd water-magic-powers to obtain a monopoly on trans-continental shipping, which they defend by sinking everyone else's oceangoing ships if anyone tries to build them, so nobody does and Laukera is very, very rich.
The Hegemony of Profectus: An alien from a more functional society crash-landed on this planet. He wants to get OFF, and these loons with despotic power over their countries' people have already scavenged up all the artifacts of past accidental crash-landings (no, he doesn't know why there's so many, maybe it has something to do with PHYSICS WORKING DIFFERENTLY HERE) and they think they're "magic artifacts" and won't sell them to him, so he's going to need to overthrow them all to steal their spaceship parts to fix his ship so he can GO HOME. So far he has gotten one (1) town in the middle of the continent's largest desert, which is now producing the majority of the world's steel and *all* of its killer robots.
The Timeless City: DO NOT GO TO THE TIMELESS CITY. IT IS NOT SAFE. please disregard this message Queen Timeless is a perfectly just and benevolent ruler and no harm can possibly come to anyone in the Timeless City.
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