This is a quick short prologue
It's basically a quick short info dump on the world.
The next chapter though is bigger, about twice the size of this one.
Well enough of this author's note, Enjoy!
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There is a place known as the Nine Circles of Hell. As to why it received such an ominous name it is unknown but it isn’t as quite as bad of a place as it sounds. It is composed of Nine Realms with different properties and rules and each are connected to each other by a realm that acts a bridge, this realm is known as purgatory and is a rather safe place since there are no monsters, which of course, does not include people. Each of the realms have a name directly connected to how the realm acts and its rules, which led to the naming of the entirety of the realms. The first realm’s (circle’s) name is Limbo and it is a constantly changing place with the rules of time and space being distorted and sometimes outright broken. The second realm is slightly different being called Lust, this leads to the entirety of the people living here being quite openly romantic. Beware though, there is hidden danger to this realm which is a constant typhoon that assault the entire realm relentlessly.
The third realm is gluttony here food is a very easy to get commodity; but this leads to there being a very large influx of large and powerful predators making this one of the most dangerous realms out of all of them. The name of the fourth realm is Greed which makes it the richest realm of them all. Again this lead to the danger of this realm, it is here where dragons have claimed their home and they are a constant threat to everyone. Anger is the fifth realm and here there is the hottest of all the realms. There are deserts that stretch for miles and fires on everything possible is a constant occurrence. Next as number six is the realm called pride. While possibly being one of the safest realms it could also be the most dangerous because the inhabitants of this realm are all so high and mighty that they might suddenly lash out each other for no reason causing a random civil war.
The seventh realm is similar to the fifth but are quite different, this realm is called violence. Here mercenaries and bandits call home it its forests and mountains. This realm is battered by tornado's and thunderstorms with an excess of lightning. Realm number eight is called fraud and it is realm filled with monsters and creatures that can either shape-shift or use illusion magic. Additionally this realm is only a series of floating islands in an ocean of clouds making high winds common. The last realm is known as Treachery and it is a frozen wasteland. This place is ruled by the one known as Lucifer who lives is his palace made from frozen corpses. Out of all the realms there is nothing to gain here at all, only a death from cold or a fatal encounter with Lucifer’s army.
The realms are filled with a large variety of intelligent sentient races with the most common being: human, elf, dwarf, demi-human, demon, dragon, and celestials. There are a few communities of some rare intelligent races out there like the Automata who are a group of people made from clockwork that gains a soul.
The best researchers and scholars from each of the races wanted to find the origin of life for the intelligent races and they found something quite interesting. All of the researchers were working in their respective communities across the entire nine circles and ended up discovering the exact same thing. For anything that has an intelligence and is self-aware, the soul isn’t created during pregnancy, the soul is instead attracted to the empty shell of the living being and is attached to the living being and that is what the origin of the soul is.
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After that was discovered and each of the researchers and scholars found out others found very similar results they formed a group dedicated to finding out more about this phenomenon. They discovered that there were specific rules for the soul to attach, firstly it had to be an intelligent self-aware being no matter what; the soul cannot be disturbed otherwise the soul does not attach and the baby dies instantly when it is born; lastly the soul is made out of magic and is possibly the reason why it takes ten years after being born for someone to be able to use magic safely because the soul slowly creates and stabilizes the mana pool during those years.
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One of the scholars that was in the group was a human who went by the name of Faust. He was originally a doctor that treated simple colds in a small village with his extensive knowledge of magical alchemy but he was drawn to the unknown so he started to research the soul. He discovered the same thing as the others and was invited to join the group. He was part of the group for three years before he started to have some troubles. The others started to disregard him as a mad man with outlandish theories that could not be proven.
The madman part was actually quite true, during the three years he attempted an experiment to try and control his soul within his body. Technically it worked because he did change something about his soul but it led to the deterioration of his mind. He started to become fixated on the strangest things like the sound of the ticks in a clock or the organization of a sand hill. Theories that were just too idealistic to believe were starting to come out of him and led to his eventual dismissal from the group.
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In the realm Pride another civil war had just ended. The battlefield is littered with corpses from both sides, most are that of the losers. The smell of death and iron float in the air warning those that death still lurks nearby but inviting scavengers for a meal. The only thing strange about this battlefield would have to be the flow of the magic in the area. All of the magic was converging on one point in the battlefield, a small hole filled with blood. Slowly this blood starts to collect itself together into a ball, tendrils of blood start to flow across bodies and grass over to the ball of blood. Once it reached about one and a half feet in diameter it started to float up into the air.
It was at this point a spectator who if it was anyone else would have run away, started to run towards the ball and used magic to compress it into a large jar. This person was of course the delusional Doctor Faust.
“They called me crazy! But at last my theory was right! In a field that has been stained by death for multiple millennia, the amount of souls that leave the bodies here may cause an anomaly like this! An intelligent creature born from an object that isn’t living, it shouldn’t be possible but here it is right in front of me!” He screams out jumping up a small bit in joy.
He stands there holding the jar triumphantly in his hand and continues on rambling about the greatness of his discovery for hours on end.