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Chapter 01

The Octus stands as the greatest city in the Plain. Once being made of several separate cities, when the god-fall happened and all places and things were combined as one world, the cities were smashed together with unheeding violence. The great towering spires being nearly crushed by the flying city above, its engines of air-stone and fire coming unhooked to float like a series of haloes, All the while a series of mountains, thrown as if from a cosmic sling became the great walls and peaks as they crumbled leaving small mountain towns clinging desperately to the surviving ridges and valleys. Towns and cities split into many pieces and the spaces between filled with the remains of choked scrub and farmlands.

In the quiet that followed, peoples of all races limped, crawled, and dug out of the rubble. Barely surviving, limping across the wastes, wounded, parched, and starting to starve they congregated in their Godless temples. No prayers were said then, the old words of faith only add to the weight of hopelessness, instead the survivors planned and parleyed. They shared their knowledge, their wisdom, and their force of will to plan out a strategy for surviving the following weeks. The leaders and experts of craft and the arcane split not only power but responsibility, and organized by the dying demigods, poisoned by the loss of their sires, all in order to repair and restore society in the only way they could. Grouped into 8 communities, with specializations and focus on their own trades and tasks, they found their own space within the ruins and became stable. Each family came up with several beings willing to sacrifice themselves to restore some semblance of balance to the structures of divinity and the arcane. Twenty-four wrapped themselves in the shredded mantles of the gods that were, rending their mortal forms, but allowing them to progress beyond and above. Allowing them to ascend to the emptied heavens and be a guard to the people who were left behind, from the fallout of all realities. They were not enough to repair the world, but they were plenty to allow their peoples to rebuild society, learning, and the trades. Allowing music to return and the arts to once again be spread throughout the peoples of the land.

And so the Octus settled into its countryside, as peoples of all forms crafted, mended and stabilized the structures of their great home. The spires once a place of the open sky, now covered by the plateau became filled with families and small shops that allowed the Octus its workforce and armies a place to rest in the cool and dry twilight of caverns filled with life. The great plateau, once a mighty floating bastion of war containing the defenses of a nation, now rests soundly on the tops of the spires and nests deep in the crooks of the peaks. It’s multitude of tunnels and storerooms now in use by the families to store wealth and food, and to allow passage to the many guards, servants and other people who serve in the manses of the mighty but do not reside in them. All of the great manses and gardens of the Plateau are open to the sky and would have been devastated by the chaotic storms and winds released by the fall, if not for the continued attentions of Sage Barachiel now the god of thunder and storms. His great churches can be found in many spaces where protection of the weak or needy is required, and his priests often work relentlessly to find support for food, housing, and work placement.

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The farms and townships surrounding the Octus spread and grew, as bounteous as the food they produced. Every type Of Flora and Fauna that survived and could be tended or farmed are born kept and slaughtered for the Sustenance of the people in the Octus, those surrounding and even some Trade to outlying city states fiefdoms kingdoms and countries. All under the watchful gaze of Mother Mucuna, now the Matron of cultivation. Her many cults of nature following the paths of the wild, to sustain growth and breakdown the parts that No longer Function. Forests sprout rapidly and are felled for their lumber while the swamps are allowed to collect the refuse and water that passes through the rivers. The displaced Fae and other beings who lived in places where magic was thickest began recongregating in the wilds between roads and settlements, creating their own bastions, nests and domains. Eventually a leader of a Great Hunt was born again, riding out when the moons are aligned, for people to hunt with, or hunt.

The Octus gained its own myths, legends, spooks and spectres as the decades passed into centuries, into millenia. Eventually it became settled into the rhythms of trade and craft, and the dynamo of sapient society began again. The Gates allowing people to enter or leave at a controlled pace and the guilds and various churches kept the flow of life for its residents, between work, worship, education and healthcare, the residents of the Octus had the dream of possibilities at their feet. These dreams of course drew others to the city and more came after that. The influx continued until civil war broke out, old families in the plains taking the new mass of people to build up their private armies and filling their castles and manses with servants for every little need.

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