[center][color=696969][h1][b]Vneth[/b][/h1][/color] [color=696969][b][u]Doomed to the Void[/u][/b][/color][/center][hr] [hider=The Lay of the Wayward Scion of Ysheggai] Once, centuries ago, Vneth was a resplendent jewel in the astral crown of Ysheggai, where it stood in the empyreal spaces alongside six other spheres of being, warm and populous with life. Formed, or perhaps ordained, in aeons immemorial, the worlds in the circle of Ysheggai were well-suited to be the habitation of various terrene beings in many shapes and forms. Manifold were their origins; some filtered down from the astral and took on material form, others sprang to life from earth and rock, others yet emerged from the churning primeval oceans. These entities were of primal and inchoate spirit, all but incapable of thought, and though it happened at length that some of them grew more crafty, it was through chance that any of them at last became more than beasts. After a brush with the veined green nolakh, the Ague-stone of wondrous properties found in certain caverns, a breed of ape-like beings was imbued with alchymical mutation, and found in itself the skill to learn to walk upright, to bind wood and bone into tools, to utter speech and live in accord. The sons of flesh and earth grew and thrived, and the crafts of civilization blossomed from their minds. Vneth was a fertile ground for their endeavours, suffused by day with sunless light from the heavens, rich with strong and precious earths from the depths of mines and quarries, teeming with plants, beasts and other things to be harvested, hunted or tamed. Many were the perils of the primordial world, but the cunning of the novphes, the people of the green nolakh, overcame the hunger, fangs and venoms of the wilds as well as the furious storms and quakes of the elements. Towns grew, then mighty cities, with spires, temples and palaces that defied the clouds and mountains. Roads of paved stone stretched across the land, trodden at all hours of day by caravans laden with goods from far realms. Realms, kingdoms and empires rose and fell, some standing for generations, others for mere days. Their armies were like fields where stalks were spears and forests where leaves were swords, with hordes of beast-riders whose steps shook the earth and sages who brewed plagues of alchymy to smite their foes. Their kings sat on thrones of ivory and pale gold, of nolakh and gemstone. It was so that the seven worlds of the crown of Ysheggai were bound with ethereal paths, so that by certain means occult and arcane one could travel from one to the other, though there was no bodily bridge one could cross. The wisemen of Vneth were not the first to discover the craft, but learned it from wanderers of yonder spheres. Turmoil followed, for a time, and war and conquest. The tide shifted many times, but no one held the upper hand, for the peoples of Ysheggai were alike in strength and craft, and as wars are wont to do at length it faded, only stirring now and again across the decades. Through struggle, trade and learning of far places, the crown of the seven worlds became much akin to one great sphere, the astral roads its highways, the skies the boundaries of its many kingdoms. For a long time it prospered and shone, fulcrum of legends and secret lore across the empyreal, repository of riches innumerable, pride and envy of countless peoples. Yet all things have their end, and doom comes ineluctable for the humble and the proud alike. Drawn by the haughty light that radiated from Ysheggai and driven to ravenous hunger by its opulent warmth, a terrible being of the abyss emerged from the depths of the starless cosmos. So vast was it as to be almost divine in might. What became of the crown of Ysheggai in its clutches is unknown, but Vneth was seized and hurled away, into the sightless void beyond. Severed from the astral ways of the spheres and beset on all sides by the consuming absence, Vneth grew cold and withered. Its skies lost their lustre, and became eternally grey, heavy and overcast. Its oceans stagnated, and became slow and dark as lead, save in rare places wracked by everlasting storms. Mountains of dead ice now drift over its waves, bearing within them waking entities from ages forgotten. The forests shrivelled, and became thin and spectral, haunted by forlornly howling and chittering things. The fields drained away, and became wastes of grey dust, silent and untrodden. The many beasts and living things of Vneth either became bone and rot or hid away in secluded places. Some withdrew under the earth, and there, touched by the nolakh and other stones of alchemical puissance, they met strange fates, such that no one dares venture after them. What was worst, things that were not of Vneth seeped down from the folds of the dark void and spread over its carcass like flies. Now the voices of horrid sky-shriekers resound from cliffs and towers, the claws of dusk dwellers rend bark and tapestries, and valleys writhe under the tide of uncountable monstrosities. The novphes, once uncontested masters of the sphere, are but a ghost of their former selves. Their empires are graveyards, fields and roads littered with the bones of those who tilled, travelled and fought over them in the thousands. Their great cities stand crumbling and deserted, empty and haunted by memory or desecrated by the lairs of unnameable creatures. Slowly and stubbornly, but with no hope, they have withdrawn into lost valleys and mountainous refuges, to lonely islands and expanses of cooling ash. Of their kingdoms, only one still stands, in a land once too hot and scathing to settle, but now the last to hold an ephemeral warmth. Yet even that is a reign of ruins, held in a ring of encroaching death. Its lords, who recklessly consume the last of the nolakh in great quantities to prolong their lives, have been tainted by an excess of the Ague-stone, and though ancient and wise in forgotten arts are sickly and disfigured. The tales of grandeur from the past are all but forgotten myths, and though some beings from other worlds of Ysheggai still live among the people of ash, few of them could say where their forebears once came from. Vneth is a world of death and oblivion, and desolation and decay hold illimitable dominion over all. [/hider] [hider=Notes on the Inhabitants of Vneth] The only indigenous sapients of the world are the novphes, hairy ape-like beings that distantly resemble upright baboons with grey-greenish fur, albeit with shorter, more compact and less prehensile hind legs, no tails and developed facial muscles allowing for a range of visible expression and vocal articulation. They are, however, all but incapable of producing velar, palatal and most alveolar sounds. Fur hue and thickness may slightly vary depending on geographical, and by extension ethnic, origin. As a whole, novphes have difficulty learning to swim, and are instinctively afraid of large bodies of water. Novphes are hermaphrodites, barring rare anomalous cases, and reproduce through the consumption of a subcutaneous inseminating organ extracted from another individual. While historically this led to the development of cannibalistic traditional practices, later developments in surgery allowing for relatively painless extraction of the organ have spread almost worldwide, and are now the most stubbornly guarded vestige of old world knowledge. The novphe peoples were born from the nolakh stone, which can grant longevity at the cost of health. As they age, they take on the hungering nature of the green Ague-stone that exchanges life for affliction, and become capable of feeding on the vitality of living creatures by consuming their blood and flesh. The victim will be stricken with enervation and weakness disproportionate to the wounds, while the ape-folk are reinforced and even rejuvenated if they devour enough. The novphes can also, through an arduous process, alchymically refine nolakh into a concoction that renders their kind all but immortal, but also sickly and deformed. Sapient beings from other worlds of Ysheggai remain on Vneth, but are extremely rare, and mostly dying out faster than the locals. Most void creatures do not possess any observable higher intellect. Those that appear to invariably ignore all attempts to communicate with them, although some mad ritualists claim to be able to temporarily appease them with offerings and other artifices. [/hider][hider=Practices of Thaumaturgy and Incantation] Magical practice is presently nonexistent in Vneth. The aethereal framework for manipulations of space allowing for intermundane translocation has been lost to the void, and the knowledge to work it is forgotten. The closest to continuing magical practices is the ancestral science of alchymy, which uses rare mineral substances to achieve sometimes preternatural effects. Those may include curing or inducing diseases, aiding the healing of wounds, reinforcing other materials, causing mutation and transformations in living beings, lighting inextinguishable fires and more, though much lore has been lost since the golden age of Ysheggai. [/hider][hider=Cartography] [hider=Map] [img]https://imgur.com/jCC5Ysg.png[/img] [i]Grey marks the surviving Kingdom of Ashes.[/i] [/hider] [hider=Relief Map] [img]https://i.imgur.com/0LjmodG.png[/img] [/hider] [/hider]