Galvyria

In the course of things, one must reach balance. Yet it is the cowards who do not commit to the extremes who fail, shattered against the Void by those teetering effigies of greatness. What is the difference between mastery and derivation? It is the smoothness of the wheel ground upon the soil for ten thousand leagues.

Galvyria is the third universe of the Amaranth Succession, the iteration of it created as a successor to Cosmoria's failed curtain-call, its self-sabotaging attempt at reannihilation thwarted by its brief dance with Amaranth. It stands as a question of itself, made from Remnants of myriad things from the macrocosms that preceded it, an eternal gnawing of a reason for its own Creation. The inconsolable loose threads wrenched from the Monad, the warped form Amaranth now takes, these mistakes that left the End before loose and messy, unfinished and unsatisfied. The omniscient perspective of its overseer must face the reckoning of its similarities to its forbearers, the only one to know behind the veil the origins of all things, all patterns. And reckon She does, agonizing in a scrutinous quest for anything different, anything to set Galvyria apart, to prove its worth in the face of the immeasurable Void it stands against.

What was left behind were the Duality, what remains of Cosmoria's Monad after it could no longer sunder itself into oblivion once more. Two inconsolable concepts that yet cannot merge or destroy one another. Hviyam and Aeter. One must familiarize themself with this Duality intimately to understand the workings of all Galvyria, held closer in thought than a lover, with more conscious care than a warm meal. Beside the Duality is Amaranth, something of the only metaversal constant that persists, now taken form and will of its own. No longer shaped by nature of being fractional to its own Creator-Force, nor the blind whims of its nature, but by an internally hosted consciousness. Amaranth in this state completes the Triad, bringing the Duality beyond the realm of reason to properly enmesh within each other.

Cosmology

Aeter and Hviyam, both suffused by Amaranth, are akin to two stacked spheres, now overlapping in a shape like a bulbous hourglass or gourd. Within the region that both of the Duality encompass is all material Creation, all things more complex than them, facilitated by the great Amaranth-Azurade Herself. They do not neatly fit within the space and behave, however. They are tidepools and each others' moon, crashing as waves against each other and wetting the shoreline sands of their rival. These ripples, the patterns they etch into the once smoothed-over beaches of their ontology, the winds and motions, these allow interpretation and warping of their objective essences into a marvelously faceted creation. But to understand the shape of a shore, one must know the process of its formation. Let us begin with the Duality, that which could not unite with Azurade's presence in Amaranth to destroy it and now must live on itself.

Hviyam

Hviyam [ˈxviː.jam] is thought of as a pure bright Cyan, a light that cannot be seen (for the Duality is unseeable for all but Her) but regardless exudes itself. Hviyam insists upon itself, for it is the ideal of self-similar stasis, preservation and continuation and eternity, perfection. In a word, it is Life. It is ironically both that which Azurade once strove for and half of what would have destroyed Her in a more successful End. It is everything that She was unable to bring to fruition, now half of the new Creation. Its nature is timelessness and inertia, and it rules over all things homogenous and still.

Aeter

Aeter [ˈeː.təɾ] is believed to be a great luminous Fuchsia, again an unseeable light that is nonetheless radiant in its purity and brilliance. Aeter insists upon all else, for it is the ideal of momentarity, action, change and direction, acceleration. In a word, it is Power. It is the realm of the founding and decay, of rise and fall and differentials, everything Azurade struggled against by using its very same ideals. It is as inextricable from Her work as it is opposed to Hviyam's results, and is half of what would have destroyed Azurade in a more perfect End. Its nature is alteration and spontaneity, and it rules over all things shifting and excitable.

These two Primes are the beginning, the unchanged state Hviyam enjoyed and Aeter relentlessly failed to alter for uncountable time between the Penultimate End and the Third Genesis. But as Amaranth-Azurade broke the silence and permitted them to mix, so too were new things formed. Ethers, the Galvyrian term for a field, concept, or law of reality that permeates the realms, began to form.

Nun

Nun's presence creates the oceanic atmosphere within Caledwyr

Nun [nʊn] is the first crashing against Aeter by Hviyam, the ripple back into its own domain that produced it. It is the action that produces stillness, Suspension. Its ocean is the drag, the friction, the differential-smoother that slows and tends towards homeostatic peace. While its method of being is antithetical to Hviyam, its parent force, its goal is aligned with it invariably. Nun relays itself not merely as resistance and inertia, but as a pillar of opposition to the nature of action and change, using those principles destructively against themselves that Hviyam might retain peace.

Nun is located almost entirely within and around Caledwyr, its density petering out to a pellucid surface in the great Acreative Gap, lapping with self-similar waves towards the realm it may never reach. Its effects are thus limited to Caledwyr, and Nun and Caledwyr have become colloquially married in thought.

Essence

Essence [ˈɛs.əns] is the first crashing against Hviyam by Aeter, the foundation that produces change, Energy that can be harnessed. Its presence is the lifeblood, the Source for all action kicked off against Reality itself. All life within Galvyria breathes Essence, its nature becoming the foundation for biology and consciousness as well. Its existence is known as the Light, the well of infinite infinities that draws on potential from the Void of Creation itself, that steals the unreal and unbecome to then create anew. Essense's stability and deference to beings, its ability to be consumed by them, is one of the highest insults to Aeter's untameable nature that one can commit, and yet its operation serves Aeter's own paradigm, by producing novelty that can induce lasting and spontaneous change.

Essence remains both the building block of life and the medium through which magic is conducted. Its presence thins out so much near the Acreative Gap that its permeating invisible field condenses into crystal dust, stretched out into one half of the hourglass yearning between the Realms yet forever cut off from Caledwyr's oceans.

Fate

As Amaranth plays a more active role in Galvyria than it did in the previous macrocosm, fate has returned to the universe in some form. While most minor actions or events are unfated, simply being determined by the wills of the people involved, certain courses of events are said to be written into the crystal pages of the book of fate. These events are the only ones that can be gleamed from prophetic visions and future-telling abilities. The rest appears as a dull fog of probability, separating the chained islands of fate.

While most of the future remains undefined, the past looks almost the same, regardless of whether the events were fated or not, tothose who look through time. This has lead to the idea of an objective present, a state of being in which one's existence is being pushed up through the fog of the future by the ever-rising stone platform of the past.

Fate itself seems to leak hints of Amaranth when observed, owing to Amaranth's nature of objectivity in an otherwise free and subjective universe. Some see fate as a shackle that Amaranth imposes on history; others see it as little pools of guidance for how to live. Others still entirely reject the notion of an objective fate, determined to live blind in a world with too many observers.

In measurable terms, fate is the proportion of a person's being that is influenced by Amaranth, rather than the normal two conceptual influences of Aeter and Hviyam. Whereas most of a person's mind and personality is determined by the tugging on it by the Grand Duality, Amaranth plays the role of determining actual events.

Lifeforce

Lifeforce is an ether many emanations down, yet an extremely important one to all events of will. It is an Aeter-leaning ether mirrored by Psyche, and it determines a body's ability to repair itself and adapt. To demonstrate how utterly essential it is to one's being, if lifeforce is removed entirely from the body, wounds do not heal and vital functions may cease after a few minutes to a few hours. The wear and tear on the body done just by living doesn't repair itself, and this short time is enough to kill anything. Lifeforce does regenerate, although it seems to do so as a byproduct of Essence metabolism. In essence, one needs to breathe Essence in and digest it to regain their ability to heal.

Lifeforce is the ether which connects the "soul" to the body, a necessary measure that ensures one's total depletion of lifeforce (usually death) is when the soul detaches and finishes its job recording the living mind. It has complex interactions with the soul and the body, eminent of the artificial nature of souls before the ether's destruction at the start of the Mortality Era.

Psyche

Psyche is the force of the mind, mirroring Lifeforce in a Hviyam-leaning way to balance out the scores of Creation. Psyche manifests as an intrinsic strength within all beings, literally forming their consciousness through a web of self-organizing energy. Psyche does not regenerate itself or expend itself, instead resonating through the body to carry the Will of Aeter in its diluted form as action through oneself.

Psyche can be safely separated from the body for extended periods of time; this is the very mechanism behind sleep. Leaving Lifeforce alone to manage and repair the body without the resistance and eroding nature of Psyche's Will is an essential for long-term healing. It is projected down into Caledwyr to fight its own battles, tried for the crime of wanting and moving towards a goal, the destruction inherent in all action.

Astral

Astral energy, as an ether, is a slowly growing and replenishing field, one which condenses pure concept into tangible form. It has no mirror, for it is the balance between the Duality and the rejection of it altogether. It is nigh-antithetical to ethers as a whole, woven not simply from concepts but from memory beyond Galvyria, weaving back into it by teasing Amaranth-Azurade's nostalgia, preying on Her fear with the violent deaths of the new stars. Matter comes anew through the strengthening of the Astral ether when Amaranth-Azurade mourns for each passing luminary, and through the impurities released upon their deaths.

Astral energy is diametrically opposed to every other ether and force, segmenting itself from the universe by way of non-alignment. It is the incarnation of violent and radical neutrality, refusing to play by the paradigm and instead enhancing it. It is a force of raw power and change in a way Aeter is disgusted by, and self-similar and sustaining in a manner Hviyam would never accept. And through this blatant rejection of the binary axis of the universe, Astral energy becomes the basis for all things truly important and the home for the liberation from the eternal warring of the universe with its other natures.

Realms

After the initial collision between Aeter and Hviyam, their intersection began to let them bleed into one another, producing persistent realms that reignited the old concepts of matter and energy, of organization into cosmic terrain familiar to the countless deceased by this point in the Succession's time. They too mirror each other, as the nature of things is to mirror and mimic and oppose, to reflect and absorb like trillions of rays of light that one color might make its hue known.

Caledwyr

The seeping of Aeter into Hviyam, the chaos fractal, the realm of self-similarity that seems infinitely complex. Its spiral structure is order from chaos, a needlepoint precision of its patterning to maintain itself in rippling beauty. It is the realm of the unconscious, the draw back to comfort, the unaware and safe. All beings know Caledwyr's self-healing oceans more intimately than their own bodies, as its arms cradle those who sleep and forge dreams from their bleeding naked psyches.

The projections of one's mind into Caledwyr are flimsy and irrelevant, as the binding force latches on to the unfaceted lattice of Nun and fights its Suspension to keep itself from being shattered and spread across the spiral seas. These projections, in whatever feeble attempt to retain their mind's form they can manage, are the Dreamers. Their heart is bound to the whims of their heart, and in this unconscious realm all thoughts are thus made manifest. Within Caledwyr, all things are possible by virtue of their nonexistence, their ephemerality as thoughts.

Glawiad

The seeping of Hviyam into Aeter, the blooming crystal, the realm of branching dissimilarity that seems to blur together on its principles the further one looks. The individuals of self-organizing packets of things and life and magic. Its form is chaos upon order, the structures branching and twisting in erratic and ever-shifting ways, shaped by the things within it as much as the forces it is within. It is the realm of the conscious, the living, the decisions that branch time into the fractal web that spins its own thread. It is the realm of consequence and awarenss, and it is all the greater for it despite its minuteness.

Glawiad is not fundamentally more real than Caledwyr, but as it lies within the biased hemisphere of change, bound to Aeter more strongly than Hviyam, it has a more definite and memorable sequence of events. Though beings tend to spend comparable fractions of their lives awake and asleep, their minds in their bodies in Glawiad and projected down into Caledwyr, Glawiad is thought to be infinitely more persistent.

Celestial Objects

One cannot populate a macrocosm with ideas alone. The physicality, the tangibility, the unfettered reality of a good hard object is unmatched throughout all Creations past, present, and future. Damned be to anyone arrogant enough to suggest, in their defiance wrought by this axiom, a Scope with none such bodies, made only of pure virginal philosophy. Galvyria is built from this knowledge, Amaranth-Azurade's memory of such structures from both its predecessors guiding the path it takes, derived just so by the essences of the ethers inhabiting Her eminent domain.

Aerilyae

The Dream-Stars, Astral energy coalesced into spheroids within the fractal-seas of Caledwyr. They are powered by the beating drum of the Sunheart and the fury-poisoned shushing of Nun, their colors separating and stratifying into density layers within themselves. The center is a core of inerrant überviolet, heaviest of the colors with the weight of envy, with the others spread out in a great rainbow up to the surface. The largest of these aerilyae are a deep bleeding crimson. In Caledwyr, aerilyae are the rulers of the realm, commanding vast energy and pulling the flow of Nun into a vortex of force around themselves. They attract free-floating gas bubbles that wander the realm, either released from the Dark Reef's metabolizing of their energy or simply from a lost world. Their rotation is turbulent, subdivided by Nun into a short-reaching flow of vortex-heavy chaos to preserve more of Caledwyr's liquid crystal form.

As the life cycle of an aerilya goes on, it will shrink at an exponential rate, shifting through the entire spectrum of colors until reaching violet, at which point it will collapse and die in an explosion that shatters its whole system and causes light to echo outward through the medium of Caledwyr. No remnants of an aerilya remain but dark shattered Nun-flows and a fading echo of violet light bouncing off the cosmic seas of the realm.

Cross section of the largest possible class of Aerilya, Crimson.

Aestrai

The Waking Stars, the writhing ones suffused by Essence and the terrible knowledge of Will. Their Astral energy is rendered chaotic and blurry by Essence's rippling, their colors mixing together in waves of prismatic light or in a near-white slurry. Their classes are less visually distinct, noted by their pull on the poor fools who get too close to them instead of their color.

As an aestra evolves, the redder colors will be overshadowed more and more, shifting until it becomes a violent ball of indigo and violet light. Once the violet glow completely takes over, the aestra explodes, leaving an Astral remnant behind. These remnants are small and range from the pale off-white glow of Pearl-Eyes to the inky abyss of a Light-Drinker. The properties behind these remnants are thought to be related to the aestra's personality by those who assign spiritual value to them.

A very large and calm Aestra, a Full Crimson Rainbow

Citadels

Throughout both realms of Galvyria, numerous locations known as Citadels punctuate the otherwise predictable worldscape. Citadels appear in the forms of massive megastructures, built by nobody, and have a presence of both awe and mystery. No two Citadels are the same, possessing wildly different forms and scales. Some Citadels remain mostly static, whilst others wander their realm. However, one consistent thing about Citadels is that they enforce a set of rules on the space they occupy. The domain of a Citadel is usually within and just around the actual structure, but on rare occasions it may extend far beyond the structure itself.

The rules that Citadels enforce on the space they control vary wildly. The more well-known of the Citadels are better understood, and are often regulated or controlled by organizations dedicated to them.

Anomylona

The Anomylona is a massive spherical Citadel near the center of Glawiad. From the outside, it appears as a moon-sized city, populated by trillions of tiny lights against its dark metallic surface. However, the Anomylona is actually hollow, using its entire structure's volume for its purpose. The domain of the Anomylona's effects does not extend past its structure's outer shell.

The inner structure of the Anomylona has been slightly modified by the organization dedicated to observing and regulating it. The structure of its interior is reminiscent of a massive city, with a great multitude of fractalesque and cubic structures seemingly floating within. All are connected by a gridlike series of bridges to the central ring city, which itself houses the bridge to the "eye" of the Citadel, which is the largest entryway into it. An estimated 4% of the entire population of Glawiad works to keep the machinations of the Anomylona in order.

What the Anomylona does as a Citadel is rather concerning in the eyes of most of the peoples of Glawiad. Within the labyrinthine catacombs of the structure, new sapient beings are created. These beings do not have much consistency in appearance, save for approximate size. The more existentially threatening part of the Anomylona's creations, which have been dubbed the Anomylons, is that they are all created with unpredictable echoes or even sets of echoes. There is a statistically significant increase in ability synergy in Anomylons than any other race in Glawiad. For example, while the people of Brimstata very consistently have fire-related echoes, they occasionally have other echo abilities that are completely unrelated or harm their fire-related ones. The abilities of Anomylons are almost always capable of complementing one another. Moreover, Anomylons are created with a heightened level of instinctual knowledge on their echoes, where most other people have to discover the details of them through complex spells or by chance.

Because of the potential threats some Anomylons may pose to Glawiad as a whole, the organization known as the Anomylona Vessel Administration puts a significant portion of their efforts into preventing such individuals from living. The current method used is installing three kill switches in vital areas of each Anomylon's body as they materialize, effectively giving that area's AVA overseer the ability to neutralize any Anomylon deemed too much of a threat to be released. Standard protocol involves an orientation course for the new Anomylon to complete. Failure to comply or display of echo abilities deemed existentially threatening results in the kill switches being forcibly activated and then ripped from the body, neutralizing the individual and killing them. This method has a near-perfect success rate. Notable examples of Anomylons who survived the killing process are Vyster Indorium and the Crimson Crusader, whose echoes allowed them to remove the kill switches on their own and prevent the AVA from having leverage over them.

Most Anomylons who escape processing and analysis are dealt with by specialist groups like the Order of the Sun, where they are often killed. Exceptions to even this exist, such as the aforementioned Vyster Indorium joining the order that was slated to kill him. However, the vast majority of Anomylons make it through the orientation/appraisal process without incident and are able to become citizens of the realm of Glawiad.

Infinity Tournament

A refuge for criminals and bloodthirsty warriors alike, the Infinity Tournament stands as the most organized and violent source of entertainment in all of Glawiad. The Citadel's rules extend slightly beyond its internal structure, but this is hardly relevant for travelers. The main structure is a conical monolith, floating near the edge of Glawiad that is nearest to Caledwyr. While taking up a finite space from the outside, the inner structure extends upwards infinitely from the bottom point. At the bottom is the official entrance into the Tournament, which is inhabited and controlled by the Deathmatch Entertainment Corporation.

The bottom area of the Infinity Tournament is filled with artificially constructed shops and infrastructure, functioning as a sort of commercial district in its own right. Hundreds of thousands of magical objects are available to see any area of any floor of the Tournament in real time, manufactured by the DEC. The corporation operates the Underbelly, as it is called, as a kind of stadium or viewing area for the actual events of the Tournament. They also regulate entry into the main area of the Citadel.

Entry to the Infinity Tournament was once free and easy, but the Deathmatch Entertainment Corporation changed that when they took control of the Citadel. Now, exorbitant fees are required to enter as a "contestant". The only positive change this has brought is the new ability to form teams of up to four members when paying the binding entrance fee. Upon paying, the contestants enter Floor 0. This is the smallest of the floors of the Infinity Tournament and a preliminary bloodbath.

The Infinity Tournament's "rules" are organized as a sort of battle game. The people within floors of the Tournament above the Underbelly are still able to be killed, but their bodies will dematerialize and they will be resurrected at a later point in time. With teams, this happens once the team ascends a level or when every team member dies, causing a descension. With single contestants, this process is nearly instantaneous. Non-lethal injuries attained after entering the Tournament are healed upon ascension.

While Floor 0's event is a time-staggered battle royale, releasing the entire roster of contestants at once, the subsequent infinity floors are more akin to a free-for-all killing field. Only the final team standing at the end of Floor 0's battle will ascend to Floor 1, but any team that eliminates two others will ascend another floor. Being eliminated causes a team or contestant to descend one floor. If one wishes to leave the Tournament, they must be killed and descend every floor until they reach Floor 0 once more, where they can exit the battle roster.

All floors have access to resources such as food and shelter, but there is the occasional difference with how they are distributed. On most floors, the team can simply call for resources and the Citadel will answer by dropping them from the floor's "sky". However, in floors whose numbers end in a 1 or a 6, resources must be sought out at Ghost Towns, cities within the Tournament where battles are frequent over the regularly regenerating but still scarce supplies. Ghost Towns on the same floor seem to have a spatial link with one another.

The most interesting property of the Infinity Tournament's infinite series of floors is the fact that they increase in size the further up they are. The smallest of the floors, Floor 0, is a measly 500 meters in diameter. However, the highest inhabited floor as of the current day, Floor 1400, is estimated to be around the diameter of an average planet.

Atop a lonely throne on Floor 1400, a single combatant remains. Known only as the Silent King, he sits and waits for another to reach him, so he may clash his sword against armor and flesh once more. The 5 floors beneath him are uninhabited, and have been for over a decade. It is said that he looks down in hope when rumors of quickly-ascending teams spreads to him through the DEC's loud communications.

Library of Magaletch

The Library of Magaletch appears as a tetrahedral cathedral, dotted with entrances and balconies. The overall appearance is very inviting, and several businesses dot the surface of the structure. The interior of the Library is a labyrinth of bookshelves arranged in fractal patterns. Any and all surfaces can be walked on. The books within the shelves of the Library shift around and fly from shelf to shelf on occasion, reorganizing themselves in an eternal dance of flying paper. Within the books is all possible knowledge within Galvyria and its predecessor realms. However, this is also mixed in with an infinite amount of false information and completely fabricated fiction.

The Library of Magaletch has a few dedicated bookkeepers, who are highly trained and have some idea of where to find certain types of information. The Citadel is a popular location for people to find stories written by the hands of fate themselves, as well as people looking for creative inspiration for their own stories. Because it is almost impossible to tell what information is true or not, the Library serves less as a center of knowledge and more as a center for creativity.

On occasion, people do find books containing knowledge of Curses and suffer the injury of a Stain. As unfortunate as it is, there are no real ways to prevent this from occurring. Victims of a Stain are compensated with money and the books are sent to the High Risk Reading section, where they will be contained for as long as possible.

Damir-Irrum

Glawiad's planets all follow the same synchronous cycle of day and night. Every 39 hours, the light returns to the same spot, the shadows align to the same angle they did the previous day. These mechanical-seeming constructs of time are caused by a Citadel near the core of Glawiad known as Damir-Irrum. The domain of this Citadel is effectively all of Glawiad, with very few planets existing outside of its reach. Two massive spheres, one seemingly made of pure white light and the other made of absolute darkness, constantly dance around each other at mind-bending speed. Where Damir, the sphere of light, and Irrum, the sphere of darkness, are in relation to each other at any time determines where the midday and midnight of planets falls.

It is unknown why, but the ratio of day to night on any given planet is inconsistent with the others. Some worlds have but a few mere minutes of night, whilst others bathe in Irrum's darkness for far longer than the light shines. The overall day-night ratio across Glawiad's worlds appears to even out to around 50/50, but it varies dramatically between them.

Some races have a mass hallucination of midday and midnight. For these races, midday appears in the sky as a bright point or line. Midnight, conversely, appears in the sky as a great looming eye or skull. These shapes, which do not exist in reality, move across the sky as time passes. It is still unknown why this occurs in certain races, nor how to induce or undo it. These ephemeral objects have been represented as gods in many religions across the realm.

Amarent

Through its objective nature, Amarent has persisted into the third Universe. Now strewn with new immovable debris from the events that transpired in the previous End, this Amaranth planet seems to reject all light from outside and supply its own Amaranth glow. It rests at the core of Glawiad, unmoving, unchanging, eternal. Because it is immovable, and is so close to the measured real center of Glawiad, Amarent has been named as the official centerpoint from which all distances are measured.

Objects and people brought onto Amarent seem to undergo a strange enchantment process, intertwining them with fate more and more the longer they stay on the barren world. Destiny is written about the beings as they stay on Amarent, almost as if it is watching them and writing what it believes would suit their futures. Those who wish to secure their futures have often gone to Amarent, with varying results. Some are fated to have nothing change their condition; some are forced into submission by a reversal of fate; others are granted grandiose destinies of glory that change the course of all Glawiad's history.

Whether Amarent's effects are a blessing or a curse depends on the individual. The fate that is set out for them can either be a burden and toll on the path one wished to take, or heighten the joys of life immensely. Amarent seems to have no bias, no way of determining who should be punished or given the boons of destiny. It seems as unfeeling and uncaring as can be, but perhaps it has a deeper agenda.

Sunheart

Nun's perfect hum was uniform, yes, and impeccably orderly. But the little bit of Aeter that first seeped within Nun's watery depths yearned for something else. Its sheer boredom began to spread and fume and boil, collapsing into the spontaneous Citadel of the Sunheart. A golden liquid sphere, the Sunheart beat at the sterile waters that would become Caledwyr, churning life into them as it poured endless energy into the core. The foundational structure of the realm stemmed from the Sunheart's restless rhythmic twirling, becoming the basis for the pelagic helices of Caledwyr.

The hum of Nun is broken up by the tempo of the Sunheart's rotation, forming an ethereal resonant song throughout the realm. Though slow, the passage of each Sunheart beat makes for an easy marker of time. Each beat is regarded as an action, a scene-change, or an otherwise relevant skip within the dreamer's dreams.

As the Sunheart added more astral energy to the core, the central swirl within Caledwyr became a bright amber, bearing long-lived gold and saffron Aestrai. The energetic bursts of light from the outer Ring's dying Aestrai met at a front with the steady hums of the Sunheart's Amber Hearth. Where these forces met, a Dark Reef of cosmic coral began growing, forming a barrier ring to separate the two. This Dark Reef is now home to the nightmares, the damned-dreams whose dangers persist after the dreamers flee them back into wakeness.

Planets

Planets in Glawiad were created by the Primordials during the first few thousand years of Galvyria's existence. While the churning of matter in Caledwyr caused them to coalesce separately there, there are a few quirks that all planets share.

Skyshards

Planets have islands that float around at random in their skies. These islands are a planet's immune system, in a sense, redirecting energy around it to stabilize it and prevent other objects from colliding with it. This was especially useful in Glawiad during the era of the Twin Blights, where neither could infect a planet without first dismantling its Skyshards.

Corehearts

At the core of most planets is a Coreheart, a dense field of matter-energy that determines some rules or properties of the planet. These rules can be anything imaginable, from subtle atmospheric changes to absolute binding law above that of mortals. They are the proof of a planet's individuality, unable to be changed by any whims external to the planet itself. A Coreheart is sort of the brain of a planet, letting it enforce some primitive will onto itself.

History

Galvyria's history is some 130,000 years long, with periods of convergences of power separated by vast oceans of unimpeded repercussions and rebuilding. Like caustics at the bottom of a pool, these convergences flow and shift in form, from groups to forces and plagues, and in all forms they are impossible to simply pin down and freeze.

Act 0 - Primordials

Amaranth-Azurade's first thoughts in this strange new universe were of the off-key resemblance it had to the melodies of the stars of old. Her memory overflowed with concepts and people and-- she stopped herself, not wishing to break the newborn macrocosm with excess concepts. She reminisced about people, how they strived to be something greater than their environment allowed. From these wistful wonderings, the Primordials of Glawiad were born.

Numbering a few thousand, these new beings changed Glawiad from a simple blooming mass of energy and Aestrai into a haven for life, creating the planets and playing through the Citadels the hidden Amaranth-Azurade accidentally brought forth. They seeded the hundreds of thousands of world in Glawiad with life modeled after their own forms, filling the fuchsia blossom with a new harmonious song. Their paradise of frolicking, however, came to an end one day with the karmic remembrance and introduction of Death into Galvyria. One by one, the Primordials died off, leaving only a lonely Grimm-Feltheous rebelling against the specter of oblivion.

Act I - Blights

The realm is alight with unfathomable bloodstained flesh and silent colorless ash. The Twin Blights, created by some unknown thing millennia ago, have been spreading through Glawiad and consuming most of the life, turning the fuchsia gem into a bleeding, decaying prison. On the long-night world Sespira, a small group gathers to defend its only Skyshard and prevent the Haemagora from taking their world as well.

Though the Blight battles hard, the friends that join the burgeoning Chaos Force keep the abomination at bay. With a plethora of races from across the realm and the utter pinnacle of refined skill, the group toils to fight it off, and maybe even figure out how to rid the once-glittering realm of the monstrous plagues ravaging thousands of worlds. Will the allies they've garnered through the war on the Blights be enough to stop the destruction of their realm, or is all lost?

Act II - Redeemers

A world long since isolated from Glawiad is unveiled by a young Astrin. Taking off into the night, he learns of the vast culture and history of the rebuilt realm, and with a couple of friends, decides to uphold the peace and prevent disaster from striking the realm again. Slowly building an organization into the prestigious and feared Order of the Sun, the Astrin learns to control his supposedly weak Echo and becomes one of the most fearsome warriors in all of Glawiad.

As several potential threats reveal themselves and are eradicated, the Order of the Sun begins to notice some patterns. Many of the disasters they prevented were caused or influenced by long-standing systems put in place by the peoples' ancestors eons ago. Now determined to undo the actions of the ancients long gone, the Order begins focusing on finding and uprooting the systems that allow chaos to thrive in their bountiful realm. Eventually, they come face to face with the icon of the afterlife himself, the longest living Primordial, the Soul Lord, Grimm-Feltheous. Will the destruction of the Felthous finally create peace in Glawiad, or will unintended consequences show themselves?

Act III - Recluses

Three brothers, rejecting their place in their society, decide to start their lives anew by buying a spatial pocket at the edges of Glawiad. As they try to live a peaceful life, they meet many people who also feel that they have no place in the realm. Slowly writing items off of each of their expanding friend group's bucket lists, many sinister secrets of Glawiad are discovered. Family histories, long-lost relatives, and a conspiracy to overthrow the entire structure of the afterlife intertwine with the everyday life of this congregation of isolated magi.

When one of the Isle's magi keeps predicting a cataclysmic battle, the friends don't know what to do. The fate cannot be prevented, so what should be done to prepare? Who and where would they fight? As the fated days draw nearer, rumors that a mercenary organization is searching for Midnight, one of the most treasured friends, begin to spread. As events seem to careen towards the peaceful found family of mages, what fate will befall its members?

Final Act - Antepenultimate End

This has happened before. Or is it yet to come? Too many convergences, too many coincidences. Nothing can undo it perfectly, nothing can smooth the craters back out enough. In pursuit of security we created monsters, and now the flimsy straw of goodwill is the only thing that holds back their rage. One bad day, one wrong move, one slip into the correct mindset can set the gears of apotheosis turning. And both inertia and boredom agree that a wheel which begins its turn should continue. With the forces of gods bubbling under the surface, ready to emerge with the wills of the Duality demanding their supremacy, what yet must happen?

Amaranth-Azurade watches, She waits. In Her mind this End was not only inevitable, but desirable. The one to claim the throne of Galvyria eternal, the mantle of Creation, the answer to existence itself, will emerge from this grand and final clash. Wherefore does Galvyria justify itself? Who will replace Her as the next Aeon unfolds, and what Creation, if any, will be made?