A traveler’s notes on Eldoria. Everything here is known before the first chapter ends.
Two Suns
Eldoria circles two stars. Solara is a warm and steady sun. Noctis is stranger. The remnant of an ancient star, it does not so much shine as pulse, flashing on a fixed beat even in full daylight. Eldorians built their clocks around that beat, and their cities too: Luminara’s walls are studded with essence that glows faint in Solara’s light and flickers under Noctis.
At day’s end the two stars set together, and the sky bleeds violet and gold. Eldorians call that hour, and the direction it happens in, TwinDusk.
Keeping Time
Time on Eldoria is counted by Noctis. Students sit trials by the pulse, Bureau officers work their shifts by the cycle, and ages are told in circulations.
The Four Winds
Eldorians do not use our north, south, east and west. Their directions are named for the sky and the wind, and they mean the same thing everywhere on the planet.
Luminara
Capital of the Aelcrest Dominion. Its streets are wide and paved, its towers sharp-angled and banner-hung, its markets loud with carts and fresh bread and the smell of sharpened steel. The Kyralin estate sits quietly on the Low Wind outskirts, among gardens and a training field.
At the heart of the city stands a square with a bronze statue of a man braced behind a spiked shield. Every child in Luminara knows the story: a stonebeast the size of a barn broke through the inner wall on that spot, and Thorvald Kyralin did not run. Its shattered skeleton rests in the museum across the square. Facing it are the white stone steps of the Investigative Bureau.
Essence and Flux
Every Eldorian carries essence, a personal reserve of power that can be trained and thickened over a lifetime. Around them, through stone and air and water, runs flux, the ambient field that essence acts upon. Most people go their whole lives without feeling either. Those who can are trained at the Academy along one of two paths.
Vigorants
They turn essence inward, through their own bodies. A trained Vigorant lifts what should not be liftable, runs faster than a horse, shrugs off blows, and can pour essence straight into a weapon. Thick essence suits this path; control keeps it from going wrong.
Savants
They work outward, shaping flux with the mind into barriers, shards and storms. Physically weaker, Savants are subtler, more precise, and dangerous at range. Their trials test precision and creativity rather than strength.
A Sensate has learned to feel essence and flux directly, sensing an opponent’s intent a heartbeat before it moves. Some feel it on the skin. Some, oddly, hear it.
Measures of Mastery
Scholars rank practitioners on seven levels. The higher rungs are rare enough that a single name can define a generation.
- 0CommonCannot perceive essence or flux. Most of Eldoria.
- 1SensatePerceives essence and flux, cannot yet move them.
- 2ImpulsoSimple manipulation within the self.
- 3TenaeExtends influence beyond the body, into objects and surroundings.
- 4RegimantPrecise control at a distance. None living.
- 5DominatusAuthority over reality at scale. Legend.
- 6Ex NihiloCreates or unmakes essence itself. Myth.
The Academy
Luminara’s Academy trains the dominion’s next generation of Vigorants and Savants, ranked by level and by score. Its trials are public, and half the city turns out to watch.
Each trial opens with a written test. Then the paths divide. Vigorants lift a row of pillars, each heavier than the last, and run an obstacle course of walls and barriers. Savants stay behind for the flux manipulation and control test. Those on the combat track finish with the Power Test: ten breaths to gather their strength, then strike a line of stone statues carved in the shapes of Eldorian creatures.
- Zalrena pass
- Umbraika pass
- Serapthisexemplary
- Thrakaanone in fifty circulations
- Voidwraithunbroken
When a student can go no further, the Academy’s Construct Core bestows a weapon shaped to their essence. No two are alike.
The Investigative Bureau
Luminara’s investigators, patrols and record keepers work out of a white stone hall of arched windows and black-and-white marble floors. Officers wear black and deep blue with a brass badge, cut from a protective weave that is famously uncomfortable. The Bureau handles everything from purse snatchers in the Low Wind bazaar to forgeries in the craftsman’s quarter. Its records room is kept with frightening precision.
Houses and Rule
Aelcrest has no crown. Its leader holds the seat because the dominion agrees, on plain evidence, that no one is stronger or wiser. Anyone may challenge for it, but a challenger must prove both might and mind, and the people must agree the contest was fair.
The great houses are lineages more than fiefdoms. When two people join, they choose which house name to carry, or found a new one together, and no one thinks less of either choice.
Beyond the Walls
Past Low Wind rise the Frostveil Mountains, and beyond them runs the Frostline, the border crossings Aelcrest shares with its neighbors. Across it lies Marrowfen, a capital built into a freshwater marsh.
The wilds have their own dangers. Felkratz hunt in packs, and children are told to run as if one were behind them. Stonebeasts make their homes by ramming through mountains, and on at least one occasion have rammed through a city wall instead.