Glorious Purifiers [GLO]

[Rocket Relm]

 

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Glorious Purifiers

Moonsoul Mountains [Region 44]

History

For centuries, the barren lands lay a completely uncivilized mess where magic was real, monsters were terrifying, and anybody who was sane did not dare step inside. Leviathans towered over cities, using the empty shells of metal as nests for the city block sized eggs of their young. The auroras flow not just above the lands, but through them like rivers. Oblique opal beasts eclipse the moon that eclipses the sky. A land completely and utterly abandoned by humanity.

One day, contact to the outside was made from this land. A technology had been activated, a simple radio call. Primitive by the standards of those high above, even by the standards to which they should talk, but none of the monsters should have been able to form eloquent words. The ... people? Of this forgotten land, they wanted to receive supplies from the empire. Wanted to do diplomacy. And so the empire told them that they needed delegate to even begin negotiations. A proper delegate, one who could prove there was a sufficient community in this dead zone to give credence.

A delegate which these lands provided.

And so it was that the Shrine managed to talk its way into being a state. Again, if they are to be believed. All because these strange lands did manage to provide a human, from a ruling class of humans. A ruling class that had, over some combination of fractional and whole numbers of rotations of Sansar, learned to tame the foreign monsters. Had learned to go from little pockets of humanity, keeping themselves and their traditions alive, to the dominant force within the region, albeit still only numbering in the dozens. These mystical techniques weren't able to be duplicated towards any other problems of the empire, but they were probably just doing it wrong.

Geography

Mountains and plains. Filled with phenomena that wax by the year, but are typically a barren empty lands. Cold comparatively, bitter, heavy winds. High places to go to to find the few remnants of civilization, with the low grounds dominated utterly by strange beasts which are, in turn, dominated by the few denizens that live in cohabitation.

The lands are littered with the last remnants of a dead civilization, from the most recent war skyscrapers overgrown with plants make up what would be forests, roads upturned and carved into the rivers, a whole set of hills and valleys peppering the lands themselves.

Some small portions of the mountains are crafted with a new civilization, large sets of stairs far as the eye can see, structures with oblique purposes, whose only purpose is to keep things at bay. To all appearances, these lands still seem like foreign wastes dominated by things better described by radiation poisoning shown by the giant craters littering the region.

People

Humans are the recessive gene that has somehow taken hold over the domination of beasts that outnumber and outsize them a thousandfold. In ye olden earth times they appear to be something between Asian and Irish, and they live inside shrines with the rest of civilization forgotten. They have a very long lifespan compared to normal humans, through a combination of genetic engineering in the past and magic rituals today. If their rumors and propaganda are to be believed, their eldest in communication predate the last apocalypse. They're certainly different in some aspects from other instances of humanity that they keep close to the chest.

Especially as contact to wider worlds grew, these people started referring to themselves more and more as Moonmen.

Practicing quiet arts with a tradition of martial arts, banishment, and demon usage, they dot the different mountains in a similar way as people would dot islands. In the past the humans have communicated to each other through rare pilgrimages and magical signals of light far across the distance, but the recent advent of ships and technology have made intercontact much easier.

The lands do not sustain a high population, but they do not need much food. They eat extravagantly through magical means, but none of it provides more than entertainment. They have customs and magics foreign to outsiders, but are still very new to the comparatively high technology of the rest of the world.

Moonmen Biology

Each Moonman is a human, technically, but they cannot reproduce traditionally. Reproduction of the typical sense creates monsters, deformed or otherwise, sometimes cute pets. It's an actual grabbag when it happens, and even cross pollination with other humans will at most result in an actual human being born. Whether this is the result of mutations from the war, something much older, or enough modifications and iterations that their bodies can no longer properly biologically replicate is in the air. The actual birth of a new Moonman is a far more intricate and derived process, where in a core is blessed and written in, the heart which serves as the beating soul of that person forever more.

Using these souls, the Moonmen can transcend their bodies into other forms, piloting great leviathans, managing their whole mountain sentrytops. But always their core is, at birth, bound to a humanoid shell of what they once had, so long ago. The core itself is a shell of calligraphy, magically empowering their bodies, giving them the ability to astrally project 'hands' as part of their will, among many other feats, and resembles a stone wrapped in a hundred seals or more. This blessing is done deliberately and takes significant investment during a traditional pregnancy, morphing whatever is developing inside into something more. Usually by binding the spirits and outside world in some shape or form into the being, but sometimes more personal, and sometimes stranger.

Each Moonsoul can learn all of magic, but each one has unique affinities. Affinities themselves can be aligned, and often correlate to words. Though given words and carvings are often massive approximations and simplifications of their raw identity, and rarely does one presume a true designation can be given.

Government

The government, fitting for a small group of humans, is also small. The religion is inextricably tied to the beliefs and localities, and fitting for a people that time has marched on and forgotten about, are largely disorganized but unified by traditions and shared experience.

In recent times coordination has improved, and the culture of humility and fortitude has let them organize themselves into a method that the rulers from high suggest is best. A royal succession. Specifically one that will become bound to not any of the people currently ruling or making decisions, but passed on to a new child. One imbued with an intelligence far beyond her years, and who may start the makings of a dynasty.

There isn't much delegation or structure beyond communal unity and a willingness to choose, but each small shrine does have its own head, and they roughly vote on things. The idea of decisions that impact them all, rather than on a singular matter though, is pretty novel.

Religion

Hundred Hands Of The Soul

One can work with the will of two, if they try hard enough. One can work with the will of two hundred, if they apply their spirit properly. One can command the spirit of the universe, if they achieve enlightenment. Sets of philosophies encouraging deep study and meditation, spiritual travel, and a steady calm are professed, and with them each person is raised in the tradition of a miko, gaining powers and being taught powerful arts.

Contrary to what most might believe of a religion like this, indulgence and hedonism is quite encouraged with the society. Magic and makeup can help people achieve their ideal selves, some abandon the appearance of humanity altogether. Rumors hold that the people have long since ceased being human, and simply hold the masks of apes as mementos of their past.

Live life with discipline, and make sure you love every second of it.

Majority Religion: Hundred Hands Of The Soul
Minority Religion:
Coedd
Possibly some others?

 

Coedd Blurb

Kythia writeup goes here

 

 

Moonmen Magic: Arcane Axioms

While the capacity to manipulate all manner of spells is as well known as breathing to the ingrained instincts written on the literal heart of each of their kind, the details of how they manipulate magic are laid out here (in brief).

First, the symbolism of symbols. Typically through signs meant to hold magic pulled from the air, and signs meant to shape it into form, paper wards or carved symbols can take the form of scrolls casting simple to complicated manner into life. From 'create this fire' to 'animate this animal into a makeshift tractor' to 'repel all invaders of a kind' to 'reincarnate an ancient undead deity as a small child' to 'purify this cache of water', the building blocks are there. Often times it takes research and very specific science to put the physics of magic to use, but catalogues are many many of the common uses. Often the written word is meant to be a battery to pull in the ambient energies of the outside world, hold it in place, let you shape it to cast the magical effects.

Secondly, the Moonmen themselves. Made up of some hundreds of curled up nested balls of 'language', holding their bodies together which otherwise cannot sustain themselves, their genetics having fallen too far to hold up normally. Serving as their souls, making them wellsprings. Dance and ritual and martial arts and physical movement help *tap into* the energy within their own bodies, motions both small like finger twirling to large like cartwheels depending on personal preference. Much more than most living creatures, they can hold and shape spells, and usually have engrained or encarved specific flicks of writing to channel powers, like the monk conjuring a hundred hands to pull collapsed rubble off of puppies after a natural disaster.

The other bit is the binding of spirits and sentience. Things have a natural will they follow, and especially the large but mostly mindless creatures can be made more mindless and more like constructs. Similarily, most things are alive in some sense. The winds, the mountains, even things from dreams and other worlds. Pulling fabrics from those things, sometimes in whole, sometimes in part, one can impart them into something. One can make a kaiju corpse, dead and empty, flow like the river, and go where it is directed with a giant payload on board. They are much more powerful alive, but much more unwieldly, and so far no realistic cast of long term domestication has been successful.

This is also in part how their reproduction works. Pulling in concepts and 'intelligence' from other sources, imparting their knowledge, and also the knowledge of archives and written words (not in the magical sense, but in the literal sense of pulling apart books and placing the knowledge inside). The consciousnesses varying from fully aware to barely flickering with awareness are congealed into a singular 'brain'. With the right magics it can even allow their minds to inhabit external shell bodies, through a much easier process of making a receiver for their consciousness in whatever object or being is currently present.



 

Resource: Unblemished Wreckage (Industrial Machinery, Planetary Vehicles)

For all that the monsters have stomped over every piece of this land a dozen times over, it is mostly the surface covered by dirt and concrete and whatever those ancient materials are that has been upended. There is a shocking amount remaining underneath, all manner of metals and gizmos and whats its that seem to serve purposes of times long forgotten.

But those purposes can be recovered, and in recent times such recovery has begun to be put to use. It is what allowed the first contact with the outsiders, as well as the first transport to take them there.

Shiny metal, jagged. Contraptions, fully formed without the blueprints to them. All kinds of Industry, just waiting to be pulled forth and repurposed.

Desired Import: Symbol Printing

The primary art of wards, of gestures and of magic within those of the Moonsoul Mountains, those that wield the power of the hundred hands, they carve their will into receivers that bear their power. However, such things are difficult to make in a mass quantity, or of quantity or quality enough to bind the biggest beasts to their will.

Ergo, as this is part of day to day life, the more the merrier. Something to magnify it, be it printing, carving, inks or lasting liquids, the conduit does not need to be paper wood or stone steel as in ye times of olde, though those have in the past provided the best results. Hell even an image would do, though that would be difficult to make last given the magic unbinds when the symbol vanishes. One enterprising mind has figured a system of sigils on the sides to holster the magic while the screen is off, and then to manually rebind it into the main screen afterwards. But such things are early and such things cannot do truly large spells in small form.

All in all, modernizing the technology is difficult, and while the people have enough to get by on the essentials, more is universally better, and it is a dependent for every part of society.

Techs

Arcane Amplification

Wet Navy Ships

Rulership

Starting Ruler
Starting Heir
 

 

Turn 7 Geography Updates

The Magma Shroud is finished, an artifice that changes the face of the Moonsoul Mountains for good, and many would say for the better. The wildlands become both greener and more full of gray steel, as huge stadium size buildings are constructed within the lower grounds of the region. Zelfs have a great place to stay, and the carbon based structure seems alive. One can go down a floor into the depths and tunnels, see veins of magma coursing through the underbelly of the region coming up straight from the core, pumping energy throughout and filling a deep orange hue of magic and mundane energy. Special florescent lighting is given to all of the wildlife within these regions, and many serve as combinations of greenhouses and living quarters. A plethora of plantlife is imported and cultured from around Sansar, and the art of creating combinations of Charmed Textiles and differently colored plants to create vibrant works of art one can scarcely imagine elsewhere. At night, the plants provide lighting where needed too, leaving some rooms to glow a magnificent blue or a luminous violet.

The giant gears turning fence the Kaiju, and the Kaiju in turn help out the land. Becoming more incorporated into the region and lending their efforts, being fed by strange produce created by the large 'plants', with the singular giant tower in the middle billowing smoke having cranes on top to deliver it and feed the beasts from a safe distance. They also surround and help the freshly constructed Basu Holdings, making keeping tabs trivial in the base that is also connected into the wider web. Every structure in the Moonsoul Mountains having its own life, spare those original shrines which retain their disconnected and mystically warded nature which seem almost to reside outside mundane reality.

 

Edited April 24 by Rocket Relm (see edit history)

[Rocket Relm]

Region 8 - Fort Helios
 

History

Within their isolated bubbles and delusions of grandeur, these people have a significant difficulty dealing with the literal and figurative popping of their bubble for outsiders to stride inside. This resulted in their history being one in which they defensively kept to themselves. There were benefits to this, it meant that the other baldalan wars never seriously impacted them, and that the other noxious intoxicants never hampered them quite as much. This eventually evolved into them being a people isolated from the world, talking exclusively to them through cameras and tvs and the interplanet, prospering with a surprisingly high population count. Although socially they were barely functioning which left them open to being captured by invaders of a strong dedicated kind.

Exposure to the outside in such a violent manner has caused their insulated immune systems and culture to rapidly crash downwards. In the years since their region has been traded first to the Glorious Purifiers, and then to the Arkhive, their population has fallen to half its numbers a decade before. Right now the region is in relative prosperity for the half that survived, and is looking to stabilize at a more reasonable population level.
 

 

Geography

Bubbles and bubble like structures fill the air and the sky, being a high maintenance for scrubbing, but well worth it as a symbol of pride. In each one lives more people than you'd have expected out of a region, especially the more well off ones who can have 'high rise bubbles' and ones with exotic scenery. The groundwork is artificial with Cubic Masonry, and even further beyond that it is rounded out. Ships traverse and round out, it slightly circles but always remains in this specific sector of Badal. The usually filthy air is purified to an unreasonable degree on the inside, for non-natives unused to such measures the extra intoxicants and mild chemical elements added to the air through the process can make it a little painful to inhale. The natural denizens are used to it, of course, and even their physiology has adapted.

This has actually created problems as exposure to the outside has broken the purification systems, and then again much more deliberately by the Purifiers. In their efforts to allow outsiders to not be intoxicated by what some would reasonably call poison in the air, it caused the natives who had adapted to have trouble. Certain areas are still hyper purified in their air zones, and laborers who come in to these areas often wear air tanks or masks to stop from suffocating.

 

People

Lizzers and humies. In normal speak, humans and lizardfolk. The lizards are more elite, and the humans are lower class, but there's variety in both. It's a bit of a splash of society, insular, almost monarch like. There is a deliberate 'I'm the best' mythos presented here, and the humans play along and adopt characteristics of the shorter lizard folk. Famous lizards once upon a time even invented technologies, different things that reach out and splash everywhere, and their culture involves proving oneself through measures and metrics.

Self congratulatory natures of everything along with mandated religions make it shockingly easy to keep people compliant, one would be surprised how little rigor is applied. The natives do enjoy festivities and despite everything being silo'd, entertainment finds a way. Basic internet and television cement into a central part of the culture, Snaking Snews, Basu-Rahaman and even the Heliotrope Broadcast find their way into the lingo. Which results in sometimes words degenerating into weird pidgin languages, like is demonstrated at the start with "lizzer" and "humie" being cutsey and slip of tongue casual.

 

Government

Mimes. Mimes. All the mimes. So many mimes. Mimes makes up the government, ever since people learned how to communicate through symbols and tvs and automated things the religion of Homeostasis has taken over, making motion minimal. There is no specific reason it seems that things have turned into mimes, or why this is a central part of the government, but that's how it is. They sure like their black and white makeup, and that is a rare thing that breaks through the quarantine measures.

The rest of the governmental natives are the lizards, who insist that they are the best (the ones who aren't mimes, anyway). They're the ones who invented the sun, after all. The emperor is secretly one of them, but nobody bothers with proving that, they just take the propaganda as self evident. Their central locations are nuclear silos, old factories that made it the old fashioned way, which have been refurbished for people to live within. They're some of the biggest areas that don't have walls infesting their designs splitting things into subrooms, allowing many of them to gather and talk about how great their culture and media is.

Maybe the mimes have it right. Maybe they shouldn't be talking.

The two factions vie for control over the government as of current, while the Arkhive tries to maintain enough stability to stop things from being crushed down. The Mime faction has some religious passion, and doesn't quite like the fact that languages are being transformed into such hybrids that don't make sense. Honestly, many of the mimes that don't have a strict vow of silence will speak to governments like the Arkhive and the Purifiers, they just refuse to converse with the incredibly smug fellow denizens of the other population.

 

Religion

Universal Homeostasis

The religion of nullification. Pausing. Emptiness. The dominant force within the region, and part of the reason that things aren't as bad as they could be, but that they also aren't as good as they could be either. Freezing and inaction provide many different benefits, and with this religion it is an actual art form. Mimes are quite a good cultural thing here, and they even hold some positions of government.

Force fields and walls are the specialty, and Cubic Masonry is a technology that these people have developed quite early on. This has advanced into spacecraft too, although with said spacecraft they have remained insular. Durable like a nintendo gameboy, though, which is really the best way to describe most of their construction.

Universal Apootosis

The religion of cell death. Everything must progress towards implosion, which avoids the greatest evil known as 'cancer'. It's something to avoid, along with the outside intoxicants. Somewhat of a cult that causes people to die after a set period of time, and one that has seen an uptick in recent years due to the traumas. As well as a weird belief that because of more people coming in to help with labor shortages, the people must even out the population.

Of course, there are positives to this religion too, such as a focus on enjoying life as you have it and peace. An exceptional set of care for people at the end of life and ability to enjoy things in the time they have left. A lack of needing to pay for social security because of said lack of aging issues. A set of cells and minor bit of magic involving the literal splitting of 'atoms', which helps power things such as the scrubbers, making nuclear batteries quite a treat for these people.

There's also Paragonism, which is about being a good person and reaching your ideals or whatever. But they're such a minority so nobody cares about their little cult.

 

Resource

Resource: Atmospheric Scrubbers [Spacecraft / N/A]

Scrub scrub scrub the force fields near the edges of the colony. These planes are real good at that, and practically able to go into space themselves with the right measure. They have to constantly scrub around the bubbles of the area to let sufficient sunlight in to power some of the cells, and this has been done so much that there's a surplus of planes to go around, to sell, to give to whatever people. Which in large part is currently the literal Psycho Capitalists. It pays well and at least on an economic level has everything going squeaky clean.


Desired Import: Labor

The quarantines have always made it hard for people to go outside and do work, and the recent collapse and downturn of population have made it even more so. More than ever, people to do basic functions of society are necessary, the ins and outs of living and delivery. It's a mass thing, not quality but quantity, plus, somebody's gotta handle all of the filth and disease of everything.

 

Edited April 24 by Rocket Relm (see edit history)