Hello again! This time it's not about Batman, it's about one of my other projects because I've been working on it.
This project is called Fractured Planet! Which is a working title as well, but definitely more final than Dark Nights. It is a blend of sci-fi and fantasy as a post-post apocalypse story where magic and sci-fi are one in the same yet also intrinsically different.
The premise is that a Year 10,000 sci-fi world that was similar to but very different from Earth discovered Dark Anti-Matter, a substance that is the Anti-Matter of Dark Matter and shares properties of both. A form of matter that is nigh untraceable, doesn't follow most universal laws, and explodes into energy upon contact with many forms of matter (+ Dark Energy especially).
With equipment already made to contain Antimatter, they quickly used this resource for experimentation. This led to a discovery; The energy produced by the Dark Antimatter collisions was unlike anything ever even theorized. It could be shaped into almost anything and seemingly played with fundamental concepts like a potter would with clay. This very energy, later referred to as "Mana", is what would lead to Magick.
Eventually, the Great Fracture occurred. This was caused by a battle where too many combatants used too much unstable Dark Antimatter all at once, and the energy began slowly destroying and unraveling the planet as they knew it. This very planet destroying energy was also what was used to save it.
Rather than try to cleanse the world of all the energy and hope the planet fixes itself, they set up pathways of the energy through every fractured section of the planet, called the "Dark Antimatter Flow", which allowed the energy to stably flow through fractured pieces. This caused the fractured regions to stay in the same planetary orbit and rotation, while the regions themselves were staying locked inside the atmosphere, but not locked to each other.
Dark Antimatter replenishes itself by making contact with Dark Energy. Much like Antimatter explodes on contact with Matter, Dark Antimatter explodes on contact with Dark Energy. This results in the Dark Antimatter constantly replenishing within the world by consuming Dark Energy, though it also makes it incredibly difficult to enter or leave the planet as it creates an accretion disk surrounding the shattered planet, as well as making it the only place in the entire universe that is nearly devoid of Dark Energy.
This is where we bridge the gap between the Sci-fi and Fantasy parts of this world.
Initially, all surviving creatures were slowly driven mad or destroyed by the world's deep saturation of Dark Antimatter, as the world simply wasn't evolved to handle such an intense energy. This slowly drove the sapient races to be little more than animals, as the last of the surviving sapient races did their best to make things that would last and help their hopefully prosperous descendants.
For millions of years, these species devolved mentally while evolving physically, leading to incredibly powerful beings with minimal mental faculties.
Eventually though, the beings on the Fractured Planet that survived both the apocalypse and the Dark Antimatter Flow adjusted to the intense pervasive presence of the energy by evolving their own internal pathways similar to the Dark Antimatter Flow.
These internal pathways could contain and use this energy, allowing not only supernatural bodies and abilities, but for the world and creatures upon it to affect the very energy itself, stabilizing the chaotic energy and allowing it to coexist with the world. The stabilization and naturalization of Dark Antimatter, something not meant to exist and made whole at the cost of an entire world, allowed the energy to still retain all it's traits while not simply just exploding on contact with most matter.
This means that when the newly evolved races reached a point where their internal systems could not only contain and subsist off of Dark Antimatter but release it, miracles occurred. Before more complex forms of use came into being, primitive creatures that were Dark Antimatter Capable used this to biologically develop enhancements and grow natural traits that use the energy,
These traits grew more complex and varied over two hundred million years, at a rate much more rapid than traditional evolution. Relatively rapid evolution remains a consistent feature of all Dark Antimatter species, in both the Magickal and mundane senses, with the more Dark Antimatter a being has leading to even more rapid evolution.
After Sapient creatures evolved once more, it soon became clear to them that the energy could be controlled by the living being of which it was formerly contained in, or dispersed harmlessly if nothing is done. It can also be simply detonated as well if the releaser is not careful or intends to do so.
Different methodologies of using Dark Antimatter Release (Commonly referred to as Magick) sprouted on each Region of the planet. These practices eventually spread and, through repetitive primitive use over millions of years, affected the Dark Antimatter Flow that keeps the planet intact.
This caused the types of Magick native to each Realm to be supported by the Realm itself, making that Magick much more powerful and easier to control while within it's native Realm.
This roughly leads us to the "modern" era, though I skipped a LOT of details to get there. But we can get to that later, because this is already a very long post. I hope y'all enjoy this!