Vuliros Worldbuilding Tidbits

what it says on the tin

[asilentcathedral]

What’s like Salazar’s whole deal?

he's a complicated dude, he's got a lot going on!

broad brushstrokes, he's an inquisitor who's not totally bought into the church and its teachings. he's got an anarchist streak that he's slowly coming to terms with, which he's helped along with by his... """friend"""... strika. he's got severe body dysmorphia and relies a lot on the compliments of others to keep his self esteem up. after being pulled into vuliros from miniess, he was raised by urale and kauris, so he's got a lot of issues leftover from that. he tried to open the veil back to miniess, and accidentally ended up opening a portal to somewhere else, which is how he ended up with oreva. he decided to raise her against the advice of kauris, and she's very important to him.

i can elaborate more on specific things if you have a more particular thing you want to know about, but that's the basics of what's up with him lol

[asilentcathedral]

What’s up with Taliv? You’ve mentioned them a couple times

she is callanin and antanaia's daughter! she started out as a 3below oc, but has been recently adapted to the s&m universe. she's @sretann's character so i don't want to run my mouth about her too much, but she's very much mean anime girl vibes.

[asilentcathedral]

hey y'all!

i'm working on putting together a lore doc (maybe site??) for saints & machines. what kinds of things would you like to see in there/know more about? these are the categories i currently have, but i'm open to adding more:

glossary

magic system

geography

major institutions

history & politics

culture

important characters

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: You can't leave it by telling us they spawn a complete freak and then not tell us about it!!

HAHA okay yeah that's fair!!

They have a kid who they name Kyle, who later changes her name to Vilayan (which is a traditional Velanian name.) Vilayan uses any pronouns, so feel free to refer to her with whichever! I will be using she/her for this ask just to simplify comprehension, but she likes he/him and they/them just as much and in normal convo I will alternate between the three.

Vilayan Loret was (unsurprisingly) not raised within the Sliasistic church and its teachings, and as a matter of fact talking about the church was pretty taboo in the Loret household. Because of this, it was a very intriguing institution to Vilayan and she became really interested in the politics and order of the modern church, and especially in Urale and his work at the Greater Imerial Academy. Kauris forbade her from ever talking about Urale or his work at the church, and for a long time Vilayan didn't even know that he was her uncle!

When ~*~major plot stuff~*~ happens and Urale starts spending the majority of his time at the Academy, she's in her late teens and starts attending. By this point she knows that he's her uncle (and that Nadir is his daughter who he had an incestuous relationship with,) and Vilayan is like... deeply in love with him lol. The two of them enter a sexual relationship at the same time that she becomes his apprentice, and they do a lot of fucked up medical experiments for Callanin.

Vilayan is very into sadomasochism and is extremely subby. I've often described her as very yandere as well, because she is fiercely loyal to Urale and will do absolutely unspeakable things for him. Kauris and Cevin are understandably not thrilled about this, but at this point in the story there's not really anything they can do about it, and she's pretty much cut them out of her life.

She's very smiley and chipper, taking much more after Cevin than Kauris. Urale is a little bit repulsed by her because she looks a lot like Cevin, but at that point he's extremely lonely and depressed and sickly, so having a singularly loyal teenager to follow him around and do whatever he says is extremely appealing to him. She's very intelligent but not very wise, and tends to think with her dick.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: How does Kauris meet his husband after he leaves?

They met in therapy. Cevin is one of Kauris' ex-patients!

While he was still a priest, Kauris had a role similar to a police or military chaplain. When he left the church, he went into private practice as a psychiatrist because he already had the necessary degrees for licensing, and he needed SOMETHING to do to distract him from his pain. He specializes in treating ex-military and ex-Sliasistic folks, and is popular with them for his no nonsense attitude and bluntness.

Cevin is an elf that served in the Velanian military, and was a (very small, low ranking) part of the coup against the royal family. He has PTSD from his time serving, and had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. Because of this, he sought therapy with Kauris when he went into private practice. Fun fact: he's a mechanic, and maintains a license to make and fix archanomechanical engines.

They actually had a bit of a meet cute! I'm planning on writing a short (<20k) piece about them and how they ended up together at some point because I really like their story. Cevin was the primary driver of their relationship and pursued Kauris in a firm but non-pushy way. He actually lined up another therapist before he asked Kauris out so that they would no longer be doctor and patient.

Cevin likes Kauris because he's a very wounded person with a deep well of cruelty that is genuinely trying to better himself and to repair the harm he's caused (unless it's Urale, but he hehe.) Cevin thinks he's a very lovely person underneath his prickly exterior. He absolutely loves Kauris' dry sense of humor - he's one of the only people that actually understands when he's telling a joke.

Cevin told Kauris once that he thinks he's the most beautiful man he's ever seen, and that pretty much instantly melted Kauris' heart and made him fall in love. Kauris is full of self hatred and has always resented Urale for being beautiful, so to be seen as the most beautiful person alive is really significant to him. Kauris loves how kind and resilient Cevin is, how sweet and gentle he is while also refusing to take abuse from anyone. They're a very good match!

And then they spawn just a complete and utter freak, but Alas lmao. Can't all be winners.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: Tell me more about Callanin and his whole deal! Who is he, what’s his motivations? Tell me about his cat divorce :p

Of course!!

 Callanin is the President (read: dictator) of Velana, which is the country on Vuliros that Acentel and Imerial are in. He's a very traditional Vulirosi guy and he's very anti-church. Through the uprising and eventual coup that he was head of, there's been a big shift in Velena to bringing back a lot of the traditional Vulurosi ways from before the church came to Vuliros, and a lot of that involves rights for quadfolk in general and specifically the right for people not to be forced to maintain elfshape in order to exist in Velenian society. Because of all of this, the Sliasistic Church has been moving leftward in a frantic attempt to maintain control, including appointing the first non-elf to the highest office within the church (the pope equivalent, which I know I gave a proper title but I can't find that in my notes right now.)

Callanin himself is an ex-military guy, and maintained elfshape for a long time. He's notably huge, and even in elfshape he's over 7 feet tall. I'm still working out all the details of his backstory, but the main important parts are his relationship with the previous royal family and Antanaia.

Velena used to have a royal family, which was appointed by the church. The title of king would still be handed down to the king's offspring, but the church could strip them of their power and titles at any time, and for many centuries would just straight up execute them. Antanaia's family had been in charge of Velena for a while, but they were falling out of favor with the church and were at risk of having their titles stripped. Antanaia was really interested in what Callanin had to say about the political system and the church, and ended up helping him with the coup. They eventually wed (in the traditional Vulurosi style of course) and had a baby named Taliv.

 Callanin's power went to his head pretty fast, and though he holds a lot of ideals that we'd consider leftist, he ends up being a very authoritarian ruler. Antanaia is not a fan of that, which is why they decide to leave him. Taliv still lives with her father because she's a daddy's girl through and through.

Callanin has a pretty important role in the major world events going on in Saints & Machines so I won't get too into where his plot is going, but I will say that he's good friends with Urale, which will be a thing that causes a lot of pain and suffering later on down the line. :^)

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: How is disability and accessibility handled in Imerial vs Acentel vs other places in the world?

Since I was talking about this a lot with Void earlier, I'm gonna talk about it a little bit here!

There are of course most of the same kinds of disability that we have on Earth, and Vuliros has been surprisingly forward thinking with a lot of that. A big part of that is that a large subset of the population of native Vulirosi folk are quadrupedal, which is something that the Sliasistic church 1) hates and 2) has tried to actively make impossible, but they've not been successful at that.

A big part of the culture on Vuliros as dictated by the church is taking "elfshape," which basically is that through magical means, any sapient non-elf creatures are expected to maintain a magical glamour that makes them appear as much like an elf as possible if they want to participate in society, including walking on two legs. There are a lot of folks that don't take elfshape for political reasons (like Void's character Llewelyn and my characters Callanin and Antanaia,) but there's also many folks that physically can't take elfshape and maintain those glamours AT ALL. Because of this, in the church's eyes they are considered disabled as well.

One of the big movements in Velana (the country on Vuliros that Imerial and Acentel are in) in the present day part of the timeline is about rights for quadrupedal folk, and a return to embracing Vulirosi culture from before the church came. Because quad folk are lumped in with disabled folk, making things that are accessible in a lot of different ways has been a shared and natural goal between the movements, and so they're largely one and the same. Callanin (the dictat- I MEAN PRESIDENT - of Velana) has really pushed a lot of change in quad and disability rights and making public spaces more accessible all across the country, but there's still a lot of pushback from the church so Imerial itself is lagging behind the rest of the country (and even Acentel) when it comes to accessibility.

And I will also note that I think there's a lot of disabled folk that AREN'T quad that are very frustrated by how quad rights has kind of become the main talking point that political action is centered around, but the movement has done a lot of good for non-quad disabled folk as well so for the most part it's more of an intracommunity discourse that never gets resolved.

 I have a lot more thoughts about specific things that have been made accessible, but I'll cut it off there for now haha

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: does urale is gay?

LMAO he's mostly gay, yes! He makes an exception for Nadir (who is too precious to him to NOT fuck,) but generally speaking he's almost exclusively attracted to other man-adjacent folks. The priesthood is also absolutely FULL of thirsty queer men so he can pretty much have his pick of any of then- his only serious relationships that he's ever had though are with Kauris and Nadir. Oh, and also he's a top. ;^)

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: what are the different planes that exist in the universe vuliros exists in

There’s quite a few! There are 5 main ones though in addition to Vuliros.

Lazark- realm of Magic. All of the realms have natural magic to them, but Lazark has the most varied natural magic. There is a huge class of wizards and sorcerers that study and live in Lazark, as well as the original religious organization that the Sliasistic Church on Vuliros broke off from. In Sliasistic mythology, the underworld is attached to Lazark.

Miniess- realm of Fire. As with all the the realms, there are climate variations on Miniess but it generally tends to run hotter than the others. Most natural magic here harnesses fire in some way. Fun fact- this is where Salazar comes from!

Chardin- realm of Frost. The complementary and opposite realm to Miniess, they are usually allied and share many portals. Most magic is based around ice and water. Strika is from here.

Kadeem- realm of Fog. Kadeem is the largest realm with the most varied population, with many creatures both sapient and not that cannot naturally be found in the other realms. This is the one realm where elves are a minority. Monsters that cause problems in other realms originate from here. Most magic is water and plant based.

Tation- realm of Shadows. The most mysterious realm, it’s been a long time since someone crossed from here, and little is known about it. The primary natural magic here is things that alter the mind and reality.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: I simply need to know how Nadir and Urale ended up fucking. And also, Urale being a high member of the clergy, how hidden do they have to keep the relationship? Would it ruin Urale's life or is this kind of abuse swept under the rug?

Eeeeeee yes thank you I think about this constantly hahaha! Kauris left Nadir in Urale’s care when she was still an infant, so he pretty much single-handedly raised her (yuck 😏) and they’re quite close as a result, even though he very severely physically and emotionally abused her for most of her life. Lots of complicated feelings there for both of them. Nadir since her teen years has been very sexually adventurous and forward, and she’s initiated every relationship she’s been in. Her first Serious (to her) relationship was with Salazar, which ended in a pretty intense amount of heartbreak for her. She ends up pregnant by him and chooses to have an abortion, which Urale performs for her (he’s a medical doctor and has a few illicit procedures under his belt.) It’s after this point that they become more emotionally close and Urale’s abuse isn’t quite as severe as it was previously. I don’t know the exact circumstances yet, but Nadir makes the first move and kisses Urale, which quickly snowballs into a very intense years-long relationship. They have to keep it VERY hidden. On top of the issue of required celibacy for the clergy, incest is VERY taboo, and Urale already has a bunch of (absolutely true) rumors circulating about him and Kauris. The abusive element is almost seen as secondary to those points as well, as the church cares more about maintaining a pious image than mitigating actual harm. Both Urale and Nadir are very private people (Nadir doesn’t even use the internet except for work things) and aren’t very affectionate outside of their home though, so it’s not too hard to keep their relationship under wraps. Even though Nadir is fully an adult by the time Saints & Machines starts it’s not uncommon for young adults barred from obtaining a practitioner’s license (magic) to continue living with their legal guardians for a longer period while still sorting out their non-practitioner’s licenses and documents, so her still living with him doesn’t raise any eyebrows. Their relationship being uncovered by the media is actually a later plot point of S&M too, so…….. 🤫

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: What is Urale’s biggest kink?

Humiliation. Above all else he likes demeaning and humiliating others, he can't usually get off without degrading his partner as part of the sex act. He also enjoys being degraded by a VERY select few, but he'd never admit it.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: Wait, who is oreva?

Oreva is my girlfriend's OC, she is Salazar's ward and Nadir's eventual love interest. :^) She's a corvid harpy and she goes to a rival boarding school.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: Are there any eye or hair colors that are unusual? Is cosmetic surgery a thing?

Eye, hair, and skin colors in elves are pretty similar to what you see in humans, plus a few pinks and purples. There's a few elves of different origins that have some more wild colors that occur naturally in their features, but they're rarer. Some of the other sapient magical beings that exist have a more varied palette as well, and of course regular animals with all their variety. Cosmetic surgery is definitely a thing, and becoming more common! Technology, science, medicine etc still is very much a thing that is separate from magic because magic is so heavily regulated, but there's some arcanocosmetics as well! Things relating to gender reassignment and whatnot are often assisted with the arcane arts, but are primarily based in medicine and technology. Nadir used to dye her hair with actual dye, but now she has actually CHANGED the color of her hair to be pink using cosmetic magic. Because her hair already had pink undertones it wasn't hard to modify the base color, but if she wanted to do something like dye it blue she's have to use actual dye for that.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: Is there plastics in this world, or is it all organic material?

There's not really plastics in the sense that we have them here on Earth. Most stuff on Vuliros is made of organic materials, metal, and glass, but there are also some arcanomaterials that serve a similar function to a lot of plastics. They're ALSO bad for the environment because they use magic in a way it's not supposed to be used.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: What’s the difference between vuliros and imriel?

Vuliros is the planet, Imerial is basically fantasy Vatican City! It's where the Church of the Silent is operated out of, and where the Father Imperator (pope) and his Magisters (cardinals) live and work. :^) I often say "Imerial" when talking about the setting because most of the stories I'm working on are centered around figures related to the Church.

4/23/23 CLARIFICATION!

Vuliros is the planet, Velana is the country, Acentel is the city, Imerial is the city-state inside of Acentel.

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: Do furries exist in Vuliros

HA!!! There's creatures that resemble our Earth-furries that are actually real, and there's absolutely people that fetishize them and certainly those that want to BE them. I'm sure there's also plenty of people on Vuliros that are pretty similar to Earth-furries as well. So... yes? In both senses haha

[asilentcathedral]

Anonymous Coward asked: How does the church feel about body mods, piercings, and tattoos?

Hates them lol. Modifying your body is blasphemous. Doesn't stop Salazar though, he has his nipples and ears pierced. He also has a Prince Albert, although it's obviously called something else on Vuliros hehe...