#pentagonal dominion

Rainbow Fantasy, the subgenre I invented to describe my own books, could be described as a mix of High, Epic, Dark, and Queer fantasy. Yet it also fails to incorporate certain expectations of those subgenres, hence my hesitation using those labels. Let me explain, using examples from my world:

What is High Fantasy? It takes place in a different world than ours, usually with magic, unique creatures/monsters, spirits/gods/demons, and usually pre-Modern tech. My world features a lot of that, but I hesitate to call it high fantasy because there’s a lot of science going on as well. The mortal world may not have advanced technology due to being unable to harness electricity, but they have the knowledge of how it *should* work. The Ophidians have guns, Ulinor has nuclear energy, the Takyufon and Carinians have mechanical parts, the afterlife *does* have advanced tech… and the future of the mortal world is steampunk. If I advertised my books as High Fantasy and then delivered a book that takes place primarily in Ulinor or Takyu City, with a non-magical, mortal Takyufon MC, readers would feel they didn’t get anything they expected.

What is Epic Fantasy? I feel Epic Fantasy is similar to High Fantasy, but with more allowances for tech/sci fi elements. On the other hand, it implies something, well, epic is happening. The world is ending. A war is occurring. Magic is running rampant. Many of my books are simply *not* epic in scale. They follow a single MC—who may be a normal person in their world—and the only things at stake are things relevant to the MC. If Calinthe fails her quest, the only one who suffers is Calinthe (and Zakuro). If Amiere fails, the only one who suffers is Amiere. Tynan… okay, Tynan’s book is probably a bit more epic than most lol. But that’s another thing: the label “Rainbow Fantasy” is meant to embody *all* my books. I don’t want to have to say “Well MoKaM is High Fantasy, but MoDaH is Epic Fantasy and MoLaB is… Slice of Life Fantasy?” Nah, bro, I’m just gonna say they’re ALL Rainbow Fantasy.

What is Dark Fantasy? It means there’s gonna be some pretty gritty stuff in here. Death, dismemberment, war, torture, rape, cannibalism, horror. Plus sexual elements, maybe even some kinks. To be clear, not ALL Dark Fantasy books need every one of those (I saw a topic the other day where someone had a friend who thought all Dark Fantasy needed rape. I am not implying that!) My books feature quite a bit of adult material, but I wouldn’t call them Dark Fantasy because… there are a lot of really tender, sweet moments. Maybe more so than the dark moments. Like, if I advertised MoLaB as Dark Fantasy, I’d feel like a fraud. It certainly *is* dark, especially in the later half, but that’s not exactly the part I can advertise spoiler-free lol. And if you just LOOK at it… I mean, my art for MoLaB usually depicts bright, sunny beaches, lovely merpeople, cute children. It doesn’t look ‘dark’ at all.

What is Queer Fantasy? Honestly not sure this is a subgenre at all, but it kinda feels like it? Books that take place in a fantasy setting and there’s emphasis on the characters being LGBTQ+? In any case, my world is queernormative and every book has queer people, but it’s just life as usual to them. The stories are never *about* their sexual or gender identity. It might play a powerful role, especially in stories where Ophidia is involved, but they probably won’t resonate with readers looking for stories about characters “coming out” or “going through a transition” because my characters aren’t going to experience the same kind of shame or oppression as real-world characters would.

So to sum up, Rainbow Fantasy is: a non-Earth setting, usually with magic/spirits/gods/non-human people/invented animals, but can include tech. The plots range from ‘the world is ending’ to ‘sculptor grives over his dead daughter.’ There’s some nasty shit, but also some super wholesome and loving shit. And queer is normal and accepted.

No, I’m not here to describe all eighty-eight lol. Actually, my plan is to write short bios about each of them and post maybe four or so at random intervals? Depends on how long it would take to write them up, it could be weekly or just whenever I finish. In the future, I’d love to have artwork of all 88, but of course that takes a lot of time and money lol.

Currently, I have art of specific characters of the following species. An asterisk means that species is represented in at least one character I have art of:

A note on my invented word ‘sapienti.’ Some might be asking “Erika, why don’t you just call them sapient?” I do, quite often in fact. However, when I was writing my books, I found that ‘sapient’ didn’t always do what I wanted it to do. ‘Sapienti’ is essentially my fantasy-world’s version of the word ‘human.’ If a characters stumbles across the bones of a person, they would refer to the bones as “sapienti bones” meaning “the bones of a sapienti person.” Imagine instead if they’d referred to them as “sapient bones.” That makes it sound like the bones themselves are alive and chatting with you!

So how did a world manage to get eighty-eight different species of people living in it? Time travel, son. The world is only 1450 years old anyway. Ain’t no evolving from a single-celled organism in that amount of time!

Many of the sapienti species evolved over billions of years in timelines that the Time Spirit left alone to just let nature take its course. These are usually the more “human-looking” species. Ones with opposable thumbs or which can otherwise use tools.

Some species were made sapient by the blessing of a Mind God. Wynnles came from lions. Yosoe came from goats. All the insect-based species came from, well, insects lol. In the Pentagonal Dominion timeline I write about, there were actually only 87 sapienti species to begin with. The Domovye (singular: Domovoi) were animals. They would be yoked together and trained to dig deep underground, uncovering metals for their sapienti masters. This was seen as no different than yoking oxen to plow a field, or dogs to a sleigh, or a horse to a carriage. The Domovye turned sapient overnight by the blessing of Lucognidus. His purpose in doing so was to punish Ulinor, whose dictator refused to accept the (at the time) new Spiritism religion. Ulinor was the primary civilization that used Domovye as working animals. The Ulese lived underground and needed the Domovye to keep their city functional. But the Ulese abhorred slavery, so when the Domovye became sapient, they could no longer be forced to work.

Many of the species are capable of interbreeding, largely thanks to Life elemental magic. Biologically, without magic, most of them would not work. Their chromosomes would be incompatible or the sperm wouldn’t be able to merge with the egg. Life element magic just “makes it work, damn it.” It will fuck around with genetics until it creates something that can exist. I made this chart a while ago when I was playing a game with some people to create demigods:

It shows how some interbreeding works, but it was within the context of a certain time and place. For instance, the Morenzi can interbreed with any of the others that aren’t in colored boxes, but they currently live in the Quarantined Plane, so none of their hybrids currently exist. It also says Odonata cannot interbreed, but the entire point of Calinthe is that she’s the first and only Odonata hybrid.

The Pentagonal Dominionists use specific language to describe sapienti based on the number of limbs they have. A human might be described as a biped-bibrach (two legged and two armed). A few sapienti look a lot like humans, including the Olivians, Ulese, Umi, Omi, Yetrians, and Myralese. In these cases, the things that make them non-human are deeper than their appearances. Olivians will bond strongly to whoever they first have sex with. Ulese have advanced intelligence. Umi and Omi can control certain internal functions which are automatic and uncontrollable in humans. Yetrians can eat things that a human’s stomach would reject. Myralese are Ice elementals and can survive in frozen environments.

Note that I use ‘nullped’ for species without legs (Domovye, second-stage Orochijin, Poltergeists, Mizura). There is a single monoped species: the Collembola. They have a leg and a tail. They mostly get around by hopping on their tail, but their single leg helps to balance them.

Yet some of these species are so weird and nonhuman that describing them is… difficult. I still don’t have art of Päivi, who is fairly prominent in MoKaM, because I tremble at the idea of trying to describe her to an artist. xD

Many of my species are aquatic, too! Or at least *can* live and breathe underwater if they choose. Aquatic/water-breaking species include: Anemone, Daga, Ephemeropteran, Flora, Foma, Hemipteran, Kraken, Mizura, Phasmida (they can transform into other species, so a Phasmida wouldn’t drown likely because they could transform into someone else), Piniko, Poltergeist, Rubaiyan, Selachi, Sin-Derion, Thysanura, Tsuru, Vodyanoi, Zullia.

Wings are another common feature. Everything that has ‘pteran’ at the end of its name has wings. Other winged species include the Winyans, Pellas, Tsuru, Noklopae, Subrikae, and Nilians.

A few species are extinct in the time period the Merchants novels take place in. The Tellia and Pokki were exterminated by demons when the demons were first created and wanted to take over their homeland. The Mujin went extinct when the Death God Sawyer lost control of his powers in a fit of despair.

A few of these species are also so few in number that a person could go their whole life without meeting one. These include: Odonata, Iur, Mabera, and Phasmida. Technically Phasmida change into other species, so their true numbers are unknown. A Phasmida might live a lifetime in the body of another species and never tell their neighbors that they’re actually a Phasmida. The only one who has made her identity known is Mira, the Chancellor of Aloutia. Because Phasmida only age in the bodies they are currently using, they are effectively immortal. Mira has been the Chancellor since the founding of the Aloutian Empire. She has existed in the Pentagonal Dominion since its beginning. She is actually over 50,000 years old because she’s the Time Spirit’s toy, and she keeps getting put in alternate timelines.

In-world, people might refer to the sapienti species by other numbers. Some will say 87 because they’re excluding the Morenzi, who are unknown to everyone on Aloutia, Cosmo, Ophidia, and the Makai. Some will say 84 because they’re also excluding the three extinct species.

Some species have body parts that naturally produce elementrons, but they can only be used for specific types of ‘magic’ e.g. the Sin-Derion have teeth enchanted to shoot Death elemental beams. Wynnles have electric tails. Yosoe have electric horns. Most winged species have Wind elementrons to allow them to fly because otherwise their bodies would be too heavy/awkward for flight. Daga shells are gold, but enchanted to float on water. Sounites have fire for hair. It’s a whole lotta fun to design all these people!

My Writing History, Part 1

I like to say I started creating the Pentagonal Dominion on August 20th, 1999. Yes, I know the exact day. Even at that age (without saying how old I was in 1999, let’s say I was fairly young), I knew this was going to be a big part of my life. At that moment, it wasn’t as big and spectacular as it is now. So how did it start? I watched a few episodes of the Pokemon and Digimon anime and decided it would be fun to design my own such monsters. I don’t remember many of those old designs, just the centaur with a Pikachu tail, crazy-sharp teeth, rockets attached to the side, and another person on its hand. It’s, uh, not quite as wacky anymore. Still has the extra entity attached to the hand.

The VERY earliest stories I remember writing were portal fantasy. They were about humans who wound up in Aloutia in a variety of ways, usually by literally walking through a portal. The idea of the water portals didn’t come until later. For that matter, the idea of the fantasy world being six planes didn’t come until later. In those earliest days, the monsters were called Aloutians and the only fantasy world in my head was Aloutia. For a loooong time, I thought my first book was going to be titled Aloutia and my series would be something like The World of Aloutia or The Aloutian Chronicles. Now Aloutia is just one of the six planes, and doesn’t even play a big role in my first published book!

I don’t remember where I came up with the name ‘Aloutia’ but that has been its name since I created it. My best guess relates to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. I was obsessed with geography as a kid, by which I mean I was obsessed with a globe I had. At some point, I’m sure I came across the Aleutian Islands and thought they were pronounced “A-low-shun.” The spelling of Aloutia changed a few times in the first year. I finally settled on ‘Aloutia’ when I began typing my stories into Word. Or maybe it was Notepad. I’m not sure. It would have been around 2001 and I don’t recall what writing software was on my computer. I wanted to distance the name Aloutia from the Aleutians.

I devised my own elemental system using the ‘types’ found in Pokemon and other video games I was into at the time. I didn’t entirely like Pokemon’s system, so I changed many things as I deemed necessary. The idea of a Normal type seemed lazy, and why wasn’t Flying just Wind? Why was there a Rock, Ground, and later a Steel type when that could all be encompassed by a single element incorporating all solids? Did Ghost and Psychic need to be separated? The TCG combined them, and that felt right to me. What may strike you as an unusual choice was that I kept the Bug types separate from the Grass types. Grass got changed to Plant in my world because I wanted a word that included flowers and trees. At the time, I thought it would also include mushrooms. It wasn’t until I got a bit older that I realized fungi were in a different kingdom, at which point I just changed my world’s definition of ‘Plant’ to also include fungi. But the Bug type? Oh, I had a hyperfixation on insects as a kid and I wanted them to be the *Life* element. I actually did call it the Insect element for about a year, and the Death element was “Needle,” though from their inception, they represented Life and Death.

The characters who are now the Gods of the Pentagonal Dominion were originally my equivalent of Legendary Pokemon or the higher-leveled Digivolved Digimon. I even called them “Megaloutians” which makes me cringe now, so please never remind me of THAT ever again.