#arcane albion

[aetherictree]

Into The Wilds: The Karst (Arcane Albion)

Beneath the boggy uplands of the North England Wilds, created by the water draining through the limestone bedrock, there lies an extensive network of caves. Within these caves, fed by dissolved carbon in the water, a unique kind of ecosystem has evolved under the influence of magic.

At the base of the food web are various forms of lichen and fungi, which filter carbon from the water for food and form layers of what has been erroneously described by adventurers as "cave moss". This serves as as food for an assortment of invertebrate species, themselves preyed upon by mesopredators such as rous and salamanders.

At the top of the food web are apex predators, the creatures popularly called "monsters". These include wyrms (a paraphylitic group that includes both serpent descended creatures such as basilisks and other legless reptiles), some of which burrow through and enlarge passages, linking together parts of the Karst previously inaccessible to adventurers. The waters are less explored; there have been claimed sightings of cephalapods, but no sample has as yet been retrieved, and there is no known route for such a species to find its way into the Karst.

Access to the Karst is tricky, due to its location -- many of the entrance caves are within the shrouded uplands, whilst the other surface accesses are unmapped due to their location in the enchanted forest. The main route taken by adventuring parties is via the Dwarven undercity within the Pennine mountains.

Despite the dangers, there are treasures to be found within, which draws a steady stream of adventurers seeking their fortune and provides the Pennine Dwarves with a source of trading wealth. Many of the invertabrates secrete valuable gemstone exoskeletons, whilst the bodies of wyrms can fetch a high price -- even the shed skin can fetch a high price for leather. In addition to this, the bodies of less fortunate adventurers are often found with valuable equipment, though it is officially discouraged to claim it.

[aetherictree]

The Extinction War Of 2019: Invocations Of Hades and Helios (Arcane Albion)

With the return of magic, the balance of power shifted. Small groups, determined to stop the environmental destruction of modern industrial society, turned to the supernatural to aid their campaign to bring an end to oil. Seers mapped out networks, tinkers crafted devices, and teams of psychic operatives sabotaged pipelines, refineries, terminals, and other elements throughout the supply chains.

They made a noticeable dent, but sabotage alone, even magically assisted sabotage, was not going to achieve the total end of industrialism that many sought. To do this, they would need magic powerful enough to strike the source. The druids and shamans of the movement planned a great working. They would need the aid of the earth itself to deny humanity its oil, and the sun to take away our devices.

And the earth and sun, it seems, obliged. Some argue that it wasn't their workings that did it, and point to evidence that the decline in oil and gas began before the spell was even dreamt of. Whatever the cause, it the effect was undeniable -- oil, and soon enough natural gas also, began to polymerise in the rocks around the boreholes that were drilled to extract it. With the pores clogged, production slowed to a trickle; and every time a new hole was drilled, it would not be long before the process repeated itself. Enchanced recovery methods were tried, but were quickly abandoned as uneconomic. Oil prices spiked, then crashed as no one could afford that price, then the price became irrelevant as their was no oil at any price in most of the world, besides a thin trickle from shale. Grids faltered as turbines ran out of natural gas. Airliners were only moderately impacted, simply due to damage done by saboteurs grounding most fleets already. Rural areas either emptied, or people consolidated into towns that could continue to provide services and, if fortunate, were along a railway line. People prepared for a cold winter without heating.

They did not prepare for the Christmas Day presents the Sun had for Earth. On the 21st of December, 2019, a coronal mass ejection, far outstripping the one that caused the 1859 Carrington Event, was detected. Earth would be hit on Christmas Eve. The whole world disconnected its grids, shut down what it could, and prepared for the loss of its satellites. The International Space Station was placed into hibernation as the astronauts abandoned ship.

When it finally arrived, after three days of anxious waiting, the Sun launched another. This one was much faster, clearing the distance in a matter of hours, arriving just in time for church. And then another, and another, of far smaller intensity but still far more than unusual. The Sun, it appeared, had woken up in a bad mood. The resulting effect on the ionosphere bolstered long range shortwave radio, but made communication with space probes nigh impossible.

2020 was welcomed with a light show. The loss of control of satellites meant maneuvering to avoid collisions was impossible. Once one satellite hit another, the resulting cloud of debris would cause further collisions -- Kessler syndrome. With lower orbits full of such fragments, and the upper atmosphere heated by solar activity, reentry became common, filling the night sky with shooting stars, set against a backgroup of aurora. The world was changed, and the sky changed accordingly.

[aetherictree]

Into The Wilds: The Demiforest (Arcane Albion)

The return of magic did not leave rural Britain unchanged. By 2020, years of marginal land abandonment, unnaturally severe weather, and magically enhanced plant growth has led to much of the island becoming a demiforest -- not a single vast expanse of woodland, but in place of fields with scattered woodlands, the growth of woodlands and hedgerows and deliberate planting around rivers has transformed the landscape into a contiguous woodland interspersed with fields.

The storms of autumn, the freezing of winters, and the continued growth of vegetation in spring and summer, have not been good to the road network. Resource limitations force highways authorities to prioritise maintanence on major trunk routes, with minor routes allowed to degrade from paved roads to farm tracks. In upland areas, it is a losing battle to keep open key crossings, with the Pennines becoming impassable for months in winter; even during the spring and autumn, thick fog and storms result in traffic having to proceed very slowly through such regions. If they can even cross -- the storms of 2015 destroyed a numerous bridges and washed away sections of roads, and few have been replaced. As the woodlands have reconnected, the roads have disconnected.

Fortunately, river flows have increased, and become more reliable due to the steady drizzle that now falls upon the mountains. Riverrine transport has seen explosive growth. Particularly in the Lake District, which has become a land of temparate rainforest and lakeside towns, connected by ferries, popular with poets and dreamers.

Farming continues, though the land devoted to it has shrunk to half of what it was at its peak, as marginal land has reforested. Grouse moors were soon abandoned when the Wild Hunt made their presence known and reverted to woodland or bog, depending on climatic conditions. Sheep have given way to caprids, goats specially bred for milk and wool production. Boar have increased -- and, though no one is willing to confess, many allege there to have been a quiet and unauthorised reintroduction of wolves. It is not wild, not yet, but it is far wilder than Britain has known for a very long time.

[aetherictree]

Animal Magic (Arcane Albion)

Magic use in Arcane Albion is not limited to humans. Leaving aside the explictly magical animals (unicorns, ogres, pied ravens, brownies, and the like), otherwise mundane animals are also capable of wielding magic, particularly of a psychic kind. Which, since the psychic awakening in 2014, has had wide ranging effects on society.

Psychic whales, singing against the damage to their homes, have not only shut down whaling with death curses (that was done in the first month post awakening), they have turned their focus upon acoustic pollution, forcing expensive changes in shipping. Globalisation faltered under the psychic warfare of the cetaceans.

On land, elephants, already noted for their ability to hold grudges and taking vengeance upon those who wrong them, have focused their collective energies on poachers. After enough died horrifically, the others wisened up. They are at least not wholly hostile to humans -- those who aided the elephants can sometimes find themselves aided in turn.

Slaughterhouses and factory farms, places infamous for animal suffering, have become abandoned places, haunted by the cumulative trauma of the creatures that lived and died there. It soon became impossible to find people willing to work there, particularly when dealing with especially intelligent animals such as pigs. Pescatarianism has become the default for most people, though red meat is still eaten whenever there is a necessary cull to manage overpopulation of certain species.

The discovery that elephants can use magic has fuelled speculation about the origins of humanity. The fringe theory that our species was selectively bred by elephant archmages as a tool using servant race is not so easy to dismiss out of hand.

[aetherictree]

Whilst most life mages are limited to the bodies own innate systems, for example the nervous and endocrine systems, with some amount of influence over cell growth that enables some degree of enhanced regeneration, archmages have reached such a level of skill that they are able even to affect gene regulation. Consequently, life archmages are capable of feats beyond what the body would normally be capable of, such as de'differentiating cells and guiding their growth to allow for the regeneration of organs that have been completely destroyed. Or, perhaps, deviating from the regular human body plan, with the addition of new organs.

Such control also allows for the breeding of incompatible species, with genetic incompatability overcome through force of will and the resulting abominations shepherded through development (though many will die afterwards from being malformed). Fortunately, archmages are very rare (perhaps one in twenty thousand life mages reach this level of control), and mad life archmages rarer still. Unfortunately, even one can create quite a few organisms, and Albion is large enough to be home to a few dozen genesmiths.

It is not always possible to tell immediately what went into their creation; sanctuaries exist to care for the somewhat human survivors of these experiments. The Steel Prisons, a complex of platforms in the North Sea, exist to contain the perpetrators.

[aetherictree]

Necromancers who have collections of vitrified preserved human brains. Their necromantic power allows them to summon shades of the dead, provided the brain is intact -- the original person is long gone, but their memories can be interrogated.

Mad necromancers who use this ability to futily attempt to resurrect loved ones, by transferring their memory and personality to a living victim. The danger of psychic bleedback, of necromancers taking on traits of those who they would consult.

Government necromancers who maintain collections of dead royals and some of the most learned people in the kingdom, because whilst it's incredibly illegal to do this the state is not bound by such things. Arguments over whether or not using it on murder victims should be allowed, to aid investigations

Conversion of valuable brains into gems to increase their durability. Theft of such gems. Murder of aged scholars to add to the collections.

So much potential, with what is really a very small and limited kind of magic.

[aetherictree]

Magic in Arcane Albion

In Arcane Albion, the primary division of magic is between perception and influence.

Perception magic is supernaturally enabled sensing, knowledge and understanding; it is very common, and it is held by many that everyone is capable of developing it with training. Influence magic, on the other hand, is a lot rarer, though still quite prevalant at 0.1-2% of the population depending on domain. Influence magic is based on guiding processes and systems, whether that be crystal formation in a cooling piece of metal, or hormone production in the human body. Whilst it can push systems in unusual directions, magic is still limited to what is physically possible -- a life mage cannot regrow an arm in a few seconds, even if they are an archmage. The speed of light remains an immovable constraint, though this is not much of a problem for mages who are only operating on Earth.

The secondary division of magic is into domains: environmental, material, life, and psyche.

Environmental magic is all about knowing what is going on in the environment around you. Almost all environmental magic is perception, and it is by far the most common kind. This is the sort of magic that enables perfect shots and uncanny dodging, and is the primary source of knowledge seers use to produce reasonably accurate predictions about the near future. There are are very few influencer mages; the few who can are able to do things like affect the process of raindrop formation in clouds, which is useful but not world changing. Environmental perception magic returned to the world in 2014, and upended the 2016 Olympics.

Material magic is, as the name suggests, magic relating to materials. Perception mages can look at a piece of steel and determine its weak points, how it will break, what its strength and limitations are; and if working the piece, can adjust their smithing in real time to maximise its quality. Influencer mages, on the other hand, can sit with the steel as it cools and get it to form into a single crystal, and can ensure that alloying elements go where they are needed rather than where random mixing puts them. Perception material magic returned in 2014; it would not be until 2034 that influencer material mages were clearly shown to exist, though there were a few incidents earlier that in retrospect were inadvertant uses of such magic (e.g. lead apatite based superconductor fabrication). Material magic enables the affordable production of all manner of supermaterials, from high temperature superconductors to metamaterial based pigments, which form the basis of magitech.

Life magic is, naturally, about life. What it is doing, what it will do. Botanical mages can hold a seed in their hand and determine what traits the resulting plant will possess; after these abilities were awakened in 2014, it revolutionised the fields of plant and animal breeding, offering orders of magnitude acceleration when paired with lab based techniques to shrink generation time. In medicine, just knowing what is going on in a body with a touch meant illnesses could be precisely diagnosed long before any symptoms have appeared, and what effect a given drug would have.

Whilst it would not be until 2020 that influence life magic became possible over most bodily systems, certain individuals in 2014 gained the ability to influence the nervous system, both central and peripheral, which enabled active healing intervention -- for example, inducing a fever in a specific part of the body. Post 2019, healers became capable of going much further, including inducing the human body into an only mostly dead state to dramatically extend the golden hour in trauma medicine, and it is typical for any life mage who has the potential to learn how to do this. As with selective breeding, when combined with existing scientific methods it becomes incredibly more powerful -- a life mage can put an individual into a very deep state of suspension to enable surgery, whilst a surgeon capable of perception magic can ensure their cuts are precise and dramatically reduce the risk of damage, and after surgery magic can help the body recover and avoid rejection if, for example, a new organ has been transplanted. Which may well have been produced in a laboratory by a mage shepherding cells over a scaffold.

Psyche magic is, as the name suggests, telepathic magic, and had the most dramatic and noticeable effect on the world following the 2014 Awakening (wherein it returned in full), as not only humans are capable of it. The psychic cries of animals rendered certain industries non viable overnight -- few were willing to work in a place where the tortured screams of pigs in pain were a constant companion in ones head. Mariners fell asleep to the mournful songs of the whales; poachers were driven mad by the concentrated psychic attacks of elephant herds.

Psyche magic is the most common domain for influence magic, with 2% of the population being capable of some degree of it, though almost all such mages are (thankfully) limited in scope -- the extent is typically something like calming an individual having a panic attack, or used offensively, inducing hesitation and confusion in the target. Perception is used more frequently, such by detectives, who can discern whether or not the person they are interviewing is hiding something, and through means of targeted questioning attempt to figure out what it is that is being hid. One of the biggest uses is in reading crowds -- it is not uncommon for artists to have a dynamic setlist that is altered according to the response they sense. All the same, it is the most terrifying of magics, with rumours abounding about archmages being able to possess unwitting individuals, and many theories about which politicians are being mind controlled. That it is the hardest to control -- what prison can hold someone who can commune with the gulls by thought alone? -- adds to the terror.

[aetherictree]

Introducing: Arcane Albion (aka Emberrun)

This last year, I have been working on (well, obsessing over) a worldbuilding project I provisionally called Emberrun, due to it originating as something of a mash together of the Emberverse and Shadowrun (originally magic returned all at once at the end of 2019, and our computers failed at the same time. It has become more gradual since.)

The story, as it goes so far, is that magic returns in 2014. April 20th to be precise. But it takes a while to realise it, because magic at this point is almost entirely supernatural perception, with a side helping of telepathy (which extends to the peripheral nervous system -- very important). The effects are noticed far earlier; psychic powers aren't limited to humans, and no one wants to work around the psychic screaming of mistreated animals. Over the next few years, the impacts on healthcare and plant breeding are.... very large. Oh and the Wild Hunt don't consider grouse moors to be sporting enough, so those shut down. And the forests of Albion reclaim much of the island. Also there are certain morphological changes that happen to a number of individuals, due to subconscious self magic influencing bodily processes...

Things step up further in 2019, when oil and gas wells start to clog with polymerised oil, which may or may not have been caused by Extinction Rebellion mages doing a hyperworking. Then a couple of big solar flares get launched on the Winter Solstice and hit Christmas Day. Our most advanced computer chip fabrication gets crippled, too, by all the magical flux -- these machines are incredibly sensitive, and it's impossible to isolate them. After 2019, magic becomes more potent, with some healer mages able to influence over body systems and processes, not just those linked to the nervous system (magic in this world is subtle and based on steering processes, systems; as fun as fireball fantasy is, this isn't one. Until the alchemists get involved.). This includes being able to slow down dying dramatically, meaning people spend hours in an only mostly dead state where emergency medicine can save them, not minutes. In 2034, it's proven that certain individuals can control how materials form, for example they can ensure cooling metal forms a single perfect crystal, or create alloys that aren't possible to manufacture through mundane means. This leads, of course, to all manner of widespread magi(callyproduced)tech. Affordable carbon nanotube tape, high temperature superconductors, metamaterials galore.

Out of all the paracosms I have created, this is by far the most engrossing one. There is just so much potential! If I'm bored with the Aetherpunk Northwest Metropolis (Manchester-Liverpool), I can take a boat upriver into the Enchanted Forests of the Wilds. Or go futher, into the Karst, the sprawling network of caves below the Three Counties where nameless things gnaw the Earth. I can zip through time, from the days of the Extinction War when eco-sabateur mages fought with multinat corps, to the Age of Magsail space opera with psychic pilots duelling it out at ranges close enough that knowing your opponent just pressed the button won't necessarily give you enough time to dodge. Right now I have a campaign semi written for the 2022 Whitby vampire hunt. And been musing over the sort of horrors necromancers, summoning shades of the dead from vitrified brains, could unleash. I have ached for the land of forests and lakes that became of what is presently called the Lake District, its lakeside downs and ferryboats. Considered what abominations life archmages, who have enough control to breed incompatible species and somehow bring the resulting organism to term, might create. Had fun pushing the limits of what might at first glance seem to be a very limited form of magic (it cannot break the laws of physics; it can't even do a simple levitation spell) but turn out to be insanely powerful in the mind of the right sorceress. There is just so, so much in this world that is ripe for stories, and campaigns, and diegetic worldbuilding such as magical textbooks. So much light and dark, so many treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross...