The cataclysm that destroyed the world left behind a very different place. Culture and technology has changed significantly in the last several hundred years...
THE POST-FALL WORLD:
The incident that destroyed the Old Kingdoms is as famous as it is poorly understood. Some say it was the work of the dark wizard Arcturus Hyden IV, choosing to destroy a world he could not rule. Others say it was the Celestials of old choosing to smite corrupt and selfish mages for misusing their gift. Others believe it was a secret last-resort weapon of the Eastern Kingdom, deployed when they realized they were losing the war.
Regardless, the result was apocalyptic. In a fraction of an instant, magic--the lifeblood of the old world--suddenly turned sour. Any object bearing an enchantment--from the Raaja Si's glittering aqueducts to weather-ward talismans worn by rural farmers--exploded. Wizards burned from the inside out as their blood boiled within their veins. Magical fonts exploded like volcanoes, filling the sky with ash and soil and leaving behind a scarred and cratered landscape of destruction.
The old kingdoms fell completely and the world descended into ruin. Cities crumbled, ash turned the skies cloudy and gray, countless plants and animals died, and an unnatural pall seemed to fall over the land. It was as if the world itself was losing its will to live.
Those that survived built a new world over top of the ruins of the old one. With their old way of life gone and nearly all wizards and nobility dead, the new world belonged to peasants and nomads--scrappy survivors who knew how to adapt to hostile lands.
The majority of those who survived the initial event were those dwelling outside major cities. The destruction each city endured seems to loosely correlate to how much magic was in use. Therefore, Westhaven and Whitefell were particularly decimated in the West, while Raaja Si and the rest of the ring of cities around Mani Bay were utterly obliterated.
Those in the northern region of the Western Kingdom fared better than most. The surface of the earth seemed to dampen the cataclysm's effects, meaning northerners in root cellars, caves, and mining tunnels survived. Already accustomed to cold weather survival, northern language, culture, and cuisine became dominant influences in the post-fall world.
Initially, resettlement seemed fairly straightforward. Survivors attempted to repair and build anew as needed. Construction looked different without magic, though, and mundane technologies began to rapidly develop to fill these new technological gaps.
But the world wasn't done cooling. It grew colder by the year, and many fledgling towns collapsed when their pre-fall economy turned out to be impossible in the new climate. People headed south, where it was warmer, or grouped up into larger established cities. Eventually, like the Western Kingdom before it, one consolidated power came to stand above the rest: The Ironfrost Empire.
These days, most of the continent is comprised of tundra and snow-buried ruins. Though the southern edge of the continent remains habitable, the cold season feels a little longer and the sun feels a little weaker each year.
Major Post-Fall Locations:
Ironfrost - The walled city-state at the head of the Ironfrost Empire and a land of stark inequality. Ruled by a hereditary ruler known as The Iron Queen and located above a cave system fueled by the Dragon's Fire geothermal magic font, Ironfrost's fierce leadership and excellent strategic location allowed it to grow into an industrial and military power at a time when its neighbors were struggling with basic survival.
Ironfrost demands mandatory military service of its citizens, taxes from its vassal states, tolls from its roads, and obedience from its people. Though their demands are often seen as excessive, allyship with Ironfrost has significant benefits in the Post-Fall world. The Ironfrost Great Rail Line makes travel and trade feasible across the tundra, and soldiers keep the roads fee of highwaymen and beasts. Foods such as chocolate can be produced (almost) nowhere else. It is a bargain nearly all of the surviving towns in the region have been forced to accept. Even those that maintain independence, such as The City of the Sun, usually have some kind of trade deal.
The Train Graveyard - Running trains on the tundra is risky and dangerous. A massive railyard of decommissioned and damaged trains, snowmobiles, and other vehicles sits on the edge of the city, just outside its industrial district. Twisted metal bones curve into the sky and piles of frozen, rusted scrap litter the ground. Blackened by soot from the smokestacks yet also warmed by their residual heat, squatters will sometimes set up camp here if they lack the funds or credentials to make it through Ironfrost's gates.
Pinebrook (Ruins) - A former timber town that was consumed by the tundra. Much of the Great Rail Line's timber came from here. It began to decline around 30 years ago and was fully abandoned about 10 years ago, when the forests began to die and even the summers became inhospitable. These days, it sits abandoned, frozen in time and covered in ice.
Stonedeep (Ruins) - A small community located in caverns under the foothills of the Dragon's Jaw range and Alex's hometown. Insulated from the brutal cold above ground by same geothermal heat font that once powered the northern bathhouses of the old kingdom and somehow survived the Fall, Stonedeep's strange, dark, honeycombed cavern structure made it a surreal place to navigate for all but those who grew up there. Most of its residents were bats, whose wings and ecolocation abilities made navigating the dark, strange caves easier. Like many unincorporated towns, Stonedeep was relatively isolationist. Hunters and trappers would trade with nearby communities when needed, but they attempted to minimize their contact with Ironfrost or its infrastructure.
Stonedeep was destroyed roughly 30 years ago by an unknown threat, rumored to be The Shadow. Many of its key tunnels have since collapsed and scavengers have picked over the ruins. It is occasionally used as shelter from the cold by squatters, but the place is said to be too cursed to risk staying in for long.
Northcrest - Located in the small strip of the continent still able to have a growing season, Northcrest and its surrounding farmlands support Ironfrost with foodstuffs in exchange for relative independence. For hundreds of years, Northcrest has held the caput baroniae of the North family, a lineage of mage nobility that have managed to cling to their land, title and continued survival despite the fall and rise of nations around them. The ornate tracery, delicate arches and twisted wrought-iron metalwork typical of Northcrest architecture are beautiful, aging relics of a more prosperous time. Over the past decades, Great Barrens-born blights, harsher winters, the loss of working-age citizens to industrialized cities and trade competition from the City of the Sun have threatened the traditional Northcrest way of life. Time will tell whether the city will survive the family that shares its name.
August Cannery Company is the largest canning company in operation and either directly or indirectly supports much of the city's workforce.
Brimme-on-Bitterun - Also known as "Brimme"--Bitterun is the name of the river that runs through it. A chilly, gloomy industrial port city, one of several located around the the rim of what was once the Valledor coastline. Fishing is a critical industry in the Post-Fall world, with fish pulled from the seas and processed at port cities like Brimme before being shipped up to the frozen lacklocked Ironfrost imperial core.
The City of the Sun - The only place in the world still blessed by the ancient Celestials, where darkness and winter ice gives way to lush greenery and the warmth of the summer, guarded by an immortal god-king who brings his subjects prosperity and peace. At least, thatās what the Cityās emissaries would have you believe. Foolhardy travelers willing to brave the forbidding tundra journey to its borders will see nothing but its miles of towering walls. Only those invited are permitted to enter. Even if you disregard tall tales about divine kings and magic plants, there is certainly something unique about the City of the Sunāthe fruits, vegetables and plants it trades in can be found nowhere else on the continent. A tenuous peace agreement between the City and Ironfrost allows trade between the two regions and the flow of luxury goods such as chocolate and fruit wine to outside world. The Cityās export of exotic peach fruits, once thought to be extinct by Ironfrost experts before trade opened between the two regions, are only served at the most exclusive of events.
Though located in what used to be the Old Kingdom's northern territory, The City of the Sun draws architectural inspiration from both its divine ruler's homeland of Valledor and the beautiful arches and mosaics of Raaja Si, which its founder is said to have seen with his own eyes back in his youth.
The Tundra - A vast snowy wasteland that stretches all across the former Western Kingdom. It probably has some formal name, but nobody bothers with itā¦ it's so featureless and bleak that naming it feels pointless. Its coldness and vastness makes travel by foot impossible--snow mobile is the norm. There is little to differentiate any one part of the tundra from any other, beyond mountain ranges in the distance and small stands of pine trees. Small villages--usually built over the ruins of Old Kingdom cities or over caves or geothermal vents--dot the landscape, but far more lay uninhabited and in ruin. Many towns were abandoned when the cold crept far enough south to consume them. Others fell to bandits, beasts or disease. A few were abandoned when taken by The Shadow. Those that survive are generally those that have given themselves up to the Ironfrost empire, paying taxes and tributes in exchange for trade, safe travel, and protection. The Great Rail Line connects major towns, offering a relatively safe and fast alternative to travel by snowmobile.
The Rising Dawn Research Outpost - A tiny outpost built into the caves under the northern tundra on the far western edge of the Dragon's Jaw Mountains. The bitter, bitter cold and extremely remote location makes it inaccessible for most of the year, even to those who know its location and are in possession of sufficiently kitted out Prowlers.
It was set up to study magic and The Shadow far away from Ironfrost's prying eyes and is staffed by a skeleton crew lead by Alex and Ridge. There were more of them at one point, but several were arrested or killed (or maybe worse).
It turns out one of the weird magical signals they were picking up was, in fact, the very same infamous Old Kingdom wizard who is said to have caused the cataclysm in the first place, in magical stasis and buried under the ice. They hadn't budgeted the supplies to comfortably take on someone like Hyden, but they managed to make it through the winter with a minimum of tantrums.
The Great Barrens - The cataclysm that destroyed the Old Kingdoms ruptured the magical font powering the Great Forest. At the moment of ignition, the magic inside every tree in the forest exploded simultaneously, razing the entire wood to the ground in an instant. What remains is a scarred, burned wasteland pocked by mile-wide craters, massive shattered stumps, and the woody, splintered remains of the great trees. Though it is far enough south to experience a mild warm season, the souring of the magical font that formerly powered the land seems to have suppressed new plant growth, too. The land now is a quiet, still world of death and gentle snow, preserved in time.
The Dragon's Jaw Mountains & The Sea of White Teeth - The icy sea north of the continent has begun to solidify into a solid ice-mass. It is hard to tell where the landmass ends and the sea begins, as the whole region is now a solid sheet of white, broken by occasional steep cliffs and frozen bays.
The Dragon's Jaw mountain range remained relatively intact. Its warped, twisted peaks are as steep and perilous as ever, but the "Dragon's Fire", the geothermal heat source/magical font below the mountains, seems to have been far enough below ground to avoid being soured by the cataclysm that destroyed so much of the rest of the world's magic.
Without the Dragon's Fire acting as an underground heat and power source, life on the northern tundra would be truly impossibleā¦ for all but those in The City of the Sun, of course.
The Ruins of the East & The Shattered Sea - If it truly was a secret Eastern Kingdom weapon that caused the cataclysm, it must have been a poorly deployed one. During the cataclysm, a great magical font explosion obliterated the continent. The land fractured along the Bhati Range, and the low-lying landmass east of it broke apart and sunk into the Jeweled Sea.
Lured by rumors of lost riches and magical treasures, particularly foolish crews sailing out of Brimme sometimes trawl the shallow seas inside the shattered continent for scavenge. However, the destruction of the Eastern cities was even more complete than those of their Western counterparts (likely due to their heavy reliance on magic) and both land and sea is lousy with sour magical fonts. A few groups of pirates and Ironfrost-resisting Eastern-descended isolationists carve out a meager existence among these rocky islands, but the rocky, windswept islands are not capable of sustaining large settlements. It is generally agreed that only the most desperate (or perhaps those with something to hide) would venture into this cursed, barren place.
Fishing boat captains passing by the coast will often encourage new shiphands to pick up a pair of binoculars and point them toward the ruins of Mani Bay. The ruins of Raaja Si's ornate aqueducts can still be seen poking out of the shallow sea.
Idea based off this...imagine if y/n figures out how to either shrink themselves or give themselves a cookie body...and moment fount sees it...cue them begging to kake out with y/n or they just kiss y/n...lol!
tw: kissing (is this even worth a warning?)
Poor dude, he really wants to but he is chickening out!
Hi there, I was just searching through the Sonic and Shadow tags and found your Alliance AU it seems pretty amazing and adorable!!!!!! and wanted to know where I can fine it fully and start it from the beginning. Thank you~
Hello!
Well it started as a series of random sketches and doodles, all of which can be found here on my art blog. They've all been tagged with Alliance AU. As for the fanfiction itself, it's over on my AO3!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I had to take a break from it for a while due to a lot of personal stuff going on. ((2021 was a crazy year!)) But the next chapter is about half way written. I hope to have it up soon.
How are the other beasts doing in your crk au? Have they met their other halves? Are any dead?
eghh this took a while- and I needed to be work onotherthingsbut eh. Warning this is long.
the beasts live ( well one was dead-ish but weāll get to that-) , if theyāve met their other halfās entirely depends on where in the story weāre at about. And how theyāre doing.. depends. Mostly dependent on how theyāre handling their new souljam virtue and being force shoved out of corruption
Burning spice is actually handling it all best. Heās the most reasonable and least corrupted old virtue. He sort of picks up his old job and turning it more towards an experiment or personal study. Keeping himself busy by ruin searching, figuring out why things broke, figuring out why things continue in living kingdoms and what it may take to break them or keep them together.
Doing so because he wants to, rather than any semblance of duty to it. And finding connection to the cookies he more watched at a distance because of it
he finds cheese kingdom the most interesting, a moving contradiction of a ruined kingdom and a living one. Which is how their base conflict starts. He wants her to let her kingdoms walls down, what would happen to it, and what would happen to the areas the sandstorm tramples. Cheese is afraid of that change tho, feeling things will go south as so as she tries that. Not willing to loose what she still has left.
They find an even ground eventually. Cheese letting her guard down a little and Spice being more conscious of her fears and not pushing them too hard ( if it wasnāt obvious Iāve thought about these two the most)
Eternal sugar is pretty similar to in canon.. but in an almost opposite way? Over indulging and pushing in to the point of strain or burnout to find their happiness. Including herself. She still believes she was doing what was best for cookies while she still had the sloth souljam, confused why she was punished or seen as corrupt for what she thought was right. Sending herself into a panic with the second chance she was given, trying not to mess up
Holly is a calm point for her, someone who recognizes the stress sheās put herself under and getting her to relax and ( partially) understand itās ok to feel bad sometimes and sheās not failing people if they arenāt always happy. Sugar also encourage holly the passions sheās neglected for the sake of protecting her kingdom
Their relationship is a rather healthy actually- a balance of rest and enjoyment. Overworked little goobers
I still havenāt quite figured out mystic story with dark cacao- but sheās closest to her canon self. Unhappy with being removed from her apathy, mystic is angry and scared, unsure about this newer world after being freed
I really need to work on them more..
ahem- finally salt
not explaining Sage because I did already explain him.. and also him and truthless are the costume starting bases for the au-
soo salt, abyssal salt
heās the only one remaining corrupted to start in a sense. He and Lily keep their original virtues here
The tree sealing went south. A beast missed by the spell and a chase caused a spiral of changes. He doesnāt have his souljam when hes freed, when Lily finds him. Just the remaining shell of armor, and the fuming anger of a guilty knight that lost its soul
He snaps back once he gets his souljam back. Still a kind knight. Rather insistent in self punishment after all thatās occurred (to lilys annoyance). Heās pleased the other old virtues have healed, and the ones inflicted with the corrupted soul jams have recovered. A risk rewarded
Holy stars this is a character dump, I like it but gods- Iām gonna go chill for a bit lol
Went through your Missplaced Virtues AU. Loving everything I've seen so far, though I haven't quite figured out everything that's going on yet.š
Could you perhaps summarize the plot for me?š„ŗ I feel like I'm missing something.
Also I love SageRecluse and I have soooo many questions about them, but let's start with one for now:
You showed the Lights, and that Deceit is seriously damaged. You also wrote somewhere that Shadow Milk silenced Deceit, and it's basically dead because of that; and also that this is giving Recluse trouble now.
Does Sage know that? And if yes, does he regret it? And would/will he try to find a way to fix it and help Truthless?
(That ended up being more than one question, and I apologize for that. It'll happen again. These two make me sick.š„°)
Sigh- look as much as I'd like to sum up the plot, I don't know if I can. I've tried three times and it's not working, I keep over explaining and I don't think anyone wants to read all that... I could probably post that ramble on a separate post but I still don't think anyone wants to read that I haven't really explained the whole plot anyway, so your probably about as aware of the story I've shared as anyone else
Plus I keep changing some things so that doesn't help much-
speaking of, I'll at least indulge the Truthless sage madness because I can do that just fine
I may have retconned that a bit as I misunderstood the Domain of the beast story a little ( as mentioned, Iām still working on plot) Light is alive but that Doesnāt mean it isnāt horribly uncooperative.
The light of deceit/secrets took the brunt of the whole souljam and Shadow milk impaled damage. Which caused it to go silent, thought against it's will. It could very well still communicate to Truthless but it's bitter about the whole situation and has decided to do the most shadow milk thing it can and be as uncooperative as possible. As it doesn't start off liking Truthless recluse much
That's until Truthless meets and starts hanging out with Sage more. As bitter as it is it can't help but be much happier being around it's other half, so starts opening up and actually helping truthless a little as long as it can be around it's other light.
I may have gone a little overboard? Doodles @mercy-love-joy fic
āBravery Through The Different Tethersā
Madness- and a dumb little timeline guess on the fic
@fishymom-art @princessblue135 @sunseed-fandump as these are your braves ( hope may enjoy dumb art of your beans I tried my best but lost some steam on some ,:] ima go hide nowww )
Made this in the past week and completely forgot to post.
Set in my AU where the beasts are all dragons and, upon awakening, the ancients also obtain dragon forms even though they don't become true dragons. Pure Vanilla's awakening ended up being a little different than the rest thanks to the fact he merged souls with Shadow Milk briefly.
Designing this was really fun but also really difficult because pure vanilla's awakened sprite basically only gave me white and gold to work with. In case you couldn't tell I took some design inspiration from the Avatar of Destiny (cause it looks far too suspiciously like Pure Vanilla for it to be a coincidence IMO) and it was more than worth it.
(I promise I'll learn how to properly draw bird wings eventually)
Amaranthine Magic System PART III: Spellcraft forā¦ Everyone Else (Including Unicorns)
This is Part III of a three-part worldbuilding set.
Part I - Part II - Part III (you are here)
So, weāve now established how magic works and how it can be manipulated by a wizard. But wizards arenāt the only ones capable of using magic... as mentioned in Part I, even a tree can do it. How does THAT work? Surely it must be pretty rare, right?
Well, actually, a number of plants and animals have evolved to harness magic. Something about themāeither a physical organ, body part, or some sort of instinctual behaviorāis able to warp magic in a way that happens to be beneficial. Some examples:
A predatory cat that can use magic to bend light around itself and appear āinvisibleā thanks to the molecular structure of its fur
A mole that can vibrate its claws in such a way that they increase the charge of magic in the earth around it, causing solid stone to temporarily liquefy
A flower whose roots absorb magic from the earth and use it to resist freezing, allowing it to bloom all winter long
A bird who sings at a strange, disorienting, warbling song, the vibrations of which interfere with the magical frequencies used by its most common predator
A carnivorous plant that paralyzes its victims not with venom, but with numbing bolts of magic produced by a specially evolved structure whenever it detects nearby movement
You may notice that, with the exception of the carnivorous plant, all the other examples are simply using magical energy already in their environment rather than producing it themselves. Which brings me to the next detailā¦ magic can be ācastā from two types of sources:
āEnchantmentsā/Ambient casting/passive casting: Happens by gently shaping the background radiation of magic already in the environment, like most of the examples above. It is typically done by passing the magical energy through some sort of physical structure in order to alter its frequency. Most enchanted jewelry functions on this principle. Studying animals that perform passive casting can be useful for wizards to learn new casting and enchanting techniques themselves, and many methods of spellcraft are based on patterns of magic wave manipulation first observed in nature. 99% of animals and plants that use magic fall into this category. Also, this sort of magic waxes or wanes in power depending on the ambient background magic radiation levels of the areaā¦ your magic locket may fail you at the worst possible moment if you take it someplace with very low magical background radiation levels.
Active casting/āCasting spellsā: Magic where the power source comes from within the creature itself and can be actively turned off or on, such as the carnivorous plant example above. Animals and plants that are capable of active casting are typically quite dangerous indeed, though their bodies tend to make for incredibly valuable spell ingredients and materials for crafting magical devices. Luckily, this ability is extremely rare in natureā¦ the ability to truly ācast a spellā is found almost exclusively in wizards.
As a half-celestial, Ambroys sits at sort of a weird position. He technically is an active caster, as he has his own magical field and he can summon his abilities up at will (or, more often in his youth, accidentally) using his mind/will as the primary trigger. However, half-celestials and half-infernals have the shape of their magical āfilterā predefined by their heritage and physical anatomyāit is not consciously shaped the way a wizardās is. They may be able to choose which of these predefined forms their magic takes, and may even discover new variations on their powers throughout their life, but they can never consciously teach themselves brand new spells from scratch, and will never be able to switch fluidly through several different types of similar magic without interruption the way a wizard could.
To Hyden, this makes Ambroys closer to a beast than a person, magically speaking (no offense, of course). He canāt talk spellcraft with him because heās not doing anything on purposeā¦ heās just brainlessly clicking his silly little claws together to dig through rock like the mole mentioned earlier. He will never truly understand all the complex mental hoops Hyden jumps through every time he conjures up a flame to light his opium pipe, even if Ambroys can do the same exact thing by just thinking āok, fire time nowā. Itās just not the same, you know?
Aaand that wraps up the Amaranthine magic guide! This should hopefully provide a clearer view of how everything works in this setting. :)
My 3rd comic for my VIS2 class, the theme was āhabitā and I found myself deciding between Smilkās habit of not sleeping and Vanillaās habit of skipping meals. This comic is actually based off a scrapped comic idea Iād originally written out back in October.
The colors took me a bit longer than usual, but I think it was worth it. Originally Shamiās room was going to be the same color scheme as Vanillaās, since theyāre in the Vanilla Castle, but I ended up changing it last minute to a distorted blue version.
I feel like if Shami were to come stay in the Vanilla Kingdom heād modify whatever space heād been given to fit his own aesthetics (to an extent). His room would be filled with books, artifacts, and most importantly, all his art projects. And since itās his own personal room, itād be more cluttered than other spaces since he doesnāt have to present it to anyone.
Iād like to, at some point, plan out both of their rooms fully (maybe for a longer comic or something), and maybe make 3D models of them. I want to give Vanillaās room a little more personality, even though I feel he wouldnāt use it all too much (aside from maybe to sleep).
At some point later on, Iād love to make a more in depth comic about these two working through their mutual issue of not properly taking care of themselves- cause believe you me, Pure Vanilla is just as guilty as Shami is
A āsequelā illustration to my last comic āOld Habits Die Hardā-! You can find it pinned on my profile ^u^)
Iām currently writing a āsequelā to this that focuses on PVās issues, though it may take a while since I have finals coming up soon.
Itāll also be a bitā¦ heavier in terms of subject matter. Iām currently writing out a loose script during my free time. Depending on how long it ends up, I may make it into a physical book-!
I do wanna say, Iāve addressed it in my story and on Twitter but- please donāt ask me if my art is a Jambound reference. While itās flattering people think I could write like Jamma, itās quite diminishing to have people constantly thinking something I worked really hard on was made by someone else.
I write all my comics myself, and if Iād been inspired by anyone else or their work, I would be sure to credit them properly.
Della
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