[VOL] Volaria [SET FILE RELEASE]

    Talis was the Elemental Spirit of Litara. He was obsessed with making a profit, bringing the concept of currency to the Spirits and then to the Factions. Stories tell of Talis appearing on lost pathways to sell information to those who are lost, or providing relics to all factions in times of war regardless of who’s side they were on. In the war before the Fall of the Spirits, Talis was an acting informant to the war effort. 

    Severa was the Elemental Spirit of Shaidosta. She embodies what current Shaidosta does: using subterfuge and deceit to reach all goals. Prior to the Fall of the Spirits, Severa was acting as a companion to Rya Nisita of Shaidosta, who she hoped would take the role of killing Balance using Sever Reality. 

    Istali was the Elemental Spirit of Ria-Demai. She was the first Volarian to consider doing anything to risk their life. She was also the first Spirit to realize that they were not incapable of dying as they had thought before. Istali spent every living moment driving people to follow their desires, regardless of the dangers. She taught one lesson above all. A heart unclouded by fear is one that is truly alive. Ria-Demai has kept her teachings alive throughout the years as the faction that is the most entranced by danger.

    Ires was the Elemental Spirit of Ria-Demai and the original reason for the existence of dragons and dragonkin on Volaria. When Istali discovered aethersteel for the first time, Ires immediately began looking into it, figuring out how to produce energy without spellcasters and how to use it without spells. When Mileran came together on top of the greatest source of aethersteel on Volaria, Ires taught the use of it to make household lives far, far easier.

    Morin was the Elemental Spirit of Oscura. He is the only Spirit that kept a primarily elemental form. Morin was spiteful of the mortals at first. The world had been designed for the Spirits, so what was going on with the life that thought themselves as powerful as the Spirits? Morin had to be convinced to hand over a part of his power, but when the time came to turn against Balance, Morin stood against the mortals, hoping that Balance would succeed in wiping them out.

Fire (Tirena)

    Pyres was the Elemental Spirit of Tirena. When she chose who would be the First Master of Tirena, Pyres was not concerned about who would make the best leader, but at who people would be most likely to listen to. To Pyres, a leader could be created if people were willing to give them time. First Master Tira, an outgoing young girl that always had opinions, fit perfectly. Pyres stepped away to watch Tirena grow into the organized militia that helped end the Spirits.

    One of the keys to Volarian magic, and to the sustenance of its civilization, is Elemental Equilibrium. The fundamentals are very simple: In a system, if all ten core elements are present with Balance, the elements will eventually equalize.On a small scale, this applies both positively and negatively in Entelan technology. As an upside, perfect balance makes measuring energy and concentration exceptionally simple. On the other hand, isolating Balance from a system where not all ten elements are supposed to be in equilibrium is a pain in the neck.

 

    Mainland Volaria is a small island. It takes only 10 days to walk across, and the Starless Expanse is not much larger. A further day of sea travel outwards, and Volarians hit a functional brick wall of concentrated aether. All varieties of teleporting through it fails. No place in the Starless Expanse will line up with a location off of the island. And, of course, sailing into it destroys the craft and the crew equally. It’s possible that there is more to the world beyond this Aether Storm, but no one can tell.

    This Aether Storm produces one of the most important scientific problems on Volaria: How to get past this wall. Specifically, two of Volaria’s technological prototypes, one from Entela and one from Theria, are centered entirely on breaking through this wall. Entela is working on a system called Aether Tunneling, intending to be able to, well, tunnel through the wall with magic and open the ability to teleport through. With help from Litara and Oscura, Theria designs enchantments and wards to allow a ship to sail safely through the aether storm for just long enough to hit land on the other side.

    Having been mentioned everywhere, it’s possible that the Starless Expanse is something that may not have been fully understood. The Starless Expanse, in its simplest explanation, is the shadow to Volaria. To people that care to practice, fading between the Starless Expanse and Volaria is a simple act of casting a spell or opening a door. Oscura took full control of the Starless Expanse early on, when no one quite understood its tactical benefits.

    One of the two most important creations to Entela is Reality Augmentation. In Entela’s laboratories exists two Reality Augmentation chambers that use aether circuitry to produce an augmentation field. Inside this room, reality is functionally subjective, and skilled casters or aether technicians can program the room to reproduce anything they wish. Battlefields, people, weapons, Deep Storage.

    Sara originally used Reality Augmentation as a toy. Over time, she developed many programs that she could call on any time in the future. Reality Augmentation provides an outlet for scanning drones to send images to Entela. It allows full recreations of cities or worlds, even capable of expanding the interior space. It allows games and drills to be run without fear of accidentally injuring others. To an Entelan, describing what Reality Augmentation undercuts the things that Reality Augmentation can do.

    Deep Storage is single-handedly the most important information source on Volaria. Originally, Deep Storage was a project designed by Entela’s First Master, intended to be where all information Entela had access to would be stored. It was designed to be impervious to simple antimagic attacks, but quickly, it became far more, and became impervious to damaging magic in all senses.

    Deep Storage, simply, is a storage drive. Information is put in, organized, and can be read. However, its indestructibility offers one key piece of information: The data within Deep Storage cannot be edited. Individual data cells can be moved around, or edits can be written in as new copies of documents, but they cannot be changed outright. Importantly, this means that data can never be destroyed, only hidden behind security barriers. This has allowed Deep Storage to remain Entela’s information storage since the Fall of the Spirits.

    Let’s talk about energy. Specifically, elemental energy and its applications in spellcasting and technology. Aether is fairly understood as the chaotic energy in space and between worlds. Elemental energy is created by mages by gathering aether and “editing” it by the use of mana into a form of simple magical energy, called “elemental” energy due to its connection to the elements. The concept of spellcasting, to those inclined to study it in depth, is simply altering the properties of an amount of aether and concentrating elements in perfect proportions to create spells. Volarians do not recognize mana as a separate entity from elemental energy, but they are separate for one large difference: Elemental energy is created from aether, whereas mana is drawn to use aether.

    When elemental energy becomes concentrated enough, it becomes fluid. It becomes visible with a bright glow with a color depending on the element, can be dragged around, formed into solids, et cetera. This is aptly named fluid energy. In this form, elemental energy is extremely volatile and harmful. If a person is trapped in a room where the energy becomes fluid, the person is likely to be killed in moments. Expectedly, this means that more potent and dangerous spells exist in fluid energy.

    So, then, if this is fluid energy, what is aethersteel? Aethersteel is essentially solid elemental energy. Because magic itself cannot exist in a solid state for any period of time, it needs to be bound to a material, and naturally on Volaria, this material is often metallic iron. This solid state of magic bound to steel is what is called “aethersteel”, and is usually elementally aligned.

    Whenever a person capable of casting a Power Script is noticed, many people completely flip out. The Power Scripts are the single most concentrated spell of their element in the world. For most people, the energy required to bring magic to a perfect concentration feeds back into the body and kills the caster before they can finish channeling it. Specifically, this feedback applies to everyone that did not descend from a specific First Master.

    Why are the First Masters important? When the factions were destined to rise, the Elemental Spirits offered a portion of their power to the people that would eventually become the First Masters. These spells were called the Power Scripts, and although the specifics weren’t known at the time, the Spirits’ true gift was a connection between the caster’s soul and Volaria itself in hopes that they could destroy the Spirits later on. Channeling a Power Script through the plane was still exhausting, but meant that the feedback had somewhere to go. This connection to the plane is passed down by descendance.

    So, why are the Power Scripts so important now? For most, the idea of tracking descendance by the Power Script has been lost, but it still has importance. Specifically, if two people can both cast the same Power Script, they are related by blood to some degree of separation. For those who study the bloodlines, this becomes even more elaborate due to one clear fact: First Master Shaido and First Master Ental had children. That is, anyone descended from either Shaido or Ental, and thus casters of Sever Reality or Erasure Process respectively, must also be related.