Saepes Mundi

[Xhin]

This project is a game I'm working on that's 99% intricate worldbuilding and 1% gameplay (you're a kind of archaeologist who's doing Courier work to support yourself as you explore and learn). This post will focus mainly on the world, its various civilized political/religious/mercantile/etc groups and the way the economy works (as well as the magic system), as I need to flesh those out anyway in this stage of development. Things like history and a deeper understanding of the world and its origin will be glossed over but they're kinda game spoilers and are still in progress as well.

World Basis

The world is a vague disc-like shape surrounded by a gigantic wall known as Saepes Mundi-- this is a mile high, and between 5-20 miles in thickness. The wall's terrain varies the same way the rest of the world does -- there are hills and mountains. The highest points on all three continents are known as Mons, with Mons Ultima being the highest point and a pretty prosperous city in its own right. The world continues downwards in a conical shape. Because of the sheer scale of its conical nature and how gravity works (and the Void on all sides), the shape of the world hasn't really been mapped out.

There are three lights (known as Astra that circle the world, passing over the top in something approximating a day/night cycle -- the brightest is a yellow light called Sol, the second-brightest a silvery light called Luna, and the dimmest a red light called Sanguine. Sol and Luna are generally mutually exclusive, however their orbits aren't exact mirrors so there are times when Luna and Sol will be in the sky at the same time, with luna being a maximum of 20 degrees above the horizon (from the perspective of Saepes Mundi) and Sol setting on the opposite horizon. Sanguine's orbit is fast and erratic but it's always in the sky when neither Sol nor Luna are, and is rarely in the sky when Sol is. All three Astra provide light, heat, and a concentrated form of a field called Mana. Sanguine and Luna provide more Mana, however their light is a lot more dim than Sol's.

Inside the confines of Saepes Mundi are three continents named Magna, Medioc and Minim in order of decreasing size. Between them is a three-forked ocean that's named various things. In the middle of that ocean is a large archipelago named The Eyes. There's also a larger island in between Minim and Medioc named Crudezoo. The layout will make a bit more sense with the map later in this post.

Civilization Basis

The Civilization is quite large and spans all three continents, concentrated mostly on areas rich in metals/crystals and useful geography. It's magic-based with a highly accessible magic system, domestication/mass farming of magical organisms, and a complex highly specialized economy that's on the cusp of industrialization. A few pieces of infrastructure are worth mentioning due to their drastic difference from our own, and how they heavily impact the civilization:

* Wrung Nodes -- Overland transport makes use of these to warp near-instantaneously between two points. The caveat is that they require a gigantic amount of mana to operate based on distance and because of limited range, require additional nodes along the route to carry the signal. Their effectiveness also drops enormously over water, so outside of a couple of limited areas (like the route between Cask Keep and Wineport, who can afford the extra mana) they exclusively move over land. Nodes along major routes will generally be settlements in their own right and will warp out to smaller locations nearby, but will always have a preference for the major transports as that's the source of their economic prowess. For example, the route between Emerald and The Gleaming City of Glass is known as Jewel Road is the longest non-rotating route and every stop in between is a city in its own right, despite a full transport between the two major cities only taking about five minutes to complete.

* Cauldrons -- Mass-produced goods are transported within Cauldrons, which are basically manipulable pocket dimensions with a large but still finite capacity. These are bound to and controlled by Couriers who move them from one destination to the next and also make sure the pocket dimensions don't Rupture, spilling the contents everywhere. Realistically, each Courier will only have one Cauldron active at a time, though the Instruments they use to control them are pretty small-- the issue is more in how finicky this kind of magic is. If you need to send a larger shipment, you just send more Couriers, which brings me to the next point:

* Ships -- These move across water, powered by some combination of Push Magic and natural mana currents in the ocean. Since they're powered by magic of some kind they're a lot faster than you'd think, but still very definitely slower compared to the near-instantaneity of Wrung Nodes. The point of these isn't to ship goods directly but to transport large amounts of Couriers from destination to destination. Some are also built to carry living plants or animals or are passenger ships, though due to value they all also carry some kind of shipment of Couriers.

A very brief synopsis of the magic system

While a much larger writeup is coming (a lot of which is already written out elsewhere), it's kinda important to at least gloss over the magic system as it explains why the major cities and regions are where they are.

As mentioned above, magical technology is highly accessible -- while you can be trained to make your own, this is more of a specialized skill than a requirement for the civilization to work, and commodified magic is both cheaper and more effective as well. Without getting into how and why it works (coming later), Magic is composed of three things:

* Mana -- Mana runs through the world pretty freely but is concentrated in various earth materials, which can also be processed to contain large amounts of it. Mana can be thought of as the amount of power behind any particular piece of magic.

* Spells -- Spells are more of a format of what the magic actually does -- they're looping mana currents that are set up to do certain things at certain times. Spells are contained within non-living biological substrates, with some being better for certain spells than others. Without yet getting into why, spells stored in this way have the potential to change over time and/or refuse to be cast, so a lot of the economy is built around preventing this or training mages to work around these issues. These issues, incidentally, is why industrialization in this world is so hard to achieve -- you can't automate processes when the components like to go off on tangents randomly.

* Egress -- Egresses focus a spell, either directing it at a target or spreading it out into the environment. These are more technical terms than physical objects, but are still important to mention as targeted magic is very different from environmental magic, despite the spell being identical.

Mana storage, spells, and whatever dictates the Egress (as well as maybe subspells or other quality-of-life alterations) are stored together into something known as an Instrument -- a self-contained device that does one (or more) specified things when activated, which is usually done via fire. Instruments will contain their own means of creating fire, but skilled mages can also produce enough of their own to trigger things. Tl;dr though you don't need any particular personal magic proficiency to use magic, you can just use an instrument, which will do it for you. At least until the mana wears out or the spell goes off on a tangent, but sophisticated instruments have means of testing for those eventualities, and testing during production lets users know about the timing therein.

For the sake of exploring the world (next post), the relevant parts of the above are that metals and crystals are highly useful to capturing and storing mana, while magical organisms are necessary to the substrate that stores Spells (and their efficacy).

Metals and crystals are extensively mined with various areas (such as the southeastern part of the continent Magna) having higher concentrations or better sources of certain things (like the city Chryseum which is built around a gigantic pillar of Gold). Magical organisms, meanwhile, are bred and farmed and also depending on what it is and the difficulty in domestication or abundance, maybe just hunted. While these are spread all over, they're concentrated in the southern portion of the world, so the Cities there are more likely to focus on exporting those products because of their rarity elsewhere.

In the next post, I'll give a more detailed look into the world and its civilization (with maps), and that'll probably be it for the day.

[Xhin]

World Map

Here is a highly disorganized world map. It's just a first draft, but I spent way too much time on it to justify cleaning it up:



Here you can see where the continents are relative to one another, the three-fork ocean, and a bunch of cities. Things marked with yellow dashed lines (and labeled yellow) are "provinces", which are more broad regions that are similar internally than areas of actual political jurisdiction. Cities are purple dots, with particularly important cities with a red circle around them. Cyan dots represent smaller cities that aren't particularly big but are very important to transport networks. The brown ring around the outside of the world is Saepes Mundi, and any settlement there that's important is indicated with white dots. The green circles represent concentration of metals/crystals and so therefore also indicate where settlements are, and particularly where major cities are.



Here's an overlay of the above map which shows transport networks -- those managed by Wrung Nodes are indicated with cyan, while those done by ship are shown in orange. The curves here are meant mostly as a way of getting around place names, however sea route curves that follow coastlines are pretty accurate.

Note that there are many many other settlements in the world, some of which are pretty big in their own right -- however the ones marked on the map kinda define the world and other settlements just supplement them economically rather than themselves being major sources of power.

All that said, let's take a look at each Province and the points of interest within them, starting from the top-left. It's worth pointing out here that when I talk about the actions of specific cities, what I'm actually doing is describing the Guilds and other groups that work within them -- political control is a lot more like economic control and there aren't strict nation-state hierarchies.There's also a lot of both competition and cooperation within any particular city, but some broad movements in various directions. In any case:

Zeal Province

This province is the home of highly religious separatists that eschew connection with the larger civilization. Zeal is probably the closest thing to an independent nation with strict borders, since political jurisdictions elsewhere are a hell of a lot more loose. The six resource clusters seen here are home to large settlements, however, the largest city in the region is Covenant, located on top of a resource-poor ancient abandoned quarry. Zeal as a whole is full of such abandoned quarries, their metals and crystals extracted hundreds of years ago and the areas since abandoned for greener pastures. This is somewhat true of The Gap as well, however that province has a lot less people and a lot of influx from more developed societies. Zeal meanwhile is highly isolated and over time has made this isolation and overall abandonment a part of their religion and culture.

* Endeavor -- Endeavor is a port city that's home to a breakaway group from Zeal at large that has ended its isolation and seeks to interact more with the wider civilization. In the next map you'll see that they have sea routes with both Tunnelsport and Gildport. Their interaction with Gildport has made them fairly wealthy so they're able to rule more independently and free from the influence of Covenant, however aspects of that isolationist extremist culture are still in play and they're still pretty difficult to work with.

The Maw

The Maw is a gigantic tunnel bored into the ground. No one has any idea how far down it goes, and traversing it is extremely difficult besides as the tunnel curves and then branches off in labyrinthine directions and everything underground is lightless so it can't make use of the Mana generated by Astra. That said, there's a lot of old decaying infrastructure down here for basic foot travel and some of the tunnels are old quarries whose materials are fairly rare and so worth exploring. The main limiting factor to settlements down here is that Mana and probably also food have to be brought down, as the darkness keeps both light and Mana from Astra from seeping in. So while there are a couple that are fairly independent, they're small and largely subsistence-based, while larger settlements are networked with various cities on the surface.

* Port Maw -- Port Maw holds the entrance to the most accessible entrance into The Maw and so it's where people are constantly arriving from various parts of the world and useful materials found below are refined and/or shipped out. While large, it isn't particularly politically important in its own right, as there's a lot of influence from other groups and locations. Additionally, it has the issue that the rest of the province is pretty resource-poor (see: old quarries like Zeal) so it doesn't really have anywhere to expand its influence to.

The two resource pockets lying due west (and one southeast) of Port Maw are settlements, however they're more like colonies of Port Maw than separate locations. The two resource pockets further south are the closest thing to independent settlements in the province -- however Tunnelsport and the easternmost Zeal city have politically claimed them -- Port Maw has the issue of the Maw itself being in the way of some kind of land invasion.

* Tunnelsport -- Tunnelsport is the main port that connects access to The Maw with the rest of the world, particularly Zeal and the continent of Minim. It's also the only sane access point into Zeal for people coming from elsewhere in Magna. Despite this, it's heavily under the influence of Zeal and particularly the alliance between Zeal and the Gold Coast. There's also a lot of pressure from The Gleaming City of Glass via its very-explicit colony Gapwork, so while it has its own influence network and self-rules, it can't expand its influence elsewhere, despite its enormous potential. Similarly, attempts at controlling Port Maw fail due to both The Gleaming City of Glass and Mons Ultima having huge influences on it.

The Gap

The Gap is yet another resource-poor region full of long-abandoned quarries. What major settlements it does independently have are close to either Port Maw or the wealthiest parts of the world further east, so fall under those influences. The two that are kinda in the middle are too far apart to reclaim them and form a more unified province, and the biggest settlements in the region are under the explicit control of Mons Ultima or The Gleaming City of Glass. So as a general rule, the settlements in The Gap are more like puppet states of those influences rather than actual autonomous regions. The two middle cities are independent but soooo dependent on the puppet settlements economically that they're basically also puppet states.

* Midway -- Literally the midway point between Mons Ultima and Port Maw. Mons Ultima has the greatest need for the rare materials within the Maw, so Midway is the most prosperous part of The Gap. It's taken advantage of this to be home to the largest collection of rare earth refinement facilities on the planet, and given the lack of actual industrialization this requires a gigantic workforce which flow in largely from Glass Beth. Its products also ultimately flow out through Kingport and East Nexus into the wider world, so despite very definitely being an explicit colony of Mons Ultima, it has its own very wide influence on the world.

* Glass Beth -- Also known just as "Beth", this city serves as one of the two connecting points between the largest city in the world (The Gleaming City of Glass) and Port Maw. It's also been connected to Midway from the outset, and is a major supplier of everything it needs to keep its refinement facilities working. Through that wealth it has recently created a route to Tunnelsport, which is its main way of pulling in workers and supplies for Midway. Despite its immense prosperity, Glass Beth is very definitely still under the explicit control of The Gleaming City of Glass politically, though economically it's a lot more independent and has a lot of worldwide influence of its own.

* Glass Aleph -- The other connecting point to The Gleaming City of Glass. This one is explicitly connected to other Gleaming City of Glass colonies so can't act outside of that in any capacity. It's so tightly controlled that various purges have made the Guilds here explicit extensions of the Guilds in the Gleaming City of Glass as well and keeps new ones from forming. Additionally, Goldtown and Emerald both had proposals to connect to it that led to mass assassinations in both cases. The Gleaming City of Glass denied all involvement of course, but neither City tried that again. The settlements you see running between it and Emerald should be under Emerald's influence, but because of this have increasingly become home to the Gleaming City of Glass's influence instead.

* Gapwork -- Literally a port originally built to transport workers to the Glass Aleph and Glass Beth projects. Once again, explicitly a colony of the Gleaming City of glass, however its purpose is more to solidify The Gleaming City of Glass's influence in the region than to actually provide anything economically. It's a kind of forward base to influence Tunnelsport and keep ports along the coast here from siding with Glass Aleph. It's also conveniently close to the northern end of The Corridor, so there are a number of research stations here to help study the weird weather/current patterns within it.

Mons

Like Magna, this region is home to the largest collection of resource pockets on the planet. It's also conveniently the location of the highest point (Mons Ultima). Also like Magna, this area is thick with civilization, though a few cities are bigger than most.

* Mons Ultima -- The highest point on the planet. Given its height it's highly good at collecting Mana (as it decreases with distance) and studying that effect in general, and it's wide enough to do that on some kind of local scale. It isn't really practical to export the mana storage because land use is waaaaay more important, but it means that the city is entirely self-contained as far as mana use goes, including with projects that require large amounts. Thus it has the most sophisticated wrung nodes on the planet and connects to everything within its sphere of influence rather than doing it in a more labyrinthine way like every other location. Similarly, the confluence of so much research and experimentation has made it the technological capitol of the world.This has given it an enormous amount of prosperity, even for the overall wealthy region -- the only reason it hasn't surpassed the Gleaming City of Glass is because of its extreme distance from the rest of the world.

* Eighth Quarry -- Mons Ultima's sphere of influence over all of Mons can't be overstated. It has tons and tons of colonies near it, including fifteen very large crystal quarry operations named 1-15. The largest of these is Eighth Quarry which reached its status through discovering a massive silver pillar while boring through crystal veins. This thing is a similar size and shape to the one in Chryseum and provides a steady stream of silver to the rest of the world. Eighth Quarry established the colonies now known as East Nexus and Nexus to bypass other trading networks and keep their monopoly secure, however while they have unlimited economic access to those places they haven't been able to maintain that control because of other influences. While Eighth Quarry is very definitely under the Mons Ultima umbrella, its extensive trading network has made it resistant to political influence, so it's allowed to exist independently in order to better serve Mons Ultima economically. It has taken this to mean vying against Mons Ultima for power on the smaller settlements between them, but this isn't a largescale war or anything since they're still very connected.

* Goldtown -- So named because of its large amount of gold quarries. Gold has a harmonic influence over crystals in both their refinement and mana storage, so gold is essential to any economy built on crystals. It exports this to both [u[Emerald[/u] and Mons Ultima, and its existing metal facilities are used to refine the Silver coming from Eighth Quarry as well. Given the short jump between it and Eighth Quarry, it doesn't require a lot of mana to travel between the two, so it's way cheaper for Silver to be refined here rather than new facilities to be built in Eighth Quarry. Once again, Goldtown is under the wider sphere of influence of Mons Ultima, however it's also under a decent amount of influence from Emerald. There's a lot of competition between the two to control it, and a lot of local guilds that take advantage of the instability created from this. It's unfortunate though, because Goldtown could probably become one of the leading powers in the world if it wasn't so unstable -- the Glass Aleph connection project would've solidified that ambition, but unfortunately The Gleaming City of Glass wouldn't allow it.

* East Nexus -- A trading port that connects the Silver production in Eighth Quarry to the rest of the world. It's also the primary means of getting Wine into Mons Ultima's sphere of influence. Its propensity for these things led it to become independent politically, though this was short-lived as Wineport and particularly Emerald now have dominance over it. It's now more of a highly corrupt puppet state that allows Mons Ultima stuff to flow through but is largely controlled by an alliance beween Emerald and Wineport. The presence of so much military by those groups probably means there's a slow plan to eventually cut Mons Ultima off from the sea, though they haven't acted yet.

Magna

Magna is by far the most pretentious province in the world. Naming your province after the continent is bad enough, but giving yourself a five-word city name and forcing everyone to say it that way is pretty bad. Magna is also the wealthiest province, owing to its high resource concentration and access to the wider world. Given the shape of Magna the continent it's also the best way to get to Minim and Medioc. It's also very close to The Eyes. Overall, it's not surprising that The Gleaming City of Glass is the wealthiest city in the world and that Emerald wields as much long-range influence as it does.

* The Gleaming City of Glass -- A lot has already been said about this city and its machinations in the rest of the continent, but it also controls much of the trade going into The Eyes and both Minim and Medioc. Those continents are very high in magical creatures but relatively resource-poor (with the exception of the Gold Coast), so by controlling the flow of metal and crystals, The Gleaming City of Glass can get those creature extracts at very cheap prices and export them elsewhere at a steep price hike. It can't do a lot about the eastern side of the world (due to Emerald), but it has extensive colonies and influence along the western side of the Magna coastline in order to keep that economic power intact. So pretentious is The Gleaming City of Glass that the Guild leaders here refer to themselves as Kings and Queens, despite nothing resembling the structure of a kingdom or empire actually existing. In the mind of the self-proclaimed "rulers" of The Gleaming City of Glass they rule an empire streching from The Maw to Schoolshore and into the Bay of Wine, and have a colony called Monkey's March. In fact it would look something like this:



This is, of course, absolutely delusional, but they do wield at least some influence (direct or otherwise) over all of those regions. The original wealth of The Gleaming City of Glass didn't come from its resources or its geographical proximity to everything, but from its gigantic fields of crystal charging fixtures -- these require glass lenses to concentrate to from a distance it does indeed look like a gleaming city of glass. It has since lost the title of biggest crystal charging complex to Crossroads (And I guess Glasstown in general), but it still puts out enough to have a major export of it in addition to its many many many other economic pursuits.

* Emerald -- So named due to copious amounts of surface emerald quarries, which led to the discovery of gigantic crystal veins going deep into the ground. It may not have the most crystal of any region (that belongs to the area around Mons Ultima), but it definitely has the most quarries and overall infrastructure for it. Unlike The Gleaming City of Glass, their initial source of prosperity is still their biggest export, though like it they have a broad geopolitical presence as well. Emerald has a strong alliance with Wineport -- they're attempting to lock down the entire eastern side of the world and maybe the entirety of the Wiseman Sea, which would push Emerald's prosperity up on even footing with The Gleaming City of Glass and give Wineport the means to break up the Triumvirate. Emerald has a pretty explicit colony (under the facade of being independent) at the northern tip of Medioc named Fort Overseer to keep an eye on The Eyes and particularly Schoolshore. Emerald is also planning Wrung Node routes to both Eighth Quarry (to cut off Goldtown) and Midway (to access Port Maw without going through either The Gleaming City of Glass or Mons Ultima country). The latter one, if built, would be the longest wrung node route in the world, longer even than the technological marvel known as the Gold Road between Chryseum and Mons Minima.

* Kingport -- One of those pretentious names again. Kingport is the primary port city of The Gleaming City of Glass and connects it to the rest of the world. It's tightly under the control of The Gleaming City of Glass, though there have been at least some movements from Emerald into it. It's unique in the world for having a secondary set of Wrung Nodes that go directly between Kingport and The Gleaming City of Glass going along the main route so there's a truly instantaneous link between the two. This makes Kingport less of a colony and more just an extension of The Gleaming City of Glass. This second route is known as The Road of Glass and the entire length of it is swarmed with crystal chargers to make absolutely sure that that connection is secure.

* Cape Emerald -- Not seen on the map, but this actually lies on an isthmus jutting out from the mainland. Cape Emerald surrounds the entirety of the isthmus, and holds the distinction of being the largest Port in the world. In addition to the various imports and exports of the Emerald sphere of influence, its size is reflective of the military influence Emerald has over the northeastern Wiseman Sea. There's constant movement to Fort Overseer, The Nexus and East Nexus as well as a lot of trade with Kingport and Mage transport between Mons Ultima and Schoolshore.

Given the size of this post (and the ~10 continuous hours I've been working on this, I'm going to explore the southern part of the world in the next post).

[bradrn]

…why do I get the feeling this is part of the same multiverse as your other worlds? In any case, keep up the good work!

[Xhin]

…why do I get the feeling this is part of the same multiverse as your other worlds? In any case, keep up the good work!

Because it is. There's a vague reference to the precursors here in page 2 of the Cygnus Pentad thread. Also thanks!

The Southern Part of Saepes Mundi

Next I'll cover the southern part of the world. I'd like to cover the Seas as well, but they're really only relevant once the continent-based content has been established. For reference, here are the maps again:





The Eyes

The Eyes are a large archipelago in roughly the middle of the world. The abundance of these islands definitely makes it the safest place to cross between the southern continents and Magna. Nothing's really stopping you from going across the whole ocean at any point, but without Currents to safely guide you towards some land, you're probably going to run out of mana and be very far from home and potential help. Plus, since The Eyes are used for this explicit purpose, they have infrastructure to support resupplying and offer protection against rival Guilds. Unless your ship or its guild banner are opposed to Oculus's or The Gleaming City of Glass's interests, of course.

* Oculus -- The crown jewel of The Eyes, this is a fairly large island that serves as a major port / resupply point for the journey into the larger islands. These larger islands, and The Eyes as a whole, are extremely suitable for farming magical plants due to both the high mana concentration (alll the island currents converging into one another) and the climate. Oculus's island is no exception, and anywhere that isn't being used as some kind of port is cleared out and used to farm massive quantities of plants such as Maple, Dotted Plantain.Gumboat, etc. Refinement facilities for these is also concentrated either here or in Failure, which is more of a general hub for The Eyes as a whole. Given this, a lot of Potion Factories also exist here, although they're more likely found in Failure.

* Failure -- Failure was originally a kind of centralized hub for The Eyes as a whole and contained its plant refinement facilities and Potion Factories. It gained its name through a joint venture by The Gleaming City of Glass, Schoolshore and Monkey's March to create a Wrung Node network that would've connected it to all three. Along the route were various islands with Wrung Nodes and crystal charging farms known as "Toad Islands" that would've carried the signal and provided waypoints, while also providing the massive amount of mana needed for wrung nodes to cross open water. Unfortunately, while some of these Toad Island connections work, the network as a whole doesn't, largely because of the large amount of mana in the region. While people still flood into Failure from Schoolshore to fix these problems, the network as it stands is inoperational, and the Toad Islands that aren't explicitly being worked on by the interest of the larger cities have become taken over by various rogue guilds in order to take advantage of the mana output and relative isolation. Generally, it's less resource-intensive to work with these groups rather than eradicate them, if work is being done only to test certain connections. Given its connection to the three, Failure is definitely politically under the influence of those three big cities, but economically, it's tightly wound around the agriculture and transport culture of The Eyes and so more subject to Oculus' influence. Anything that isn't a shipment of plant or plant products is subjected to outrageous taxation, which is so bad that it makes sense to hide your products inside plant products to get around it. Larger guild shipments will just pay the taxes and avoid the hassle.

Gold Coast

Gold coast is a province that encompasses the narrow strip of land branching off from the continent Minim. Here you find a resource-rich area comparable to patches in Magna/Mons and Triumvirate. It's also a suitable place to breed magical animals since it's connected to the rest of Minim by land.

* Chryseum -- No part of Gold Coast makes sense without talking about Chryseum. This is an area on The Saepes Mundi itself that contains a massive Gold pillar with some totally unknown depth. It's a similar size and shape to the Silver one in Eighth Quarry. As mentioned, Gold is vitally important to crystal refinement, and conveniently, Chryseum is close to large crystal pockets that form the basis of the civilization here. Unlike Goldtown, the gold in Chryseum's pillar is extremely easy to access, which means the gold and refined crystals flowing out of Gildport are a lot cheaper than imports from Goldtown or (sometimes) local production. These products are therefore used widely in Minim, Zeal and the southern portion of Medioc. Drakesport is notable for almost exclusively using Chryseum Gold despite having its own gold quarries -- it's just usually way cheaper to use the gold flowing into its ports than push mana into the quarries that could be better spent on containing Dragons. Despite supplying Gold to half the world and controlling settlements around it for crystal quarrying and refinement, Chryseum itself is not a political player and teds to be influenced and highly corruptible instead. Part of the reason is that the ease of gold quarrying here doesn't require sophisticated technology. Additionally, being along the Saepes Mundi and being otherwise resource-poor itself, it's reliant on other settlements for provisions.

* Gildport -- Gildport is a major trading port that serves mostly to move gold out of Chryseum into the wider world. Were it not for its alliance with Endeavor, it probably would've become a colony of Cape Gale, which is its biggest trading partner and the real power in the region. Gildport's dealings with Endeavor and Zeal as a whole has however made it more politically independent, especially as Zeal is largely reliant on it for anything that's being blockaded in Gapwork. Wine shipments, for example, are completely blocked from going west from Tunnelsport, so they instead have this circuitous route along the bottom of the world and up through Minim, getting taxed all the while. Drakeport takes full advantage of this, allowing (and providing for) large Wine shipments to go through as long as cheap Gold continues to flood into it.

* Cape Gale -- Cape Gale is so named because the stretch of ocean known as The Corridor repeatedly pushes storms into it. While this would ruin cities on other worlds, in a magical world that consistent energy is very useful and powers something resembling the prototype of mechanical automation in its factories. In addition to exporting Chryseum's gold to the rest of the world, it uses these lumbering automatons to craft that gold (or other metals or
sometimes even crystal) into a variety of precise shapes and sizes for [/i]Components[/i] and Instruments elsewhere in the world. Its biggest clients are The Gleaming City of Glass, Drakesport and Port Maw, which all require large amounts of metal in very precise shapes, though it's connected to the Triumvirate in much much older contexts as they have a near-monopoly on mass Instrument creation. Cape Gale basically owns both Mons Minima and True Bay, and has economic influence over a long southern network running all the way to the Triumvirate -- their exports to the Triumvirate are not taxed in any capacity except sometimes at Crudezoo. Politically, Cape Gale is self-ruling and Mons Minima and True Bay are also self-ruling on paper, but Cape Gale lacks real political authority and is instead almost entirely economically focused.

* Mons Minima -- Mons Minima is the highest point in the content of Minim. It serves as an observatory for Cape Gale, particularly in predicting storms coming from the Corridor. Like Mons Ultima, it's also a useful place to charge crystals, however Mons Minima itself is resource-poor even relative to Mons Ultima, and lacks the extensive infrastructure that one does, so this is a much smaller industry. It is however a huge research hub, owing to its pre-existing purpose in predicting storms, the research potential of Mons and certain groups that are studying the metallic pillars found at Chryseum and Eighth Quarry. A lot of the advanced pre-industrial technology powering Cape Gale came out of the think tanks here, and there is constant interaction with researchers underpinning Schoolshore and Triumvirate, as well as the diaspora of research groups near magical animal populations in Minim and Medioc. So, economically, it's tied to other research hubs and particularly to Cape Gale. Politically, it's (on paper) a self-ruling colony of Cape Gale, but it's definitely subject to the political whims of Minim Axis and the Cities with political control over their research groups.

* True Bay -- True bay is a stop along the long stretch from Cape Gale to the rest of the world. It's also somewhat of a hub for the Monkey industry and the overall push to reunite the Wrung Nodes in that province. Untrained Monkeys definitely pass through True Bay to Mons Minima for research, while Trained Monkeys take the Minim Axis route. Plant products and other exotic animal products are also shipped in from Monkey's March to Mons Minima's fledgeling Instrument Industry, or more likely its Instrument Research Industry. True Bay is definitely a colony of Cape Gale, or more accurately a colony of Mons Minima, but the influx from the rest of the world makes it very susceptible to corruption. Monkey's March in particular tends to dictate political rules to suit their Monkey export, and this has gotten significantly worse ever since the node network in monkey broke. Minim Axis, meanwhile, has heavily influenced its culture, so much that it's changed its name accordingly.

True Axis

True Axis is the southwestern corner of the world. There's not much to this province, it's largely based around research and training monkeys. True Axis is so named because the southwestern corner of the world is almost a perfect right angle between the Saepes that runs along the west and the Saepes that runs across the south. It contrasts itself with the "Corner" in the southeast region which is a more acute angle and so not really fitting for the "Axis" title.

* Minim Axis -- Also known locally as just "Axis". Originally a colony of Monkey's March, it has since become fully independent as Monkey's March is highly reliant on it to train its Monkeys export and it has access to the giant research hub of Mons Minima. Originally, it was a research colony to study the Axis -- that "corner" of the world mentioned above, which has unique mana properties. However, experiments on Untrained Monkeys to train them have led to it being basically the sole export of Trained Monkeys. Something about training wild primates and being near the true axis of the world while a distant land is actually called the axis has led to a kind of superiority complex in the culture and an almost-religious fervor comparable to the reformational city of Endeavor. Minim Axis has some of the most precise scientists in the world, who tend to migrate to Mons Minima or Triumvirate for actual opportunities and it also has wild political ambition, wanting to eventually take over True Bay and Monkey's March, though these goals are highly unrealistic with its limited resources and industry.

* Monkey Beth -- One of the two major nodes along the route from Monkey's March to Minim Axis. This direct network is unfortunately broken, so the actual networks between Monkey Beth and Minim Axis and also Monkey's March to Monkey Aleph are labyrinthine clusterfucks where you'll randomly appear in an agricultural community with a pack of wild starving primates that slip out of your control. Minim Axis tends to take control of (and may be causing) this sort of chaos in order to firmly seal its control over Monkey Beth and its attempt to take over Monkey Aleph. Monkey Beth also has the largest collection of nodes that run into wild monkey country, so controlling them is the key to eventually controlling the Untrained Monkey industry.

Monkey

On the far eastern edge of Minim lies the province of Monkey, a region whose biggest export are Monkeys and (occasionally) Monkey extracts, along with a diaspora of other magical creatures that start appearing on the eastern end of the province. Monkeys themselves are essentially the name given to a wide variety of primates that resemble humans in many respects, so are excellent things to test spells or potions designed for humans on without, you know, accidentally killing actual humans. The Untrained variety are more useful for things that target the physical properties of humans, whereas the Trained variety can manipulate magic to some extent so are more useful for testing things that tap into humans' use of magic.

This Province lacks a central hub for monkey gathering or farming (except for Monkey's March, but that's a bit complicated) -- instead there are a variety of very small settlements connected into possibly the most confusing transport maze in the world that eventually make their way to Monkey's March, Monkey Aleph or Monkey Beth.

* Monkey's March -- this is something approximating a centralized hub for Untrained Monkeys, which are shipped off to the rest of the world. Trained Monkeys will also pass through here on their way to Medioc or Magna. Monkey's March used to be named Port Monkey, but changed once the transport network between it and Minim Axis broke down (probably due to the influence of Minim Axis, and definitely due to the monkeys themselves staging some kind of revolt). Now moving Monkeys from here to Minim Axis is like taking them on a long long march, with so many corruptible and unstable regions in between and weird transport schedules and just a lot to navigate.

* Monkey Aleph -- A node between Monkey's March and Minim Axis, this one isn't connected to as many settlements as Monkey's March or Monkey Beth, however this is near the range of magical creatures such as Permasloths and White Tigers, so it has an industry for hunting/farming/extracting those in its own right outside of its chief monkey export. Monkey Aleph also has a connection to True Bay so it can provide Gold and Components/ Instrument parts to the various settlements in the region for a better price (usually) than Monkey's March. This has made it somewhat more independent politically, though it's heavily influened by Monkey's March and (somewhat) by Minim Axis.

Once again, this post is entirely too long so I'll cover the third continent (Medioc) in the next one.

[Xhin]

The Continent of Medioc

Once again, the Maps:





Crudezoo

The province of Crudezoo contains the large island of Crudezoo, on which is the City of Crudezoo (don't worry, the locals get confused too sometimes), and some smaller islands around it. There are also some other settlements on the island, but they're much smaller and not worth putting on the map.

Crudezoo Island is home to the largest diaspora of magical creatures in the world -- from Monkeys to Dragons to Gryphons and everything in between. They're extensively hunted and/or farmed (depending on which one is easier) and there's also a decent industry for refining them locally (though the cities in The Wilds tend to be more specialized for that). The sheer amount (and variety) of wild and farmed magical creatures makes this island fairly dangerous to visit outside of the highly protected port of Crudezoo the city.

* Crudezoo -- The city of crudezoo is a good centralized hub for the island and its surrounding islands, and alongside its export of local animals and animal products, it's a go-between along southern trade routes (like the one from Cape Gale to the Triumvirate). Its land borders are heavily fortified and manned with crudezoo's military at all times to protect the city from magical creature attacks, which happen often and are so well defended that the city's inhabitants don't usually know when they're occurring. This runs in direct contrast to Deathstay, which has a record of magical animals coming in and destroying ships in the harbor on several occasions. Because of Crudezoo's reputation, it's sometimes seen as safer to use it to access Dragon Bay (if coming from the west), or to access Minim, if coming from the Triumvirate. Magna and north Medioc are more likely to go through The Eyes instead.

* Lost Bridge -- This isn't a settlement but a geographic region at the absolute southern end of the world. It's so named because there's an old legend of there originally being a substantial land bridge here that connected Medioc and Minim. When the currents are right, it'll expose some little bits of land and reefs along the way, which helps support this theory. The thinking is that, particularly given the magical animal diaspora, the land bridge extended all the way to Crudezoo, which was a mountainous part of the region. When Lost Bridge flooded, the animals went to higher and higher land, eventually settling on Crudezoo in very high numbers and variety relative to anywhere else.

The Wilds

The Wilds is a province to the east of Crudezoo concentrated around a sound that runs deep into Medioc known as Dragon Bay. Like Monkey and Crudezoo, it contains a high population of magical animals, though not anywhere near as numerous or diverse as Crudezoo -- they're a lot more spread out and the population below the bay is populated almost entirely by Dragons and creatures that can avoid being eaten by Dragons, while the ones to the north have a higher variety but also a bigger range to roam in.

* Deathstay -- Deathstay is a major port in the region that connects Crudezoo/Lostport/Drakesport with Schoolshore/Wildsland, particularly with the city of Wildshore being in ruin. It has a bad reputation for magical animal attacks on ships that are passing through, but the actual amount of unrepelled attacks are pretty low, nonetheless due to the lower concentration of magical animals it's not as heavily fortified as Crudezoo is. As a major hub for the region, there are a lot of animal product refinement facilities here, and these at least are heavily fortified and have resisted animal attack. Some of the larger research groups are also based out of Deathstay, as it has access to all the big research sites and a direct link to the biggest research colony in the world (Schoolshore). As far as moving non-animal non-research goods goes, however, groups in Minim prefer to go through the south or The Eyes because it's a lot safer, so Deathstay's geopolitical power is firmly locked to the local.

* Wildsland -- Wildsland is a major hub for animal products in the region -- this whole section of the Wilds is like Crudezoo in its variety but not its quantity, though the size of it is much much larger. There are also some decent resource pockets along the border to the Lost Desert, so resource extraction is a viable industry when things are shipped to Crossroads, though there's also a lot of competition with other connected cities. Wildsland's biggest export, therefore, is its animal products and it has the most sophisticated facilities for processing them on the planet. These products are shipped out largely to Wineport and Triumvirate but also make their way to southeastern Magna through various routes. Generally, Minim produces its own animal products or ships from Crudezoo, so only very specialized ones will make their way there. Since its major trading partners are also major cities, Wildsland lacks any real geopolitical power of its own, though its isolation and specialization keep it resistant to outside influences. It has some influence over Deathstay, but ultimately Drakesport is going to have the controlling influence therein.

* Wildshore -- Wildshore is a colony of Wildsland that connects it with Drakesport and Dragon Bay more generally. The Wrung Node network still works very well, unfortunately the harbor has been absolutely destroyed by local Dragons and potentially by sabotage from Drakesport, who is verrrrrrry strict about their trade routes to keep their currency intact. Efforts to rebuild it have been underway for some time but seem to always go sideways before completion. Groups will sometimes take this route anyway, connecting from Wildshore to smaller local ports and making their way to Drakesport that way (or vice-versa), though what they're allowed to do in those small ports seems to be dictated by Drakesport's political power in the region. Beyond transport, Wildshore has no major industries of its own, and due to its harbor instability, this is unlikely to change. It does however work decently as a transport hub for port cities along the northern coast of Drakesport, connecting those much much smaller economic groups with the rest of the mainland.

* Lostport -- Lostport is part of the southernmost trade network so it constantly has Scales, Instruments, Instrument parts, Wine, etc flowing through it. It also takes forays into Lost Bridge in order to gain the valuable (and unique) marine products there, and refines them into useful ingredients. Given the amount of Wine flowing through it and those marine extracts, it has its own Potion Making facilities and is the main supplier of The Eyes' Water Breathing potions. Another major industry are the sedatives it ships to Monkey's March so the Monkeys there are more compliant. While it has some sophisticated Potion Making facilities, these are very definitely locked to the materials found in the Lost Bridge, so for example it's not able to compete with Drakesport's Fire Resistance Potions. Nonetheless it's quite prosperous, and additionally controls the outflow of Scales into Minim Banks. While it itself is self-ruling, it's so reliant on the trade network and particularly the scales trade economically that Drakesport is able to wield considerable political power over it -- this comes down mostly to making sure its taxes for the southern trade network aren't too high and it doesn't hoard scales. Drakesport leaves its potion making industry and marine products industry alone.

* Drakesport -- Drakesport is the true power in the region, and one of the major geopolitical players as well. The southern edge of Dragon Bay is inhabited almost entirely by Dragons, and Drakesport has a thriving industry on farming them and making extracts from them. It also exists on a large resource pocket so aside from cheap gold flowing from Chryseum, Drakesport is able to be fully self-sufficient therein. Dragon products are highly useful, particularly their Scales, which are extremely stable substrates for fire spells and so underpin basically every Instrument's fire activation mechanism. Focused fire spells are also the best way to harvest plant products, so The Eyes is highly reliant on the scales flowing from Drakesport. Drakesport has a huge industry related to the cutting and shaping of scales to various formats, imbuing them with fire spells, etc, though most of that specialized refinement happens in surrounding colonies rather than Drakesport itself, which specializes more on Dragon farming and overall administration of its gigantic trade empire. Dragon scales are so ubiquitous in Saepes Mundi that they've become the de facto currency of the world, and a group called Wyrmbank has taken it on themselves to cut dragon scales very precisely and mint them out for wider use as currency. In addition to being a viable source of currency, these also have practical value -- as dragon scales they can still store fire spells, with the higher-quality ones storing better ones and thus being a higher tier of currency. Drakesport has many smaller industries as well -- it produces Fire Resistant potions for example and its overall Potion Making industry is competitive with other parts of the world. Drakesport wields an absurd amount of power over the world, though it is largely economic and thus hard to pin down. It is however one of the founding members of Schoolshore and is on equal footing with The Gleaming City of Glass and Wineport. it's also part of that important southern trade network, and so a lot of things from Minim and Medioc flow through it on a regular basis. It keeps taxes low on these to promote trade (and forces other nodes on the network to do the same with military might if needed) but the sheer volume of things coming in allows it to profit substantially from trade.

Wiseman Sea

Wiseman Sea is the name of both this side of the ocean and this province of the world. It consists entirely of the northern edge of Medioc and variously can include Cape Emerald/East Nexus/Nexus, depending on who exactly is making the maps. Schoolshore mapmakers will definitely include them but Emerald will not, and Nexus mapmakers always place themselves within the Bay of Wine. That said, Schoolshore and Fort Overseer are definitely within the Wiseman Sea, as are the smaller cities along the northern coastline of Medioc.

* Fort Overseer -- Fort Overseer is a highly fortified military base under the express control of Emerald, though Emerald swears up and down that it's independent politically. It is the eyes and ears of Emerald within Medioc and The Eyes more generally, and also stages military excursions into Nexus and the Bay of Wine (particularly Glasstown, though it also sends troops to Wineport for their issues with the Triumvirate). Fort Overseer is exclusively a military base and doesn't have economic power outside of that, however it does control a lot of the food farms around it and uses sending provisions to Schoolshore as leverage for political power therein. Farms supposedly under the control of Schoolshore are very much.. not anymore, and the other controlling interests of the city are too far away to contest this. A lot of non-staple food also flows from the Bay of Wine, which has the best climate for it on the planet, though Wineport tends to push these exports through Crossroads instead.

* Schoolshore -- Schoolshore is the single biggest research city on the planet -- most research groups operate out of here, regardless of where their primary base of operations is (The Maw, one of the Mons, Cape Gale, etc). It was originally a joint venture by The Golden City of Glass, Drakesport, Wineport and Triumvirate to collaborate their various magical knowledge and train others to do the same, however given this it's become a gigantic store of magical knowledge as a whole and a safe base for continued learning and research outside of the geopolitical machinations of any particular City. Schoolshore is incidentally where you begin in the game -- you're part of one of those research groups that's studying the world's overall history. Schoolshore is centrally located with respect to most research outposts and also sits on a large resource pocket, so is able to be self-sufficient as far as crystals and metals go, though imports from the various founding Cities are much more prevalent. Schoolshore is totally politically independent, and the founding cities allow this as long as its geopolitical and economic aims are limited to research and it still flows knowledge and specialized researchers out to them freely, which it largely abides by. In return, it gains highly specialized imports from every corner of the world for further study and use, though most of this is locked away in specific research guilds. Schoolhome's geopolitical power is extensive, though focused entirely on research -- it has a controlling interest over every research station on the planet and its guilds tend to compete with and/or destroy those that don't abide by this, regardless of their distance. Schoolshore also has a monopoly on the training of personal magic, like the ability of people to create their own fire. Locations elsewhere that teach these techniques are under that Guild's umbrella rather than being actually independent. More recently, Schoolshore is slowly being squeezed by Emerald to give it more political power, but there's a heck of a lot of pushback so they've instead taken to blockading imports and exports in whatever way doesn't attract the ire of the founding members. Despite repeated attempts of Fort Overseer to provide military "protection" to Schoolshore, it maintains its own local military, and there's not a whole lot Fort Overseer can do as they're the most highly trained Mages on the planet, with the possible exception of Minim Axis. This slow give and take will eventually lead to either Emerald controlling the city or a long drawn out war between eastern and western world powers that has the potential to be an actual world war because of various research group alliances.

The Lost Desert

The Lost desert is a huge arid region in the heartland of Medioc. It consists mostly of sand, but there's a heck of a lot of old organic detritus as well, which suggests that the region was overfarmed and became a desert -- given the agricultural proficiency of surrounding regions, this is a viable theory. The settlements here are small and spaced pretty far out, concentrating on Crossroads and the two resource pockets you see on the map. The region as a whole is pretty poor, particularly because of the resource scarcity and difficulty in farming anything whatsoever, however some of the nutrient-rich sand pockets are very valuable for nearby agricultural areas, and sand in general is cheap, freely available, and a good export for Glassmaking industries in Magna and Minim to some extent. Glasstown basically controls the glass trade along the southern trade network and the far eastern side of the world, but The Gleaming City of Glass always has use for it beyond what it can provide, particularly with Emerald trying to control that part of the world. Despite this, the resource/food scarcity and low-cost Sand refinement make this area exceptionally poor.

* Crossroads -- Crossroads is the one city in the region that has some amount of wealth, though it's based entirely on being a trade hub rather than a sand exporter, which is a much smaller industry. Crossroads connects Triumvirate to Schoolshore and Wildsland, it connects Wildsland to Wineport, and lastly, connects Wineport/Triumvirate to Schoolshore. It's also the preferred route that Triumvirate takes to the larger world as the primary Instrument manufacturer. Given these connections, Crossroads has some industry devoted to secondary refinements for these different economies, such as one that polishes/otherwise makes Instruments look nicer, one that grinds animal products into forms suitable for Potionmaking, etc. It has its own fledgeling Potionmaking industry since it has all the ingredients flowing in, however this has been repeatedly sabotaged by the industries in Wineport, Triumvirate, and even Failure to some extent. Crossroads also holds the title of the biggest crystal-charging tract of land, extending very far into The Lost Desert -- however all of these resources here have to be imported (including glass lenses, ironically), so local powers are really controlling the flow of charged crystals here. With no real exports of its own outside of the tightly-controlled charged crystal industry and the same scarcity as the rest of the region, Crossroads is forever doomed to have its wealth be dictated by wealthier Cities. Interestingly though it's politically self-ruling rather than controlled by another city -- this is perhaps due to the confluence of so many foreign political movers, but that theory doesn't explain why it's also so resistant to corruption. Maybe it's just used to being economically poor so economic factors can't really be used as leverage.

Bay of Wine

The Bay of Wine is a highly agriculturally prosperous corner of the world, and provides specialized food products to the rest of the world. Its biggest industry, however, is Wine -- this substance is alcoholic wine in the traditional sense but also forms the perfect biological substrate for storing the basic spells in Potions. More complex spells have to have their biolological strata ground up and mixed with it, but wine is also unusually preserving of spell consistency, meaning that spells contained within Potions are a great deal more stable than those contained within Instruments. Unfortunately this isn't a general solution to magic, as a Potion's egress is always just the drinker's body. Potions are however extremely useful in the world, particularly when users are working around magic or harsh conditions. Wine itself is also highly useful because alcohol.

The Bay's oceanic currents are set up in such a way that they bring consistent rainfall much like The Corridor, however unlike it it isn't prone to storms. There are also conveniently winds that have blown the nutrient-rich sand of the Lost Desert towards it over hundreds of years, though more recently it makes more sense to just import that sand very very cheaply from the neighboring (and usually quite poor!) region. The agricultural-rich environment extends all the way around the Bay, from Nexus to the tiny resource pocket in the southeast corner, to Cask Keep and back around through Glasstown and back out to the ocean. It isn't visible on the map, but this whole region is highly developed, on par with the civilization density of Magna and Mons, though concentrated on agriculture rather than resource extraction.

* Nexus -- Nexus serves more as a go-between between the Bay of Wine and the rest of the world. Historically, it belonged to Eighth Quarry but has since been taken over by a joint effort of Emerald and Wineport. It's a major trading hub with agricultural products and wine flowing from the Bay of Wine into Magna, Glass Lenses from Glasstown flowing into Magna, and Silver and cheap charged crystals flowing southwards into Triumvirate. It also controls some of the agricultural farms around it, which are more geared towards exotic luxury items (like spices) rather than staple goods. Its primary industries are thus similar to Crossroads -- it acts as a go-between on those routes to more form-fit the various products into something higher in quality, though its spice exports are rapidly becoming a major industry in their own right. Nexus is tightly politically controlled by the alliance between Emerald and Wineport, though they still allow Eighth Quarry Silver to flow through unimpeded (for now). They're under the military protection of Fort Overseer, which is consistently giving it military supplies. Wineport is okay with this, as their military is more focused on disputes with Cask Keep and the Triumvirate, though their alliance with Emerald is still contingent on them having solid political power in Nexus. Emerald finds this arrangement acceptable.

* Glasstown -- Glasstown was originally just another large agricultural community (specializing in nutrient-rich feedstocks for magical animals, which it still maintains as a solid industry) but has since then become more invested in Glassmaking, given its proximity to The Lost Desert. Glass Lenses are vitally important for charging crystals, which creates concentrated sources of Mana for magic the world over. Glasstown transports a lot of glass up through Nexus and to Emerald, however it isn't reliant on it -- its old feedstock networks make it very friendly with the Triumvirate, who are more than happy to transport glass out through Drakesport through a long circuitous route leading eventually to The Gleaming City of Glass. The Gleaming City of Glass also exports things more directly through Emerald, but the glass in its sphere of influence is heavily taxed, so surprisingly, sometimes a route from Glasstown -> Cask Keep -> Gryffer -> Drakesport -> Deathstay -> Schoolshore -> Failure -> Kingsport is cheaper than a more direct route from Glasstown -> Nexus -> Emerald -> Kingsport. Glasstown also transports a lot of glass to Crossroads via its trading buddy Cask Keep to power the giant crystal charging stations there. In turn, Glasstown gives Cask Keep access to Nexus and keeps the Triumvirate's exports from interacting directly with Wineport, which makes Wineport furious. There's no direct link between Glasstown and Wineport, despite their close proximity -- Glasstown is essentially a part of Triumvirate and this is one of the reasons why Wineport wants a strong alliance with Emerald. Glasstown has also tried on numerous occasions to connect with Crossroads directly, but these projects get sabotaged by Wineport and (usually) Emerald spec ops. Meanwhile, Glasstown has consistently purged groups on its side of the bay that attempt to operate permanent networks between it and Wineport's side. The two sides have a whole cold war thing going on.

* Wineport -- A lot has been mentioned about Wineport already. It's highly specialized to the production of Wine, both in farming/breeding and refinement into various types of either alcohol-friendly wines or potion-friendly wines. Given the amount of local wine and plant products (and easy access to the southern part of the world), it also has the strongest Potionmaking industry in the world. Wine exports are far more expensive than they'd like, as the means of storing and crafting wine is provided by the Triumvirate at a steep rate, so they haven't really been able to exert largescale geopolitical power despite their near-monopoly on Wine. The potionmaking industry is much more promising, as the utility of those is far higher than Wine and Potion storage is a lot easier to source than Wine storage. So, weirdly, Potions will sometimes be cheaper than the wine contained within them, which has led to weird things like Inns selling useless potions rather than wine for alcohol purposes. Wineport is highly at odds with the Triumvirate, despite their friendly trade relationship, due mostly to the inflated wine Instrument prices and the lack of any real power Wineport has over their exports, so they've taken to allying with the power-hungry Emerald in Magna. This at least gives them the ability to tax Triumvirate exports in Nexus, however there's way too much incentive there to override it and Emerald's military presence doesn't find stopping this worth potentially losing the city. If it were able to break up Triumvirate power, Wineport would have a solid geopolitical presence essentially on par with The Gleaming City of Glass due to the sheer utility of Wine and Potions and the power they would then also have over Instruments and the largest crystal charging complex in the world in Crossroads. Wineport is thus highly ambitious, but the Triumvirate blocks their attempts at world domination, so they've instead lowered themselves to allying with Emerald.

Triumvirate

We come at last to the southeastern province of the world. Triumvirate occupies the most resource-dense region of Medioc, and one of the three biggest resource provinces (the other two being the Gold Coast and Magna/Mons). It's also south enough to have a large diaspora of magical animals and close enough to the Bay of Wine to have solid agricultural prospects. It additionally is home to Mons Axis, the second-highest point on the world (after Mons Ultima). All these factors combined make it enormously wealthy and powerful, and because of the natural resource variety and proximity to major trade networks have led to it virtually monopolizing the Instrument industry.

Triumvirate is so named because it is jointly ruled by the three major cities in the region -- Cask Keep, Gryffer and Edgeman. These three cities are self-ruling internally, however collaborate frequently on joint ventures, including the joint colony of Mons Axis, the technological marvel that connects Cask Keep with Wineport via Wrung Nodes rather than by sea, and their various geopolitical aims. They're highly resistant to outside influence or attempts at breaking them up, as their interests are best served by all three working together, particularly the near-monopolization of the Instrument industry. Instruments, as mentioned, are objects that focus spells in specific ways, and are thus the primary means by which Magic is operated on a large scale. The Triumvirate keeps the prices just low enough to prevent too much competition elsewhere in the world, but high enough to give them enormous wealth and geopolitical influence. They conveniently have local sources of animal and plant extracts for storing spells and earth resources for storing mana, and through Cask Keep and their influence on Glasstown, they have a steady supply of charged crystals coming from Crossroads. They thus don't need anyone else in the world to keep their economy alive, which is unique among Cities in the world, however they will definitely take advantage of cheap things that come in, such as gold from Chryseum or Dragon Scales from Drakesport. The downside is that their extremely isolated location keeps them from enforcing their highly stable power elsewhere politically.

Triumvirate is politically neutral, freely shipping things to any nation that buys from them without asking for political power or alliance in return. There are however groups that hate Triumvirate, such as Wineport, despite having mutually beneficial trade with them. Wildsland also likes to block their animal extract exports from going out to Minim, but this hasn't kept them from having cordial trade relations for Instruments or charged crystals. Triumvirate is content to let the rest of the world do whatever political machinations it wants, so long as enormous wealth for their instruments continues to flow in. The one place they'll step in is militarily is if instrument manufacturers elsewhere in the world get too large of a stake -- they've managed to reel in Mons Minima by controlling the movement of instrument-specialized researchers from Schoolhome, though they're so reliant on Cape Gale and that's so far away that they haven't been able to extinguish it completely. So probably at some point there will either be a competitor to Triumvirate or some kind of war.

While it's best to describe Triumvirate as a whole, there are some minor differences between the three major cities. Again, though, it's worth pointing out that they all have long-standing pacts with one another and very wide transport networks, so Triumvirate tends to act as a single entity rather than three individual Cities:

* Cask Keep -- Cask Keep manufactures the storage containers for Wine and is also largely specialized towards Winemaking. Through a joint effort with the other cities in the Triumvirate (and a lot of researchers pulled over from Schoolshore), they've built a Wrung Nodes network that runs across the sea to Wineport, to more effectively ship these products. They charge Wineport very steep prices for this technology, and Wineport can't do anything about it because Cask Keep has a near-monopoly on winemaking instruments and Wineport has a vested interest on Cask Keep not selling that technology elsewhere. This in turn makes Wineport's exports cost a lot more than they should, and cripples their geopolitical influence. Wineport sometimes finds it cheaper to import Casks from The Eyes if those shipments don't get sabotaged along their long journey, but can't do anything about the Instruments save from helping to keep the fledgeling Instrument industry in Mons Minima afloat. Cask Keep, meanwhile, has a vested interest in preventing this exact thing, so the Triumvirate checks Wood shipments passing through Schoolshore very carefully, which makes them sometimes reroute up through Kingsport and into Emerald territory, which in turn gets The Gleaming City of Glass to sabotage it to cripple Emerald. The whole Cask trade is highly complex, and sometimes you'll see shipments end up in weird places like Mons Ultima to circumvent a bunch of world players. Ultimately, Cask Keep exerts a stifling amount of political power over Wineport, and while it is still very much a wealthy city, it isn't able to exert its political influence elsewhere.

* Gryffer -- Gryffer is so named because it extensively farms Gryphons. The people that do so are named Gryphers or Gryffers. Gryphons are farmed for either their feathers (which support a surprisingly large variety of spells stably) or their Claws, which form the basis of many potions that enhance sight, and so are highly useful in Mons outposts, quarries or The Maw. Gryffer doesn't have a monopoly on Griffins or anything (they roam freely in Crudezoo as well), however they've mastered the art of domesticating and particularly breeding them for one product or the other. Gryffer has a solid Potionmaking industry centered around the claws but also provides for other native animal products (or things flowing in). Their Claw-based Potions are shipped out to research groups in Schoolshore and into the wider world from there, though they also give large amounts of it to Mons Axis to maintain surveillance dominance. Meanwhile, Gryphon feathers are combined with other ingredients here and elsewhere in the Triumvirate to mass produce generic instruments. More specialized ones will definitely use better animal or plant ingredients more suited to the spell, but Gryphon Feathers are highly versatile.

* Edgeman -- Edgeman has extensive resource production and provides Crossroads with most of its uncharged crystal and provides cheap metal to the rest of the Triumvirate. They also maintain the infrastructure needed to ascend to Mons Axis and are highly skilled at maintaining Wrung Gates in general , so they're the real power behind the tight network between the three members of the Triumvirate and their sane transport network with the rest of the settlements in the region. Like the rest of Triumvirate, they have their own extensive Potionmaking and Instrument creation facilities as well, though they specialize a bit more in the targeted direction given the availability of metal.

* Mons Axis -- Mons Axis is a city in its own right and is operated jointly by the three cities in the Triumvirate. Triumvirate doesn't need a solid Research presence, as they have a lot of pull over Schoolshore, and they don't need extensive crystal charging as they basically own the largest platform in the world in Crossroads. So instead, the purpose of Mons Axis is Surveillance -- it's a tightly-held trade secret that they don't even really share with Schoolshore, but they've refined Gryphon Claw Potion technology to the point where Potion Drinkers on top of Mons Axis can survey anything that's happening in the world outside of Mons Ultima in great detail. This kinda gives the Triumvirate a huge intel advantage to where they don't really need a large military to keep themselves intact and to where they can see the operations of Instrument creators on the other side of the world without maintaining a network of spies. Triumvirate keeps this very secret, including using coded language to refer to the people up there as "Prophets" or usually "Seers" so other Cities think it's future-prediction magic rather than just very good surveillance. Despite its potential utility as an export, the Triumvirate fears other Cities using this technology so keeps it to themselves. They therefore don't sell their best Gryphon Claw potions elsewhere, just enough to make basic surveillance feasible and promote sight in quarries and the other dark places of the world. Trained Seers are barred from ever leaving Mons Axis but are rewarded very handsomely.

Mons Axis also contains the Axis Library (another one of those things Minim Axis hates), a compendium of knowledge far surpassing anything in Schoolshore. For a steep price, researchers can come into Mons Axis and peruse but aren't allowed to take anything home other than their own notes. Triumvirate has managed to compile this through its Instrument sales all over the world -- sometimes lowering its steep Instrument prices (that it itself sets!) in return for specialized knowledge. Axis Library has kind of an interesting history -- it was founded by and run by Seers to compile their knowledge but given the Seers being barred from leaving has become somewhat subversive and more of a political entity in its own right, separate from but very friendly to the interests of Triumvirate as a whole. If Triumvirate ever gets broken up, the Axis Library (and particularly the Seers) would be the key.

While Schoolshore is a hub for research and researchers, Mons Axis instead contains the most knowledge and history. The constant back and forth between the Library and Schoolshore has allowed Triumvirate to gain a lot of secret political power over Schoolshore, which in turn allows it to influence research projects elsewhere to its own ends, something the other founding Cities are unable to do. The Triumvirate mistakenly believe they have absolute power over the Axis Library so allow foreigners from Wineport and Drakesport in on a regular basis, but the Axis Library has become friendly with them to the extent of trading Seer intel for two huge projects to connect it (secretly!) via Wrung Nodes laid out on the Saepes Mundi itself to both Wineport and Drakesport. Wineport and Drakesport aren't fully aware of how Seers work (and the Library Seers keep it that way), but the intel is very useful to their geopolitical aims -- Drakesport in maintaining the southern trade network and Wineport in maybe eventually breaking up Triumvirate.

Conclusion

This concludes the World Summary, which took around ~24 hours to write up. Next (and probably not today) I'll probably delve more into the economy and how it works beyond what's been covered here.

[Xhin]

The Economy of Saepes Mundi

Unlike other worldbuilding projects, this one has a very definite focus to it so the different areas of it will be completed, in order, in excruciating detail. So the next set of points will exclusively focus on the economy and how it's put together, as that helps define what's actually in these various cities and surrounding regions. Along the way I'll cover how politics and magic work in passing, as they're relevant. I'll probably also make these posts shorter, as I have wider ground to cover.

Power Structures

As mentioned, there aren't single sources of power in any particular City -- there are no Kings, Lords, etc. Instead, Cities are home to Guilds which are a bit like a cross between a union and a corporation and I guess operate closest to an organized criminal network. Guilds will be headquartered in a city (or cities), with branches of various size and purpose in other Cities and settlements. They have their own individual militaries or will collaborate with Guilds they're allied to to form them, which are variously hired goons or people loyal to the Guild that have been trained to be soldiers or usually a combination of the two. Similarly, Guilds may have Couriers (and Ships) working for them, or may just hire them on a freelance reputation-based basis. Schoolshore has a pretty steady stream of reliable Couriers as the constant movement and exploration aids them in their research and brings money in, and Schoolshore has a uniquely politically neutral perspective which makes it suitable for all kinds of Courier tasks.

Guilds will ally with other Guilds within the same city, particularly when they use the same supply lines or have similar goals. While there's a heck of a lot of infighting, this does present the illusion that Cities are single entities united towards some common purpose. They'll usually pool their military and transport resources as well. It tends to just make more economic sense to collaborate with people close to you than compete with them, particularly in a highly specialized economy where each part needs the other parts to cooperate.

Guilds themselves are less like corporations and more like fraternities -- the workers within the Guild trade their labor and administration skill for fellowship, protection, lodging, provisions, training, money, etc and basically enter a lifelong contract enforceable via their military (individual or shared). Failing to belong to a Guild is basically a death sentence -- where are you going to stay? What are you going to eat? Who will respect your life in the Cities you visit? Definitely not Guild members who are constantly on the lookout for spies and foreign guilds trying to gain a foothold.

Couriers, Mercenaries and Researchers are given more respect, despite (usually) not belonging to any particular guild or group. They instead belong to their own distinct Guilds, which are a lot more loosely formed and operate more like traditional unions than more hierarchial groups. There are however specialized versions of these that are actual full Guilds that compete with the less specialized ones in certain contexts. There's always a lot of bidding with Mercenary Guilds when there's some kind of ongoing conflict, as both sides want the best soldiers and will pay top scale for them. Those conflicts end when one side runs out of money or justification rather than when they're destroyed, though attempted assassination of one of the leaders is always a useful tactic. Blackmail, extortion and other coercion strategies also usually work very well.

Guild members have a pretty high quality of life -- their basic needs (and some scales) are provided for by virtue of belonging to the Guild, and they only need to work enough to maintain their standing in it or gain whatever additional scales or power they desire. Work compulsion and Drafts don't work very well to preserve Guild Loyalty (which is pretty important!), so the focus with productivity is more on fellowship and team activities. And/or scales or power incentives to buy various products and services that aren't already flooding into the Guild.

The society is overall set up very differently than our own, due to a few factors:

* The lack of any initial centralized power. Kingdom structures based on a quasi-religious Mandate from Heaven can propagate themselves and/or get roped into other empires that conquer them. Here, nothing like this ever existed and the starting conditions of the world were a gigantic melting pot.

* The extreme specialization of the civilization's economy makes it very difficult for monopolies to form, with some rare exceptions -- but even those regions aren't fully self-sufficient in every area so they're unable to use that natural wealth to their advantage.

* The lack of mechanical automation makes it to where skilled workers are extremely important to every part of the economy. Under those conditions, labor has way too much power relative to job creators, so Guilds have evolved to be more syndicalist than hierarchial.

* The lack of natural monopolies combined with extreme specialization creates an environment where competition thrives, and in that kind of environment, loyalty is more important than anything else (and definitely isn't assumed, see point #1), so controlling hierarchial structures can't survive.

[Xhin]

Economic vs Political Power

In the World Map summary posts, I mentioned the various influences Cities (or more appropriately, their headquartered Guilds) have over others, however what I didn't explain was the difference between Economic and Political power. This is particularly ambiguous in a social structure where economic Guilds operate statelessly.

The entire basis of this civilization is the wealth (materials, products, researchers, skilled workers, etc) that flow into Guilds. The inflow here will also create (or help) other industries (controlled or sold by this Guild), which over time will lead to even more wealth. The thinking on this is sort of the opposite of Mercantilism -- you want more stuff flowing into your city rather than out of it, but to do that you need solid exports that other cities will trade for. Thus the economic focus on Guilds is always in gaining more access to resources elsewhere in the world, which makes the local economy wealthier and wealthier (and upping the overall quality of life) while also making the planet's overall Civilization tightly connected.

On a local scale, Scales are the de facto currency, and for very good reason -- they're highly portable and they form the fire activation basis of virtually all Instruments and so are consistently being replaced anyway. Even if they weren't a currency, facilities already have stockpiles of them to replace Instruments with faulty fire mechanisms, and facilities with a low stock can trade some of their resources or finished goods with other ones to gain more. This constant trading and the consistent movement of "dead" scales and influx of "active" or "specialized" scales has led to a kind of proto-money system with Guilds that maintain Banks (to store and distribute large quantities) handing them out in exchange for economic power. The actions of Wyrmbank simplify these pre-existing systems a great deal and make these exchanges more precise, though Minted scales are still exchangeable for the other kind at Banks.

When crossing into other regions, the scales system doesn't really work because scales have different values elsewhere (based on overall production needs), and the consistent influx of goods is far more important as it dictates the permanent alteration of the local economic landscape. So economic power is still very definitely based on exports and particularly imports. Theft/Sabotage also highly complicates things and keeps universal currencies from working -- if you lose a single shipment of, say, Gold, along a trade route, it isn't a huge deal as long as Gold is still flowing into your city, but losing a shipment of scales to someone you're buying from or losing a shipment of their goods you traded scales for is pretty crippling and it's hard to even know that this has happened because of the clusterfuck of transport networks making it hard to time things.

Locally, Theft can be prevented through military enforcement, but you don't really have power over other regions and even if you send armed guards with your shipment, they're going to turn disloyal quick when they meet the full weight of that City's military. Having a consistent flow of goods is far better, as it encourages more ethical uses of Theft in the form of Taxation -- this still allows goods to flow through but the local area just gets their cut of it by virtue of being a stop along a common trade route. This in turn makes those areas along trade routes have more cordial relations with the trading partners trading through them, even if the guilds there are outright hostile to the trading partners' ones.

Economic power, therefore, is represented by the control Cities wield over trade networks and the resulting influx of goods into other Cities. Cyan cities on the map tend to be economically controlled by the goods flowing through them, so for example Crossroads has nothing of economic value to offer other than what flows into it from other Cities. Because of this economic servitude, its industries (like the massive crystal charging tract) are tightly controlled by Guilds in other cities. However, it does maintain its own Political power (which I'll get to in a bit), so despite its economy being entirely dictated by other powers, its own politics are exclusively its own.

Political Power

In contrast to Economic Power, Political Power is represented by the use of force, such as theft/murder/blackmail/violence/etc. Cities don't really operate according to a strict codified series of equal and fair Laws, they will instead use force wherever it's required for whatever end and will similarly ignore ethical or moral breaches that don't conflict with whatever the dominant Guild's aims are. So for example, killing a random mercenary won't make you get in legal trouble unless that mercenary was valuable to one of the Guilds that were operating there. If you kill a high-ranking local Guild member and get caught, you're probably going to get executed, unless you're more valuable to that guild in which case you'll simply get punished some other way. If you're the highest-ranking member of the dominant Guild, you have carte blanche to kill whoever you want -- but that doesn't really promote Guild loyalty and other high-ranking members of the Guild will probably oust you if you're a loose cannon.

If one city has Political Power over another, it means that the guilds of the ruling city are able to make these kinds of judgments despite not directly operating in the vassal city. There are several Political structures that I've already mentioned:

* A political subservient state -- The ruling city has full political power over the vassal state, such as the power The Gleaming City of Glass has over Glass Aleph (which is a particularly extreme example).

* Shared political power / a puppet state -- These vassal cities are allowed to self-rule, provided they abide by the decrees of the ruling cities. A good example is Glass Beth. This happens a lot, particularly with Cities that are under more than one influence (such as Failure) or those that have important economic exports or geopolitical control of their own (such as Monkey Aleph).

* Self-rule -- These are fully self-ruling. Pretty self-explanatory. Big geopolitical players are all self-ruling, but plenty of smaller self-rule cities also exist such as Glasstown. Major transport hubs like Deathstay tend to be both self-ruling and lacking in geopolitical power due to their lack of unique exports.

* Corruptible -- These are self-ruling but can swing one way or another depending on what kind of deals they get offered. They're a bit different from puppet states in that they're way more politically unstable and even susceptible to influences that aren't along their normal economic networks. Chryseum is an excellent example, and an interesting one too because it has a big export. It's probably owing to the overall poorness of the region and the wide value that its gold has elsewhere in the world due to its extreme cheapness. True Bay is a more classic example as places as far as Oculus or Covenant can influence it, and its Taxation schedule is largely set by the whims of the cities around it.

Smaller areas outside of major cities tend to be either puppet states or corruptible, depending on the influence of the major cities around them. Economically, they're way too tied to the major cities to practice true self-rule, however isolated areas are an exception such as settlements in The Gap/Zeal, islands in The Eyes or settlements within the Lost Desert.

[Xhin]

The structure of Cities/Settlements

One last point before I go to bed for the night. I've pointed out the various economic/political centers of the world (and called them Cities) and mentioned smaller settlements that are not on the map, but haven't actually gone into what these structures are -- this is crucial for understanding the world on a smaller scale, and particularly for development, as the important smaller settlements will also be fleshed out at some point.

While Cities that I've talked about before (say, Drakesport) do contain actual cities in the traditional sense, they also refer to the settlements immediately adjacent to them that are under their direct control. These tend to be related to the operations of the City at large, such as Quarries, Farms, Factories that don't fit into the city landscape for whatever reason, etc. Settlements also extend further away from the City and are still generally under the main City's influence, but have weaker infrastructure and may also do a lot of business with other settlements in the region rather than just the City itself.

These various external settlements are connected to the internal ones, which in turn are connected to the main City through transport routes that tend to use short-range Wrung Node technology, though the ones further out lack the infrastructure for this and may instead move things via Carriages that carry Couriers (or even the good itself if they're poor enough), driven by magic or (again based on poorness) draft animals. More advanced Cities may have local transport networks that go into many many other settlements, while others have more of a maze of them where the Wrung Nodes rotate around to face other settlements cyclically.

An explanation of Transport Routes

Similarly, the Wrung Node routes seen on the map aren't instantaneous, except in some rare cases (like the secondary network connecting The Gleaming City of Glass to Kingport). They instead make stops at adjoining settlements along the way, allowing (brief) disembarking at any point along the main route. If you get off at the wrong stop, there are usually secondary networks that connect adjacent nodes together, and you can in fact use these to traverse the whole route, however it's much slower as there are longer wait times in between hops. Particularly wealthy nodes might have direct routes to one or both of the major Cities along the route, though they tend to be costly. Failing that, you could also use settlement transports along the periphery, although they're more chaotic and the transport stations aren't always in an intuitive part of the settlement.

Congestion can definitely be a problem on more important routes. Whichever Cities are funding the infrastructure will add more crystal receptacles and/or charging stations and widen the Wrung Node window in order to prevent this, but this necessary maintenance leads to economic consequences if they don't properly route traffic through individual node networks or adjacent settlements. Thus it can take time to really widen the windows and you end up with congestion and long lines more often than not. That said, the Windows are quite large and Courier traffic is usually prioritized over Carriages carrying plants/animals because Couriers can carry way way more goods on their person.

Congestion is particularly bad in the province of Monkey, as the main thing that's moving around are living monkeys, and due to the lack of nodes directly connecting Monkey's March to Minim Axis, the settlements they flow through tend to be underdeveloped and have much smaller windows. A similar problem exists in the Bay of Wine, where living plants have to be transported all over the region through poorly-maintained settlements. Additionally, overland Researcher shipments to and from various research centers (like any of the Mons or Schoolhome, via Crossroads) run into this problem, though at least Researchers are people so they're more manueverable. Military and Personnel shipments lack these issues because they're more organized and so timed a lot better, whereas the Researcher thing is kinda chaotic since they like to flit from group to group.

[Xhin]

I'm reviving this project and the game based around it is going to (hopefully) be my main project moving forwards over the next year or so.

A more detailed look at the Magic system

Every part of the magic system of Saepes Mundi begins with Mana. Mana is a kind of energy similar to heat/light/EMF but exists separate from it and obviously does very different things. Mana can exist independently or be contained within some physical object or structure; in the former case it tends to dissipate or increase in strength until the environment is homogeneous. Either way, an individual collection of mana is known as an "entity" and in its unbounded form will definitely act like one.

All entities of Mana have at least two properties:

* Depth, also (sometimes) known as "Charge" (though that's not technically correct). This describes the strength of a Mana entity and how much actual mana is concentrated there. There doesn't appear to be a limit on how much depth a particular entity of mana can contain, however storage mediums definitely have limits

* Model. This describes the form of the mana. No one has any idea what different forms actually look like since Mana isn't directly visible, but various symbols are used. Every entity of mana will contain a single model, though more complicated configurations of entities can have more models present. An entity's model can be transformed via a magical process known as Transmutation, though this process can be complex and temperamental. Generally it makes more sense to let the mana diffuse out into a material instead -- different materials such as Silver and Gold will alter the model of an entity of mana in predictable ways.

Mana entities vs Diffusion

I should probably touch on this a bit more before things get too confusing.

Rather than acting like light or heat would, mana instead acts somewhat like how air currents would. Mana entities are very definitely distinct from one another, though they tend to trade depth with one another. The main reason for this is that air itself is a medium for mana, and while it doesn't alter its model (or if it does, there's nothing to compare it to so it's irrelevant) and so differences in air currents will create distinct entities. It's hard to figure out how big any particular entity in the environment is -- the central problem here is that if you're extracting it, it no longer exists and some new entity will form in its place. The fact that clouds have difficulties (especially during magical storms) interacting points to the idea that they're at least around the size of them, but nothing has really been proven.

In any case, mana entities of all kinds will both stay internally consistent and will also "diffuse" into various materials that can carry them. Some materials are better than others at capturing mana, for example Glass can be crafted into Lenses that will pull entities out of the air and force them into some kind of substrate. Metals like Silver and Gold can definitely capture mana but it's more of a trickle and their depth will stay homogeneous with the rest of the environment. Some materials will block mana entities, such as sand which basically rips entities apart into chaos because of how glass works, or certain types of rock that makes mana just bounce off it. Others allow mana entities passage as though they didn't exist at all, or slowed passage like they were moving through water. This kind of thing becomes very important for Spellmaking and particularly Instruments.

A short description of some different Models

This list is nowhere near exhaustive -- I prefer to keep it open ended until more work of the game is done. There's definitely a finite (and known) number of models though.

* Solar, Lunar, Sangual -- the mana that comes from the three Astra are slightly different from one another. They tend to all work and store the same, and the differences don't become obvious until you concentrate and filter them repeatedly. Regardless, these three form the basis of all other models, with one exception:

* Monadine -- There is such a thing as "pure" mana that has no Astral affiliation. It's the kind that's transferred between entities with different models and this process is used to capture it. Monadine cannot be Transmuted and lacks affinity for physical materials that do that (such as Silver and Gold, which act like impenetrable barriers). Additionally, Monadine entities can't exist outside of a substrate -- if released into the environment it'll just be scooped up by other entities. Monadine has its uses (It's always the strongest link in a spell since it can't Transmute), but isn't as widely adopted for mana storage as you'd think, largely because creating it is resource-intensive. Crystal charging stations will instead store a mix of Solar/Lunar/Sangual, as it's the most widely available.

* Chakral -- as mentioned, "personal" magic is a thing. Humans are capable of storing some amount of mana on them personally, which is probably iron-based since it concentrates in the blood and the magnetite in the brain. This amount can be boosted by getting other useful stores of magic into the bloodstream via Potions, but not only is this not the primary function of Potions, but this technique is also rarely used -- personal magic is just way too weak compared to what a good Instrument can do. In any case, the blood/brain/etc Transmute Solar/Lunar/Sangual mana into chakral mana. They don't appear to act on any other model. Chakral mana is notable for being the only one that can freely transmute into any other model (and based ultimately on the intent of the mage), though the rituals for this are complex/temperamental and again personal magic is so weak that it basically reduces the personal spells to parlor tricks.

* Bestial -- Animals can also have personal mana that functions similarly to Chakral mana. However, unlike chakral mana, this model can activate the spells contained within their animal parts directly (such as the spells in dragon scales that allow dragons to produce and concentrate fire). Bestial mana also is concentrated into a wider variety of organs/tissues (depending on the animal) and has greater Depth, sometimes rivaling that of highly charged Crystals. Animals will usually only Transmute a single model of mana into Bestial mana, and their behaviors will reflect this. For example, those that charge with Lunar mana tend to be nocturnal, while aquatic animals that swim near the surface will charge with Aquasolar mana.

Both Chakral and Bestial mana can only be contained in living substrates -- thankfully the term "living" is loose enough that blood (for Chakral) and bones (for Bestial) are good keepers of these models. Bestial mana is useful since it's easier to Transmute into anything than Chakral, and Chakral mana can be turned into "personal" spells that only work for that mage (via Chakral activation), making the theft of a high-powered Instrument pointless.

* Myrfloral -- Plants can Transmute mana into several different plant-based models, all of which are under the banner of "Myrfloral". Solfloral is definitely the most common since plants (usually) photosynthesize from Sol, however some can use Luna or even Sanguine, producing new models accordingly. There's also a few plants like Goldfoot that converts Solaurumic --> Solfloraurumic, and Lunargentic --> Lunaflorargentic should be possible, but no one's ever seen (or been able to breed) a wild plant do that. In industrial settings, Lunaflorargentic mana is instead produced by diffusing Lunafloral mana into Silver (via Dust Cremation). Aquasolar/Aqualunar/Aquasangual can (in some plants) turn naturally into Aquafloral, and Aquaflorasangual is theoretically possible except that aquatic plants and sangual plants are in wildly different biomes. Aquaflorasangual mana holds the distinction of being the only Myrfloral mana model that's never been produced in any capacity. It would probably have some weird properties. Myrfloral mana is definitely useful for plant-based spells, such as Solfloral spells that increase agricultural yields or speed up growth time.

* Aquine -- Water Transmutes all models of mana into Aquine mana in addition to other types, however on evaporation those other types will all Transmute to Aquine. Freezing will instead turn everything into Glacine, and on melting, all Glacine will be converted to Aquine. Clouds are Aquine entities in every sense of the word. Aquine spells work with water like you'd expect, however Aquine in spell form is unstable when used and tends to shift to Aquasolar/Aqualunar/Aquasangual, so Instruments that use it have ways of converting it back via water or Glacine. Aquine spells are also one of the most temperamental (not as bad as Ignine, but still), probably due to this natural conversion.

* Myraquine -- Aquine is unstable in other ways, and will readily shift to other models that keep the aquatic affinity. This includes Aquasolar/Aqualunar/Aquasangual obviously, but if exposed to Gold, the gold will become Aquaurumic pretty much regardless of what it was already holding -- though Sanguaurumic is pretty stable (it'll still convert but it'll take longer). Aquaglacine/Glaciaquine is theoretically possible but producing it doesn't make physical sense; it's one of those ones that would probably have strange properties. Strangely, Ignaquine is perfectly possible and not even that hard to achieve; just make a fire that's producing stable Ignine and expose it to steam. Ha! Nevermind! Good luck getting a fire to do anything stably. It's been produced in some settings via Ruby/Sapphire configurations, but there's nothing to store it in so until that happens it's hard to tell what its utility -- if anything -- is. Attempts to embed it into spells destroy the spells, so I guess it's useful for that. In any case, Myraquine mana models do what you'd expect them to do, carrying both aquatic affinity and the affinity of whatever their other components are. Usually with spellmaking it just makes sense to have different models acting separately but myraquine models are more stable and less temperamental than aquine so the combinations there are pretty useful.

* Glacine -- As mentioned, Glacine is produced by freezing water that contains Aquine or Myraquine. It can also be produced by creating a Loop of Lunar mana and trickling in Mortine mana. Glacine is notable for not having any Myrglacines, with the one (and very weird) exception of Igniglacine. Like other Myrignines, this one has never been produced, and like what would it even do? Set something on fire and freeze it simultaneously? It doesn't make a lot of sense. In any case, Glacine stores well in Kyanite and tends to be pretty stable in Silver as well (though Myrlunar will always override it). It's useful around ice-based spells as expected, and can also slow things down in other ways, including a small patch of local time if its depth is great enough.

* Ignine/Myrignine -- This is by far the most temperamental form of mana, and it's so bad that distinguishing between pure Ignine and the looser umbrella of things like Ignaurumic is pointless. The one exception to this rule is Ignisangual, which I'll cover in a different section. If you just want to produce fire, Ignine/myrignine is well suited for your task. Spell activation works very well with that kind of chaotic destructive energy as well. However, if you want to produce a very specific fire magic effect (such as an Igniferric spell to add fire to metal without melting the metal), you're in for a world of pain. Ingnine and its various forms will freely Transmute into each other for no reason when a spell is activated. Pure Ignine also sometimes take on the wrong set of properties despite not actually Transmuting. Sometimes a spell just won't work, period. Other times the spell itself will be destroyed. Ignine apparently doesn't like being in Loops with other models; it's fine when it targets things and it's fine on its own but it doesn't play nice with others.

* Ignisangual -- this is the exception to the above rule. While it will sometimes turn into Ignine (and back obviously since Ignine will turn into any Myrignine), it's otherwise very stable. Exposing it to a source of sangual mana (such as a Quartz crystal with a lot of it) will keep it permanently stable. Ignisangual has some kind of affinity for Mortine (which might explain its stability), and you can produce it by looping some form of Myringnine and trickling Mortine in a similar way to producing Glacine. It will turn to Sanguignaurumic if exposed to gold and Sanguigniferric if exposed to iron, and should turn to Sanguignicobaltic if exposed to cobalt, but for some reason this only works if the cobalt is holding Mortine. It's blocked by Silver, so Silver is generally a good way to contain it. It also freely passes through Copper, unless the Copper contains Sanguacupric or a Myrsanguacupric like Sanguaquacupric, so this can be used to selectively block its passage. Ignisangual is by far the most destructive mana type and is therefore extremely useful in tasks like mining or cutting through hard materials. Releasing it into an environmental egress is a good way of getting yourself executed -- if the spell doesn't kill you, the surviving people around you sure will. Thankfully it doesn't do a whole lot besides cause blisters with lower amounts of depth.

* Mortine -- Chakral, Bestial and Myrfloral mana convert to this when the organism dies. "Death" is a bit loose here, as those original mana types will still linger in blood/bones/seeds/wood; basically any organic material classified as "Undying". Mortine will instead be present within anything that's decaying. It can be stored in Onyx, and forms Mortargentic/Mortiferric/Morticupric if exposed to Silver, Iron or Copper respectively. It is blocked by Gold and has kind of a weird relationship with Cobalt -- it's blocked by Solcobaltic and any kind of Myrsolcobaltic but turns anything else into Morticobaltic, with the exception of Aquacobaltic, which will instead turn into Glacicobaltic. Same deal with Myraquacobaltics like Lunaquacobaltic --> Lunaglacicobaltic. In addition to its Transmutation uses, Mortine powers "death magic" (which isn't what you think).

* Mortisangual -- Worth mentioning on its own, as it forms the basis of all "push magic" -- things that power ships that aren't just following currents, anything that requires momentum, and the levitation that magical animals such as gryphons and dragons are able to perform. In those cases, they seem to be inclined to murder the things around them in order to help sustain flight, though Mortisangual is stable enough that the mortine component doesn't have to be replenished often.

It's almost 6am here so this is probably enough for now.

[Ahzoh]

What happens if they go past the wall? Do they fall off into oblivion or do they warp to the other side of the world like Pacman?

[Glenn]

@Xhin: I always find your conworlds and their unusual con-physics interesting, and this one is no exception, although I did find the various flavors of mana difficult to keep track of.

After reading your most recent post, I have a question: You describe mana entities as (probably) being at least the size of clouds, and large clouds (at least on Earth) can sometimes be miles (kilometers) across. Does that mean that at any given time, all of the mana over a large area will be of the same kind, and only mana of that kind will be available to be tapped? (If so, I expect that different kinds are tapped at different times and places, and then stored and brought together for different applications, rather like mining different mineral deposits and bringing the different metals together – although the comparison with clouds implies that mana entities, unlike mineral deposits, are mobile.) Or can different mana entities overlap, and if so, does this have any particular consequences?

[Xhin]

What happens if they go past the wall? Do they fall off into oblivion or do they warp to the other side of the world like Pacman?

They fall off into oblivion. It's actually a bit worse because the edge seems to curve inwards gradually so building any kind of infrastructure on the sides is tricky. Luckily, none of the areas surveyed actually have resources that are worth the risk.

Mons Minima has a complex known as the Abyssal Observatory that studies the edge and its phenomena. It's largely dedicated to watching the Astra go underneath Saepes Mundi (and presumably over to the other side) but it's definitely explored questions like this as well, in ideally safe hypothetical ways (dropping something and tracking it as far as they can for example).

although I did find the various flavors of mana difficult to keep track of.

To be fair, I'm also finding them difficult to keep track of. I think it'll be more clear when I explore the kinds of things magic can actually do and maybe when I sketch up some kind of "periodic table of mana".

Does that mean that at any given time, all of the mana over a large area will be of the same kind, and only mana of that kind will be available to be tapped?

Generally no because tapping into a mana entity will tap into the whole thing at high speed. Crystals such as Quartz are excellent conductors of mana and have a high (though not infinite) storage capacity.

So for most environmental conditions, the charging stations are pulling entire large mana entities into a crystal within a few minutes, causing some telltale air disturbances as new entities form and alter the motions of local air currents. The exception are storms, which have highly concentrated mana and therefore take a lot longer to tap.

The limiter here isn't the size of entities, but rather which Astra is in the sky at a particular point in time. Generally there will only be one at a time, though Sol and Luna will overlap sometimes, and Sanguine and Luna can overlap as well -- Sol and Sanguine overlapping is very rare but sometimes happens.

When one Astra sets and another rises, the various air entities will begin to Transmute, outside of storms which mostly just get jostled around -- they will definitely Transmute too but it takes longer.

Or can different mana entities overlap, and if so, does this have any particular consequences?

Mana entities can't overlap. There can be different ones in the air at the same time however, depending on the composition of the visible Astra and also what time it is -- "twilight" type time periods tend to have more variety, as is any time where there's two Astra in the sky at once.

Solar, Lunar and Sangual mana are all virtually identical so there aren't any particular consequences from this.

[sasasha]

I find this really interesting and I'm glad you revived the project. I like the way you've worked out the infrastructure of otherwise tropey features like enornous storage capacity and fast travel. The lack of this infrastructure usually breaks the illusion in games for me, but I feel I could really get behind your systems.

Right from the early posts I was enjoying imagining how differently the world might function under the three Astra (I like the structure of Luna and Sol being exclusive, and Sanguine being like a ‘special’ phase that can co-occur or occur on its own, giving five phases of varying rareness). Is there a reason you've made their mana all virtually identical? It might be an interesting area of gameplay to have the magical mechanics change in these phases.

[Xhin]

The lack of this infrastructure usually breaks the illusion in games for me, but I feel I could really get behind your systems.

There's a heck of a lot of engineering as well, despite the magic-friendly setting. Magic isn't just a tool that allows wish fulfilment -- it has to actually be refined and shaped and any big projects (like fast travel) have a lot of intricate magical and mechanical components working in concert.

I like the structure of Luna and Sol being exclusive, and Sanguine being like a ‘special’ phase that can co-occur or occur on its own, giving five phases of varying rareness

The Astra phases are (in order of rarity)

* Sol
* Luna
* Sanguine + Luna -- Sanguine tends to rise and set while Luna is out, sometimes doing a few rotations before Luna sets. However sometimes it just doesn't appear at all, and the reason for that isn't well understood.
* Sol + Luna -- They're generally exclusive but occasionally you'll get both since the orbits aren't mirrors of each other. With this phase, Luna will rise up to 20 degrees above the horizon while Sol is setting and then return to being a mirror of Sol. Luna doesn't really behave the way you'd expect an orbital body to.
* Sanguine -- Having only Sanguine implies that you're alternating between Sanguine and Sol+Luna, because Sanguine is always in the sky when neither Sol and Luna are.
* Sanguine + Sol -- Very rare and has something to do with Sangual Cycles. Sanguine will pass overhead during a Sol phase exactly once and at its absolute top speed. This only happens during a period of time when Sol and Luna are mirrored so it probably has something to do with that.

Sol + Luna + Sanguine is impossible because Sanguine is always opposite a Sol+Luna pair.

Sanguine tends to be more erratic when Sol and Luna are mirrored, probably because there's no time window where it has to come out. It is however cyclical, as are the rest of the Astra phases. I'll detail them at some point.

Is there a reason you've made their mana all virtually identical?

Mana is the foundation of the magic system but the different types don't have as much effect on a spell as what you actually do with them. The subtle differences are nonetheless important when spellmaking. There are definitely some exceptions like Aquine and Glycine, which have effects in themselves. Additionally, subtle effects become way more pronounced when you build up a lot of depth -- for example solar mana and lunar mana are virtually identical in their base state but build them up enough and solar mana will power explosive spells while lunar mana will dampen them. Lunar mana based spells are also way more prone to go on tangents, whereas solar mana based spells are more likely to self-combust.

might be an interesting area of gameplay to have the magical mechanics change in these phases.

The game is largely just a bunch of quests (with some item collection and Courier/other work to support a kind of "exhibit" you're making). Any time you're interacting with the magic system you're doing it from a learning perspective. Or if you get a job with one of the many handcrafted spellmaking factions I guess you'd be interacting with it more directly. But it definitely isn't an open-ended system -- there's some specified goal you're trying to achieve.

The game is also very very lore-heavy. So much so that I've got more written up about Mons Minima alone than the entirety of this post. It's the kind of game where it makes sense to store all the background information / dialogue in a server database rather than trying to dump the entire thing into the browser.