How land is created, and how people shape it.
Score: 764 | 8/18/22 |
The world is always expanding. Around its edges, there is an empty, formless, infinite void.
Transitional Process
Formation
Spent Psychic Energy gives this void form. It takes more energy to do this quickly. It takes more energy to do this to a large area. The form taken is what is pictured in the mind of the people providing the energy.
There is an unrefined process where a large group of people work together with a sufficient common idea of what they need that the space takes this form. This was discovered by the earliest humans, out of necessity.
Later, individuals skilled in psychics learned to funnel, channel and shape this, and even learned to increase their own contribution; sufficiently powerful individuals could shape small plots on their own in days!
Much later, once the mechanics were understood, artificers were able to create devices that reduced drastically the need for skill. These ranged from devices which seemingly amplified the flow from an individual or group, to devices which allowed an unskilled individual to impose their own will on the form, to devices which provide energy without other people being the source, to devices which forced the formed places to have a shape matching a specific set of parameters by funneling the energy through a captured memory.
Depletion
Regions are infused with Raw Psychic Energy. This energy is consumed through the creation of life, though it can be drawn on via other means, such as certain kinds of magic and artifacts. Because Raw Psychic Energy is not renewable, once all of the energy in a region has been drawn out, the region is said to be Depleted.
Once a region is depleted, life cannot be created. No seeds will germinate. No animal can be born. No egg can hatch. Bacteria cannot replicate. Naturally, magic and artifacts that depend on drawing raw psychic energy from their environment cannot function.
Different kinds of life will deplete land quicker or more slowly than other life. Wood-elves, for existence, cause very little strain, presumably because their population growth is low. Plants, bacteria and other lower life forms also draw very little, because they require very little Soul Energy to spawn. (Naturally, this means that higher life forms will see themselves unable to reproduce first, with large numbers of stillborn, before lower life forms and plants cease to flourish.)
Some things cause a lot of Depletion. Certain Aberrations may feed a lot on ambient psychic energy. Some artifacts, called Psychic Devices, engineered by misguided fools (or malignant geniuses) fueled by psychic energy might be able to very quickly deplete a region.
Warforged operate on psychic energy as well; if they move to a Depleted area, they will shut down after a few days, waking up again after a few days when moved to a non-depleted area. The Warforged Warlord was one such warforged who was stranded in a depleted area, discovered and moved to a non-depleted area, which they subsequently conquered. There's also the adventures of the Warforged and the Demigod, where the Demigod sustains their Warforged partner with their own psychic energy when they're faced with Depleted areas.
There may also be found some enterprising individuals who use artifacts or other techniques to collect and concentrate psychic energy into storage vessels, enabling it to be used elsewhere.
Geography
At the center of the world is an ever-growing area of Depleted regions, while at the edge is the Void. In the middle is a growing area of livable space, always becoming more depleted toward the center, frequently growing out fresh into the Void around the edges.
Each region, when Formed, gets a natural, invisible boundary; a spell cast on one side of the boundary won't deplete energy from the region on the other side of the boundary.
As the world grows older, and the livable region next to the void grows larger and larger in circumference, it will become more and more common for civilizations and nations in one area of the world to have had no contact or knowledge with civilizations and nations in another; if there's 10,000 miles of barren, lifeless wasteland between two places, contact and trade between the two will be next to impossible. In this way, vastly different cultures and technology levels eventually exist around the world, sometimes with adjacent contact, but more often without. The Eldest like it this way, and may interfere if it looks like the world might homogenize.
The Void
In the beginning, there is a Void. Voids are regions of wild magic, no gravity, no sky, no ground. They are, in a word, lethal. They present as a gray, formless mist which burns to the touch.
Young Regions
Newly-formed regions will have plenty of Raw Psychic Energy in them. They'll typically already have land and life, though this will depend greatly on the will of those who drove the Formation process. The regions will be very fertile, and crops and populations of all types will grow readily.
Young regions will not have complicated infrastructure, mortal races, established civilizations or mountains of wealth; these things are too complicated for a large number of people working together guiding Formation, and the amount of energy required for Formation is too great for a small number of people to achieve. They will take time, blood, sweat and tears for civilizations to settle and build up.
Old Regions
Old regions, having been long settled, will tend to have great, established civilizations, with large amounts of infrastructure and accrued wealth. Cultures in Old Regions are likely to be sophisticated and complicated; lore will have evolved from the region's long history, with plenty of time for embellishment in the retelling.
Old regions are likely to be very heavily populated. In fact, population will peak just as an Old Region begins to transition to Depleted, as birthrates will decline. People who can will move to younger regions.
Everything has a claim on it, probably more than one claim in contention. Prices are high, demand is high, and competition for territory has had plenty of time to grow complicated, if possibly no less dangerous.
Depleted Regions
Depleted regions will have ruins! Before being abandoned, a Depleted Region was very likely the peak of some other civilization, and much of that infrastructure may still stand, waiting to be explored and looted.
Speaking of loot, abandoned civilizations are always rumored to have treasure. And there may still be some; I heard this guy saying to his buddies about how his friend saw a vault that was still sealed--I bet there's something valuable in there!
Depleted Regions may not be able to sustain new life, but that doesn't mean they're devoid of people! Treasure means opportunity, and opportunity means adventure! People searching for treasure, braving the magical and the mundane, the traps, the aberrations, the pirates and magical beasts, all to collect a little more gold, find that big score, or perhaps just to prey on others who are there for the same purposes...
Pirates! Need a place to hide yourself or ill-gotten goods? I know a guy who has a place over yonder; you just need to book a passage on his ship to reach their secret cove...
Depleted regions may not be completely depleted; it takes less raw psychic energy to grow a crop than to have a child, and even less for fields of grass and weeds to form. So there may be lower forms of mortal life. However, there may be enclaves of fey and sleeping magical beasts who could present their own risks and rewards, allies and threats. Be careful.
Politics
Because regions wear out over time and their suitability for various purposes wax and wane, there are many opportunities for grand-scheme politics. Let's look at some examples of these schemes and scenarios that have played out, and the peoples involved.
The Kingdom of Prine
Void regions suitable for Formation always border existing regions which have already been formed, and are a natural first choice for those regions which need to expand to fresh lands. The Kingdom of Prine, for example, has had three territories in its recorded history, Old Prine, its first, now Depleted, Prine Province, its current seat of power, and New Prine, the region it most recently Formed and claimed to replace its aging lands.
The Vecurian Empire and the Canait Kingdom
If the formation and claiming of a new region results in an existing nation becoming "landlocked" away from access to void regions, the days of that nation and its people are numbered; they have nowhere to expand to, and their existing lands will eventually cease to sustain them. This happened to the Vecurians when the Canaitians Formed the Void adjacent to the Vecurian Empire, and then held it against their settlement. The Vecurian Empire is now ailing land, and its people are scattered, and it has enacted harsh policies in an effort to prolong its existence.
The Fey
While the Fey require little to no psychic energy to survive, they're still generally associated with nature. They may sometimes be found in New Regions, but can survive after a region has been Depleted.
The Fey dislike being in regions with little to no remaining life. Some migrate to undepleted regions, settling into forests and enclaves; these Fey will eventually move on again, becoming populations of Nomadic Fey.
Some Fey may become soured on life and look for something to blame; these Fey will often chose a target for their wrath and seek to punish or destroy them. They may pursue these vendettas individually, or as part of an organization such as The Outraged.
(image by midjourney)