Valaran
Valaran is a plane dominated by truly massive arcologies, completely self sufficient, self contained cityscapes dotted across the landscape. Some are massive spires reaching into the heavens, others are spheres residing beneath the oceans or buried pyramids beneath Valaran’s surface. While no two acrologies look alike they all share the same traits of self sufficiency, being built over confluxes of mana. Even the smallest acrology contains hundreds of thousands of souls, supported by mage engines that convert mana into matter, conjuring material from the aether.
While each arcology has their own governments all are in practise mageocracies, given that their vital systems are supported by the magical expertise of mages every arcology is dominated by mages. Whether it’s by political philosophy, economic power, or sheer intimidation mages comprise the majority on ever political body of note. To be born with magic is a golden ticket to a life of plenty, to be without is to be doomed to be looked over. Even democratic and progressive arcologies have mage lead councils and presidencies, the sheer power and importance of mages in Valaran society ensuring their supremacy.
The world outside the arcologies is a landscape dotted with ruins, once home to a truly massive plane spanning Empire, the rise of the arcology spelt it’s downfall. The old Empire relied on a monopolization of resources to maintain it’s hegemony, encouraging a massive trade network that linked continents across the globe to establish an economic dependence on it’s markets. When the arcologies were built, their self sufficient nature provided an alternative to the Empire’s tyrannical rule. Slowly tensions mounted as arcologies began to sprung up across the globe, decades of labour going into their construction, draining resources and entire cities of population into them. Eventually the arcologies declared independence from what they saw as a failing Empire that had been imposing it’s culture and beliefs on the world for too long.
Most of the arcologies declared a mutual defense pact, some stayed neutral or even declaring loyalty to the Empire. Each had developed distinct cultures of their own over the years but the majority all decided that the time had come to break away and become their own political entities in their own right. Each arcologies free to rule it’s people as they wished.
The war raged for nearly a hundred years, slowly swinging in the favour of the arcologies as more and more were completed, people flee behind their defenses for shelter from the war. Powerful magic was tossed around by both sides, the megaspells of the Divines devastating the very land for centuries. Desperate weapon projects were started and abandoned in equal measure by all factions, littering the plane with rouge war machines and horrific monsters that still roam Valaran today. This proliferation of weapons would finally break the back of the old Empire, by the end of the war the overwhelming majority of the plane now resided inside the safety of the arcologies, the once great cities of the Empire being reclaimed by nature and the land was seething with monsters lurking in the shadows.
In modern times most people are born and die in their acrologies, growing up on stories of how dangerous the outside world is. In theory each arcology is capable of support all it’s inhabitants equally, in practise every arcology experiences a massive inequality in the distribution of resources. While people with magical talent make up barely a quarter of the any arcology, they take up over 70% of most the resources in most arcologies. Massively opulent and hedonistic parties are thrown from golden towers while non magic’s busy themselves with making a living Most people live comfortable lives and public education is a mandatory policy in every arcology so that only the poorest reach adulthood illiterate.
Because each arcology is self sufficient traffic beyond the walls is an uncommon occurrence. But it’s not unheard off; for the fabulously rich, mostly mages, they travel across the land in massive ariships, cruising through the sky on personal party barges. Everyone else is force to travel by caravans, hiring a small army of mercenaries for protection, or if they can afford it hiring a Hunter. Aside from tourist Mages the people most likely to travel are Adventures looking to plunder ancient ruins of the Old Empire for valuable scraps, travelling merchants and performers, or people just desperate enough to risk life and limb for a taste of opportunity somewhere else.
And that opportunity is found in two places the Freeholds or the Frontiers. The Frontiers communities of people who for whatever reason leave the arcologies to eek out an existence in the world beyond the arcology walls. These townships usually spring up around major trade routes, if a community can survive the initial few years and establish themselves with the patronage of an Arcology they usually grow into small cities of a few tens of thousand souls. The Frontiers act as extensions of an Arcology, many Frontiers reliant on their parent arcology for advanced magic and resources. While more equal they still suffer from the class inequality of the arcologies. But most people who live in the Frontiers prefer their harder life of honest work makinging a life to toiling in a mage’s sweatshop.
The other option for people who want to leave their arcology but want to truly break free from the yoke of the mages is to venture out into the wild and join a Freehold. Freeholds are rough communities of people who wish to live apart from their Arcology. No two are the same, some are hardy pioneers taming the land free from the yoke of their mage overlords, others are hives of scum and villainy. Religious convents worshiping a Divine, secretive cults, Arcane research facilities that the mainstream discourse dream unethical, Freeholds are a broad classification that covers any settlement not subservient to an Arcology. While they rarely grow beyond a thousand souls, most dying out in a few decades, a rare few survive to truly establish themselves as real cities. The Free Cities are often less corrupt than the Arcologies but with the added drawback of resource scarcity. Most are forced to trade with Frontier townships for resources and the number of truly established Freehold cities is less than a hundred.
Monsters and the old warmachines are a constant threat for these communities, even the arcologies regularly maintain purges on their surrounding lands least anything infiltrate their walls. Which is where the Hunters step into play, mercenary professionals who travel between the Frontiers, Freeholds and Arcologies taking contracts on monsters or occasionally providing protection to travelers.
Hunters are an offshoot of an old super soldier program from the plane’s history, centuries ago in the twilight years of the old empire a cabal of mages banded together to create the perfect fighters. Children were taken and experimented on with alchemical and magical concoctions, out of a hundred only 10 would survive the procedures. But those that did developed superhuman reflexes, mental acuity, stamina and strength. They were made resistant to all manner of disease and toxins, taught a small amount of magic and purposely had their empathy dulled. Expensive, brutal and highly lethal these soldiers were also rendered infertile, least the mage’s weapons slip their leash and breed a new race of superhumans.
Effective as they were their numbers were simply too small to save the failing empire and as time went on they all died out. Or so the world thought, in reality a squad of these soldiers saw the writing on the wall in the empire’s final days and disappeared into the growing wilderness, emerging over a century later to offer their services. In their self imposed exile these soldiers had survived in the wilderness, learning how to fight the roaming monsters of the new world.
They formed the Hunter Guilds, becoming a group of mercenary organizations selling their services for gold and supplies. They still follow the Procedures that created them, taking in orphaned children or purchasing them from the desperate. Even centuries later the odds of survival are no better than when the Procedure was first invented. Often a parent who sells there child never learns of their fate, and in the vanishingly rare moments it is often bittersweet when they do cross paths. The Hunter often either carries a chip on their shoulder at being abandoned, or doesn’t even recognize their parents.
The origin of the Divine Exalted is a mystery as records indicate they predate the even the old Empire, but what isn’t is the forms they come in, seperated into Holy and Unholy shards of White and Black mana. On Valaran angels and demons don’t just emerge from the plane’s mana, instead a shard of energy is formed called an Exaltation. This Exaltation seeks out a soul that fits it’s profile and merges with the person’s soul, granting them fantastic power. A person is chosen for how they act in the moment of exaltation, regardless of the actual content of their character. Angelic shards pick people performing Heroic or monumental tasks, while Demonic shards pick for profoundly selfish or cruel acts. Because of this it is not unheard of for Angelic Divine to go drunk with power and Demonic Divine to be overcome with guilt, but the majority of Divine play to type.
The Divine barely number more than 600 in total, a combination of the rarity of their creation and the tendency for new exalted to take massive risks while still riding the initial wave of power. The Divine are to the best knowledge of the plane immortal, the Exaltations keeping the bodies of their hosts sturdy and strong. The Angels and Demons of Valaran share some traits with their counterparts across the multiverse, but the biggest divergence is that the powers of the exalted is determined by the abilities of the host as the Divine shards boost it’s host’s abilities beyond what is possible by mere mortals. A mortal swordsman can parry an axe, with training an Exalted can parry magic. A mortal mage can throw fire, an Exalted mage can incinerate cities. The Divine look mortal, capable to manifesting their otherworldly nature at will, the only signs that a person of more than mortal is the tell tale glow of their eyes. Angels possess glowing golden pupils while Demons possess similar violet pupils. Many an arrogant mage or conniving trickster has sought to mimic this through illusion magic, though many Divine loath impersonation and most use this strategy sparingly to avoid retribution.
For this reason the Divine are venerated far and wide, with many setting up massive cults of personality around themselves. On Valaran most Arcologies have at least one patron Divine, or multiple. For the most part though the Divine don’t factor into the daily lives of the people and are content to enjoy the mind boggling luxuries afforded to them.
