miragemodage | Setting

SETTING

Newase

The world of Newase consists of one large landmass and six floating islands beneath an eternally-shining sun at the peak of the sky. Past the boundaries of the seven islands, blue sea and sky stretch out endlessly into the distance.

Everything in the world, animal or plant or mineral or otherwise, has a spirit known as an ogre, a vital component of its existence. Though most ogre are too small or too insignificant to be seen normally, some do appear as a matter of course if their physical part is substantial enough. Massive ogre swim through the sea in its currents, possibly all in service of one immense beast that represents the ocean as a whole; a known ogre of incredible size drifts about the sky it embodies. Mountains have their own spirits, possibly giving rise to tales of dragons on peaks, or horrors in the deep. Energy, too, has its spiritual counterpart, the animus field. Where known and explicable physics fail, the mystical and spiritual dominate.

Metta

The greatest of islands, the one on which all known people dwell and the only one a Mirage has ever stepped foot on, Metta is larger than the six floating put together twice over -- indeed, many Mirages would be quicker to call it a continent than an island. For all its efforts, humankind has touched barely a fraction of its breadth with civilization. Vast plains of verdant grass lead to sprawling forests that cross countless miles of terrain. The heart of the island swells inexorably upwards in almost all places, till at the very center it tangles into a twisted spiral of unnaturally lifted land that remind those who see it how the rules of nature do not always apply in Newase. Rather than by compass directions, the inhabitants of Metta give directions by the central highlands: towards or away, and current- or anticurrentwise, relating to the clockwise water current around the island.

Metta is simply crawling with creatures, ranging from the tiny and all but harmless shnids to colossal gigarexes and placid blanickes. Past civilized areas, adventurers takes their lives in their own hands whether they try to cut through the creatures great and small, or simply sneak past them to view the sights or seek out valuable resources. But wealth lurks in the forest, jungles, and highlands of Metta in the form of rare plants, curious minerals, or even overgrown ruins that offer tantalizing peeks into a past where the island was more inhabited than current days. Plenty of people try to make their living at exploration, and many Mirages find themselves particularly suited to the work.

Travel on Metta is either close and local, or wide-ranging; few middle-grounds exist. Besides airships, which are generally confined to the governments and militaries, average citizens can cross the island on unique vehicles called ogred trains. Skilled spiritual-engineers craft beautiful trains from carefully machined parts and forge rails that practically glisten with purpose, and so all the ogre of the rail system are not only appeased but eager to assist the physical realm. This unique alliance eliminates many of the problems associated with the speed the rail reaches. Travelers can cross from one city to another in at most three hours, cheaply and inexpensively. Tacticians and philosophers debate whether this convenience has prevented more wars than it had caused, but no one can deny its utility. Sea travel runs exclusively currentwise, and as such is the province almost entirely of traders, who run great circuits around the island seeking profit at every stop.

Politically, Metta consists of eight city-states -- each of them a centralized large city surrounded by as much land as its populace can claim and defend.

Pumonia

The Great Green Sea of Metta, Heaven on Newase, or any other proud nickname its citizens might have for it -- call it what you will, Pumonia is as close to paradise as the island knows. In its isolated corner of the map, Pumonia spreads its reach far wider than any other city, thanks in large part to the unassuming and generally weaker monsters and creatures that its farmers and ranchers must compete with for space. As a consequence, Pumonia is an agricultural powerhouse which gladly trades food and drink of all sorts across the island in exchange for tools, metals and ores, and finished goods which it otherwise lacks.

Pumonia has almost no industrial base, and as a consequence is the most pastoral and provincial of towns -- it doesn't have a single building taller than three stories except for its windmills. Its people are at once easygoing and workaholics, the type who need to be constantly busy but possess an immense love of life and their activities within it.

In recent years, Pumonia has become gradually but perniciously destabilized as Tyrus takes every opportunity to lure away its citizens. Though most are content to stay where they are, enough young people have enough ambition to chase dreams (and enough sense to avoid Capilong) that this valuable demographic is actually shrinking. Holes are slowly appearing in the quilt of agriculture that lays over the land, and at present, no one seems willing to acknowledge the problem, let alone act on it.

The Mirage Welcome Home: For reasons unknown, every Mirage that comes to Newase appears somewhere within the bounds of Pumonia, and eventually almost all of them find their way to the central city in search of answers or information. The Mirage Welcome Home (more like a campus, really) arose generations ago to handle these wayward drifters. Mirages who come here receive a basic education in Metta's geography and politics, food and board until they can get on their feet and find work, and often training in the Techs and Unleashes they don't quite understand. Skilled counselors help Mirages suffering from roiling emotions at their new circumstances come to terms with their lives and offer support to those in need.

The Home relies extensively on donations by those Mirages who they've helped. Since Mirages often prove to be very competent and capable and often quite decent as well, this has served them excellently over time.

Duruning

One of the two great ocean powers of Metta, Duruning relies heavily on the sea for its survival. Though its relatively narrow sliver of land has fierce monsters and creatures of various sorts, it blessedly had few dangerous aquatic enemies to contend with. The city abuts the ocean directly, with a great port and harbor stretching across miles of coast, from which ships and boats of all size come and go constantly as they ply the current and the local waters for their livelihoods.

Residents of Duruning tend to be hard individuals, their lives defines by the monsters that test the walls of their city and few settlements and their constant battle with the sea for life. One of the more militaristic societies of Metta, Duruning can repurpose its fleets for war at a moment's notice. Some factions within the city wait constantly for the slightest slip in Tyrus, their currentward neighbor; should that day come, the fleets of Duruning might stream south to take advantage.

The Great Lighthouse: The greatest landmark of Duruning is the Great Lighthouse, which towers over the harbor as it casts radiant beams out to sea. In storm or night, the Great Lighthouse always guides ships back home. More than just a convenience, the lighthouse is a vital necessity, allowing ships to catch more fish for longer and feed the burgeoning population.

Hell: The large island currentward of Duruning, Hell is named for the creatures that inhabit it: an awesome panoply of carnage and power, the weakest herbivore of which is a match for some of the mightiest highland predators of main Metta. No one has ever managed to penetrate its depths, and few can even stand on the island for more than a few minutes before opportunistic predators push them into retreat. Hell is the largest reason Duruning has not been able to ever move effectively against Tyrus -- the treacherous shoals between Hell and the mainland are difficult to navigate at best, but establishing a base on Hell is utterly impossible.

Capilong

Trade City Capilong sits at the nexus of most sonic rail lines through Metta; the southern cities have direct routes, but much of Blejavek's output and all of Pumonia's pass through its walls on its way to the eventual destination. Unlike most other cities which grew up over time, Capilong was deliberately founded to exploit its location.

The youngest of the cities, Capilong is viewed as the audacious man's dream: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Capilong encourages this viewpoint; one of its very few exports is entertainment, in the form of traveling troupes and musicians and performers who provide spectacle and drama for the other cities. They don't need to lie, necessarily, to make Capilong look amazing, since many of its wealthiest citizens did indeed arrive only with the clothes on their back and a willingness to work hard and smart that they parlayed into trade or mercantile success. These stories conveniently omit the many, many more fools who Capilong ground up and spit out, taking everything they had along the way. The city is harsh, opportunistic, and seemingly without empathy, but a place where success is respected and sincere camaraderie exists among its classes, if not between.

Besides taxation and trade manipulation, Capilong maintains the sonic rails -- which may be the only reason the other cities have not banded together to grind the place to powder. No one can deny the value of that service, and so Capilong's traders and engineers are tolerated but never particularly welcomed throughout the rest of Metta.

The Rail Exchange: One of the most impressive facilities on Metta, the Rail Exchange is the hub of Capilong and rail traffic both. Sonic trains that roll into the facility are weighed, surveyed, analyzed, and assessed by teams of shockingly fast and thorough inspectors, who then assess the appropriate taxes and fees while the train is guided through the complex interlocks onto the second leg of its journey. The Rail Exchange keeps traffic flowing -- and at the same time, keeps Capilong wealthy.

Tyrus

The Citadel on the Sea, Tyrus owes much of its character as a city to Duruning -- specifically the constant danger of assault by Duruning's sea raiders, which won't hesitate to strike should Tyrus's defense lapse. From its humble beginnings, Tyrus has grown into a great walled city with advanced animus weaponry trained on the sea, while its disciplined soldiers resolutely push back the monsters of the plains into the low and gradual rise of the highlands.

Tyrus is the most rapidly developing city on Metta thanks to its culture and discipline. Having developed to the point where its central fortress is all but unassailable and its army can handle most reasonable challenges, Tyrus is expanding outwards faster than its population can settle behind its own front lines. To fill the gaps and farm the land it is claiming, Tyrus aggressively lures citizens from other cities, especially Pumonia, with promises of light taxes and all the land they can claim. New recruits swell the city and expand outwards into the fertile farmland. Their different attitudes almost invariably conflict with native Tyrusborn discipline and mentality, and the growing culture gap is rapidly becoming a problem the leaders of Tyrus either don't know or don't care about.

Tyrus prospers primarily through its mercenary services, both by providing it directly and administering it for others. Small posts of Tyrus soldiers reside in each city, coordinating bounty boards and hiring for mercenary endeavors, licensing and employing freelancers, and maintaining records of completion and payment. Cities also hire whole platoons or regiments of Tyrus soldiers to guard against or battle fierce creatures, including some of the worst Released and Unleashed. Furthermore, Tyrus conducts regular Blade recruitment drives and maintains the Master Registry.

Tyrus is the most popular city for Mirages, as so many of them are capable adventurers and interested in the services Tyrus provides.

The Animus Nexus: A massive crystal which houses immense quantities of unpurposed animus energy, the Nexus powers Tyrus and its defenses. More than once, others have questioned if Tyrus really needs all that energy. Tyrus's representatives never seem to hear this question...

Asail

Asail exists for one reason: excavation of Mechs. Though buried or sunken Mechs have been found here or there across Metta, Asail seems to have the bulk of them offshore. Like a gold rush, word of this wealth eventually spread over time, and the aspiring excavators and salvagers of Metta ended up in a sprawling and haphazard community that to this day seems unwilling to admit that it is one of the main cities of the island.

Asail has existed long enough that it resembles any other city in its makeup, with laborers and commonfolk, a middle-class of traders and merchants and those with valuable skills, and atop it all the scientists and financiers of the MECHanists. The city has next to no formal government, though -- law and order persist half through local justice and social pressure and half through the MECHanists reluctantly bestirring themselves from their work long enough to tell people to levy this tax or forbid this act. One could correctly call the MECHanists the government of Asail, but they refuse to take the position openly and hate every intervention they have to make.

What really keeps Asail going is the fact that its people are all, for the most part, incredibly decent sorts who tolerate little nonsense or abuse from anyone trying to live there. The pacifist leanings of the MECHanists and their constant work with weapons of war that most want to repurpose for peaceful use leave them all willing to extend tolerance and empathy to their fellow man. 'Laws' basically boil down to, 'don't hurt other people' -- which sounds like paradise, but does result in most processes being very slow and convoluted as people work to arrive at a true understanding of situations ranging from relationships to purchases to property. As a consequence, Asail rarely seems to accomplish ANYthing -- but the most visible thing they accomplish, the excavation of a few Mechs each year, pays for all.

Asail is a city built on the use of Mechs, and as a consequence, spreads out over miles of terrain. Mechs are not even an uncommon sight here -- the casual visitor could easily find one strolling down the street on a delivery mission or simply being put through its paces for the benefit of research. Strangely enough, Asail almost seems technologically backwards in every other way. Its inhabitants put all their focus into Mechs, not other creations.

The MECHanist Institute: The MECHanists love Mechs, as anyone can tell by their pedantic use of capitalization to emphasize that MECH is in fact an acronym, and their academy is of course based in the most Mech-oriented city in Metta. The Institute is a sprawling campus that mixes warehouses with classrooms and laboratories, all devoted to understanding Mechs. The MECHanists handle Mech training and licensing, ruthlessly control the distribution of any of Asail's salvage, and provide Mech services to a standard (and expense!) unmatched by any other city.

Blejavek

Undisputed industrial capital of Metta, Blejavek also symbolizes human survival and defiance. Nestled up against the Capstone Mountains, Blejavek thrives in the hostile terrain of the highlands and in spite of the dangers that exist in a harsh environment, dangerous monsters, and terrible growing conditions. The reward is well worth it: Blejavek extracts, processes, and refines more metal ore than every other city put together. Raw material and finished goods stream out of the city in bulk, in exchange for food from Pumonia, mercenaries from Tyrus, Mechs from Asail, and wood from Weyring. Factories pump steam and smoke into the sky, where a curious flock of ogre perpetually hover, working some process on those industrial byproducts.

Blejavek's people are prideful and tend towards arrogance, but a surprising vein of intellectualism runs through the town. Its people understand more about ogre than any other, and research the beings as a side-branch of their industrialization. On good terms with most of its allies, Blejavek reserves a special and one-sided hatred for Capilong, who they view as exploiting and profiting off their own hard work without contribution. The city is desperate for an alternative to the sonic rail, and as such is in constant negotiation to acquire more Mechs or more ogre appeasements that can provide them with a way to break Capilong's effective monopoly on trading.

A harsh city, Blejavek is more stone than dirt and more storm than fair skies.

The Capstone Mine: A shaft sunk deep into the ground, from which the metallic and mineral wealth of the island flows, the Capstone Mine is constantly deepening, widening, and advancing in technique.

Kundaris

Kundaris is unique in Metta, both in construction, by populace and by being old. Carved out of the side of the great volcano Tyrajek, the city is far larger than its inhabitants could ever ask for. All its residents fit within the first three layers of buildings honed out of the volcanic mountain stone, leaving dozens more stretching up to the lip of the volcano itself.

Humans are a minority here. Three other species share this city as their one bastion of great civilization on the island: the birdlike Ryven, the lizardlike Drychon, and the large sphere with legs-like Gomeno. Their surprisingly peaceful coexistence results in a thriving and rich community here, with the nearby plains almost shockingly fertile and plenty of commodities such as obsidian, granite, and other igneous resources to trade and build from. The extremely laissez-faire government barely bestirs itself most day, and its main purpose seems to be to dump work on whoever fails to escape being voted into various positions of power. Visitors from other races who show up thinking this lax government is easy to exploit inevitably get taken for a ride by the Gomeno or fall in love with the idyllic lifestyle of Kundaris, and the city has many human residents who find it to be domestic bliss. The city is a surprisingly popular retirement location.

Tyrajek: The volcano Tyrajek has been dormant for ages -- because, according to Ryven legend, a great swordsbird of yore killed its ogre and rendered it lifeless. These days, the towering mountain seems no different from any peak of the Capstones save for the city crawling up its side, and only the presence of so much igneous rock nearby proves the Ryven didn't just make up the story about an ordinary mountain from the start.

Weyring

The second sea power of Newase, Weyring is also greatest supplier of lumber and wood to the island. Weyring is an oddity among the city-states -- rather than a circle of influence around the city proper, Weyring's influence is confined to its own walls and numerous denser settlements on the coast of its own smaller island. Aside from roads scrupulously patrolled by Weyring's soldiers, augmented by standing troops from Tyrus, the forest is simply too harsh to claim much of. Towering ancient trees hide vicious monsters and creatures that see man as nothing more than a snack, so Weyring claims claims only the great central clearing and the Forest Spring that bubbles to the surface there, while its people log from the outside in.

Weyring's ships sail deeper into uncharted waters than Duruning even thinks is possible, keeping its people supplied not just with fish but more curious creatures from the depths as well. In recent times, findings of salvage and machine parts in nets has hinted that a deposit of Mechs and ancient machinery that would dwarf even Asail's might possibly lurk in the deepest parts of the ocean, but only luck and patience can elicit an occasional reward the way current technology and development now stands. Weyring's leaders are more interested in the logging that assures continuing survival than in pouring resources into what may just be a pipe dream.

The people of Weyring are friendly, outgoing, and amazingly cynical. The forest has taught them to expect that anything can and will go wrong, so they bring a cheerful pessimism wherever they go. Utterly uninterested in conflict or even diplomacy, the only thing that keeps Weyring from full isolationism is the exchange of goods and services.

The Forest Spring: This great natural pond has a constant upflow of cold, clear water which flows from its banks in a broad, slow river. The entire populace of Weyring proper draws from this spring without appreciably diminishing its flow. Weyring is constantly on the lookout for the ogre responsible for this phenomenon, as it appears to be unique in all of Newase, but thus far it has never been spotted.