Setting and Background
Description of World: Hard_Wired Fantasy
In a world controlled by Stride and Gait, there is often much conflict between humans and the many races that live alongside them. As beings who live in a dimension apart from this, they often only observe the goings on in the world but rarely interfere unless it would interest them. They do however denote many smaller beings to help them run things, namely the three elementals, beings which embody the six 'physical' elements. They are Fiegunsius (Water/Ice), Bieombe (Fire/Earth), Volphgaard (Air/Thunder). There are actually nine elements; Air, Dark, Earth, Fire, Ice, Light, Non-Elemental, Thunder, Water, with Non-Elemental being the central balance to the other eight. Elemental alignment affects to everything in the world, even humans and especially nonhumans.
Nonhuman is a generic term for a being of at least human-level intelligence and.is often able to exist in human and animal form. So if a person didn’t know what to look for, they’d never know that the person next to them on the bus isn’t human…which is the case in many parts of the world.
Like our own world, cultures and beliefs vary with the region. Some areas are similar to our modern day world in technology and society, while others seem almost medieval. Much of the world is still recovering after another long-running feud between the humans and nonhumans which ended over a thousand years ago. As a result, some cities, like Wyatt, either have forgotten the existence of nonhumans, or have a low tolerance for them living in the area, like its neighbor Ashford.
Toban, the third largest town on the continent Tentressa, has the largest concentration of nonhumans in one city of the whole planet. This is likely because there is the biggest variation of terrain surrounding the town. A vast beach borders the southern and southwestern edges of the city, and forests border the east and western edges. The eastern forest is broken by the start of a mountain range, and an expanse of plains separates the two forests. At the edge of the far western edge of the coast and bordering the forest is a huge expanse of frozen wasteland, odd because it remains even during the hot summer.
In the middle of this harsh, icy deathtrap is a large abandoned laboratory. This building was once home to a scientist who has developed many artificial nonhumans, called hybrids. His goal had been to end the feuding between humans and nonhumans by making them all the same, but he’s dead and gone now. The only sentient lifeform residing there now is an eccentric and knowledge-driven demon.
However, there are rumors of unusual nonhumans causing trouble and then disappearing mysteriously to parts unknown. And there is a town consisting entirely of hybrids being built in one of the less traveled sections of the continent. These hybrids seem rather uniform and peaceful, but one can’t help feeling that something is amiss.
Background:
Touya was born in a small, uncharted village in the far northeastern forest of the continent. Oddly he had no spirit and therefore wouldn’t have lived more than a few days. A magic crystal, an artifact that did have a life of its own, was given to him to give him a chance at life. Most of his childhood was uneventful until one day at age five when he was playing by the river and fell in. He was swept downstream by the current and hit his head on a rock in the process. When he woke up, he was in the bed of a strange house with no real recollection of anything from before the river.
Unfortunately the little catboy understood next to no Common(the frequently used language in most well-travelled areas). This lead him to leave the house he’d found himself in within the week, because he couldn’t communicate with the owner and therefore wasn’t sure of his intentions and whether he could trust him or not. This in turn led to a little over two years of wandering alone and slim pickings, as well as picking up bits at pieces of the language where he could.
Eventually, he ended up in Toban, where a carnival was being held. There he met Catherine, a mother of thirteen fully grown children. Despite them not understanding each other and his reluctance to trust her, she refused to leave him on his own and he was brought into the large family. During his first month there, he picked up enough Common to hold simple conversations, but often lapsed into a completely different language from what anyone knew. He had an almost perpetual attraction to picture books and music though.
Since Catherine and several of the kids didn’t work, they began teaching him basic Common and some beginner reading. The first two years were spent almost solely on this, and coaxing him out of the emotional blockade he was in.
When he was almost nine, the Knights found themselves with a problem. Not equipped to fully educate him themselves Dawson and Catherine turned to a couple of friends who could help: Amon Morrison Diederich who had the ability to understand any language and speak it fluently, and Felix Lucius Abel(cousin to Arro Caine) who was such an avid reader that his home was little more than a storehouse for his endless quantity of reading material. Morrison was quickly able to determine that whatever Touya’s natural language was, it wasn’t any of the more commonly spoken ones…which meant he came from one of the older, more reclusive cultures.
Between the two of them, Morrison and Lucius were able to start Touya’s home-schooling, and the boy consumed everything they could teach him and then some over the next few years. Impressed by his progress, Morrison decided to test his aptitude for magic, mainly because he was curious if Touya could grasp it. He showed a basic understanding and light potential, so the next several weeks were spent learning about magic and its laws in between his normal lessons. During this time, Morrison taught him several practical low-level spells, such as lighting candles.
Touya didn’t go far from the house very often, because he was often set upon with unwanted affection by people who saw him. Adults thought he was adorable and children wanted to know if his ears and tail were real, and once they knew, liked touching them. Not at all pleased with this, he went through a three-year period where he would not leave the property. Having quickly become fond of watching his sister, Bryanne, with her bow during this time, one day he borrowed it without asking. This caused a bit of a stir as it was her prized possession and thought it stolen, but rather than punish him for taking it, it was decided he should have one of his own and also learn a discipline. This would have the added benefit of helping him get back into the world outside the yard.
Of the available teachers in the small town he chose Sai, a former slave who was proficient with the staff(both in the areas of combat and creation of). Studying for two years under her gentle guidance, he proved himself a competent fighter with a calm mind and she gifted him with a hand-crafted rod to call his own at the end of his training. He also took up the flute, from Guil, a mute dragon who also lived in the area.
As his academic tutoring continued through and beyond that, he began to notice that Morrison had less and less time to work with him, over the next two years until finally he stopped coming. Lucius explained that there was a war going on far from town, and that many people were leaving to help…including himself.
Less than a year later, Touya decided to go learn what he could about this war and the rest of the world, and left home at age fifteen. Several months of traveling and asking around fruitlessly eventually led him to a base in the wastelands.. Here, Morrison, along with his brothers, Enno and Vin, had set up a resistance to the hybrids who, while normally only a suspicious bunch, had become aggressive and begun attacking influential towns and cities, seizing control of them. There was information leading to the conclusion that someone else was pulling the strings, but no one knew who.
Worried for his family’s safety since Wyatt is a very important town and Dawson a highly influential man, Touya enlisted himself in their base, opting to help gather intelligence and confront the enemy when necessary. His first assignment was to travel to the hybrid city and try to determine if they had any hand in the current chaos. He met with Jasmine, a hummingbird hybrid dubbed Twitter, shortly after arrival and was able to learn that someone was abusing the money problems that the city was having by making them aid his bid to take over the continent. This wasn’t common knowledge apparently as most of the city went on with there daily lives…but Twitter disappeared the next day, and Touya noticed a white-haired boy watching him intently as he left town to report back to base.
In a world controlled by Stride and Gait, there is often much conflict between humans and the many races that live alongside them. As beings who live in a dimension apart from this, they often only observe the goings on in the world but rarely interfere unless it would interest them. They do however denote many smaller beings to help them run things, namely the three elementals, beings which embody the six 'physical' elements. They are Fiegunsius (Water/Ice), Bieombe (Fire/Earth), Volphgaard (Air/Thunder). There are actually nine elements; Air, Dark, Earth, Fire, Ice, Light, Non-Elemental, Thunder, Water, with Non-Elemental being the central balance to the other eight. Elemental alignment affects to everything in the world, even humans and especially nonhumans.
Nonhuman is a generic term for a being of at least human-level intelligence and.is often able to exist in human and animal form. So if a person didn’t know what to look for, they’d never know that the person next to them on the bus isn’t human…which is the case in many parts of the world.
Like our own world, cultures and beliefs vary with the region. Some areas are similar to our modern day world in technology and society, while others seem almost medieval. Much of the world is still recovering after another long-running feud between the humans and nonhumans which ended over a thousand years ago. As a result, some cities, like Wyatt, either have forgotten the existence of nonhumans, or have a low tolerance for them living in the area, like its neighbor Ashford.
Toban, the third largest town on the continent Tentressa, has the largest concentration of nonhumans in one city of the whole planet. This is likely because there is the biggest variation of terrain surrounding the town. A vast beach borders the southern and southwestern edges of the city, and forests border the east and western edges. The eastern forest is broken by the start of a mountain range, and an expanse of plains separates the two forests. At the edge of the far western edge of the coast and bordering the forest is a huge expanse of frozen wasteland, odd because it remains even during the hot summer.
In the middle of this harsh, icy deathtrap is a large abandoned laboratory. This building was once home to a scientist who has developed many artificial nonhumans, called hybrids. His goal had been to end the feuding between humans and nonhumans by making them all the same, but he’s dead and gone now. The only sentient lifeform residing there now is an eccentric and knowledge-driven demon.
However, there are rumors of unusual nonhumans causing trouble and then disappearing mysteriously to parts unknown. And there is a town consisting entirely of hybrids being built in one of the less traveled sections of the continent. These hybrids seem rather uniform and peaceful, but one can’t help feeling that something is amiss.
Background:
Touya was born in a small, uncharted village in the far northeastern forest of the continent. Oddly he had no spirit and therefore wouldn’t have lived more than a few days. A magic crystal, an artifact that did have a life of its own, was given to him to give him a chance at life. Most of his childhood was uneventful until one day at age five when he was playing by the river and fell in. He was swept downstream by the current and hit his head on a rock in the process. When he woke up, he was in the bed of a strange house with no real recollection of anything from before the river.
Unfortunately the little catboy understood next to no Common(the frequently used language in most well-travelled areas). This lead him to leave the house he’d found himself in within the week, because he couldn’t communicate with the owner and therefore wasn’t sure of his intentions and whether he could trust him or not. This in turn led to a little over two years of wandering alone and slim pickings, as well as picking up bits at pieces of the language where he could.
Eventually, he ended up in Toban, where a carnival was being held. There he met Catherine, a mother of thirteen fully grown children. Despite them not understanding each other and his reluctance to trust her, she refused to leave him on his own and he was brought into the large family. During his first month there, he picked up enough Common to hold simple conversations, but often lapsed into a completely different language from what anyone knew. He had an almost perpetual attraction to picture books and music though.
Since Catherine and several of the kids didn’t work, they began teaching him basic Common and some beginner reading. The first two years were spent almost solely on this, and coaxing him out of the emotional blockade he was in.
When he was almost nine, the Knights found themselves with a problem. Not equipped to fully educate him themselves Dawson and Catherine turned to a couple of friends who could help: Amon Morrison Diederich who had the ability to understand any language and speak it fluently, and Felix Lucius Abel(cousin to Arro Caine) who was such an avid reader that his home was little more than a storehouse for his endless quantity of reading material. Morrison was quickly able to determine that whatever Touya’s natural language was, it wasn’t any of the more commonly spoken ones…which meant he came from one of the older, more reclusive cultures.
Between the two of them, Morrison and Lucius were able to start Touya’s home-schooling, and the boy consumed everything they could teach him and then some over the next few years. Impressed by his progress, Morrison decided to test his aptitude for magic, mainly because he was curious if Touya could grasp it. He showed a basic understanding and light potential, so the next several weeks were spent learning about magic and its laws in between his normal lessons. During this time, Morrison taught him several practical low-level spells, such as lighting candles.
Touya didn’t go far from the house very often, because he was often set upon with unwanted affection by people who saw him. Adults thought he was adorable and children wanted to know if his ears and tail were real, and once they knew, liked touching them. Not at all pleased with this, he went through a three-year period where he would not leave the property. Having quickly become fond of watching his sister, Bryanne, with her bow during this time, one day he borrowed it without asking. This caused a bit of a stir as it was her prized possession and thought it stolen, but rather than punish him for taking it, it was decided he should have one of his own and also learn a discipline. This would have the added benefit of helping him get back into the world outside the yard.
Of the available teachers in the small town he chose Sai, a former slave who was proficient with the staff(both in the areas of combat and creation of). Studying for two years under her gentle guidance, he proved himself a competent fighter with a calm mind and she gifted him with a hand-crafted rod to call his own at the end of his training. He also took up the flute, from Guil, a mute dragon who also lived in the area.
As his academic tutoring continued through and beyond that, he began to notice that Morrison had less and less time to work with him, over the next two years until finally he stopped coming. Lucius explained that there was a war going on far from town, and that many people were leaving to help…including himself.
Less than a year later, Touya decided to go learn what he could about this war and the rest of the world, and left home at age fifteen. Several months of traveling and asking around fruitlessly eventually led him to a base in the wastelands.. Here, Morrison, along with his brothers, Enno and Vin, had set up a resistance to the hybrids who, while normally only a suspicious bunch, had become aggressive and begun attacking influential towns and cities, seizing control of them. There was information leading to the conclusion that someone else was pulling the strings, but no one knew who.
Worried for his family’s safety since Wyatt is a very important town and Dawson a highly influential man, Touya enlisted himself in their base, opting to help gather intelligence and confront the enemy when necessary. His first assignment was to travel to the hybrid city and try to determine if they had any hand in the current chaos. He met with Jasmine, a hummingbird hybrid dubbed Twitter, shortly after arrival and was able to learn that someone was abusing the money problems that the city was having by making them aid his bid to take over the continent. This wasn’t common knowledge apparently as most of the city went on with there daily lives…but Twitter disappeared the next day, and Touya noticed a white-haired boy watching him intently as he left town to report back to base.