WHO LIVES ON MISONA?

Misona's a small planet, but it still has many clades, each with their own customs and place in the world. Alliances and rifts form and break between groups as allegiances shift over time, but, as always, there are exceptions.

CLIEARCHS

KNOWN CLIEARCHS: CLOUDY; NIMBUS; DESS; AWAN;

Responsible for keeping the water cycle in check and ensuring consistency and moderation in rain levels, cliearchs are strict and methodical, their bodies composed entirely of clouds and their society ruled over by a council. Considered haughty and dangerous by the land-dwelling clades, they have exceptionally long lifespans and are practically impossible to kill except by specially appointed executioners in intercommunity trials.

OVERVIEW

The Cliearchy refers both to the clade as a whole as well as their homeland and birthplace — an ever shifting mass of clouds high in the sky, from which all cliearchs originate — though it is also sometimes (incorrectly) called the cloud kingdom by humans and Closean citizens. Their society is highly systemised with codes and rules that are followed to the letter, any cliearch that fails to meet these exacting standards is considered a disgrace and is often summarily executed. All cliearchs are genderless, with normal cliearchs being created through a ritual at the turn of each century, living for about a thousand years each. Through this ritual, they are brought into the world knowing exactly who they are and what their purpose for existing is, though they still require the guidance of their ustaad for the first few years of their life. Barring executioners, cliearchs tend to have soft and rounded features.

The native tongue of cliearchs is not spoken, but felt, as they push and pull and vibrate the surronding air to articulate their thoughts and intentions. It has no written form, and though impossible for non-cliearchs to speak, clades with heightened senses could theoretically learn to understand it. For cliearchs speaking other, earthly, languages, a strong accent would compose of staticky warbling and instability of voice, pitch, and volume.

COUNCIL MEMBERS

The administrative organ of the cliearchy, members of the Council are created, not elected. They're even more resilient than normal cliearchs and live twice as long, created at the turn of every millenia with the intention and knowledge of managing the cliearchy.

EXECUTIONERS

Executioners have a statuesque and imposing appearance and double as royal guards, often positioned in intercladical meetings in order to intimidate the other delegates and representatives. When a misbehaving cliearch has been sentenced to death, it is the job of executioners to restrain them in special chains and then carry out the sentence.

NOTABLE FEATURES:

360 Vision:

Though most cliearchs have poor eyesight on land, in the sky they have complete vision, supplemented by temperature and wind current sensing. Council members, executioners, and normal cliearchs selected and granted the privilege, all have eyes that make it easier to distinguish the granular differences required for navigating on land.

Shapeshifting:

Because they are made of clouds, all cliearchs have the ability to freely modify their shape and size by drawing or expelling moisture in the air. Some cliearchs have even trained to create human disguises, though most of them are not very good, and all of them have a bizarre, washed out quality to them.

Form Locked

Despite their shapeshifting abilities, new cliearchs are locked into a body that roughly resembles that of a five year old, but often smaller. This is in addition to a limit on their powers, which gets released once their ustaad deems them ready and releases their larger, adult form.

Cliearch Cloth:

All cliearchs can produce cliearch cloth, distinctive blue fabric with magical properties that is stronger than steel and softer than silk. Cliearchs' traditional clothes (formless robes with wide, long sleeves) are made of this. It is considered incredibly valuable across all clades, and is often gifted by cliearchs personally to those they wish to grant their favour to.

Cliearchical Runes

Theoretically, cliearchs' native tongue is also incredibly magically potent, but due to cliearchs being so inherently powerful, they have no use for it as a casting language, as their magic operates on a far more instinctual level. Nonetheless, cliearchs have pioneered a system of magical runes that, while rarely in actual use, are diverse and powerful.

LUNAGI

KNOWN LUNAGI: MOSS; PAGE;

Running the gamut from large, vaguely upright moths and butterflies to eerily human-like except for some insectile touches, lunagi were known for their ancient scholarly tradition and mastery of memory manipulation magic. They were one of the oldest clades on Misona before they were completely wiped out five hundred years ago.

OVERVIEW

Lunagi had more decentralised governance than most clades, choosing to settle mostly within all manners of villages and tribes in almost every conceivable climate, save for the largely inhospitable Hotlands. However, most of them would still regularly send delegates to the capital, Lotoum, from which most of the governing took place. They would then undergo rigorous academic and diplomatic training to prepare them for ambassador duties. Of course, politics weren't the only reason that attracted lunagi to Lotoum; it was a bustling city with some of largest libraries on the planet, and many of all clades came to bask in the living archives of science and knowledge. Despite lunagi's native tongue being extremely insectile and difficult for other clades to learn, its written form (featuring a unique alphabet) was marginally easier to learn, and sometimes was by advanced magic researchers, especially those in comparative studies.

Most of their settlements have fallen to rubble, but many exist in the present day in the form of ruins, with the Lotoum ruins being the most significant. They're an adventurer hotspot and attract many looters and/or seekers of knowledge, despite their precarious location, north of Griefwoods.

SEMI-AQUATIC TRIBE

A subsect of moth lunagi that spent most of its preadolescence in freshwater streams and rivers, they were wrongly believed by many to have gills that they shed after metamorphisis. The truth was just that they had extraordianry lung capacity and sought safety for their vulnerable young in fast flowing bodies of water. This eventually evolved into an entire culture with the friendliest ties to the Closea kingdom. When the human aggression against the kadeis and lunagi started, it was the semi-aquatic tribes that sought and gained the support of Closea.

BUTTERFLY LUNAGI

Despite most lunagi being moth based, there were still a few distinct butterfly lineages. The monarch butterflies were the most prominient, having long settled deep in the Griefwoods, where the trees grow thickest and tallest, in stacked treehouses. To outsiders, including moth lunagi to a lesser extent, butterfly lunagi were often characterised as vain and airheaded, partly due to their softer methods of motion. The butterfly lunagi were on good terms with humans, who found them ethereally beautiful and more closely aligned to human beauty standards than other races, and even other clades. In the war, most of them fought alongside their fellow lunagi, but a few defected to the human side. Even this, however, failed to save them.

NOTABLE FEATURES:

Memory Manipulation:

No one could change, store, or otherwise manipulate memories the way lunagi could. They guarded their methods fiercely and closely, all literature on it magically sealed and protected. Since their extinction, the information has been presumed lost to time.

Physical Weakness:

Despite (or perhaps because of) their possessing large amounts of latent and utilisable magic, lunagi tended to be physically weaker than all other clades. It is rumoured that the mixing of magic and biology leads to instability of form, particularly for the lunagi who never had the explicit blessing of any of the major spirits.

Excellent Senses:

Due to their insectile origins, most lunagi had variously enhanced senses of smell, sight, and hearing depending on their exact race. However, one thing they all had in common was improved kinaesthesia due to the almost uniform presence of antennae on lunagi.

HUMANS

KNOWN HUMANS: AAJAH; ZACHARIE; AMALA; TS; ONYX; OPHELIA

Insecure and insular, most human communities are tightly knit and extremely hostile to outsiders, particularly those of obvious non-human appearance. Illiaries are mostly kept within human settlements, except for escapees and (rarely) freed individuals.

OVERVIEW

Humans live in loosely interconnected settlements, much like the lunagi did (except with settlements that were larger in size and fewer in number), but have a centralised royal family that represent humans in intercladical meetings and rule from the capital, situated in the larger continent, north of Griefwoods. This family can clearly trace its lineage back to before the war, though their influence has declined somewhat in recent times, with the onset of modernity and the increasing importance of the learned class (scholars, wizards, etc.). Aside from illiaries, who are kept as slaves and familiars, no nonhuman is allowed within the bounds of a human settlement. Those who can disguise themselves as human get access to very lucrative smuggling opportunities, as humans are the most technologically advanced clade on Misona, and there are many who pay handsomely for technology from the "inside".

While technology plays a big part in the day to day life of humans, magic users are also fairly common. They tend to be viewed with some suspicion, due to magic's association with nonhumans, but wizards are still revered in society and treated with respect.

MOONARCHERS

A large town under the eternal patronage of the moon cliearch, Moonarch is situated on the southwest border of Griefwoods, its westernmost edge bordering the ocean. They provided assistance to the non-human clades during the war, and have thus retained their trust and good relations unilaterally, at the expense of being labelled traitors by other human territories, particularly those of the main human settlement, Ellarose.

WIZARDRY

To be a fully fledged wizard, one has to attend advanced magic universities and pass rigorous exams, which are administered and graded by a circle of elders. There are many specialisations for an aspiring wizard-in-training, but throughout all disciplines is an entitlement to an illiary familiar, as well as the right to take on apprentices if desired.

(P.S. There are sometimes physical and mental side effects that arise from tampering with magic, and there has been a rise of a wizard subculture that embraces and induces these changes.)

SEAFARERS

Certain coastal factions of humans have extensive experience in voyaging and traversing the oceans, tending to have more friendly relations with the citizens of the underwater kingdom of Closea.

NOTABLE FEATURES:

Fortunetelling:

Innate magic ability varies in humans as much as physical strength, seemingly with no regard to gender or race. However, it is widely agreed on that humans are naturally gifted at fortunetelling and forseeing the future, though their over-reliance on it can be detrimental. For instance, it is held in consensus among historians that humans' over-reliance on fortunetelling was a major reason for their losing the war.

(Technological) Integration:

For as long as there have been humans, there have been humans dropping in from other worlds. It is not understood why only humans are transported from other worlds, though occasionally Misonian humans also disappear, presumeably to those same worlds. The process of integrating them and any technology they have on them into society has been highly systemised, and is widely considered the reason why humans are so technologically advanced. Their advances have mostly been in communicative technology and non-magical medicine.

Poor Senses:

At least compared to other clades, most of whom can see in the dark and tend to have better balance and coordination than humans. This too may have its advantages, however, as humans have more tolerance and are less sensitive to unoptimal living conditions.

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ILLIARIES

KNOWN ILLIARIES: WISH; CARLOS; MELODY;

Actually made up of two distinct clades, the illiaries comprise a systemised underclass of human-owned slaves, broadly classified into the common cats and the legendary, elite corvids.

OVERVIEW

Despite nominally losing the war, humans weren't the worst off by far. The cats and corvids, both closely allied with the lunagi, were badly taken off guard when the humans unleashed their ultimate weapon. The corvids took heavier losses than the cats, due to being both physically weaker and already less in number. Their distinct cultures erased and grouped under the term "illiary", the corvids and a small amount of cats were taken for their strong magical capabilities and formally bonded as familiars to the elder wizards. Many of the other cats were disseminated in a similar fashion, to those the kingdom wanted to reward for their assistance in the war, though many more still were put to work in grueling physical labour on the outskirts of human territories, seen as more expendable assets.

SECRET KADEIS TRIBES

Retaining a strong sense of identity, the reclusive big cats lived simpler lives hidden away deep in the woods and in harsh mountainous conditions. Desperate survivors of the great war sought them out before the official enslavement of all kadeis, and were accepted into their fold. These big cats had never fought in the war in the first place and had a reputation for being incredibly strong-willed. They were thought to emulate kadeis tinkerer communities of old, and allegedly quite mechanically advanced. They kept almost everything about themselves hidden, including their exact locations, and many assume their existence to be the stuff of legend.

UNDERGROUND FIGHTING RINGS

Supposedly illegal, these fighting rings are an illicit and lucrative business where dirty money circulates and powerful crooks socialise. The unlucky illiaries who get trapped in these (usually homeless, sometimes bred within these confines) often end up dying from sustained injuries over time, or otherwise are left to die when they become too weak to turn a profit.

CORVIDS

Corvids are so rare some people consider them only a myth. No one knows exactly how many there are or how many remain, but what's agreed upon is that regardless of the amount of enslaved corvids, there are almost certainly no free survivors now, since those that escaped in the great war were so miniscule in number, they would have certainly died out since.

NOTABLE FEATURES:

Magical Variety

Unlike the humans, who tend to occupy a sweet spot when it came to inherent magical power, most cats are completely nonmagical while all corvids are extremely magically poweful. Only a few select cat breeds had inherent magical abilites, such as the ragdolls and the maine coons. While a regular corvid could beat a regular (magical) cat in a show of magical strength, the opposite tended to be true for physical strength.

Small:

Both the cats and corvids were amongst the smallest in size generally when it came to the clades, only being narrowly beat to the title by some new cliearchs. Most cats barely reach four feet and corvids are only a little taller, on average. The big cats, though, were naturally larger, with some reaching heights of seven or eight feet tall.

Religiosity:

The cats were and continue to be the least religious clade on Misona, in large part due to their inherent lack of magic.

SKELETONS

Responsible for the maintenance and groundskeeping of large swathes of land, skeletal creatures known as ostelles tend to the soil and are created and maintained in turn by a council of deostons.

OVERVIEW

Due to the nature of their existence, skeletons can be found in every corner of Misona. Whether the climate is cold or hot, whether you're underground or on a mountain, in a forest, a desert, or even underwater, chances are you'll hear the legend of at least one local deoston. Most ostelles are created through the official channels of the council, but there are no formal rules banning deostons from creating ostelles on their own.
Skeletons have the most robust form of long-distance communication on the planet, surpassing even the humans' technological innovation in the field. Their economy does not revolve around normal money, but rather, around a type of magic stone or crystal, colloquially referred to as a "shard". The consumption of these allow ostelles to extend their lifespan, and its output is often controlled by deostons, whether individually or as a council. For skeletons, bones that are broken need to be replaced, and the supply of fresh bones is also heavily regulated by deostons

OSTELLES

KNOWN OSTELLES: RALPH; LILY

Often designed with the ability to commune with nature, particularly plants, ostelles are magical constructs roughly divided into pack animals and sapient people. What groups them together is the fact that they are created by deostons, as well as the fact that they can't use magic on their own. They're made from one or more species' bones, though typically only bipedal ostelles are given the capacity to think on a complex level, due to the taxing nature of that method of creation. Sapient ostelles are generally either given the choice to go into farming or mining, though there exists a burgeoning illegal black market where bones are bought and sold. Outlaw merchants and bone scavengers make up the bulk of this underground economy.

DEOSTONS & THE COUNCIL

KNOWN DEOSTONS: MARY; SARAH; ERIC;

Not all deostons are involved in the ruling of the Telluric Republic, but all deostons are given the choice of a seat at the council, which also allows for voted representatives of ostelles to join (though not as official members and merely as observers or visitors) if and when they feel the need to. The collective strength of this council has been rumored to rival that of a demigod, they are powerful enough to kill immortal beings. The Council of Telluria has no fixed location, but all deostons know where and when to find it if need be. New deostons are only created with the direct blessing of the earth spirit, and a deoston may only die at a time of their own choosing.

NOTABLE FEATURES:

Classical Tongue

The native language of the deostons, and by extension some ostelles, Maxillaria, is considered the standard magical casting language across Misona, due to its strong magical potency and relative ease of access when compared to other magical languages such as Flamish (fairly accessible but ultimately a dead language), Cliearch (impossible to replicate biologically), or Lunagic (biologically difficult and now also a dead language).

Redemption Program

An extensive program for the rehabilitation of outlaws, certain criminal ostelles who get caught and sent to the council are given the chance to atone for their crimes through bounty hunting.

The Ellipse

Though, that isn't the only way to become a bounty hunter. A series of games held at the Ellipse, an ancient ampitheatre, allow ostelles to compete against each other for a chance to climb the ranks and become an athlete bounty hunter, with first picks on new bounty postings and the chance to keep a far larger proportion of their earnings than redemption bounty hunters.

Earthly Communications

Using their ability to commune with the land, skeletons have developed robust systems of communication that can even manage relatively rapid communication exchanges with other skeletons on different continents. However, this is a skill that is exclusive to skeletons, possible only due to their unique bond with the earth spirit.

Ambient Sounds

Skeletons, deostons especially, emit a low ambient sound of the magical forces holding them together, akin to buzzing or vibration.

MERFOLK

Also known as the undersea kingdom despite its aristocracy mostly living on land, Closea is a wide-spanning kingdom that surpasses the human settlements in terms of raw numbers of citizens.

OVERVIEW

Scattered across the ocean are Closean settlements situated at varying depths, accommodating a wide variety of merfolk under the unified banner of one ruler. While average civilians all live exclusively in the water, the aristocracy is marked by the ability to shapeshift from seals to human-passing and tend to live semi-aquatic lives on secret islands or sequestered underwater caves.

"ROYALTY"

KNOWN SELKIES: MOON;

Royalty is a term best used with quote marks, due to its tenuous nature. In a word, only a remarkable few families stake an uncontested claim to the throne, those most closely descended to the first selkies personaly blessed by the earth spirit. Most others are content with their aristocratic status and wealth.

Selkies are born as seals, though their skins can transform into an extremely magically potent coat or jacket, often adorned with the same markings as their sealskin, which they can freely take off their humanesque appearance. Some selkies take advantage of this by hiding their coats and going into human territories to act as smugglers or informants, or even just to attend human universities or escape bad domestic situations. However, selkies being away from their coats for extended periods of time come with curious and not fully understood physiological and psychological harms, so it's rare for a selkie to abandon or attempt to destroy their coats.

COMMONERS

KNOWN MERFOLK: TINO; LATIF;

Like mentioned above, merpeople can't live outside of water the same way selkies can, though they could be transported in specialised tanks over land if need be. While selkies are just contained to different types of seals, merpeople experience a stunning variety of form and size, surpassing the lunagi in their diversity.

NOTABLE FEATURES:

Magic-Based Society

Due to the earth spirit's personal blessing, Closea is blessed with much in the way of latent magic, which is used to power day to day life in lieu of electricity. Other clades use a mixture of electricity and magic, and even merfolk aristocracy use electricity. Merfolk commoners are the only ones who exclusively use magic for these purposes..

FIRE SPIRITS

KNOWN FIRE SPIRITS: IGNATIUS; ESTELLE; BLAZE;

Long since extinct, the fire spirts used to populate the still-cooling hotlands, to the south of the main continent.

OVERVIEW

Only bits and pieces of their complex and intricate society remain today, but even those paint a rich picture of what has been left behind. Five tribes, each with unique markings and customs, as well as a clearly defined role in society.

FAMILIARS

FERALS

NOTABLE FEATURES: