Fantasy Conatus - The Great War (Lore)

[Edric Yuma]

This is where all lore, NPCs, background information, and more goes.

 

[Edric Yuma]

Terranthea​

Unlike Earth, Terranthea is a planet made of mostly land with many freshwater streams throughout. Even though it is mostly land, it also boasts an impressive amount of fertile land, with dense forests and rolling plains dispersed throughout the planet. The abundance of fertile lands comes from the existence of thermal pores throughout the planet. These thermal pores are connected to deep within Terranthea, and they contain enormous amounts of energy that nourish the land. By utilizing the liquid energy within these thermal pores, humans on Terranthea were able to create towering structures, power vehicles, and mass produce products within factories. This led to the existence of steampunk cities dotting the planet and the formation of the Planetary Government, a government that oversees all the cities of the world in the name of peace. The land of Terranthea does have political borders, however; large sections of land are broken up into states, and within the states are regions. Regions are comprised of one city and its surrounding nature. Dirt roads connect all of the steampunk cities, but for most part the nature remains as it was before the emergence of steampunk cities - small towns of people live throughout the land. Until recently, these towns never really communicated amongst each other, but with the emergence of dirt roads communication and visiting became much easier.

The level of technology here is steampunk. It's like if our current society moved away from developing electronic technology and just put all their energy into medicine and motorized devices. So no electronic screens, no smartphones, but there's flying airships, floating cars, and assistant robots that move around and help humans with menial labor. Medicine has progressed beyond Earth today, but the medicine is focused around prosthetics. Everything you need replaced, an extra heart, extra arm, or leg, can be done, it'll be completely functional but won't look the same as it is made of metal. Weaponry is advanced, but advanced with bullets and bombs, not missiles or lasers. You might see a machine gun that shoots tank bullets at an inhuman speed, but you won't find any laser guns lying around.

In terms of communication, radio communication is available, but there is nothing more advanced than that.

The creatures of Terranthea are diverse and plentiful, as there is so much fertile land for them to live on. Birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, and more populate every corner of the planet, and they tend to live in harmony with the humans. The only areas where wildlife begins clashing with humanity is around the steampunk cities - some larger beasts have not taken kindly to their territory being taken over.

Religion is integral to many rural towns of Terranthea, but less prominent within the steampunk cities. There are all sorts of gods that are worshiped, but there is a single prevailing belief in how Terranthea was created. The religious believe that gods used to roam the planet but later left, leaving behind their energy and giving birth to the power of Ern.

Currency in Terranthea is called "Medallions." For perspective, an average snack, like a sandwich or a beverage, would cost around 150 medallions, a fancy car around 40 million medallions, and a radio around 1500 medallions. and the average salary of an individual on Terranthea is 50 million medallions a year. The starting salary for a Titan in a D-rank cohort is 70 million medallions a year. Because all currency is in coins, banks are very important, and large transactions are often made by going to the bank directly transferring funds.

Everyone on Terranthea speaks the same language, but different areas have different accents. Some accents are very thick and hard to understand - these tend to be found in towns that are less connected to the big cities.

Time on Terranthea is the same as time on Earth - there are 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year.

In terms of climate, most of Terranthea is temperate due to the thermal pores across the planet. There are seasons, but wintertime is relatively short while summertime is long and warm.

Our story begins in the steampunk city of Onyxport, the second largest city in Terranthea. Its economy is powered by trading, as it is connected to the largest river on the planet, the Medusa. This city is where the Titan Academy is located.

 

[Edric Yuma]

Titan Academy​

Titan Academy, located in Onyxport, is the only university sponsored by the Planetary Government military. That is due to the necessity of study for an individual to use and manipulate any kind of Ern. Individuals who are accepted into this highly competitive academy are accepted based on their physique, combat instinct, and intellect. Upon graduating, they are guaranteed a job within the Planetary Armed Forces (PAF) as a Titan, the specially trained branch of Ern users within PAF. The class size of each grade level at the academy is around 400, and the academy attempts to put students in at least one class together so that professors can monitor the interactions and see if there are any groups of friends that are obviously meshing well and working well together to become cohorts. Unlike most schools, however, only 25% of the students (100) pass the final exam, as some may drop out, knowing that their Ern training basically guarantees them a safer job elsewhere, and others are unable to pass the rigorous eyes of the judges. The school keeps the pass rate at this level because the active Titan cohorts, which number around 250, exist for about 10 years before being disbanded due to aging and the health issues that may arise from constantly completing such dangerous missions. So every year, 25 cohorts disband and 25 new cohorts are made.

Although the Titan branch of military was created by the Planetary Government 286 years ago from the start of the roleplay, the Academy was founded 257 years ago.

Planetary Armed Forces (PAF)​

The Planetary Armed Forces are the Planetary Government's military force. It is relatively small compared to the population of Terranthea, as military action is rarely necessary, but they are still one million strong. The smallest branch of PAF are the Titans, who have only around one thousand members.

Titans​

The Titans are PAF's smallest branch, but they are the strongest and most elite. The Titans are sent on missions that other branches have failed to complete or cannot complete with the expectation that they are the ones that will get the job done. They work in cohorts of four, a cohort that they are assigned to upon graduation from Titan Academy. These cohorts tend to work together for life unless there is a major fallout. Of the two hundred and fifty cohorts, each one is separated into one of five ranks: D-rank, C-rank, B-rank, A-rank, and S-rank. Missions and pay are given to the ranks accordingly, and exceptional performance allows for the promotion of cohorts to higher ranks. All cohorts are placed in the D-rank upon formation and work their way up. The top cohorts of S-rank often become worldwide celebrities, celebrated for their accomplishments.

Each region has at least one active or inactive Titan outpost where Titans can be stationed. Titan cohorts are all given a number between 1 and 10,000, with the cohort numbers recycling every one hundred years.

 

[Edric Yuma]

Ern​

Ern is the spiritual energy within any living being - it is necessary for an individual to survive. Therefore, use of Ern for combat is difficult and risky, as expending too much Ern can lead to death. Therefore, intense training with manipulating Ern is necessary for it to be of any combat use, and even then an individual can only manipulate one natural phenomenon with Ern, hence the requirement for specialization within the Titan Academy. The way Ern is used for any combat reason is by thrusting the energy from within their bodies outwards in a certain way that alters the desired phenomenon, and because of this Ern combatants must have an immense disposition towards Ern regeneration. Over time, expended Ern will return to an individual's body, so the faster it regenerates, the more a combatant can use their Ern abilities. This regeneration can be trained through years of practice and meditation.

In combat, it is much more difficult to use Ern against a living target than it is a nonliving one. Nonliving things have no Ern, so they are easily manipulable by outside Ern energy. However, if something is living, its inner Ern will naturally defend against outside Ern forces. Therefore, to directly affect another person's body, they would have to overpower their inner Ern energy with enough of their own Ern powers to inflict any direct damage. If someone is aware and allowing of Ern to affect their body, however, the defenses can be bypassed.

The way I envisioned Ern was that it had natural defenses against outside Ern that are only taken down if the outside Ern is allowed in. So, to break those defenses, one would have to overpower someone else's Ern to the point of all their Ern being depleted and no longer able to construct the natural defenses. This normally doesn't happen, because Ern weakens over distance, making attacking with Ern directly at someone much harder than someone defending with Ern, which happens naturally. At the level of someone leaving Titan Academy, they would probably be able to overpower two, maybe three untrained individuals before depleting their own Ern.

Therefore, overpowering someone's Ern defenses is not about training to slip through them, but about just straight brute-forcing through someone's defenses. Ern defenses are natural and very effective, something the body knows how to do through evolution, but attacking with Ern is unnatural, something learned through the Titan academy. That's why it is so difficult to break through defenses. It's like walking vs. studying astronomy - although someone could become super good at astronomy, there's always more to learn and discover, whereas walking is mastered within a couple years of being born.

Ern is not used exclusively by humans, nor is it used exclusively by the Titans. All humans use it in their everyday lives: some to grow plants, some to heat their food, and others to comb their hair. These small tasks are things everyone can do, but because combat is so much more straining on the Ern supply within an individual's body, extensive study and training is required to be a Titan.

Ern is also used by the animals of Teranthia. Some, like the bears, use it to alter their hormones in different ways, such as increasing their strength for defending territory or reducing their hair growth to adapt to warmer climates. Others, like birds, use it to control the air currents around them for better flight. All animals have some degree of Ern capabilities within them.

 

[Edric Yuma]

The Planetary Government​

At the top, there's a singular head called the prime minister. The prime minister is the head of the government as a whole, and he/she/they has the most power out of anyone in the government, but not power to do anything they want to. Each region of the world gets an allotted number of votes based on population that go towards selecting the prime minister once every six years. Prime ministers are not allowed to serve more than once, but they tend to stay involved in the government one way or another. The prime minister is head of the Council, which is the single international branch of government that oversees international affairs - they create and enforce laws. If a disagreement happens between regions, they are also the ones to settle it. Unlike the prime minister, each region of the world has the same amount of representatives in the council, regardless of population. These are the only positions with international power outside of the military - council representatives and the prime minister. However, these positions have a shit-ton of power. The heads of the Planetary Armed Forces listen to the prime minister, and in turn the council ensures the prime minister never has too much power.

Below them are the regions themselves, which function as sovereign states outside of their following of international laws set by the council alongside the prime minister. They all have their own sets of laws, own regional military force, and own customs/traditions. This means that they also decide how their votes for prime minister are allotted and how their candidates for the council are selected. In some regions, council representatives are hereditary, based on royal status. In others, they are voted upon. For prime minister votes, some regions also vote on those, while others are just distributed based on whoever the head of the region wants to select. There are 300 regions on the planet.

Although everyone so far in the RP has decided to have their characters come from within Onyxport (mostly because I'm ass at explaining that anything else was possible,) Titan Academy is an internationally renown place to train Ern powers, so people in the academy can come from pretty much everywhere.

(Side note for this - if you wanted to create/design your own region within Terranthea for your character to have come from, I'd be totally fine with that - just send all relevant details to me afterwards, please. There are 300 regions within Terranthea, so it wouldn't dramatically change the story outside of a region that was just fucking anarchy.)

 

[Edric Yuma]

Geography (Introduced regions in list, notable locations of that region in sublist)​

• New Ironhaven
  • Onyxport (Titan Academy; Aveline & Rena)
• Green Spire (Rosaria)
• The Quartz Plains
  • Aldertown (Alias)
• Phynxfire
  • Dagonpoint (Location of one of the Titan outposts)

 

[Edric Yuma]

Dagonpoint Intel:
Most of the maps and charts on the walls are detailed information of specific areas around Dagonpoint. The areas around the settlement is split into 8 sectors. Of the 8 sectors, 2 have been completely mapped out, and from the intel it can be gathered that those two had the least amount of dangerous beasts populating the area. They are currently working on sector 4 (skipping 3 due to more hostile animals,) but have been running into some issues due to animal interference. With each sector, there is a chart tallying the number of times each beast has been spotted. There are also files on all known traits for each beast. TL stands for threat level, and there is low, medium, high, and deadly:

Yellowteeth Jaguar (TL: Medium) - The Yellowteeth Jaguar does not normally attack humans, but has in rare occasions when very hungry. It uses Ern to sense its prey and boost its speed, reducing air drag and strengthening leg muscles. Its top speed recorded can surpass most road vehicles.
Diamond-plated Rhino (TL: Medium) - Although this species of Rhino uses Ern to reinforce its skin to a hardness level of diamond, its attacks are very predictable and easily avoided. It is only territorial, and does not normally attack humans.
Spitfire Centipede (TL: Deadly) - This centipede is nicknamed "the hidden giant." It is massive, standing at about one foot high and twenty feet long. It hides in plain sight, mimicking vines or shrubbery and using light Ern to camouflage itself. When prey approaches (humans are considered prey,) it sprays deadly toxins that erode the skin and turn prey to digestible liquid for the insect.
Nomadic Spider (TL: Low) - This spider tends to be found within the trunks of trees. Every week or so, it changes locations, catching new insects that enter its hiding spot. When cornered, it will defend itself, emitting a burst of particularly sticky web that can be annoying but not harmful to humans.
Blue-Speckled Hawk (TL: Low) - The fierce hunters of the skies, these hawks are immune to most kinds of poisons. With primitive Ern, they are able to detect prey up to fifty miles away. They very rarely attack humans.
The Happy Frog (TL: High) - Although not particularly hard to kill, its unbefitting spots that line its back form a happy smile to a human. When touched, the venom is enough to kill a human in two hours if left untreated.
Earthquake Gorilla (TL: Deadly) - These carnivorous gorillas travel in packs, which make them particularly effective when hunting. They use primitive Ern to harden their skin, allowing to pound into the ground endlessly without damaging themselves. With this strategy, they create loud sounds and minor earthquakes, disorienting prey as they attack.

Another set of files are on excavation sites that have been discovered, as well as ancient artifacts that are uncovered there. It is common knowledge that each region has its own history, but because phynxfire had so little population for so long Little is known about the artifacts or excavation sites. However, some artifacts are linked back to relics from other surrounding Regions.

Another section of files is about the climate. It has always been hot and humid, and rainfall is very common, but the files note occasional periods of cooler temperatures. During this time, a larger number of animals sighted can be noted.

A small footnote on one of the animal files mentions the appearance of a group of hooded figures that always disappear when spotted. They are predicted to be mostly harmless due to their non confrontational nature.

Another set of files lists the kinds of plants that appear within the jungle. Most are harmless, but there are a few that fight back or should be avoided (Will add later

Another set of files details the information about Dagonpoint itself. Outside of the Titans, there are 170 soldiers stationed here and 30 researchers stationed. The researchers have their own lab, and their main job is to identify plants and animals alongside mapping the land. The soldiers defend the base, although animals seem to naturally avoid the area. Of the soldiers stationed, 3 have lost their lives while trying to defend researchers against wild animals. 20 have been injured enough to be removed from Dagonpoint.

Another file details a disease only found in the area - Magnolia disease. While deadly if left untreated, it’s symptoms of high fever and no sweat are easily identified, and vaccinations are readily available.