#ehlverse

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Oh now you’ve really got me. Asymptomatic vampirism? How does that work? Please elaborate on asymptomatic vampirism and why it afflicts humans disproportionately 💜💜💜

:D!!!! thank you!!!

because vampirism is a full, like, disease in the ehlverse, it's possible for people to be carriers without realizing it!! so even if they're infected, they won't start down the toothache > tooth growth > Too Much Tooth pipeline, won't start to experience frenzies and hallucinations, and will remain fully fine in bright light :)

this is Very Bad for people who are symptomatic. the Shara'i are universally symptomatic in a way fully different from everyone else in the world, so they can't really uh. interact with humans. cause who knows how many of them have been asymptomatic or for how long, since it spreads through bodily fluids and is passed on from parent to child.

humans specifically have... i guess the best way to put it is powerful blood, but in a way that like. the magic they have comes from using blood to paint symbols to do things. and it kinda neutralizes any other blood-borne magic it comes in contact with? so like human half-ehlves have a 50-50 chance to not be mages, and vampirism exists in them but can't really. do anything.

this also means humans can't use their own blood for alchemical purposes! so their magic is well and truly Only Theirs. not even a potion can let someone else borrow that skill.

the only exceptions to that rule are the Eternal Three, since in the process of becoming immortal the ehlves became just human enough to use runes if they wish, and Arthur became just ehlven enough to access elementalism.

additional fun fact: this means arthur is the only true allmage! because tieling and veratrum both started with elementalism (air and plant, respectively), neither of them can use the opposites of their original element. for tieling, that means no stone magic, and for veratrum, that means no metal or flesh magic! but since arthur Didn't Have An Element To Begin With, he got the full suite of elementalism. jury's still out on whether that's a boon or a curse

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Happy WBW! How does magic work in the Ehlverse? If that’s too broad, pick one aspect you’d like to talk about!

Hi!! Happy WBW!!!

How magic works in the Ehlverse......................... where to START.

Okay first of all: despite trying a bunch of different things, I. Could Not figure out anything to draw for this question. Nothing was clicking.

BUT.

The Ehlverse has, at the point in time when the Millennium Saga and Whispers take place, 10 separate magic systems going on. And uh. That number, due to one of said systems, fluctuates throughout history. I'll focus on that one, since it's the framework for the whole entire world!

The Millennium Cycle, namesake for the Saga because it's hugely relevant to the plot, is a historical pattern of going back and forth between adding something new to (a Growth) or destroying something already a part of (a Decay) the world every thousand years. So, year 0 of the current calendar is when The Common Tongue (the magical translation magic that permeates the world) Grew, and year 1000 was when the Rill Decay happened, which has been trying to erase the Shara'i with a Vampirism epidemic ever since. Growths can add whole new species, peoples, magic systems, continents, plants, etc etc, and Decays can take any of those things away. This is overseen by the Goddesses, specifically Venn (Goddess of Magic, among other things) and Delta (Goddess of Change, among other things), with the other four essentially giving creative input in the form of suggested edits.

(Why, yes, TMS can be interpreted as a commentary on the experience of making art and when to let go of a thing and accept that it has flaws and that doesn't mean it isn't done.)

BUT the way the Cycle manifests changes almost every time. In-world, there's infinite debate to be had about whether or not the planet's creation itself was a Growth, and whether the Goddesses had to essentially just do a rapid series of Growths to get life going before settling into a Growth > Decay > Growth > Decay pattern. And, like, the fact that the Rill Decay hasn't fully manifested (the Shara'i still exist as we're creeping up on year 4000 PCT) when the Eqian Decay (1000 BCT) was over in an instant with an entire continent being inverted into deep sea chasms has made a lot of people question whether it was a Decay at all, over the centuries. (Those people don't realize that Sieril was the technological leader of the world at that time, with the Shara'i having essentially faced an apocalypse that dropped them to less than 1% of their population. Because, you know, that was almost 3000 years ago.)

ANYWAY. The plot of TMS revolves around the Great Decay that was supposed to happen on the dawn of the year 3000 having been stopped by the Chosen One, and uh maybe just actually delayed instead. But he's been pretending he fully stopped it. And its currently 3995 and 5 years is not a lot of time to figure out how to stop the Permanent Magic Eraser from destroying the manifold societies that are entirely dependent on magic to function.

Thank you again for the question!!

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Hey! Happy WBW!

What kind of animals does your world have? Do you draw from any specific mythos, or are they closer to our world?

@italiangothicwriteblr

Hi!! Happy WBW!!!!

BOY DO I HAVE SOME FUNKY ANIMALS FOR YOU!!! I don't tend to draw on any particular mythos when creating Creachures - instead, I take different real-world animals with the vibes/functions/niches I'm going for and put them in a blender with a funky color pallette. Here's some illustrations I've done in the past for a few of them!!

First up, we have our Feathered Ungulates, the Dreamdancers and Spiritseekers (more detail on the Spiritseekers and varieties for Emarye, Sieril, and more coming to a tumblr near you at Some Point):

And the couple of dragons I've designed so far:

And finally, some miscellaneous Creachures!! The first one is called a Cacklehound, that drawing was just my experimenting with their Vibes not going hard into the designs like a lot of the others :)

Thank you for dropping by!! I hope you like my Creatures :D

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URYAK DESIGNS

As usual, a transcript of the words will be blended with the worldbuilding segment below, and I'll put a description of the Uryaks themselves in the alt text of the image!

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Uryaks are the favorite pack animals for the vast majority of Emarye, and have become beloved all over Ehl for their soft fur, gentle eyes, and ease in the presence of sentient peoples of all kinds. They're a resilient species built for the harsh, long winters of the far north, and wild herds can be found on the borders of the Motherfrost and the polar mountains to this day, even after a long history of domestication.

While their fluffy, dog-like fur keeps them well insulated against the cold, it's not the most practical for textiles - Woolwyrms are a much better option for Emry shepherds - and the white color has historically made them quite easy to lose in the blizzards that frequent their home. The solution to the latter is the brightly-patterned blanketed saddles given to most domesticated Uryaks (based on traditional Tibetan yak saddles and ornamentation), as well as plenty of equally colorful yarn adorning their horns to serve as a potential beacon in the ice plains, should they ever be separated from their riders. Like many Yaks and similar animals in the real world, Uryaks will often be given nose rings in their youth to make handling their rowdy adolescence easier, as well as to aid in weaning them off their mothers.

It can be difficult to tell which sex calves are for the first few years, especially because they can be far more energetic and playful than their parents, acting much more like fox pups than baby cows. Adult females tend to have shorter horns and snouts than their male counterparts, and usually weigh significantly more. They also have longer tails, which nursing calves will use for extra warmth and cover when feeding.

(From a meta standpoint, they're a blend of Tibetan Yaks, Arctic Foxes, and Polar Bears; I landed on what I would say is 60% yak, 30% fox, and 10% bear, which is, in my opinion, the cutest of all the variations I came up with along the way.)

thank you for reading, if you did!! there's a bonus autism/tbh/yippee creature rendition under the cut because my brother insisted i make one and i love it so u all get to see it too <3

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PEOPLES OF THE EHLVERSE #4 - THE DEEPFOLK

Legends whispered in dark taverns and cargo holds speak of a world unutterable at the bottom of the ocean, where names do not exist, and age does not kill. Legends, and that is all the world knows them to be, for how could such a thing go unseen for so long?

Perhaps it is because the Deepfolk begin life as oarfish. Live as any other would, until a century of infancy ends with the sprouting of a torso from their throat. Only another five centuries, and their youth as males will come to an end with the ripping of their second voice, should they survive that long in the deep.

Those who are lucky enough to reach womanhood never stop growing, never succumb to age. Death is plentiful still, but when one lives long enough to outgrow their planet, nothing will bring it.

The Deepfolk remember a time before the Goddesses chose their oceanic planet for their next act of creation. She Who Wraps Thrice Around the World remembers the day exactly, for she watched the first land rise from the waves not a century after her womanhood.

She remembers three hundred thousand years like the surface remembers a decade.

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out of LITERALLY nowhere, i decided to work on the written language of sieril tonight. and this time i actually managed to make it work and make sense :)

here's a preview of the basic writing system (without the letters or anything)

The text reads:

Each letter makes multiple sounds. These sounds are shown via rotation (or mirroring for letters with only 2 sounds). Left half of a circle is Voiced, right half is Unvoiced; top half is Long, bottom is Short.

Syllables cluster in a maximum of 4 letters, read clockwise from the top left. Syllable gaps are anglicized using apostrophes (e.g. K'Ron, Lu'Syr, Tal'Ren).

And this is how you write K'Ron! (pronounced K-ɾon; for non-IPA, a K sound, followed with a flip/tap on the r and the word own)

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Pax my friend let's talk food for wbw!! Are there any cultural dishes in your world that you feature in your projects? How do food cravings/traditions change as the year goes on? This ask brought to you by me fuckin dying for avgolemono and spanikopita lately btw.

HI ALEX happy wbw!!! I had never heard of either of those dishes before but now I am So Hungry they look so so good :O I hope you get some soon!!!

As for cultural dishes in the Ehlverse,,,,, well. Despite my affinity for food irl, im. not super creative when it comes to food in fiction. There are, so far, exactly two (2) meals I describe in any of my Ehlverse books. One of them is in Whispers and actually relevant to the plot.

The OTHER is a traditional meal that Veratrum cooks for her grandkids when they're in Tal'Ren in Firebreathers! It was mostly borne of me thinking over what kinds of food are available in the bayou, so it's a cuisine with lots of fish, rice, and citrus, as well as naan-like flatbread that I imagine is made from wetland-based grains instead of, like, wheat.

And since my personal WBW engagement challenge today is to draw something for each answer that I can, here's my (admittedly very basic-looking) rendition of that meal!!

As far as holiday foods go, I really should put more thought into that sort of thing. I've been playing with religious worship differences throughout the Ehlverse on the backburner for a while - I think Deltierin would put a lot of importance on food and drink, especially in terms of fasting and feasting and offerings. They'd probably have a period of fasting and a period of feasting each year, though probably not back-to-back. There's probably feast days every couple of months in the Maelands, and two per year in Sieril but they're HUGE and everyone in the land is invited to Tal'Ren. And Emarye probably used to absolutely pop OFF with feasts but with industrialization hitting them at the same time as huge surges in criminal activity that uh. Probably fell off to the wayside a bit.

Thank you for the ask!! <3<3<3

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PEOPLES OF THE EHLVERSE #8 - THE AHSITARI

The Ahsitari of Deltierin are a kaleidoscopic people to an extent unmatched by any other Shifters in existence.

Where most gifted with the ability to change their shape are able to become creatures of similar size and distant origin, Ahsitari and trained Greater Shifters may change any feature they wish, even as small as moving their freckles around - or as big as giving themselves wings, scales, hooves, or gills. And where most Shifters do so with great pain, the Ahsitari do so as easily as blinking, and just as often.

Some will take humanoid shapes; others will Blend so thoroughly with the world around them, you will not notice their camouflage until they speak. But they will, and they will do so jovially, for their existence is one that takes life as a joyous chance to bring as much laughter as possible.

But though laughter is a pursuit most necessary in a world like theirs, it can be quite hard to come by in times of war.

Perhaps that’s what makes it even more important?