Diodia

Watchers

A select group of chimeras who adopted their present form and mission following a supposedly awe-inspiring encounter with The Dragon Sungazer

The now five Watchers founded the city-state Suniherve around an artificial sun of their own, and are its acting rulers, though they rarely leave their perch, preferring instead to interact with both their subordinates and the general population through their faeries

Though each is composed of dozens, enough to grant them significant power over the plane, the Watchers are in the process of reducing their numbers even further, regularly exchanging mass (in the form of their faeries) until all differences between them have been eradicated and they can become a single being

Ssutilei

The firstborn of Suniherve, a remarkable scientific achievement of the Watchers in defiance of the purported impossibility of reproduction in the plane of Yolsthro, created by permanently severing and pooling together some of their mass

Though not too dissimilar to the Watchers' faeries at a glance, unlike them Ssutilei possesses a will of their own, which they use to... mess with the denizens of Suniherve, primarily. The Watchers, alas, were most interested in whether they could, and paid Ssutilei little heed following their creation, leading them to grow cynical and spiteful

Cue Ilistirgue ending up in Suniherve and Ssutilei doing some self-reflection because of their interactions, similar in that they were both "born" in the plane, but polar opposite in their experiences afterwards as they are. Where Ilistirgue, created as a means to an end, came to be loved by her creators, Ssutilei, ostensibly created out of love, is viewed as just a successful experiment by theirs

For all intents and purposes it's a modern-ish city but with a fantasy/art nouveau coat of paint, i imagine it'd actually be quite nice! i guess since it was built around the artificial sun it... would have to be ring-shaped, huh not beating the "person who's only ever experienced Dark Souls" allegations

The Dragon Sungazer

Among the oldest and most formidable chimeras in the plane of Yolsthro, the ark of a people who refused to be subsumed. It soars aimlessly, interested only in its diminutive conjured sun

Lemures

What passes for fauna in the plane of Yolsthro, and its most ancient denizens. In the absence of physiological needs, these (assumed to be) instinctual beings devote themselves to various forms of 'play', often to the chagrin of the more rational newcomers

Something that's basically impossible to prove in-universe (but that i'm confirming for the sake of conversation) is the fact the lemures are, subconsciously, actually the ones dictating the current state of the plane! While it is possible to affect localized change with enough pushback, they have a definite advantage in raw numbers, and their (comparative) thoughtlessness also helps (As the embodiment of the plane, Ilistirgue could, in theory, override their influence all by herself, though!)

The plane of Yolsthro functions much like SR' artificial afterlife, in that people arrive there from elsewhere as disembodied souls, immortal and freed from physiological needs but now malleable through thought alone. In theory it should be more open, by virtue of me not tying its origins and/or development to a 'real world'

Most of the plane of Yolsthro is empty space broken up by impossibly vast derelict structures that simultaneously look natural and man-made, and seemingly unconcerned with the laws of physics. i imagine it to be quite bizarre. Surreal, if you will...

Without further ado,

Taking place within an artificial afterlife of (indirect) alien make, "Soul Remains" was probably my most valiant attempt at a setting to date, repurposing a lot of older ideas and/or designs i liked and just generally delving into many of my favourite concepts. Alas…

The aliens in question, the "Inheritors" for short, who achieved (something close to) omnipotence by joining their minds together into a telepathic network, essentially, and began probing the universe for other forms of life, heedless of the fact that contact alone resulted in assimilation

On Earth-in-all-but-name, it lead to the creation of the so-called Archons, children of those who had come into contact with the Inheritors capable (unlike their parents) of partaking in the aliens' network. Ancient history, though

Realm of Day

The Sun

Artificial celestial body created by and maintained by the angels

The Ruins

Once a bustling dominion now fallen into apathy and beset by undead beasts from underfoot

Realm of Night

The Moon

Sterile home of the Watchers and their Faerie underlings

The Desert

Dominion embroiled in perpetual conflict for the chance to ascend to the Moon

Abyss

Story/setting i deliberately tried to keep smaller in scope, about an angel's headless body going in search of it inside a subterranean labyrinth inhabited by devils

Not a whole lot else to this one. The angel did have a slightly different older design i got as far as making a (probably terrible) 3D model of, though

Old art. A Sci-Fi setting in name only, the gist of which was various alien species vying (or not) for the attention of so-called higher beings who aspired to become (like) planets, to mixed results

It was these four originally, then i… got bored, i suppose, and started adding more and more, on top of completely supplanting the original (skeleton of a) story i had in mind

Even older iterations below the cut. Though each lineup belonged to its own would-be setting, you can probably tell which of those designs i kept picking at

Watchers

A select group of chimeras who adopted their present form and mission following a supposedly awe-inspiring encounter with The Dragon Sungazer

The now five Watchers founded the city-state Suniherve around an artificial sun of their own, and are its acting rulers, though they rarely leave their perch, preferring instead to interact with both their subordinates and the general population through their faeries

Though each is composed of dozens, enough to grant them significant power over the plane, the Watchers are in the process of reducing their numbers even further, regularly exchanging mass (in the form of their faeries) until all differences between them have been eradicated and they can become a single being

Ssutilei

The firstborn of Suniherve, a remarkable scientific achievement of the Watchers in defiance of the purported impossibility of reproduction in the plane of Yolsthro, created by permanently severing and pooling together some of their mass

Though not too dissimilar to the Watchers' faeries at a glance, unlike them Ssutilei possesses a will of their own, which they use to... mess with the denizens of Suniherve, primarily. The Watchers, alas, were most interested in whether they could, and paid Ssutilei little heed following their creation, leading them to grow cynical and spiteful

Cue Ilistirgue ending up in Suniherve and Ssutilei doing some self-reflection because of their interactions, similar in that they were both "born" in the plane, but polar opposite in their experiences afterwards as they are. Where Ilistirgue, created as a means to an end, came to be loved by her creators, Ssutilei, ostensibly created out of love, is viewed as just a successful experiment by theirs

For all intents and purposes it's a modern-ish city but with a fantasy/art nouveau coat of paint, i imagine it'd actually be quite nice! i guess since it was built around the artificial sun it... would have to be ring-shaped, huh not beating the "person who's only ever experienced Dark Souls" allegations