Premise (accessible ver.)
[PLEASE NOTE THAT THE BELOW CONTAINS A RATHER LONG WINDED EXPLANATION OF THE SANDBOX AND HISTORY OF WRITING WITHIN IT. THE TRUNCATED VERSION CAN BE FOUND ON THE PINNED POST ON THIS BLOG'S MAIN PAGE.]
The story of this setting is simple, but I wanted to include it anyways, since the goal of this blog is to preserve the knowledge and journey.
Originally, around the 2010s, I found a fantasy RP forum containing a very loose version of this sandbox setting on a Proboards site--back when those were popular. I made many friends and wrote on that site for quite a few years, and during that time I pushed for a bit more development on details concerning cultures and locations. There was a lot of wish fulfillment NSFW content on that website, given that people enjoyed shipping their characters with others', but over time there was quite a bit of lore painted by the background details of various location and event details. While I understood that there was a desire to leave things vague enough that anyone could play nearly any sort of fantasy character in this setting (outside of attempting to "godmod" or railroad others), I felt that we could have tiny pockets of groups, neighborhoods, people and cultures with defined information if we were careful.
The website's name at the time was Era of Manipulation, and was later changed to "Libertine Age". Not many people liked or enjoyed that name, and eventually it was changed back. Have a look at one of the website logos (made by me long long ago):
Without turning this into an epic, the conclusion is that Proboards unexpectedly changed its ToS to explicitly prohibit written NSFW content, which led to us seeking out a new RP home to try and retain membership and activity, as well as our character and background information, which was very important to those of us who grew attached. That's pretty typical. We did end up finding a new home for our stuff, and even managed to move many of our characters and old threads--but by then the spark was gone for many people, and the move didn't take root. A few of us remained in contact, but the idea of a new routine on a new website and having to socialize in a large place was overwhelming and difficult to adjust to.
There were still many of us who wanted to continue writing the lives and dramas of our characters, and the result of this desire was a large Google Docs archive. We would simply format our docs in a similar way to old school forums and go back and forth. As time went on, and our lives changed and we grew, and our group became even smaller, we would plan and plot out events via DMs, and flesh out very important events to chronicle them in full prose; there are quite a few DM'd conversations archived as well.
So, there's a lot that's lost due to moving place to place online, quite a lot archived thanks to Google Docs, and still a tiny group of people who are passionate about characters they have in this setting, even though there isn't as much time to write the way we did when we were young and horny college students. We're just horny adults now, haha. So I wanted to preserve my piece of things in a corner where I can look back on it and remember the major turning points.
[THIS INFO IS DIRECTLY COPIED FROM PREVIOUS ARCHIVES, WITH FEW EDITS FOR READABILITY.]
This is a sandbox set in a divergent future where unseen realms (known as "Realms beyond the Veil") by some catastrophic accident collide with our own. Though the contact was not for long, the result of this event was the outpouring of various magical energies, creatures, and perhaps more mysterious forces out of those planes to be stranded in our own. This has prompted hidden, assimilated beings native to our plane to come forward to combat otherworldly threats and try to wrangle the chaos into peace. Humanity was forced to acknowledge the existence of magic and other ethereal powers as fact, in a context outside of rumor and imaginative mythologies. In an attempt to subjugate foreign powers wreaking havoc on Human societies, slavery was re-established as a system of penance for destructive or dangerous non-Humans from other worlds. With magic saturating the earth, technology rocketed forward in an attempt to maintain mankind's authority on their planet and its new citizens and functions.
Our setting exists in this world a little more than a century after the above event. Humans and non-Humans have adjusted to one another. While the slave market is still primarily comprised of otherworldly creatures, there are just as many non-Humans in a position of power. Greed permeates all races/sentient species, and despite stating that their "goal" was to ensure that the Human race remain "pure", money and valuables can buy nearly everything. Technology has developed more quickly with the introduction of magic, and society is an echo of what it used to be - both similar and different. Things have settled down from the danger and chaos of The Event, and the caste system while loosely defined, is now firmly in place.
As this is a sandbox there is no overall story premise, simply characters interacting in a City on the Eastern coast of the United States, though many other locations are featured!
OUR EARTH, JUST A LITTLE DIFFERENT
The year was 2014. The world-at-large for planet Earth was considered to be quite small: Humans held dominion over the land and those who showcased abilities or talents were shunned, called freaks, ostracized and forced into hidden communities. Lore concerning magic and super-human abilities were relegated to the status of exaggerated legends, children's fancies or lies told by the mad.
This was, allegedly, not always the case. There were Others, of course, creatures and beings and at times, small populations operating in their own circles, passing information about other realms and otherworldly feats from generation to generation from times forgotten when the Earth and its inhabitants were once different. For these people, touched by magic, their abilities were both curse-and-blessing: their abilities were great, but could not often be used or displayed. Glamours were all too common, assimilation necessary to ensure survival. No group revealed in totality to Humans persisted for long, with few exceptions.
It was in fact rumored that the Earth had been protected by the magic of a God; some grandiloquent spell cast eons before, preventing anything other than Humans to flourish. This was a wide and far-reaching belief, as it was well known that Non-Humans didn't reproduce or thrive in similar numbers. Be it through ill-fated luck or deliberate intent, open settlements of the supernatural were overrun or became isolated. And so those peoples remained silent; practitioners and stewards alike over nature and the magic were reduced to sneaking from the shadows to complete their works. Remaining hidden became engraved into various cultures as they hid in plain sight. It seemed that even the very powers that watched over them kept their deepest secrets hidden from a world that would not accept them without much bloodshed and strife, as it remained this way for millennia.
The Earth was primitive without its Otherworldly connections, and Humans suffered in spite of their large numbers. The planet could not replenish resources quickly enough, could not rid itself of disease and illness effectively. Soothing energy only pooled in specific places; the reach of magic was limited and restricted in effectiveness.
That was the status quo - being unaware of their full potential, and of the planes around them, Humans existed blissfully ignorant.
As for how the disaster occurred: A lone Human psychic, her name never recorded, allegedly foresaw the possibility of the Event. She came from a mixed bloodline, with very particular affinities. It was not a matter of power or purity of pedigree - her magic was linked to probability; magic attuned to states of reality was rare occurrence, and stealing it for personal gain was likely motivation (though no one has been able to prove it). It is thought that she was used as a conduit by other scholars of magic, made into an anchor to trigger the uncertain into certainty. Whatever their goal, the task proved too much for them to handle.
They could not control her magic.
If there was a Shield preventing contact with other Realms, it must have shattered or been banished; others still believe a mass of portals might have been manifested instead. The common consensus, however, is that for a brief moment, all of the planes became *merged*. Regardless of what is attributed to be occurrence, the Earth and its inhabitants came into contact with planes layered both above and below, flooded with myriad magical energies, as well as countless creatures both similar and grossly different from those in hiding.
A suddenly over-saturated Earth erupted in chaos. Though many historians emphasize the havoc wreaked by violent, mindless, or ignorant creatures that disrupted every day life, there were other changes, too. Magic changed its topography, changed the flora and fauna, changed any living being it came across, brought new life from other places we have never known with strange properties and effects. Many Humans fell ill, adjusting to new energy swimming through their veins; a handful were transformed almost overnight into living beings thought only figments of imagination.
Initially, there were attempts made to try to replicate the phenomenon to return the visitors and reverse the process. These proved unsuccessful, and these plans were soon abandoned. there were more pressing matters that required attention; with new animals and creatures came problems and dangers that needed to be handled. Many died in attacks or invasions. Some new inhabitants hid on islands and landmasses not yet mapped. Others could disguise themselves undetectably. Areas of the world became unstable and unsafe in a matter of days. It's these times that granted the reveal the alternate nickname of "The Calamity".
Emerging from their hiding places were those of magical origin born on earth, before the tearing of the Veil. There was little time to debate the validity of these offers for help, and Humans took the hands (or paws, or claws, or talons) of those granting assistance. The leagues of "monsters" now a part of the world were cataloged as best as possible. They worked with Humans to maintain control, to heal injured, sick and ailing. They also helped to capture anything new and unfamiliar for study, parlay (when possible) and when necessary, neutralization. Several diplomats rose to sort things out, to exchange customs and impart information, but few agreement came without a price. Lives of many kinds were lost across conflicts.
The advent of new magics complicated things, despite fast advancements in tech; paper and metallic currency meant virtually nothing when some odd creature could replicate it easily.
But slowly and carefully, many were taught how to function with and allowed to integrate into various communities.
Social conventions struggled to adapt to accommodate new needs and features. Regardless of what was thought of Man, Creature or Beast, order needed to be established for the good or survival. Civilization, or some version of it, managed to cling to the changing planet.
The Great Reveal was not only unexpected, some would argue, but necessary. Others call it Justice or Retribution. A few, Destiny. There are those who argue that the planet would have died without the Event to revive it, that Humans were wasting it away.
And many people were not prepared to share a world with anyone else.
Humans were still considered inheritors of planet Earth by virtue, but it was a different world. They fell into old habits. Humans were better, by their own status, and always had been - how else could they adapt well to this sort of calamity? Those once deemed insane, eccentric, were now in demand - their information helped keep the new inhabitants at bay, kept them from sullying Human culture.
By force of law those who had been changed, and what creatures that could be subdued were denied their basic rights. Those who could not be were ignored until the proper tech to take them into custody was designed. They were second-class beings who were - at first - assigned legal guardians to take care of them. From that arrangement swiftly grew a caste system that turned the changed into a commodity. They became slaves, their guardians masters who held most if not all rights over their charges.
Despite the planet being theirs, however, Humans were quickly outnumbered. With the aid of magic, some creatures were indistinguishable, and others simply appeared Human on the surface. And that was not the only resistance: many of them had accumulated massive fortunes over time, and in their own home worlds. They put together a strong lobby that allowed them to influence legislation and public opinion, avoided becoming slaves and managed to become Masters themselves. Those Humans who held power and station were quick to turn on their brethren in exchange for more.
For a few decades chaos had reigned, but slowly things settled down.
Now the year is 2122 2037, and the caste system is firmly in place almost all over the world. Technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over the last century, but some conventions could still be recognizable to someone from before the change. Everyone who is someone is a Master, lording over a class of slaves - and the changed never had a chance to become 'someone'. Stuck in the middle are the Citizens, those who are neither; these are the people who still fill the majority of jobs, go through their lives working 9 to 5, many of them uneasy in a world where some flaunt owning others who so covet even their meager positions.
