The world of Adestor is an old non-medieval fantasy world comprised of a large and ever-expanding planet that encompasses technically a single kingdom. A wide number of species live in Adestor, most in each their own separate nations. The world is most strikingly characterized by a connection to the human world, a series of federal monarchies, and a variety of different magical abilities split politically by element.
In Adestorian custom, it is generally accepted that there are twelve core elements. Seven are concrete, three are sacred, and two are untouchable, but all have their opposite counterpart. [Earth, air. Fire, water. Dark, light. Change,] [eternity. Division, unity.] [Life, death.] It is said that these sacred numbers are why we have ten fingers, that each may attempt to grasp at all but life and death themselves, and why we have seven days in a week, three weeks in a month, and twelve months in a year, yet only two seasons.
The seven concrete elements are the only ones represented by magic, and each is associated with a certain color and a certain type of gem. The gem Annerin is a light, almost pale purple and represents light. Darahun is white and represents earth. Eliasi is dark green and represents water. Serrana is light blue and represents air. Tagap is a dark orange and represents change. Okilahin is black and represents darkness. Ruktehok is a vibrant, dark red and represents fire. It is these seven gems that make up the kingdom Adestor. Many magics performed will manifest one of the seven colors based on the element they are. The high rulers of Adestor are said to represent unity and their color is unofficially considered to be gold.
The seven gems (and therefore their respective colors) have existed pretty much since the beginning of the world, in a species known as the whisper rocks. It is said the gems, usually encased in normal-looking rocks, are the souls of the whisper rocks, contain all of a single element’s magic, and have recorded all the history of the world. Currently, Adestor is split by these seven elements into seven approximate smaller kingdoms each encompassing the people who use magic of that element. These kingdoms are also referred to as “gems” or by the name of their respective gem, thanks to an old incident that tied every magical people to their respective stone.
In Adestor, the soul is the manifestation of one’s entire non-physical being, what we might call a person’s personality or consciousness, though in reality it extends beyond what the body is simply conscious of and is also comprised of the subconscious, primal responses and fears, and memories. Souls do not change, for their representation of us is as individuals at our core. The only thing that can make a soul change is a complete change in identity. Sentient beings can manifest their souls in their hands. When they do this, it basically looks like a hologram held in their hand, a very good quality, colored hologram. What the soul looks like depends on the person. When a sentient magical creature is born, this hologram-like soul sits in the palm of the dominant hand, and it is an old practice for the parents to give them a secondary name to describe this form.
Everything that lives has a soul, and it is thought that the planets themselves may have souls. Certain treasured objects also can be imbued with what people believe to be some sort of soul, if they’ve taken on the memories and emotions surrounding them. Sentient magical beings have two souls tightly bound together, and the two represent two totally different personalities. The first is the personality of the body’s main host, but the second is what is called the magical personality, and its function for the most part appears to be aiding in the use and control of one’s magic. The two souls are held together with some sort of glue. The magical personality is the one tied to the gems, but is still, at its core, inseparable from the main personality.
The intricacies of how souls work and relate to one another are not known with any level of detail, and it is likely they will never be fully understood, though there are a few key spells that allow one to manipulate a few soul interactions. However, it is a fairly well-established fact that certain souls seem to hold a connection wherein they can communicate with each other regardless of separations in space and time, sharing a consciousness and memory down throughout their descendants. This does not apply to regular, sentient beings (not even for twins), but for magical personalities, whisper rocks, and a couple other very special magical species only.
Adestorian magic comes in many shapes and sizes, so defining it in a simple way is rather difficult. It tends to be a skill unique to each species that is impossible by conventional understanding, though some species’ abilities overlap to some extent. It is generally accepted that every sentient species has magical abilities, even if they are not immediately obvious. Most species have a range of related abilities, but it is also not unusual for a species to only have one very specific ability. All magical beings also exhibits some kind of energetic pulse that can be felt by most other magical species, known as magical presence or force. The more powerful the magical being, the stronger and more distinct their magical force.
Magic can be separated by type in three different ways: control, learning, and effect.
By effect, magic can be split into self-magics, outer magics, and control magics. Self-magics are magic that impact oneself, such as shapeshifting or magical memories. Outer magics are abilities that control the outer, physical world, especially the six elements (besides change), such bending light or controlling ice. Control magics are magics involving control over another living being, such as summoning, healing, or altering memories.
By learning, magic can be either inherent or learned, which should be pretty much be self-explanatory. Some magics need to be learned, while others are easy, natural and inherent to use. Some are even completely inherent in that they cannot be controlled at all and are just constantly on, like the magic of the aura-seers, who see auras all the time, regardless of whether or not they want to. A majority of magics are some combination of this, with most individuals having varying levels of inherent control over their magic that they have to learn to cultivate and improve as they grow older and more knowledgeable, but plenty of species use magic that is purely one or the other.
By control, magic can be split up by self-control and external-control, neither of which have anything to do with outer magics or control magics. All it indicates is whether or not a separate external item is required to control their specific magic. External-control magics require some external item through which the magic is conducted. Incantations, pentagrams, charms, wands, sometimes even more than one at a time. Incantations are really the only one used commonly in most regular species. Most external-control magics require a lot of learning to use.
Incantations are most frequently components of spells. Many species’ magics are a series of general abilities with no name, but spells are particular pieces of magic with specific triggers to cause specific singular effects. Spells are established pieces of magic that do a single, specific effect, usually of a higher level than the regular, innate power a person might have. Species do not make their own spells, but are born knowing them when they are first created as a species, if they have them at all. The children of first-generations are not born knowing spells and often have to be taught how to do them (incantations are not necessarily always required, but it is pretty common for them to be). Thanks to this, it is very possible for species to lose the knowledge required to do certain spells as generations pass.
Note that most species have some variety in abilities, which can encompass more than one classification, no matter which metric you’re using.
Most sentient species that need to learn their magic also develop magical stances as children, essentially a position or hand motion that acts as a focal point through which children learn to channel their magic. They are not inherent, and must be discovered on an individual basis. Most do not need these once they become adults (except for enacting particularly tricky spells), but external items used in external-control magics are often considered specialized stances, though incantations are not.
There are very few real inabilities of magic in Adestor, but there is a set of agreed-upon conventions known as forbidden magics. Forbidden magics are also called “universal magic rules,” and they are so old that no one know where they came from or how they developed, except that most everyone agrees that they cannot be broken without being considered major violations of nature and the law. There are three types of forbidden magics: time-turning, direct control, and necromancy. All three of these forbidden magics have some root in each gem, but are easy to abuse. Although the magics didn’t completely die out in the gems, there is no longer any good knowledge of how to perform the magics. This makes the magics even more imprecise and more dangerous to use in modern times.
Direct control entails direct, irreversible control over another sentient being’s actions or thoughts using magic, especially without their consent, and is most similar to control magics (and therefore the most controversial as a forbidden magic). Necromancy is affecting the body of someone who is dead in any way shape or form using magic. Fully resurrecting an individual is absolutely impossible (one of the few inabilities of Adestorian magic), but it is possible to summon another’s spirit and temporarily return it to their body, or move someone’s soul to a dead body. This is what is referred to as false necromancy. True necromancy is about affecting someone’s life or death using their life-roses. It is not illegal, but is also unique to a single species actually referred to as necromancers.
New species in Adestor simply appear on the surface of the planet, with their own allotment of land. Most new species nowadays are sentient and One Race. One Race is the word used for the humanoid form, which is considered by some to be a sacred or important base form among sentient beings across many realms. The One Race is thought to be the form of a single species off of which all other One Race species are made, though what that original species is and whether they still exist is unknown.
Many species are very different from each other, while some have similar types of powers, and a few have been lumped in together in their own categories, which encompass species with certain shared characteristics, but different precise specialties. These categories are the vampires, the growers, the riders, the caretakers, the makers, the drawers, the summoners, and the visualizers.
First, there are the vampires, which act as one species and kingdom, but really are more of a category than a species unto themselves. Vampires are especially fast and can have children with each other, but the thing that sets them apart is the ability to suck something from other living, sentient being and use it both to feed themselves and to manipulate that something as an external manifestation, such as blood or the emotion of pain. They are considered hunters, but rarely kill those they feed on.
Then there are the growers, which hold no one solid form, and instead can breed with each other of the same element and produce a child of a random race of the same element (such as a water sprite-form mother and a mermaid-form father giving birth to an ice maker). While they do not have a single form, it is nearly unheard of for them to interact and mate with anyone who is not also a grower of the same element. It is not known why.
The riders are species known to – what else? – ride specific animals. While beasts of burden and transportation are plenty common in a wide variety of species, riders rarely have any other magic to speak of, and in exchange ride a single, magical creature specific to them. Types of creatures range wildly, and some species even live inside of their respective animal, but they are universally known to share a special bond with their specific creature, and have some sort of mental communication with them, though only some of the ridden beasts are sentient.
Caretakers, on the other hand, are often confused for riders, because they have a specific connection with a species of their own, but are a very different sort of entity. The simplest way to tell them apart is that caretakers rarely ride their species, and the species they care for tend to be less mobile and less sentient, but the core of the difference is the amount of power afforded to one side. Riders have a relationship with their animal, but usually are the dominant force in the relationship. Caretakers are less likely to actively communicate with their creatures than act as an extension of them, acting out their will almost instinctively, knowing how to best care for them as a One Race from the time they are born and rarely bonding to a single individual of the creatures they care for. In return, the creatures respond to them and do not harm them (many of these creatures are naturally harmful to most One Race, another distinction from the riders, whose steeds are usually no more dangerous than the average horse – think, bear vs poisonous frog: both can be dangerous, but one has to actively be trying, and the other just is).
Makers are, by far, the simplest of the categories, as they can make things of their specific element or expertise from thin air, as opposed to the drawers, which store quantities of their element in their body somehow without poisoning themselves and can draw it out into a tangible, manipulable form. This does require the element in question be concrete, however, like wood, metal, ice, or lava, as opposed to say, fire.
Summoners are different from both the makers and the drawers in that they do not involve themselves with elements at all, but different creatures. Unlike both the caretakers and the riders, however, their creatures are never native to Adestor, and must instead be summoned from a different world. There is never any other way to access that other world, and each summoner species has their own special universe, no two are the same. Likewise, each summoned species has its own culture and capabilities and rankings and society and rules about summoning, even if they are sometimes called the same. Some races can summon only a single familiar their entire life, while others can summon whatever they want as long as they have enough power for it.
And lastly, the visualizers, while possibly the least glamorous and active of these species types, encompass a wide range of versatile species who can see things no one else can. They rarely have the ability to do anything else, but a few examples are relationships between people, auras, magical abilities, physical strengths and weaknesses, an individual’s vices, the exact composition of rock, or the details of a piece of cloth. While a few of these may be considered feats of physical visual acuity, the specificity of say, being able to see the detailed texture of cloth alone, but not the same detailed texture of rock or skin, makes it very likely that these are magical abilities, and people treat them as such, particularly when they cannot, apparently, do anything else.
The human world is integrally tied to Adestor in a number of ways. It is physically tied by portal, but also appears to be ideologically linked, as many species are born with a human language, and many species seem to be influenced by patterns in human imagination. This apparent influence ties back to what might be looked at as the main “religious beliefs” of Adestor.
Every species on Adestor is born knowing of a figure called the Creator, who has made them all, though he has never been seen. Whether or not the Creator is benevolent and omnipotent is never put to much debate, but not everyone attributes the same things to his power. Some people say war or natural disaster is the result of his wrath, for instance, while others insist he is more of a lofty Creator who creates idly but otherwise interferes little with their affairs. The Creator is probably the closest Adestor has to a “god,” but the word does not exist in the language, and the concept itself is a bit of a foreign one in the world. “Prayer” and “worship” are not done in any systematized fashion and are not considered “religious practices,” though people will thank the Creator or Hidden for one thing or another, or make requests or pleas of them. The term “religion” itself is also a foreign concept and there is no word for it, and while there is a word for “worship,” it does not entail exactly the same thing.
There is also a second figure in Adestor’s belief system known as “She Who Knows Not What She Makes,” a lengthy official title that few people ever use. Her more popular nickname is “The Hidden,” and she holds a position that is rather difficult to describe in our world. Belief in the Hidden is not quite as automatic as belief in the Creator, and her existence is sometimes disputed, but essentially the thought is that the Creator is the one who puts everything into motion, but the Hidden is chosen from one individual per generation in the human world, who inspires the creation of new species. She is a representative of imagination and inspiration in their world. However, the Hidden does not constitute a separate religion; she is not a god; she is also not a priest. She stands outside of what we normally understand in a religion, and in fact could probably best be compared to figures like Uncle Sam, Big Brother, Mother Nature, Lady Liberty. She acts as a representative of a concept, and in herself she is considered a channel for the Creator’s intentions, not truly separate from him. The gender of the Creator is sometimes disputed (whether or not he has a gender at all is often disputed), but the gender of the Hidden never is.
Species are sometimes thought of as “Creator-based” or “Hidden-based.” This is not a standardized, solid classification, it’s more of an association. Hidden-based species are those that are somehow deeply entwined with imagination and not physical form. Creator-based species tend to be creator-types in and of themselves, and are those that are involved mostly in a very physical aspect of magic.
The kingdom of Adestor is comprised of what we would probably consider a small solar system. The spherical planet of Adestor revolves around one massive, glowing moon known as Iuleran several times the size of Adestor itself. A small “star” that serves as the sun for Adestor, called Lorre, revolves around Adestor, though it certainly would not supply enough solar energy to run our world, and a small rock known as Kieraba revolves around that sun. Lorre and Kieraba are largely uninhabitable, and even though a few unique species live on Iuleran, the inhabitants of the planet Adestor rarely visit. All four planetary bodies are encompassed in a single, wide “atmosphere” of sorts, which grows thinner farther away from the source of the breathable gas, which is Iuleran itself. Both Iuleran and Kieraba are considered moons. While stars do exist in the universe, they appear to be masses of cold, multi-colored flame, infinite in age and finite in number, none of which are in close proximity to the mini solar system.
Kieraba is nothing more than a plain and rather knobbly, wobbly rock. It appears to have a yellowish tint on the rare occasion that it can be seen not because of the sun it rotates around, but because the only species that inhabits it is a bunch of very small, semi-sentients known as Kierabis. They are slightly humanoid yellow blobs that look kind of like moss in the dark rock.
Lorre, for its part, largely consists of extremely bright, extremely hot golden, molten lava, and has no inhabitants whatsoever, as it is a far fly from any source of food, but legend says that a number of the older fire species were born on Lorre and expelled violently onto Adestor, melting that portion of the surface and resulting in the stretch of barren, burnt land commonly referred to as the black glass plains.
Iuleran is significantly farther away from Adestor than Lorre or Kieraba, and significantly larger than any of the other bodies. It is also, actually, the most similar to the stars in the remainder of the universe, in that it glows without giving off any sort of heat whatsoever. However, it appears to be made of massive and very light white rocks that give off an unearthly, pale light. Its surface has a few pits here and there, but otherwise is fairly smooth and flat with few varieties of landscapes, mostly a couple canyons, rivers, mountains, and some small forests, with no large bodies of water or concept of seasons. Floating rocks hang all around, however, and large, beautiful fountains spring with clear, sweet water, around which are built great palace-cities. The inhabitants of Iuleran are equally strange.
Considering Iuleran’s massive size and apparent presence of sustenance, one might expect it to house the greatest number or variety of species. It does not. Only one true single race lives on Iuleran, technically. While they have no true name, on Adestor they are typically referred to as the moon bunnies or the People of the Moon, and occasionally as the Iulerani. These large rabbits walk around on their hind legs, wear clothing, and have a great love for poetry. They are very independent from Adestor, despite being considered a satellite of the kingdom, and rarely communicate with what they refer to as the “mainland.” They live in large, grand, sprawling residences which all the people live in equally. Though they don’t live eternally, they are long-lived, and require little sustenance, but they do produce both cheese and rice cakes as tasty snacks, particularly for or on special occasions. Both their long life and their sage disposition are attributed, in their culture, to the nurture of the moon itself. Their cheese is known to be the most exquisite in the world and is painfully expensive in Adestor. The milk they live on and make their cheese from comes from the sap of every plant that grows on the place and can also be milked from the floating rocks. Different plants yield milk of different flavors, but the rocks provide the milk in its purest form, and this milk is said to be the moon’s gift to those who live upon her.
Iuleran also has the unusual quirk of being a gathering point for several other portals, connecting a single large portal to the human world with several smaller portals which serve as the homes for what is known as the Legends. The Legends tend to be specific, immortal individuals important to some aspect of the human world and its imagination. Neither the People of the Moon nor the Legends are tied to any gem, and what magic they seem to have no relation to any of Adestor’s typical magical rules. It is unknown if they originate from some other land connected to the world of Adestor through portal.
The planet of Adestor itself is perhaps the most similar to our earth. Of the four, it has the widest variety of biomes, but biomes seem to cluster around certain sections of the planet regardless of where science says they should have naturally formed. Annerin is largely filled with extremely fertile land and lush forests. Its neighbor, Okilahin, is largely comprised of dark mountains and thick forests, until it flattens out into hot plains, which then merge into Ruktehok territory, which is almost entirely comprised of hot, wide plains and fields, including the black glass plains, which look much as they are described – like a seemingly endless stretch of black glass, cut through by thin rivers of lava. A couple of volcanoes exist near or in the black glass plains, and no plant life grows in these areas. Tagap and Darahun, which both border Ruktehok, also largely comprise of hot plains, but Darahun becomes more mountainous and has several marshes, while Tagap tends to include more fielded areas and again merges into woods, though less thick forests. Serrana, which is by far the smallest by land mass, is mostly comprised of sharp and inhospitable high cliffs and rocky crags, which immediately cut away into Adestor’s single ocean, which has no name, but is generally considered to essentially be Eliasi territory, including the large ice floes found here and there attached to a little land. There are tides, and these are believed to be caused by the magical pull of Iuleran.
The planet is only 40% water and has two massive holes/whirlpools, one at the bottom, and one at the top axis of the rotation, as Adestor does spin, though not on a tilted axis. It also is eternally expanding, a new piece of land simply popping into existence with every new species, thus making it impossible to make reliable non-magical maps, which are not a concept in the world as a general rule. Besides a few major landmarks, the only thing that does stay consistent is the approximate territories each gem claims dominion over. The planet itself is also believed to have its own magical presence, not dissimilar to the concept of ley lines, though less lines and more winds and pulses, and it is a commonly accepted concept that these winds and pulses are the cause for the many random smaller portals that appear across the planet’s surface.
Portals themselves are an integral part of Adestor’s geography. Adestor has six cardinal directions: out towards the atmosphere, down towards the center of the planet, north, south, portal-side, and capital-side. Non-flying species do not typically care all that much about the first two, so compasses can come both in flat and spherical forms. The terms portal-side and capital-side refer to the two major landmarks across from each other, in the center of the planet. The first is the Great Portal, a massive portal connecting Adestor to the human world. Most portals are small and transient, allowing one or two people through at a time, and always connecting to a random place in the human world. The Great Portal is permanent and at a fixed location, and leads to a continent in the Atlantic ocean that is shrouded in mist and impossible for nonmagical people to see, much less access.
The capital city is a rather large city the size of a small kingdom which houses the high royals and other inter-gem nobles. While a largely forgotten fact by most, it very deliberately sits atop another massive portal. It’s somewhat similar to Iuleran in that it acts as a hub for portals, but unlike the area in Iuleran, which itself connects to multiple portals, this is a single portal that leads to a place known as the Portal Field, the Worldless World, the Empty Lands, the Barren Hub, the list goes on. It is a stony, flat land that stretches far as the eye can see, dun in color and with nothing more lively than dusty winds constantly blowing across it. Nothing can live there. Plants do not grow, water does not flow, no sun shines, and any who dare step foot there will eventually become the dust itself, as nothing can be born and nothing can die. However, far as the eye can see there are great big circular openings to a vast variety of other worlds. It does not lead to the human world. The dust there is often used to make compasses, because (compass-makers believe), it is called home. It does not belong in a world where there is life, and it is therefore constantly yearning to return to the Barren Hub.
The Adestorian time system is not terribly different from ours, except that it is not a construct of its people, and is somehow quite intentionally laid out. Although they do not use the exact same terms as we do, for the most part, the concept of weeks, hours, minutes, etc, are basically the same as ours. They do count them very differently than we do, though. 12 months per year, 3 weeks per month, 7 days per week, 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. They measure their time of day not in H:M, but with what we would interpret as decimal points of hours, such as 2.5 hours, and the like (it is actually spoken in a way that sounds more like how we might refer to fractions). Their version of seconds can be assumed to be the same length as ours. While months, weeks, and days of the week do not technically have special names, each is attributed to one of the core 12 elements.
The year starts with the season of Life, which encompasses the months (in order) of Unity, Life, Light, Air, Fire, and Change. The season of Death encompasses the months (also in order) of Water, Earth, Dark, Division, Death, and Eternity. The three weeks are typically the weeks of Division, Eternity, and Unity, in that order. The days of the week are in the order of Dark, Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Change, and Light. A celebration is held in some cultures on the day of change in the week of eternity during both the months of change and eternity, and usually these are considered purification celebrations, since the actual day of involves a lot of scrambling around making sure everything is ready.
Only two “seasons” exist, and they are not caused by the rotation of the planet, but by a biannual purification event, where all of the planet’s water sinks into the two holes I mentioned in Geography, at the very “top” and very “bottom” of the planet, and then comes out completely purified of all but a few basic minerals. Each time this purification occurs, it abruptly enforces an internal magical change that sweeps across the land and switches the seasons. Change in seasons happen once at the beginning of the year, and once in the precise middle. While the purifications switch the seasons suddenly and definitively, leading up to each purification and the time following the purification there are transition periods during which climates and other such season-related things gradually change (rather like our fall and spring). Since the purification is very sudden, during this time, species that do not reside in the water itself carefully instruct everyone not to go near any water source, for when the water sharply recedes or returns in a fast burst. The purification has little effect on ice-dwellers, as the ice stays exactly as is. Because of this, the fish of Adestor (as well as water-only species) can survive without water for a single day, and adapt to the gradual “saltification” of the waters, which occurs faster than it should considering the geography.
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