Caranoctia 101
A Brief Tour of Caranoctia
This is the bare minimum of what's important to know about the world the book is set in. I'll try to make all of this obvious in the text, but a little background never hurt anyone.
Geography
photo by Riktorsashen on deviantart.com
Caranoctia is a enormous continent vaguely resembling North America in size and shape, although there are several differences.
The eastern seaboard, heavily wooded and mountainous, is home to satyrs and most humans, and was the first area settled by the invasion from Iendenali. There are many deep bays and small islands off the coast, and the sea is deep, rough and cold.
The north is dominated by many cold little tundra islands, separated by bodies of salty water that freeze for most of the year, and alpine mountains dotted with caves, meadows in steep-sided valleys and still, deep tarns. Ymir herd their shaggy beasts here, and trade with mountain-dwelling centaurs and alpine satyrs.
The east coast is split from the western wilds by the Sunder, a treacherous, raging river that used to be the winding, gentle Sweetwater River (Delildi), once a trade route traversed by centaur barges and satyr fish boats, until Aelvian magic cataclysmically altered the land. Now the gentle mountaintops of much of the central-eastern range are islands in this chill inner sea.
As the Sunder flows south, it breaks up into many small, winding rivers, becoming shallower and slower and saturating the land, producing the bogs, marshes and swamps collectively known as the Guldurgu on the western side. These steamy, jungly lands are the home of swampie satyrs and trolls. On the eastern side, land coral rises from the sea and forms a small peninsula.
Across the Sunder, past the sharp new mountains created by the Aelvians, we enter the Sea of Grass, a vast, flat savannah bordered by scrub forests and populated mostly by centaurs. This patchwork of prairie, forest, mountain and canyon is greener than our West. There is little true desert, but there are pockets of heat and aridity, one of which is home to a secret colony. Further south, a population of humans still loyal to the Aelvians survives in the scrublands.
The Sea of Grass is bordered on the far west by steep mountains thrown up by an ancient comet impact. The actual crater, which the centaurs call the Hoofprint of the Creator, is filled with a freshwater inner sea featuring a large central island, home to an offshoot population of blooded and many strange native creatures.
Past the mountains, the land slopes gently, blanketed by temperate rainforest all the way to the foggy, rocky coast. The aughwar dominate this area. Where we have California, Caranoctia has a long, skinny tropical island.
The People of Caranoctia
*note Except for wonderful trolls and the things I drew, this is just art I’ve linked to because it looked about right.
Satyrs
art by Arnold Bocklin
A native species resembling a small human with horns, goatlike furry legs and cloven hooves. There are many races, tough little sylvans, the sturdy, wooly-coated alpines, the willowy, sleek sand-striders of the desert, the curly haired, curvy horned swampies, not to mention a few species that might have been driven into hiding or extinction by invading aughwar. Satyr society is based around the rare females (1:5 sex ratio). Each doe is in charge of a protectorate which she tends, aided by her 3-5 husbands and her children. They subtly encourage the growth of food plants and animals, instead of planting fields and penning up livestock, so that a human might walk through a satyr protectorate and never realize it is not an ordinary forest. At certain times of the year, or to resolve disputes, satyrs gather for feasts and perform a 'boontha dance' in which masked, costumed performers mimic and mock others' foibles, an amusing reminder to mend one's ways. This social pressure serves them in place of a judicial system. Satyrs believe the world was created by twelve godlike Powers, which then retreated from it, and that day-to-day issues can be resolved by consulting with the Presences, the spirits of ancestors and patron spirits of certain locals or animal and plant species. They believe in nine hells, not places of eternal punishment but of education, where a ghost is properly instructed before being returned once again to life to try and do better. Although satyrs sided with the humans in the war against the Aelvians and many now live in human cities, they remain a race apart.
Aelvians
art by Brian Froud
Aelvians resemble human children of unearthly beauty, with frail, delicate bodies, almond eyes, snub-nosed, pointed faces and pointed ears poking from masses of feathery hair. They are entirely without gender, and fond of dying themselves in wild patterns. Aelvians are descendants of humans who did not give up their magic. Like the children they resemble, Aelvians are greedy, emotional, quarrelsome, often heedlessly callous, willful and capricious. With a natural aptitude for magic, they alter the landscape and animals using their life-sculpting magic for their own pleasure, and bred their human slaves the way we would breed lap dogs. Aelvians are so long-lived they're effectively immortal, which along with their innate conservative nature caused a great deal of stagnation in their culture. Aelvians destroyed their own homeland in some type of magical cataclysm, at which point they invaded the human homeland and enslaved the non-magic using population. They eventually destroyed this land too (or at least, something mysterious happened) and came very close to destroying Caranoctia before being defeated in a horrific war shortly before this novel begins. The few Aelvians who survived the backlash of their final, destructive magical effort went irrevocably insane, and the species is surely on the way to extinction.
Humans
Pretty similar to what's sitting here typing this, and presumably what's reading this. Caranoctian humans are the descendants of people bred for centuries by the Aelvians for different tasks, much in the way we bred dogs. These refined breeds, however, had lost a lot of their natural vigor and in the wilds of the new land fared about as well as a chihuahua would if dropped on the African veldt. Aelvians tried many ways to strengthen the breed, including hybridizing them with other animals (see: Trolls) but what eventually worked was breeding variant types back together to create a basic, mongrel human. Still, occasionally there are throwbacks and sports, so Caranoctian humans have a slightly wider range of variation than we do. They also tend to be better looking and healthier than our type of human, as Aelvians naturally wanted their slaves to be easy on the eyes and to last as long as possible. There are always exceptions, of course.
Human technology at the time of the story is Victorian level in the few densely populated cities, but much lower in most areas, and in general is highly inconsistent, both due to the incorporation of 'magic' and the fact that Aelvians suppressed many inventions. There is a sketchy railway system, for example, and pistols are more common than swords, but the trains are like as not to be pulled by huge animals as steam engines, and the pistols are primitive flintlocks.
Human religion is a rather interesting form, as humans believe that their ancestors discovered the gods that had created them and their world had gone mad after being forced to destroy the first race of intelligent beings to punish them for trying to usurp the gods' place. The ancestors of modern people managed to destroy their insane gods, freeing themselves but in the process losing their ability to perform magic naturally.
Centaurs
art by George O. Barr
A native species resembling a pointy-eared human to the waist, blending into the shoulders of a horse in place of the horse's neck and head. There are several different types adapted to various climates: tall, lanky savannah centaurs, graceful little dune centaurs, stocky, hairy mountain centaurs, gentle giant coastal centaurs. Centaurs travel in large nomadic herds consisting mostly of related females, guarded by a herd stallion and his male underlings, which are chosen by the herdmothers every year during their Great Games. Centaurs are generally practical and hardheaded. Centaurs sided with humans against the Aelvians, although many preferred to remain neutral. Now centaurs can be found among humans, mostly young males who have opted out of the fight to become herd stallions. In the far west, a society of human loyalists have enslaved their local centaurs, imitating the worst habits of their Aelvian masters. Their original religion was that the world 'wants' to be orderly, and elements of chaos (drujes, or demons) work to unbalance it. Recently a new religion has sprung up among the enslaved southwestern centaurs, started by a messiah figure named Stonecrop who claims to speak for a voiceless goddess, Avoca. Escaping his tormenters, Stonecrop has founded Babylon, a large, mixed-race community in the central desert centered in an ancient abandoned structure.
Ymir
art by Robert Baleman
Also called frost giants, these are a species of human that arrived in antiquity and adapted to the cold northern tundra, where they herd their massive, shaggy beasts and hunt along the ice floes. Averaging 8 feet tall and 500 lbs, these hardy nomads are covered in a thick, soft pelt the color of spoiled cream and have boxy, flat-nosed, almost feline faces and pale eyes that stand out startlingly against their dark skin.
Halvers
art by Scott Davis
Since humans and the yeti-like Ymir are basically variations on the same theme, they are able to interbreed and produce fertile young. This happened more often than you might think, and the offspring often banded together and bred amongst themselves, so that now there is a small but thriving population of human-ymir hybrids, called halvers. Being crossbreeds there is naturally a range of types, but most halvers are tall and sturdily built, covered in a thin pelt of hair in all the normal colors of a human (blonde, brown, red, black), with flatter faces than ymir. Because of the insulating properties of all that hair, halvers are more common in northern areas.
The Blooded
art by Gerald Brom
One tactic attempted by Aelvians to strengthen the human line was to graft some of their own qualities into it. These 'blooded' individuals tended to be physically frail and mentally unstable, and while this strategy was abandoned, enough survived that a portion of the human population still evidences Aelvian traits. Most have innate magical gifts, but find them difficult to control. An group of blooded went west early on and founded a colony on Queldcha-ryn, an island on the Inner Sea. It has been closed to outsiders since, and no one knows if it still survives and what mysteries it might contain.
Trolls
art by KrisCrash (left and center) and Thumbclawz (right)
Created beings, trolls are a hybrid of human and a Caranoctian reptomammal called a goblin. Trolls are tall, angular and carnivorous, with a mixture of mammalian and reptilian features. Distinctive traits include the sharp spurs curving from their outer wrists and heels. On the forehead is what looks like a small, dark jewel; this is actually an organ for sensing infrared light. Trolls are isogamous, with a single sex but still requiring two individuals to reproduce.
Created to be physically hardy slaves, trolls are certainly tough but also extremely intelligent and cunning. They waited until their population was stable then slaughtered their masters and disappeared into the trackless swamps, where they've been breeding in secret ever since. Naturally arrogant, competitive, individualistic and practical, trolls are problem solvers and innovators, and have been the secret source of many new mechanical and magical inventions. Currently trolls are laying low and consolidating their power while spying on other species' activities. Very few outside the Guldurgu swamps have ever seen one, or at least, that's what people think - trolls can pass as ugly humans with a little disguise. A contingent of them have emerged from the swamps and taken over the ghost city of Thorcasia, once a center of life-sculpting and where they were created, and are attempting to learn more magic from its ruins.
Aughwar
drawing by me
Aughwar come from Xbalanque, the continent to the south of Caranoctia, a land of vast plains, steamy jungles and razor-sharp mountains. They are muscular, scaled bipedal pseudo-mammals, with an upper body like a gorilla's, lower limbs and tail resembling a predatory dinosaur, taloned hands and faces like the skull of a sabertoothed cat.
They invaded Caranoctia some 80 years ago, landing on the west coast. They conquered the coastal areas, slaughtering the native centaurs and satyrs, but were halted in their conquest by a mixed group of blooded and Aelvians. Recognizing superior firepower, the defeated aughwar devoted themselves to fighting humans on behalf of their new Aelvian masters. However, many older aughwar were disturbed by the mad, dissolute Aelvians, and they were never quite as obedient or effective as their masters might have liked. Following the war, the remaining aughwar retreated into the west, possibly to regroup and plot another takeover attempt.
Aughwar society is a rigid theocratic/gender-biased caste system. Their deities are all warriors who have ascended to godhood, and they believe that only a life lived both properly and full of glory will allow them to be reincarnated as an even more competent warrior until their souls have become as perfect as possible, at which point they will become gods themselves. Females are second-class citizens, and the weak are mercilessly culled.
The basic unit of Aughwar society is the clutch, a group of siblings. All aughwar start life genderless, and the clutch members fight for dominance with the alpha becoming male and the rest developing as females who will support him. A male showing signs of weakness might revert to feminity, their society's greatest shame, and a female might 'ascend' to masculinity. Scholars believe Caranoctian aughwar are a radical splinter cult booted out of Xbalanque by a much more tolerant, progressive majority culture.
Kinowa
(actually a brushtail possum, but close enough)
Kinowa are the smallest intelligent race, cat-sized and lemur-like with colorful coats. Their communities are exclusively found high in the interwoven branches of the massive, ancient andavadoaka trees in eastern Caranoctia's temperate rainforests. Female kinowa are active and aggressive, males are placid, lazy homebodies. They construct a surprising array of intricate gadgets with their limited material, and travel from tree to tree in hang gliders. Kinowa religion is a little known, the only outward sign being the huge, humanoid faces they create on tree trunks by a combination of carving and infecting the tree with fungus that causes it to grow odd protrusions. Due to their rarity and their inaccessible homes, kinowa are little more than a rumor to most of Caranoctia's inhabitants.
Magic
image by phatpuppy on deviantart.com
Although all magic springs from the same source, each species accesses it in different ways. Although the methods used to craft spells are different, some basic principles remain the same.
All spells are composed of the same basic elements, and each element adds to or subtracts from the difficulty of performing the spell correctly. In general, the more specific, short-lasting and subtle a spell is, the easier it is to craft.
Spell elements are:
The focus - The person or item crafting the spell.
The action - what the spell is intended to accomplish.
The target - who or what the spell is designed to affect.
The effect - the intended result of the spell.
The conditions - complications such as duration, restrictions, requirements, strength and triggers.
Menthric
Menthric is natural, or instinctive, spell casting. "Menthric" can describe the magic or the person with it (for example, "Irari, the centaur menthric.")
Although some species exhibit menthric, in the case of intelligent beings an individual is born with peculiarities of mental processes that allow them to use magic, much in the same way that some are born with great artistic ability. Like artists, however, menthrics must practice and refine their natural skills. Menthric spells are often unreliable, causing effects not what the caster intended, or suddenly occurring unconsciously, or failing when the caster tries. Basically, the elements of the spell are being assembled subconsciously.
Menthrics are often the subject of suspicion and discrimination in human communities. Partly because of the danger an unskilled menthric represents, and partly because they are too-vivid reminders of what the Aelvians had done. There is also a dimension of jealousy - menthrics cannot teach their magic to the non-gifted. They often gather into colonies to learn and experiment together, or simply to take shelter from the outside world, although some are so set apart by their menthric they become loners. Blooded and other hybrids are often menthric as well, possibly due to their unstable genetics.
Arkoniel
"Arkoniel" is the Aelvian word for "craft". It refers to their traditional type of magic, which was developed without the scientific principles of cause and effect. The results are based on observation and deduction, and therefore are a mix of effective technique and completely unfounded superstition (imagine having to burn a scented candle every time you turn on your iPod, and not knowing which actually makes the music work, candle or pushing a button). Because of the lack of reason and experimentation in arkoniel, as an art it had stagnated, dooming the Aelvians to merely repeat what their ancestors had done with very little variation. Still, what they were able to accomplish was extremely effective. There is also an element of menthric in arkoniel, with some practitioners being naturally more gifted, and able to craft more effective spells than others using the exact same methods.
Arcanopathy
Arcanopathy is magic as a science. It has scientific laws, formulae, theories and experiments. Spells are created by the use of physical objects - potions, spoken spells, and so on. Arcanopathy was developed by humans, who had long ago given up the ability to naturally practice magic when they destroyed their insane gods. No natural gift is required to perform it. Anyone can use an arcanopathic spell providing they are properly trained, although new spells can only be created by highly trained and highly skilled dedicated professionals (in much the same way most of us can drive a car competently, but few could build one from scratch). Arcanopathic magic is ultimately practical, and is usually blended indistinguishably from technology, so that, for instance, a steam engine will run on the thermal output of a sunstone rather than burning coal. Trolls have recently begun applying the principles of arcanopathy to arkoniel, trying to distinguish between what was effective and what was mere bunk.
Satyr music
Relevant to the text, satyr magic is an interesting blend of menthric and arcanopathy.
Satyrs are born with an innate ability to harness magic by use of music instruments. This is typically done by playing their panpipes, but other instruments may be utilized. All satyrs are taught three basic spells, one to calm listeners, one to put listeners in a good mood, and one to cause an overriding sense of panic. Skilled players can elaborate on these basic spells and afflict listeners with terrifying hallucinations, send them into a coma-like sleep, or drive anyone within hearing range wild with lust (great for parties). Trolls seem naturally immune to the effects.
History
Statue commemorating fallen centaur soldiers
photo by linwoodstock on deviantart.com
The total true history of Caranoctia can be read here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1993272/
The Reader’s Digest version is this . . .
Seven hundred years ago, the human homeland of Iendenali was invaded by the Aelvians, a physically frail and mentally unstable species that nevertheless were extremely powerful magic-users. The Aelvians were fleeing the destruction of their homeland by some sort of magical mass conversion event. Without any magic of their own, the humans were handily defeated. Now slaves of the Aelvians, they were bred (and magically enhanced) for Aelvian use and amusement, like any other domesticated animal, while Aelvian society sank into decadence. As they were nearly immortal, the few young Aelvians had little chance to rise in the ranks of society, so 200 years ago when a vast, unexplored continent was discovered across the sea, they gathered their slaves and made haste to claim it as their own.
However, there were already several native intelligent creatures living on the vast continent of Caranoctia. The Aelvians saw them as delightful raw fodder to exploit for their magical art of life-sculpting. Their humans slaves, too mentally inflexible and constitutionally weak to survive the rigors of this new land, died in droves, prompting the Aelvians to try and create new servants (like trolls). This tended to fail spectacularly, as the trolls revolted, slaughtered the citizens of the Aelvian city Thorcasia, and slunk off into the wilderness to breed, hence the edict not to create any more fertile monsters.
Meanwhile, the humans who survived tended to be the “mutts”, unspecialized crossbreeds of various rarefied types with a great deal of hybrid vigor. Along with this, though, the humans redeveloped a sense of independence. When ships suddenly stopped coming from Iendenali, and anyone sent to investigate never returned, the small number of Aelvians in charge realized some disaster had claimed their distant kin, and they were the only ones left in charge. Their precarious position made them paranoid, and they cracked down hard on their humans and the others. This backfired rather spectacularly, as the humans rebelled and allied species joined them in a war to break free of Aelvian rule.
The war dragged on for almost 15 years, with the Aelvians created horrific war-beasts and recruiting loyalists and aughwar to battle for them, until everything came to a decisive end with the Sundering.
Some say it was a deliberate disaster caused by mad Aelvian magic users, some say it was accidental. Others say it was nature itself (or dragons!) acting to end the war. A gargantuan earthquake literally split the continent in half, widening the slow, gentle Sweetwater (Delildi) river into a raging whitewater channel. Almost half of the human population was killed, as well as countless of the nonhuman allies and antagonists, and all but a handful of Aelvians.
Life goes on. So this is the situation as it stands.
The eastern seaboard, where the colonies began, is controlled by the humans. They have been industriously recovering, aided by their ally species, and gradually trying to figure out how to rule themselves. At the moment their lands are divided in seven city-states called Territories, and elected officials govern as a parliament called the Septarchy. They face threats from leftover biological weapons (monsters), enemy species like the aughwar, shady operators species like the trolls, and Aelvian loyalists and splinter cults within their own ranks. The lands of the sylvan satyrs were in the pathway of destruction, and they're displaced persons struggling to make their way in the new world. During the war, valuable metal was mined in the cold northern mountains inhabited by the alpine satyrs, and the great strength of the tundra-dwelling frost giants made them extremely valuable laborers. While some giants still live as hunter-gatherer tribes, a considerable number now live in human cities (not to mention giants are basically human, so there has been a lot of crossbreeding).
On the border between east and west are the Marchlands, the Caranoctian equivalent of the Wild West, lawless and dangerous. It is here where the Aelvians’ leftover genetically modified beasts still roam, trashing local ecosystems and making life miserable for the intelligent species who make their homes there. The trolls are making a name for themselves, too. They’ve been sending out spies and moved back into the ruins of Thorcasia, seemingly be dedicating themselves to rebuilding it and relearning the old arcanopathic arts.
Across the Delildi river, the west is referred to as "the monsterlands". There are human cities, but many are controlled by loyalists (with a mad puppet Aelvian king installed by the ruling parties), and some are under the thumb of the aughwar. In Caranoctia's equivalent of the Great Plains, humans have enslaved centaurs and a resistance leader and prophet has built a secret city in the desert as a home base to organize the centaurs against them. The last few Aelvians, damaged by the hideous backlash of the Sundering's magic, can be found slinking in the back alleys of their once glorious cities, feral and insane.
Powers and Presences only knows what exists out there . . .
This is the bare minimum of what's important to know about the world the book is set in. I'll try to make all of this obvious in the text, but a little background never hurt anyone.
Geography
photo by Riktorsashen on deviantart.com
Caranoctia is a enormous continent vaguely resembling North America in size and shape, although there are several differences.
The eastern seaboard, heavily wooded and mountainous, is home to satyrs and most humans, and was the first area settled by the invasion from Iendenali. There are many deep bays and small islands off the coast, and the sea is deep, rough and cold.
The north is dominated by many cold little tundra islands, separated by bodies of salty water that freeze for most of the year, and alpine mountains dotted with caves, meadows in steep-sided valleys and still, deep tarns. Ymir herd their shaggy beasts here, and trade with mountain-dwelling centaurs and alpine satyrs.
The east coast is split from the western wilds by the Sunder, a treacherous, raging river that used to be the winding, gentle Sweetwater River (Delildi), once a trade route traversed by centaur barges and satyr fish boats, until Aelvian magic cataclysmically altered the land. Now the gentle mountaintops of much of the central-eastern range are islands in this chill inner sea.
As the Sunder flows south, it breaks up into many small, winding rivers, becoming shallower and slower and saturating the land, producing the bogs, marshes and swamps collectively known as the Guldurgu on the western side. These steamy, jungly lands are the home of swampie satyrs and trolls. On the eastern side, land coral rises from the sea and forms a small peninsula.
Across the Sunder, past the sharp new mountains created by the Aelvians, we enter the Sea of Grass, a vast, flat savannah bordered by scrub forests and populated mostly by centaurs. This patchwork of prairie, forest, mountain and canyon is greener than our West. There is little true desert, but there are pockets of heat and aridity, one of which is home to a secret colony. Further south, a population of humans still loyal to the Aelvians survives in the scrublands.
The Sea of Grass is bordered on the far west by steep mountains thrown up by an ancient comet impact. The actual crater, which the centaurs call the Hoofprint of the Creator, is filled with a freshwater inner sea featuring a large central island, home to an offshoot population of blooded and many strange native creatures.
Past the mountains, the land slopes gently, blanketed by temperate rainforest all the way to the foggy, rocky coast. The aughwar dominate this area. Where we have California, Caranoctia has a long, skinny tropical island.
The People of Caranoctia
*note Except for wonderful trolls and the things I drew, this is just art I’ve linked to because it looked about right.
Satyrs
art by Arnold Bocklin
A native species resembling a small human with horns, goatlike furry legs and cloven hooves. There are many races, tough little sylvans, the sturdy, wooly-coated alpines, the willowy, sleek sand-striders of the desert, the curly haired, curvy horned swampies, not to mention a few species that might have been driven into hiding or extinction by invading aughwar. Satyr society is based around the rare females (1:5 sex ratio). Each doe is in charge of a protectorate which she tends, aided by her 3-5 husbands and her children. They subtly encourage the growth of food plants and animals, instead of planting fields and penning up livestock, so that a human might walk through a satyr protectorate and never realize it is not an ordinary forest. At certain times of the year, or to resolve disputes, satyrs gather for feasts and perform a 'boontha dance' in which masked, costumed performers mimic and mock others' foibles, an amusing reminder to mend one's ways. This social pressure serves them in place of a judicial system. Satyrs believe the world was created by twelve godlike Powers, which then retreated from it, and that day-to-day issues can be resolved by consulting with the Presences, the spirits of ancestors and patron spirits of certain locals or animal and plant species. They believe in nine hells, not places of eternal punishment but of education, where a ghost is properly instructed before being returned once again to life to try and do better. Although satyrs sided with the humans in the war against the Aelvians and many now live in human cities, they remain a race apart.
Aelvians
art by Brian Froud
Aelvians resemble human children of unearthly beauty, with frail, delicate bodies, almond eyes, snub-nosed, pointed faces and pointed ears poking from masses of feathery hair. They are entirely without gender, and fond of dying themselves in wild patterns. Aelvians are descendants of humans who did not give up their magic. Like the children they resemble, Aelvians are greedy, emotional, quarrelsome, often heedlessly callous, willful and capricious. With a natural aptitude for magic, they alter the landscape and animals using their life-sculpting magic for their own pleasure, and bred their human slaves the way we would breed lap dogs. Aelvians are so long-lived they're effectively immortal, which along with their innate conservative nature caused a great deal of stagnation in their culture. Aelvians destroyed their own homeland in some type of magical cataclysm, at which point they invaded the human homeland and enslaved the non-magic using population. They eventually destroyed this land too (or at least, something mysterious happened) and came very close to destroying Caranoctia before being defeated in a horrific war shortly before this novel begins. The few Aelvians who survived the backlash of their final, destructive magical effort went irrevocably insane, and the species is surely on the way to extinction.
Humans
Pretty similar to what's sitting here typing this, and presumably what's reading this. Caranoctian humans are the descendants of people bred for centuries by the Aelvians for different tasks, much in the way we bred dogs. These refined breeds, however, had lost a lot of their natural vigor and in the wilds of the new land fared about as well as a chihuahua would if dropped on the African veldt. Aelvians tried many ways to strengthen the breed, including hybridizing them with other animals (see: Trolls) but what eventually worked was breeding variant types back together to create a basic, mongrel human. Still, occasionally there are throwbacks and sports, so Caranoctian humans have a slightly wider range of variation than we do. They also tend to be better looking and healthier than our type of human, as Aelvians naturally wanted their slaves to be easy on the eyes and to last as long as possible. There are always exceptions, of course.
Human technology at the time of the story is Victorian level in the few densely populated cities, but much lower in most areas, and in general is highly inconsistent, both due to the incorporation of 'magic' and the fact that Aelvians suppressed many inventions. There is a sketchy railway system, for example, and pistols are more common than swords, but the trains are like as not to be pulled by huge animals as steam engines, and the pistols are primitive flintlocks.
Human religion is a rather interesting form, as humans believe that their ancestors discovered the gods that had created them and their world had gone mad after being forced to destroy the first race of intelligent beings to punish them for trying to usurp the gods' place. The ancestors of modern people managed to destroy their insane gods, freeing themselves but in the process losing their ability to perform magic naturally.
Centaurs
art by George O. Barr
A native species resembling a pointy-eared human to the waist, blending into the shoulders of a horse in place of the horse's neck and head. There are several different types adapted to various climates: tall, lanky savannah centaurs, graceful little dune centaurs, stocky, hairy mountain centaurs, gentle giant coastal centaurs. Centaurs travel in large nomadic herds consisting mostly of related females, guarded by a herd stallion and his male underlings, which are chosen by the herdmothers every year during their Great Games. Centaurs are generally practical and hardheaded. Centaurs sided with humans against the Aelvians, although many preferred to remain neutral. Now centaurs can be found among humans, mostly young males who have opted out of the fight to become herd stallions. In the far west, a society of human loyalists have enslaved their local centaurs, imitating the worst habits of their Aelvian masters. Their original religion was that the world 'wants' to be orderly, and elements of chaos (drujes, or demons) work to unbalance it. Recently a new religion has sprung up among the enslaved southwestern centaurs, started by a messiah figure named Stonecrop who claims to speak for a voiceless goddess, Avoca. Escaping his tormenters, Stonecrop has founded Babylon, a large, mixed-race community in the central desert centered in an ancient abandoned structure.
Ymir
art by Robert Baleman
Also called frost giants, these are a species of human that arrived in antiquity and adapted to the cold northern tundra, where they herd their massive, shaggy beasts and hunt along the ice floes. Averaging 8 feet tall and 500 lbs, these hardy nomads are covered in a thick, soft pelt the color of spoiled cream and have boxy, flat-nosed, almost feline faces and pale eyes that stand out startlingly against their dark skin.
Halvers
art by Scott Davis
Since humans and the yeti-like Ymir are basically variations on the same theme, they are able to interbreed and produce fertile young. This happened more often than you might think, and the offspring often banded together and bred amongst themselves, so that now there is a small but thriving population of human-ymir hybrids, called halvers. Being crossbreeds there is naturally a range of types, but most halvers are tall and sturdily built, covered in a thin pelt of hair in all the normal colors of a human (blonde, brown, red, black), with flatter faces than ymir. Because of the insulating properties of all that hair, halvers are more common in northern areas.
The Blooded
art by Gerald Brom
One tactic attempted by Aelvians to strengthen the human line was to graft some of their own qualities into it. These 'blooded' individuals tended to be physically frail and mentally unstable, and while this strategy was abandoned, enough survived that a portion of the human population still evidences Aelvian traits. Most have innate magical gifts, but find them difficult to control. An group of blooded went west early on and founded a colony on Queldcha-ryn, an island on the Inner Sea. It has been closed to outsiders since, and no one knows if it still survives and what mysteries it might contain.
Trolls
art by KrisCrash (left and center) and Thumbclawz (right)
Created beings, trolls are a hybrid of human and a Caranoctian reptomammal called a goblin. Trolls are tall, angular and carnivorous, with a mixture of mammalian and reptilian features. Distinctive traits include the sharp spurs curving from their outer wrists and heels. On the forehead is what looks like a small, dark jewel; this is actually an organ for sensing infrared light. Trolls are isogamous, with a single sex but still requiring two individuals to reproduce.
Created to be physically hardy slaves, trolls are certainly tough but also extremely intelligent and cunning. They waited until their population was stable then slaughtered their masters and disappeared into the trackless swamps, where they've been breeding in secret ever since. Naturally arrogant, competitive, individualistic and practical, trolls are problem solvers and innovators, and have been the secret source of many new mechanical and magical inventions. Currently trolls are laying low and consolidating their power while spying on other species' activities. Very few outside the Guldurgu swamps have ever seen one, or at least, that's what people think - trolls can pass as ugly humans with a little disguise. A contingent of them have emerged from the swamps and taken over the ghost city of Thorcasia, once a center of life-sculpting and where they were created, and are attempting to learn more magic from its ruins.
Aughwar
drawing by me
Aughwar come from Xbalanque, the continent to the south of Caranoctia, a land of vast plains, steamy jungles and razor-sharp mountains. They are muscular, scaled bipedal pseudo-mammals, with an upper body like a gorilla's, lower limbs and tail resembling a predatory dinosaur, taloned hands and faces like the skull of a sabertoothed cat.
They invaded Caranoctia some 80 years ago, landing on the west coast. They conquered the coastal areas, slaughtering the native centaurs and satyrs, but were halted in their conquest by a mixed group of blooded and Aelvians. Recognizing superior firepower, the defeated aughwar devoted themselves to fighting humans on behalf of their new Aelvian masters. However, many older aughwar were disturbed by the mad, dissolute Aelvians, and they were never quite as obedient or effective as their masters might have liked. Following the war, the remaining aughwar retreated into the west, possibly to regroup and plot another takeover attempt.
Aughwar society is a rigid theocratic/gender-biased caste system. Their deities are all warriors who have ascended to godhood, and they believe that only a life lived both properly and full of glory will allow them to be reincarnated as an even more competent warrior until their souls have become as perfect as possible, at which point they will become gods themselves. Females are second-class citizens, and the weak are mercilessly culled.
The basic unit of Aughwar society is the clutch, a group of siblings. All aughwar start life genderless, and the clutch members fight for dominance with the alpha becoming male and the rest developing as females who will support him. A male showing signs of weakness might revert to feminity, their society's greatest shame, and a female might 'ascend' to masculinity. Scholars believe Caranoctian aughwar are a radical splinter cult booted out of Xbalanque by a much more tolerant, progressive majority culture.
Kinowa
(actually a brushtail possum, but close enough)
Kinowa are the smallest intelligent race, cat-sized and lemur-like with colorful coats. Their communities are exclusively found high in the interwoven branches of the massive, ancient andavadoaka trees in eastern Caranoctia's temperate rainforests. Female kinowa are active and aggressive, males are placid, lazy homebodies. They construct a surprising array of intricate gadgets with their limited material, and travel from tree to tree in hang gliders. Kinowa religion is a little known, the only outward sign being the huge, humanoid faces they create on tree trunks by a combination of carving and infecting the tree with fungus that causes it to grow odd protrusions. Due to their rarity and their inaccessible homes, kinowa are little more than a rumor to most of Caranoctia's inhabitants.
Magic
image by phatpuppy on deviantart.com
Although all magic springs from the same source, each species accesses it in different ways. Although the methods used to craft spells are different, some basic principles remain the same.
All spells are composed of the same basic elements, and each element adds to or subtracts from the difficulty of performing the spell correctly. In general, the more specific, short-lasting and subtle a spell is, the easier it is to craft.
Spell elements are:
The focus - The person or item crafting the spell.
The action - what the spell is intended to accomplish.
The target - who or what the spell is designed to affect.
The effect - the intended result of the spell.
The conditions - complications such as duration, restrictions, requirements, strength and triggers.
Menthric
Menthric is natural, or instinctive, spell casting. "Menthric" can describe the magic or the person with it (for example, "Irari, the centaur menthric.")
Although some species exhibit menthric, in the case of intelligent beings an individual is born with peculiarities of mental processes that allow them to use magic, much in the same way that some are born with great artistic ability. Like artists, however, menthrics must practice and refine their natural skills. Menthric spells are often unreliable, causing effects not what the caster intended, or suddenly occurring unconsciously, or failing when the caster tries. Basically, the elements of the spell are being assembled subconsciously.
Menthrics are often the subject of suspicion and discrimination in human communities. Partly because of the danger an unskilled menthric represents, and partly because they are too-vivid reminders of what the Aelvians had done. There is also a dimension of jealousy - menthrics cannot teach their magic to the non-gifted. They often gather into colonies to learn and experiment together, or simply to take shelter from the outside world, although some are so set apart by their menthric they become loners. Blooded and other hybrids are often menthric as well, possibly due to their unstable genetics.
Arkoniel
"Arkoniel" is the Aelvian word for "craft". It refers to their traditional type of magic, which was developed without the scientific principles of cause and effect. The results are based on observation and deduction, and therefore are a mix of effective technique and completely unfounded superstition (imagine having to burn a scented candle every time you turn on your iPod, and not knowing which actually makes the music work, candle or pushing a button). Because of the lack of reason and experimentation in arkoniel, as an art it had stagnated, dooming the Aelvians to merely repeat what their ancestors had done with very little variation. Still, what they were able to accomplish was extremely effective. There is also an element of menthric in arkoniel, with some practitioners being naturally more gifted, and able to craft more effective spells than others using the exact same methods.
Arcanopathy
Arcanopathy is magic as a science. It has scientific laws, formulae, theories and experiments. Spells are created by the use of physical objects - potions, spoken spells, and so on. Arcanopathy was developed by humans, who had long ago given up the ability to naturally practice magic when they destroyed their insane gods. No natural gift is required to perform it. Anyone can use an arcanopathic spell providing they are properly trained, although new spells can only be created by highly trained and highly skilled dedicated professionals (in much the same way most of us can drive a car competently, but few could build one from scratch). Arcanopathic magic is ultimately practical, and is usually blended indistinguishably from technology, so that, for instance, a steam engine will run on the thermal output of a sunstone rather than burning coal. Trolls have recently begun applying the principles of arcanopathy to arkoniel, trying to distinguish between what was effective and what was mere bunk.
Satyr music
Relevant to the text, satyr magic is an interesting blend of menthric and arcanopathy.
Satyrs are born with an innate ability to harness magic by use of music instruments. This is typically done by playing their panpipes, but other instruments may be utilized. All satyrs are taught three basic spells, one to calm listeners, one to put listeners in a good mood, and one to cause an overriding sense of panic. Skilled players can elaborate on these basic spells and afflict listeners with terrifying hallucinations, send them into a coma-like sleep, or drive anyone within hearing range wild with lust (great for parties). Trolls seem naturally immune to the effects.
History
Statue commemorating fallen centaur soldiers
photo by linwoodstock on deviantart.com
The total true history of Caranoctia can be read here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1993272/
The Reader’s Digest version is this . . .
Seven hundred years ago, the human homeland of Iendenali was invaded by the Aelvians, a physically frail and mentally unstable species that nevertheless were extremely powerful magic-users. The Aelvians were fleeing the destruction of their homeland by some sort of magical mass conversion event. Without any magic of their own, the humans were handily defeated. Now slaves of the Aelvians, they were bred (and magically enhanced) for Aelvian use and amusement, like any other domesticated animal, while Aelvian society sank into decadence. As they were nearly immortal, the few young Aelvians had little chance to rise in the ranks of society, so 200 years ago when a vast, unexplored continent was discovered across the sea, they gathered their slaves and made haste to claim it as their own.
However, there were already several native intelligent creatures living on the vast continent of Caranoctia. The Aelvians saw them as delightful raw fodder to exploit for their magical art of life-sculpting. Their humans slaves, too mentally inflexible and constitutionally weak to survive the rigors of this new land, died in droves, prompting the Aelvians to try and create new servants (like trolls). This tended to fail spectacularly, as the trolls revolted, slaughtered the citizens of the Aelvian city Thorcasia, and slunk off into the wilderness to breed, hence the edict not to create any more fertile monsters.
Meanwhile, the humans who survived tended to be the “mutts”, unspecialized crossbreeds of various rarefied types with a great deal of hybrid vigor. Along with this, though, the humans redeveloped a sense of independence. When ships suddenly stopped coming from Iendenali, and anyone sent to investigate never returned, the small number of Aelvians in charge realized some disaster had claimed their distant kin, and they were the only ones left in charge. Their precarious position made them paranoid, and they cracked down hard on their humans and the others. This backfired rather spectacularly, as the humans rebelled and allied species joined them in a war to break free of Aelvian rule.
The war dragged on for almost 15 years, with the Aelvians created horrific war-beasts and recruiting loyalists and aughwar to battle for them, until everything came to a decisive end with the Sundering.
Some say it was a deliberate disaster caused by mad Aelvian magic users, some say it was accidental. Others say it was nature itself (or dragons!) acting to end the war. A gargantuan earthquake literally split the continent in half, widening the slow, gentle Sweetwater (Delildi) river into a raging whitewater channel. Almost half of the human population was killed, as well as countless of the nonhuman allies and antagonists, and all but a handful of Aelvians.
Life goes on. So this is the situation as it stands.
The eastern seaboard, where the colonies began, is controlled by the humans. They have been industriously recovering, aided by their ally species, and gradually trying to figure out how to rule themselves. At the moment their lands are divided in seven city-states called Territories, and elected officials govern as a parliament called the Septarchy. They face threats from leftover biological weapons (monsters), enemy species like the aughwar, shady operators species like the trolls, and Aelvian loyalists and splinter cults within their own ranks. The lands of the sylvan satyrs were in the pathway of destruction, and they're displaced persons struggling to make their way in the new world. During the war, valuable metal was mined in the cold northern mountains inhabited by the alpine satyrs, and the great strength of the tundra-dwelling frost giants made them extremely valuable laborers. While some giants still live as hunter-gatherer tribes, a considerable number now live in human cities (not to mention giants are basically human, so there has been a lot of crossbreeding).
On the border between east and west are the Marchlands, the Caranoctian equivalent of the Wild West, lawless and dangerous. It is here where the Aelvians’ leftover genetically modified beasts still roam, trashing local ecosystems and making life miserable for the intelligent species who make their homes there. The trolls are making a name for themselves, too. They’ve been sending out spies and moved back into the ruins of Thorcasia, seemingly be dedicating themselves to rebuilding it and relearning the old arcanopathic arts.
Across the Delildi river, the west is referred to as "the monsterlands". There are human cities, but many are controlled by loyalists (with a mad puppet Aelvian king installed by the ruling parties), and some are under the thumb of the aughwar. In Caranoctia's equivalent of the Great Plains, humans have enslaved centaurs and a resistance leader and prophet has built a secret city in the desert as a home base to organize the centaurs against them. The last few Aelvians, damaged by the hideous backlash of the Sundering's magic, can be found slinking in the back alleys of their once glorious cities, feral and insane.
Powers and Presences only knows what exists out there . . .