#setting notes

The Cloudcrystal Skyfields. Literally the entire area. This is what I want out of vast science fantasy worldbuilding. It’s a sky full of huge crystals floating over a desert formed from the shattered shards of fallen ones. There’s a dune sea pierced by crystal shards. There’s a moving city in there called the Crowd City that’s built/formed of corpses, strange, preserved, possibly petrified corpses, and this whole city crawls around the place, and everyone (sensibly) avoids it. There’s a lake so transparent it’s invisible and the fish seem to be swimming through air. There’s a mountain in the middle which may or may not exist, because some people can find it and others can’t. Uxphon, the main living, inhabited city in the area, built up off the plain in the Black Riage mountains, is built into a twisting complex of massive ceramic prior-world piping that extrudes out into a canyon. I just. If you have a fantasy, high magic, high tech universe, feel free to go off a bit with the landscaping, you know? Have an invisible lake and a vast field of crystals floating in the sky and a corpse city crawling around the place, why not. Go off a bit. Have fun. Make it big and bonkers and just a little bit horrifying. The Cloudcrystal Skyfields are excellent and I adore them.

Mt. Zanlis, in the Black Riage Mountains. Worshipped as a living being, a god, and Aeon Priests say that the heart of the mountain is artificial and run by a reality-warping AI that makes weird weather, teleports people into and off itself randomly, and generally makes life weird in the vicinity. Because everybody loves a living machine-god mountain that makes weird weather, right?

Hidden Naresh, in the Black Riage Mountains. Basically a hidden fungal skid row, it’s a weird writhing creepy bioluminescent fungal city in the mountains whose primary export is psychedelic substances (‘mycos’) and despair. Humans and abhumans and all sorts of others find their home there. The city’s leader has a harem of Nibovian Wives, which appear to be basically genestealers, who take human, ahem, genetic material and transmit it to ultraterrestrial (possibly Lovecraftian) entities who use it to make distinctly nonhuman children. So. Weird creepy drug city full of alien genestealers? I mean, why not.

The Slant Milieu, again in the Black Riage Mountains, or rather just below them. It’s a wide strip of land that is blasted flat by a constant wind off the mountains called the welkerwind. As in, trees grow sideways along the ground instead of up, if they grow at all, sort of blasted flat. People live in burrow towns in a network of prior-age tunnels that honeycomb the area, and most of the wildlife in the area is ferociously wind-adapted. And valuable. There’s a (very dangerous) insect here called a caffa whose iridescent goldgleam wings and golden silk from their cocoons is really valuable, but also really hard to gather, so there’s a whole tense industry around collecting enough of it to trade out to big cities in the Steadfast. There’s also a whole community of once-criminals and their families who were sent here as forced labour to harvest them, and who realised that this was the perfect land to slaughter your guards and vanish into instead. And the only tall things in the area are two prior-age artefacts. The first is the windmoldens, which appear to be hundred-foot-tall ancient black wind turbines, which would probably power quite a lot, but nobody can figure out how to hook up to them. The second is the Susurrus, which looks like a massive junk sculpture, but is actually an environmental musical instrument, which is played by the welkerwind. I honestly love this entire area as well. It’s the concept of katabatic winds writ really large. I love it.

The Ausren Woods, in the Plains of Kataru. I’ll be honest, I just love the shape of this entry. It takes the form of several excerpts of a diary found in the woods, a ten day arc of a visitor admiring these lovely purple trees and their absolutely delicious fruit, and then getting sick, and then getting too sick to move, and then growths coming out of their stomach, and then the growths burrowing into the soil, and crippling them with agony when they try to cut them, and then the diary ends. And then, after all that, there’s this lovely dry note by the Corebook itself at the end: “The Ausren Woods are a large forest of purple trees that grow nowhere else. Do not eat the fruit of these trees.” That’s it. That’s the entry. A quick horror short story, and a dry ‘don’t eat the fruit’ at the end. Excellent.

The Beanstalk, in the Plains of Kataru. Because they wanted to play on one of the class names being ‘Jack’. But. This is why I love Numenera’s playing with POV. To the medieval-era people of the Ninth World, it’s a metallic beanstalk up to a giant’s castle in the sky. To a modern reader of sci-fi, I’m here wondering is that an orbital elevator? It’s a tower of metal and glass that leads up to the ‘stalk’ a strip of a strange material about 10ft wide and a few inches thick, that just extends beyond view into the sky. The whole edifice causes a local gravitational distortion that has five huge boulders hanging in the sky around it. Not for any apparent reason, so it’s possible they’re just a side effect. And, like. That sounds like a gravity-isolated orbital elevator to me? If I was a Nano in its vicinity, my fingers would be itching. There is a thousand-strong town under the rocks outside, pushing any buttons you might happen to find is likely a bad idea, but gosh I wanna push some buttons. The top end of the elevator, if it is an elevator, could be broken and I’ve just zoomed myself up into orbit to die, which would likely be karma given that I might have just killed 1000 people, but … I wanna push the button, Max?

Dessanedi, the Jagged Wastes. Again, as a region, and for the same reason as the Crystal Skyfields. It’s a sheet of splintered glass. The whole area. It’s a desert that got literally glassed, and then carved up by wind or other forces in the aftermath. I just love when fantasy lets its hair out and gives me some alternate landscapes. There’s little beetles in there called Warrow Beetles that eat glass and it’s gently noted that most things therefore can’t eat them. I love it.

The Great Slab, in the Jagged Wastes. Because it’s a jazzed up sci-fi version of the Lost World. The Slab is a vast artificial plateau, whose strange organic synth-metal sides ooze a red-black oil that makes them impossible to climb, and which contains a giant gash on top called the Driftless Valley that’s its own whole little isolated ecosystem that has nearly no contact with the outside world. Nobody’s been up there, because the slab is featureless otherwise, and the sides are impassible. So unless you find a flying machine or ability, you ain’t getting up there. So … anyone want to play Lost World/Dinotopia up there?

Druissi, a town in the Ba-Adenu Forest. It’s ‘built on the visible part of ancient, unknown wreckage that generates a stable, low-level heat year-round’. Which. Concerns me? I know it’s been there for hundreds or thousands of years and it’s been fine, but the combination of ‘wreckage’ and ‘heat’ just has me concerned. Like. I would want measurements over time scales. How stable is stable? Is it stable but increasing? Because, yes, making clever use of ancient machinery to live your life, very cool, but also … wreckage. That’s generating heat. I have concerns.

The Untethered Legion, also in the Ba-Adenu Forest, but towards the swampy, bayou-esque southeastern extremes, where the forest is a morass of red oily mud that dries itself grey and hardens and then liquifies itself in cycles, and births black mutant hounds as it liquifies again. And an army of biomechanical humanoid riders waits to ride them every time, just gathering in the forest, waiting for gods know what. This is one of those ones where I feel like the science fiction perspective makes it worse than the fantasy one. Because the fantasy perspective is just a cursed land birthing demons. The SF one is a vast biofactory manufacturing supersoldiers/supersoldier mounts. I don’t know if it’s just me, but somehow that makes it worse.

I really am vibing with the Beyond, over here. The Steadfast, for all its obelisks and inverted cities and telepathic cliff faces, did feel much more ‘ease the audience used to medieval fantasy into this’ a bit, while the Beyond is taking the gloves off and shaking your sleeves out and going, ‘right, that’s done, now let’s get down to business’. Let’s throw some landscapes in here. Some orbital elevators. Some AI mountains. Am I being unfair? It’s possible I’m being unfair. But I just want to get a bit wild and woolly with my hyperworld-SF-viewed-through-a-fantasy-lens over here, and the Beyond feels like it brings that a lot more than the Steadfast does.

Outsiders tend to come in a few groups in terms of how they feel about the trankil: Scholarly curiosity, fans of creepy cute, and anxious about anything out of the ordinary.

Academics from in and out of Vinyl City are, naturally, very curious about the trankil. Where did they come from? How do their powers work? How different is their physiology from a human’s? Stuff like that. Of course, actually studying them is kind of a pain, because NSR is very particular about protecting the trankil (because, y’know, they’re children), so anyone who wants to experiment with them has to go through the proper ethical and paperwork channels, same as they would trying to study human children. They don’t want to get super-mega-sued by a huge company like NSR. There are some that try to obtain trankil as test subjects through less than legal means(kidnapping, adoption with the intention of exploitation, etc), but as I’ve said in the second link, trying to do things that would bring harm unto trankil tends to come with the consequence of dealing with their extremely powerful and extremely protective elder siblings, and sometimes their age peers if there’s enough of them in one place. Those little fuckers bite and scratch like crazy when they sense danger.

Fans of creepy cute tend to utterly adore the trankil for their strange but cute looks and behavior, not unlike you guys. The strongest group of this are those that haven’t really met trankil in person before, but rather just seen them through videos and photos, as the aura of the void doesn’t really seep through cameras. The intensity of this fandom, of course, varies like any other; most are pretty normal about it, fawning over the little ones like normal people, but some are kind of weird about it. Excessive infantilizing and going “I want one” aren’t unheard of within that community, though it’s been drilled into the public’s heads that 1) trankil aren’t pets and 2) you can’t adopt one outside the juristiction of the adoption agency (i.e. Vinyl City). Some of the crazier ones have tried to get trankil smuggled out of the city to keep, like how some people pay poachers to kidnap wild baby animals, but again, crazy dangerous venture for a payoff that probably won’t work anyway.

Aerathis, the Capital City. For if you want some solarpunk vibes. Aerathis is built around the Gaians’ animist beliefs, so it incorporates large elements of the environment around it, inviting trees into the buildings and building around rather than through things like natural crevasses. It’s a city of metal and glass, and you’d think that makes it a prior-world city, because those techniques are mostly lost, but it’s less than a century old, built by a secretive guild within the city called the Builders. Who may or may not have the guidance of a prior-world AI to explain things. Heh.

Iripendra, in the Indigo Forest. Because it’s a clearing where, for some hyper-specific prior-world reason, food doesn’t spoil and sex can’t get you pregnant. Because building a contraceptive clearing in the woods was a thing some past civilisation felt a need for? I have some questions.

The Kileti-fior, or Temple of the Wellspring, in the holy city of Cheloh. It’s a massive ‘vaguely egglike’ tower with a great pit in the middle where priests pull up ‘energies’, which can actually power things. Anyone can join the priesthood in here, even if passing through, and help perform some of the rituals, and you get a little glass badge to say you joined the lowest order of the priesthood in this fashion. I think I just like the little glass badges? This could be the Catholic and/or enjoyer of history via objects in me, I like the echo of medieval pilgrim badges.

Chayn, in Southern Lostrei. Because it’s a town built around a giant hovering prior-world building that ‘stands’ atop a pillar of light. It’s called the Glittering Castle, because naturally, and the mayor lives up there. But it’s not standing on a beam of light, the beam of light is just emanating from the generator keeping it afloat. The beam lands on a giant yellow crystal in the centre of town on the ground, and you can hook up to the crystal for power, so the whole town essentially has electricity and all the conveniences. So far, so good. But, um. Chayn has, for probably completely unrelated reasons, ‘a far greater incidence of mutation than anywhere else in Lostrei’. So yeah. This is not a place of honour?

Kasistromis, in Southern Lostrei. It’s a giant tower of metal and synth that’s fully organic and alive inside. Anyone going in gets basically eaten. Not hurt, just swallowed, and then unwillingly transported along the organic passages and chambers of the interior. You can’t control your movement or get out until Kasistromis basically poops you back out. Nobody’s ever been able to talk or communicate with the tower, it’s just there. Vibing. Presumably hoping for something actually digestible to wander in.

The Shifting Lands, in Southern Lostrei. It’s a savannah. That, about 50ft down, sits atop giant square metal plates that move parts of it over each other. It’s all one giant puzzle floor, moved by a single giant mechanism, for no known purpose. That’s roughly 40,000 square miles (200 miles across) of giant earthen puzzle that’s just there. For reasons.

Ashuri Isle, off the coast of Lostrei. The name means ‘Exile’, and in theory it’s an island of criminals and exiles and self-exiles who wanted no part of Lostrei society. Owing to the lethal shoals around it, though, and the lack of charts outside of certain particular captains in the area, it’s as much an island of castaways and shipwreck survivors. It’s not overly violent, though, just full of people who wanted to do their own thing. I’m vibing with it.

Arsorra, on the northern coast of Lostrei. It’s a beach town backing onto a jungle, and a little way inland is something called the Stone Hatchery. Which is a piece of land that is, slowly, and for whatever its own strange reasons, tearing off piece by piece and floating upwards in little floating ‘islands’. They ascend at a fixed rate, about 40/50ft the first year, then 400/500ft or so a year for the next few. When they hit 1500ft, they, along with anything unfortunate enough to still be on them, vanish into thin air. The town occasionally uses this to get rid of criminals, stranding them on bits of land that are clearly about to be airborne. Which is … an interesting choice? Do you jump to your death from a great height, or see what happens after a few years of exile when you hit the edge of the sky? (Or get a friend with a flying creature or numenera to get you off, obviously. But. There’s an interesting little background).

The Fluid Tower, in the Glass Sea. The Glass Sea is an inland sea that during spring and summer goes so dead calm it becomes like, well, glass. The Fluid Tower is a 400ft extrusion from the sea that is hardened water. Not ice. Just water, that is currently harder than steel. Some people have scraped some material from the tower, and it immediately turns into liquid again, but can clean anything. The ‘walls’ are translucent, and there seems to be liquid water inside, full of fish that can suddenly enjoy a lot more of a view than usual. It looks like there’s a way for those fish (or people) to swim up into the tower from the sea itself, but that might be an illusion. I just love this thing. What a fantastic inexplicable thing to just plop in your world. The tower also has three hovering androgynous faces that float in its vicinity that sometimes ward people away, sometimes not, and even occasionally speak various opaque bits and bobs to people. This area is just weird and I love it. It might be my favourite thing in Lostrei, as random as that might be.

Orcourt, where the Glass Sea meets the Tiomon River. It’s an ancient prior-world city that’s half inhabited, but in a much more fun way that usual. From the modern wooden docks attached to the lower edges of the ancient towers, you take ‘float shafts’ up to habitation level: the upper stories 300ft up that are connected by ‘an invisible field of force’ that acts sort of like water. Stuff weighing less than a ton floats on it, and you can swim through or sail along it, like invisible canals between the buildings 300ft in the air. You can also ‘wade’ through it, but balance is tricky, and if you successfully reach the ‘bottom’ of the 12ft deep canal, you will fall through it. There’s a school for nanos in this city, and it’s just … it’s really quite fantastic.

The Glass Sea as a whole area is just … probably one of my favourite parts of this world so far? I would live there. I’m gonna go to Nano school in Orcourt. Can you imagine growing up in a city like that? Playing in the ‘canals’? Everyone having that story of the one kid they knew who swam too deep and fell out the bottom to their death 300ft below? Teenagers whose whole point of pride is that they’ve successfully figured out how to ‘wade’? Sailing into the city on a fishing boat from below, looking up to see a whole city’s worth of people just swimming around in the air 300ft up? Vendor boats sailing around an invisible canal 300ft up selling tea? Out into the sea a bit, there’s a great tower of glass-like solid water where fish can take in much the same views you can. Fisherfolk here regularly fish up glass fish, live ones, that they then throw back, because if you keep them until they die you start to know stuff you shouldn’t know and don’t want to. It’s just … I love it. I love this area. What a fantastic part of the world. Genuinely, I love it so much.