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unfinished/rough app structure worldbuild
Apr. 14th, 2022 08:39 pmWorld in a Wineglass: The universe is inspired by a variety of things just to give you an idea of thematic tone: the story of King Solomon and his seal-ring that controlled the Jinn, the cynical romanticism of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the elemental divisions of the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe and the very real climate crises we're all facing right now.
There are Five Great Spirits who created life on the Tisres Albjo (or the 'Tri-Worlds'). They started out with spirit babies, and then decided to give the gift of Pets to their children. The pets were humans, and humans were a terrible idea. One human in particular is a very terrible idea, and that human happens to be the Allyas' father!
If you'd like to take a peak at the world/history that accompanies this story, it's over yonder. All you really need to know is that Kwennaxtō (said father) is an immortal asshole with godlike power over air/wind/storms/etc due to the enslavement of the Great Spirit of air — Wirro. Kwennaxtō goes by the name Adreigo in this era of history, and I will be referring to him as such throughout the app!
So now that we're all caught up, let's jump into character specific history!
Before we proceed: there are CONTENT WARNINGS the drowning death of children, the willful maternal slaying of a child, general parental neglect/abuse.
Allyas came into the world charmed. The oldest son of a beloved, benevolent king, born smack dab in the middle of a time of great prosperity and peace — he wanted for absolutely nothing. His era was a romantic one where writers and philosophers were celebrated as the pinnacle of culture, where art was praised as being the highest possible pursuit of one's ambitions. Love and beauty are hung with all the trappings of religious fervor, and Skalgo — his home city — is a gilt and glittering place, foremost in the Tri-Worlds for its rapid advances in technology (which is about ~100 years in advance of modern Earth) and famous for its lively ... poetry competitions.
Like most of his contemporaries, Allyas had no belief in spirits — something his father strongly encouraged.
He was a pleasant, outgoing child until the summer of his ninth year, whereby through carelessness or ignorance he left his three-year-old brother unattended near a body of water — resulting in his death by drowning.
The period of grief and guilt that followed was crippling, and it was especially hard on his mother Kamulā. She began consulting with mystics — anyone who claimed to have knowledge of the spirits. Eventually, her frantic obsession drew the attention of a brilliant conman, who in exchange for a great deal of money and prestige, explained that she could exchange one son for another if she appealed to the Great Spirits and gave her remaining child as a sacrifice.
Kamulā had no desire to do this unhappy deed herself — instead, she bade one of the trusted members of her harem to do the unhappy deed. Allyas never learned what the man's incentive was, whether he was threatened or promised riches or whether it was an act of love for his mother — but that attendant took him to a beautiful step-well called Iskakwernā, and drowned him there. (Iska being the great water spirit, and 'kwernā' meaning 'well' or 'vessel'. Yes, I am Going Places with this.)
Whatever miracle his mother Kamulā was waiting on did not happen. Koisi did not return to her. What became of the man from the harem is unknown — he was never seen again. What Allyas knows is this: he woke in the water.
He does not remember returning to his family's palatial home. He certainly does not remember his mother's shock at seeing him, nor his father's fury. He had apparently been missing for three years, and he claims to remember exactly none of it.
What actually happened is that he was brought back to life by the spirit Iska. The great spirits, weakened by centuries of pollution and damage, had largely gone into hibernation, their resting places the last vestiges of magic in the world. When Allyas was drowned there, it jarred Iska from their rest. The spirit decided to save his life, and entered into a bond with him. Now: Iska is a largely benevolent spirit, but spirits also do not really adhere to human morality. They saved him, yes, but they also proceeded to basically leave him in a semi-perpetual state of twilight consciousness for several years at the bottom of a well because they have zero concept of time.
You might think this is leading to some grand showdown. Local boy defies his father and leads an army in rebellion, heals the world and the spirits return.
(But this is not that kind of story.)
In the 15+ years since his death and subsequent rebirth, Allyas has tried very hard to be a dutiful son, racked with survivor's guilt over his brother's death, and a medley of Issues surrounding his relationship with his mother and father both. His mother has essentially proceeded to ignore his existence, and his father has been descending into paranoia and madness, because he certainly expects that Allyas bonded with Iska on purpose to overthrow him.
(Spoilers: Allyas has no idea who his father really is, or that he's bonded to Wirro at all.)
In the interim, he lived his life to the royal letter. He attended all his lessons, learned languages, diplomacy. He's entertained the greatest philosophers of his age, he's befriended artists and poets and musicians galore. He accepted his parent's chosen suitors for him, a woman named Letoayla and a man named Telinjō, annd this union happened when he was eighteen.
This is where things started to fall apart. Letoayla, whether by accident or design, came to realize that Adreigo and Kwennaxtō were one in the same. She is a fierce, passionate woman, born to a family which rose to power out of the ashes of brutal oppression, and has good reason to absolutely hate Kwennaxtō. She decided she was going to kill him for the good of the Tisres Albjo, and knowing that she would have no chance without the other great spirits, she (the real hero of the story, lbr) set out on a quest to locate the others.
Letoayla bonds with Knāmi.
Telinjō is killed.
Letoayla is imprisoned.
and Allyas is exiled to another world when he is 25.
Busy guy.
(This is also his first real encounter with the 'real world'. You learn a few hard lessons.)
Personality: 'Change isn't possible, so we should strive to accept what is, and make the best of it.'
Allyas is a knotted-up web of contradiction. As a child he was sweet and outgoing, and treated people equally regardless of their station. After his death and subsequent rebirth, he was markedly more withdrawn, subsumed by trauma and guilt and the odd tangle of emotions he has at sharing a body, essentially, with a spirit. Spoiler: human bodies aren't exactly built to accommodate a ride-along, so he has a tendency to feel uncomfortable in his own skin, rattled by his own shadow. The crippling, gnawing sense that something is wrong with him lives in his skin. Whether it's because he died and his soul got a little void-touched or because he is sharing a body with a spirit is hard to say.
The emotional beat that defines him best is cowardice. He has been afraid most of his life. He is terrified of dying, the dark, and large bodies of water (haha, oh the irony). He lets fear dictate every inch of how he engages with others. Fear keeps him from forging deep connections, it keeps him from growing as a person. He is basically the personification of that old adage about rats on a sinking ship, because when he's afraid he's afraid to the point of irrationality — even though he isn't actively cruel, he could become so in an attempt to secure his own wellbeing and life.
He's cynical — wouldn't you be if your own mother had you killed? Add into that the knowledge that he's directly descended from a genocidal monster, that he watched one bonded mate kill himself and another be literally entombed in a live volcano. He doesn't think there's any point in trying to change the status quo, he doesn't believe he can have any impact on his father or the world. Despite the fact that he has deep compassion for the plight of the vanishing spirits, he doesn't see himself as someone who can affect change on that level. He also thinks it's embarrassing to try and fail at something, and has already talked himself into believing he'd fail, so he'd simply rather not do anything at all.
One side effect of his bond with Iska is that his empathy is sometimes... a little suspect. He can be absolutely callous when dealing with situations he doesn't personally consider being upset over, especially pertaining to situations he has no experience in. Given that he's royalty, and never really wanted for anything or at any point in his life had to work to survive, his scope of experience is quite narrow, and he lacks a natural empathy for those outside of it. He is capable of learning it (he's got a wee touch of narcissistic hedonism, but he's not a sociopath).
He fancies himself a bit of a philosopher/poet, and will speak very charismatically on things like romance and beauty and the futility of life and how the point of existence is to surrender to one's impulses/et al, but the fact of the matter is a lot of what he says is empty — and I don't mean in the sense that he doesn't believe it, I mean in the sense that if you peel the layers back from what he's saying it's not nearly as deep or profound as he believes it to be. He expects that his life being so bracketed by tragedy makes him a tragic figure and he is... wrong. However, he has a great deal of curiosity for the world and a thirst for knowledge... that directly reinforces his own beliefs (whee confirmation bias) However, it's this curiosity that will also make him capable of change as he learns and grows — he has the ability to challenge himself and his beliefs, he's just found safety in stagnancy and has a bit of a case of arrested development. People who push him, are willing to argue and bite back are going to put him in a position of (sometimes painful, but absolutely necessary) growth of character.
He has a tendency to be somewhat mercurial and capricious. He has very low impulse control as a person and tends to live in his emotions very much, so when his mood switches between extremes he does the same. This is a bit of arrested development in action — due to the way all his other traits intersect, he's paralyzed in the face of self-improvement, and due to trauma and the way his body and emotions handled being dead (and also being basically held in a semi-conscious stasis literally at the bottom of a massive well for three years) he definitely struggles with emotional management.
Powers/Abilities: Allyas is bonded to Iska, the great water spirit of his world. While not as powerful as it once was, Iska still grants him use of a variety of water-based skills. It's important to note that he bonded with Iska literal millennia after Kwennaxtō subjugated Wirro, so there are literal leagues of difference between their abilities — Kwennaxtō is far closer to godliness, and Allyas is basically like 'elemental metahuman'. He is capable of becoming stronger as time progresses and he becomes more 'compatible' with Iska, but at his 'canonpoint' he has not really delved too deeply into what Iska is capable of. I've detailed his current powerset below and potential future paths as he trains/etc, feel free to nerf whatever!
I'd call him a 'waterbender', but honestly - he has absolutely zero combat experience with it, so no one is seeing fancy water whip moves out of him any time soon. He is, however, capable of using it for defensive/shielding purposes
He can control existing water sources within reasonable limits. The more water he tries to manipulate at once, the sooner he tires out. Moving a few litres is no big deal, but if he tried to lift the volume of water in an olympic pool he might manage it... but he'd be unconscious for like a week.
He can also summon water in small amounts (probably not in excess of like, a couple litres over a 24 hr period) within a close radius around him. Yes, he can summon water into your lungs, but only if you're close enough.
He can use water to accelerate healing. This isn't instantaneous, it's more of a 'this injury that would have taken six weeks to heal will now take three' sort of deal. He can also use water to stop people from bleeding out!
There are Five Great Spirits who created life on the Tisres Albjo (or the 'Tri-Worlds'). They started out with spirit babies, and then decided to give the gift of Pets to their children. The pets were humans, and humans were a terrible idea. One human in particular is a very terrible idea, and that human happens to be the Allyas' father!
If you'd like to take a peak at the world/history that accompanies this story, it's over yonder. All you really need to know is that Kwennaxtō (said father) is an immortal asshole with godlike power over air/wind/storms/etc due to the enslavement of the Great Spirit of air — Wirro. Kwennaxtō goes by the name Adreigo in this era of history, and I will be referring to him as such throughout the app!
So now that we're all caught up, let's jump into character specific history!
Before we proceed: there are CONTENT WARNINGS the drowning death of children, the willful maternal slaying of a child, general parental neglect/abuse.
Allyas came into the world charmed. The oldest son of a beloved, benevolent king, born smack dab in the middle of a time of great prosperity and peace — he wanted for absolutely nothing. His era was a romantic one where writers and philosophers were celebrated as the pinnacle of culture, where art was praised as being the highest possible pursuit of one's ambitions. Love and beauty are hung with all the trappings of religious fervor, and Skalgo — his home city — is a gilt and glittering place, foremost in the Tri-Worlds for its rapid advances in technology (which is about ~100 years in advance of modern Earth) and famous for its lively ... poetry competitions.
Like most of his contemporaries, Allyas had no belief in spirits — something his father strongly encouraged.
He was a pleasant, outgoing child until the summer of his ninth year, whereby through carelessness or ignorance he left his three-year-old brother unattended near a body of water — resulting in his death by drowning.
The period of grief and guilt that followed was crippling, and it was especially hard on his mother Kamulā. She began consulting with mystics — anyone who claimed to have knowledge of the spirits. Eventually, her frantic obsession drew the attention of a brilliant conman, who in exchange for a great deal of money and prestige, explained that she could exchange one son for another if she appealed to the Great Spirits and gave her remaining child as a sacrifice.
Kamulā had no desire to do this unhappy deed herself — instead, she bade one of the trusted members of her harem to do the unhappy deed. Allyas never learned what the man's incentive was, whether he was threatened or promised riches or whether it was an act of love for his mother — but that attendant took him to a beautiful step-well called Iskakwernā, and drowned him there. (Iska being the great water spirit, and 'kwernā' meaning 'well' or 'vessel'. Yes, I am Going Places with this.)
Whatever miracle his mother Kamulā was waiting on did not happen. Koisi did not return to her. What became of the man from the harem is unknown — he was never seen again. What Allyas knows is this: he woke in the water.
He does not remember returning to his family's palatial home. He certainly does not remember his mother's shock at seeing him, nor his father's fury. He had apparently been missing for three years, and he claims to remember exactly none of it.
What actually happened is that he was brought back to life by the spirit Iska. The great spirits, weakened by centuries of pollution and damage, had largely gone into hibernation, their resting places the last vestiges of magic in the world. When Allyas was drowned there, it jarred Iska from their rest. The spirit decided to save his life, and entered into a bond with him. Now: Iska is a largely benevolent spirit, but spirits also do not really adhere to human morality. They saved him, yes, but they also proceeded to basically leave him in a semi-perpetual state of twilight consciousness for several years at the bottom of a well because they have zero concept of time.
You might think this is leading to some grand showdown. Local boy defies his father and leads an army in rebellion, heals the world and the spirits return.
(But this is not that kind of story.)
In the 15+ years since his death and subsequent rebirth, Allyas has tried very hard to be a dutiful son, racked with survivor's guilt over his brother's death, and a medley of Issues surrounding his relationship with his mother and father both. His mother has essentially proceeded to ignore his existence, and his father has been descending into paranoia and madness, because he certainly expects that Allyas bonded with Iska on purpose to overthrow him.
(Spoilers: Allyas has no idea who his father really is, or that he's bonded to Wirro at all.)
In the interim, he lived his life to the royal letter. He attended all his lessons, learned languages, diplomacy. He's entertained the greatest philosophers of his age, he's befriended artists and poets and musicians galore. He accepted his parent's chosen suitors for him, a woman named Letoayla and a man named Telinjō, annd this union happened when he was eighteen.
This is where things started to fall apart. Letoayla, whether by accident or design, came to realize that Adreigo and Kwennaxtō were one in the same. She is a fierce, passionate woman, born to a family which rose to power out of the ashes of brutal oppression, and has good reason to absolutely hate Kwennaxtō. She decided she was going to kill him for the good of the Tisres Albjo, and knowing that she would have no chance without the other great spirits, she (the real hero of the story, lbr) set out on a quest to locate the others.
Letoayla bonds with Knāmi.
Telinjō is killed.
Letoayla is imprisoned.
and Allyas is exiled to another world when he is 25.
Busy guy.
(This is also his first real encounter with the 'real world'. You learn a few hard lessons.)
Personality: 'Change isn't possible, so we should strive to accept what is, and make the best of it.'
Allyas is a knotted-up web of contradiction. As a child he was sweet and outgoing, and treated people equally regardless of their station. After his death and subsequent rebirth, he was markedly more withdrawn, subsumed by trauma and guilt and the odd tangle of emotions he has at sharing a body, essentially, with a spirit. Spoiler: human bodies aren't exactly built to accommodate a ride-along, so he has a tendency to feel uncomfortable in his own skin, rattled by his own shadow. The crippling, gnawing sense that something is wrong with him lives in his skin. Whether it's because he died and his soul got a little void-touched or because he is sharing a body with a spirit is hard to say.
The emotional beat that defines him best is cowardice. He has been afraid most of his life. He is terrified of dying, the dark, and large bodies of water (haha, oh the irony). He lets fear dictate every inch of how he engages with others. Fear keeps him from forging deep connections, it keeps him from growing as a person. He is basically the personification of that old adage about rats on a sinking ship, because when he's afraid he's afraid to the point of irrationality — even though he isn't actively cruel, he could become so in an attempt to secure his own wellbeing and life.
He's cynical — wouldn't you be if your own mother had you killed? Add into that the knowledge that he's directly descended from a genocidal monster, that he watched one bonded mate kill himself and another be literally entombed in a live volcano. He doesn't think there's any point in trying to change the status quo, he doesn't believe he can have any impact on his father or the world. Despite the fact that he has deep compassion for the plight of the vanishing spirits, he doesn't see himself as someone who can affect change on that level. He also thinks it's embarrassing to try and fail at something, and has already talked himself into believing he'd fail, so he'd simply rather not do anything at all.
One side effect of his bond with Iska is that his empathy is sometimes... a little suspect. He can be absolutely callous when dealing with situations he doesn't personally consider being upset over, especially pertaining to situations he has no experience in. Given that he's royalty, and never really wanted for anything or at any point in his life had to work to survive, his scope of experience is quite narrow, and he lacks a natural empathy for those outside of it. He is capable of learning it (he's got a wee touch of narcissistic hedonism, but he's not a sociopath).
He fancies himself a bit of a philosopher/poet, and will speak very charismatically on things like romance and beauty and the futility of life and how the point of existence is to surrender to one's impulses/et al, but the fact of the matter is a lot of what he says is empty — and I don't mean in the sense that he doesn't believe it, I mean in the sense that if you peel the layers back from what he's saying it's not nearly as deep or profound as he believes it to be. He expects that his life being so bracketed by tragedy makes him a tragic figure and he is... wrong. However, he has a great deal of curiosity for the world and a thirst for knowledge... that directly reinforces his own beliefs (whee confirmation bias) However, it's this curiosity that will also make him capable of change as he learns and grows — he has the ability to challenge himself and his beliefs, he's just found safety in stagnancy and has a bit of a case of arrested development. People who push him, are willing to argue and bite back are going to put him in a position of (sometimes painful, but absolutely necessary) growth of character.
He has a tendency to be somewhat mercurial and capricious. He has very low impulse control as a person and tends to live in his emotions very much, so when his mood switches between extremes he does the same. This is a bit of arrested development in action — due to the way all his other traits intersect, he's paralyzed in the face of self-improvement, and due to trauma and the way his body and emotions handled being dead (and also being basically held in a semi-conscious stasis literally at the bottom of a massive well for three years) he definitely struggles with emotional management.
Powers/Abilities: Allyas is bonded to Iska, the great water spirit of his world. While not as powerful as it once was, Iska still grants him use of a variety of water-based skills. It's important to note that he bonded with Iska literal millennia after Kwennaxtō subjugated Wirro, so there are literal leagues of difference between their abilities — Kwennaxtō is far closer to godliness, and Allyas is basically like 'elemental metahuman'. He is capable of becoming stronger as time progresses and he becomes more 'compatible' with Iska, but at his 'canonpoint' he has not really delved too deeply into what Iska is capable of. I've detailed his current powerset below and potential future paths as he trains/etc, feel free to nerf whatever!
I'd call him a 'waterbender', but honestly - he has absolutely zero combat experience with it, so no one is seeing fancy water whip moves out of him any time soon. He is, however, capable of using it for defensive/shielding purposes
He can control existing water sources within reasonable limits. The more water he tries to manipulate at once, the sooner he tires out. Moving a few litres is no big deal, but if he tried to lift the volume of water in an olympic pool he might manage it... but he'd be unconscious for like a week.
He can also summon water in small amounts (probably not in excess of like, a couple litres over a 24 hr period) within a close radius around him. Yes, he can summon water into your lungs, but only if you're close enough.
He can use water to accelerate healing. This isn't instantaneous, it's more of a 'this injury that would have taken six weeks to heal will now take three' sort of deal. He can also use water to stop people from bleeding out!
