Sentient beings/people:
.)Colourful orb - Might be God, might be a figment of my imagination. Might as well be the emperor of slug people for all I know.
.)Trey/Me - I'm me, 'Nuff said. Seriously, there is nothing to tell, other than the fact that for some reason I'm immortal. See? I'm just an everyday normal guy.
.)Steve DeGrieve - Some dude who wrote the magic book my parents had. I don’t know, never met him, and never heard of him otherwise.
.)Khanos – Some dude who's a master mage. How should I know about him? If you recall I was dead at the time of our meeting, killed by him.
.)Jeanne – Some kind of paladin lady, better stay away, don’t want anything to do with the church.
.)Aeania – Some daemon lady with an Axe.
.)Kingsley – Swordsmanship mentor and master tactician for Jeanne. Why keep asking me these things? I just read from the picture cards descriptions. I haven’t even met the guy. What do you want from me?
Races:
.)Humans - Pretty much self-explanatory. They are the majority of a race from where I come from. As always there are some that think themselves above other races because of this, but it's not like racism is that common with only humans. Everyone's a little bit racist inside anyway, it’s just how well you can hide it. Though I like to think I'm over such a little things as judging someone by their race, making jokes "As smelly as an ogre" is still something I do from time to time. As I grew up in a location that shares space with humans and daemons whom you interact with every day, it quickly tends to fix your prejudices against them.
.)Demons - Basically evil beings, not much to go by as a description, as they tend to differ greatly, but at least most of them have horns. Most demons are just animals possessed by evil beings, while some are Daemons that have lost their minds or ways. Demonization induces faster horn growth and animalistic/grotesque deformations that are easy to distinguish, this transformation is irreversible. Thankfully, this does not happen that often and in all cases is because daemon wanted to gain power that came with the transformation, as the mind loss only comes after approximately 3 days of transformation. Most daemons turned demon, chose to go die in the wilderness or by knights hand so that they don't hurt their loved ones. All demons, both turned daemons and beast types can awaken intelligence after gaining enough power, though this is a really rare occurrence. Nothing of the old personality remains behind and the being born is one of pure evil. No need to say that after that 99.99% of them still remain deeply on the "We will first torture you and then kill you" list. I say 99.99%, but honestly I have never heard of that 0.01%, nevertheless, it's always nice to be optimistically at times where there is nothing to be optimistic about.
.)Daemons - Not to be mistaken with demons, as that would just be rude and you don't want to be rude when 30% of our village and closest town population are daemons. Daemons do not share common ancestry with demons, the only reason they can become one if given enough stimulation is that they are more closely tuned to the spirit world. Given enough reason, they might take up a contract with an evil spirit, but as that’s practically a death sentence, rarely anyone chose to do so. In most cases their personalities are quite a bit similar to humans, well maybe a bit more leaning on violent side (just a bit), but that is probably because they have been pushed around a bit more than the rest of society. You know, because they look different and may turn into a demon if you push them too far and stupid people find it hard to adapt to different things. In past, I knew a daemon called Miez T'raodri, was a nice guy. That is until someone killed his wife then proceeded to rape and kill his daughters. Chose to turn into a demon for revenge. Guy got scary real fast. Let’s just say the bandits didn't leave full corpses. I don't blame the guy though, was some seriously fucked up shit, I probably would choose the same.
.)Ogres - The most cultured and gentle beings around the planet. People are used to saying that ogres are the kindest and helpful beings around. Yeah right... Most live in tribes, go to war, and kill. While this may be true for some other races too, someone just ramped-up the ogre violence setting when creating them a bit more than for the other races. Besides that, they basically eat everything they kill, that includes humans and other sentient races. It's not easy to hold a conversation when the other party is constantly thinking if you would taste better if they cooked you first and added salt and pepper, or just plain raw. They are responsible for most non-monster related problems. While they may be scary and violent. They are still not considered monsters, as they are sapient and can be reasoned with, well... provided you are in the power position during the conversation and have not pissed them over by breaking one of their many tribal rules. As one of the sentient races they are provided with Star council’s seat, but they mostly chose to ignore council meetings, unless, it’s something considering their race or going to war.
.)Beastman – People with bestial traits. Don’t ever joke about if their ancestors fucked a beast to become like this. I learned this the hard way, lost a tooth and couldn’t walk for a week. Fuckers can’t even take a joke. Truth be told, that was me being an edgy teen asshole, we all had those dark periods in life. Thankfully, a few good beatings after I said the wrong things to the wrong people, have made me a better person, and I've met some great beastman fellows since then. They are not that bad, especially when you don’t start your conversations by insulting them. Ahh almost forgot - don’t pull on their tails, even if it’s a cute girl, that’s a black eye just waiting to happen.
Geography:
Planet/world - Achyria. I don't know much about it, even though I was basically forced to watch as it was created and grew. That still leaves me with nothing more than an impression. If you had the chance to look at your planet being created and all the history happening until then in from of your eyes, all that timespan compressed in 3 days’ time, how much of it would you understand without being given any context before? Well, it's pretty big for one, I guess. Has 3 continents. It's cold in North, warmer near the middle, with deserts at the middle part being commonplace, and cold in the south (As far as I could tell by all the snow I saw on both of planets poles).
.)Continents:
*Central continent – This is where the action currently takes place.
.)Empires:
*Great Kundun Empire – Empire where I live in. The remote village I come from didn’t really interact with any royalty of the empire so I have no idea about the political structure of it. Honestly, I don’t even want to know, seems like a drag.
*Great Beast lands – Don’t let the name fool you. This is a full-fledged empire, run by a warrior race of ohhh… you guessed it, Beastman.
.)Cities:
*Sanctorum – Holy city, where the church of Holy Fire headquarters lies. Probably, the worst place for me to be right now.
.)Towns:
*Bristol - Town from which I was riding at the beginning of my journey, in order to reach my home village, now a smoking ruin.
.)Villages:
*Home village also known as Greenville - This is where I live. Nothing much to say about it, it's just a combination of about 25 wooden houses inside a wooden fence, though the count varies greatly as storms tend to take some of them down. All-in-all boring and dirty place, where having a good work ethic is emphasized and being fun shunned. Now I just hope it’s still intact.
.)Rivers:
Alsa – the river that divides us from the wilderness. Not that spectacular of a river. It doesn’t even stand close to Central continents largest river Aranka.
Aranka – Central continents largest river. It flows through half of the continent from the Misty Mountains to south sea.
.)Mountains:
Misty Mountains – Covers west part of the continent. Unexplored, large, scary, covered in all kinds of beasts. That’s enough for me to know that I don’t want to go there.
Beasts/animals:
.)Brahham - Commonly used as a steed, animal for hard field work, food source. Not really known for being smart animals. All the smart animals ether fear or eat humans, while Brahhams only need a bit of a food and shelter as a reward and they are already ready to basically slave away for us, though I have seen humans do the same for as little as that. Weigh about 2 tons, but its speed can reach about 80 km/h. You might ask, why I know so much about them. Well as I kid I used to read books my parents had. Unfortunately, they had about 2 of them and one of those were common animals and beasts of Kundun. You would not believe how many times you can re-read the same book when you only have 2.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
*Donny - My steed, for now... One day I will ride dragons and drink vine with the Gods, mark my words! Jokes aside, he is not known as one of the smartest individuals of his species, there is absolutely nothing special about him otherwise. If anyone wonders why an animal would promptly decide to sleep just because he can’t see, then blame brahham raising techniques. It’s common practice to cover their heads with sacks so they don’t wander off at night.
.)Trolls – From the useless domestic beasts and animals (please don’t mistake my usage of beasts as in beast people. Nobody ever calls them beasts. In addition, the Great Beast lands are something people just started to call their empire. I think it was meant more like an insult because Kundun Empire has suffered numerous losses to them over the last 100 or so years. I’m not sure what they call it themselves. Anyway, if you really want to call a Beastman beast, just be prepared to back up that claim with power; else get smacked around by them.) Soo... Where were we? Ahh yes - from the dumb brahhams we arrive at one of the world’s deadliest predators. Trolls are known for their lack of manners around the dinner table. Well that, and smashing everything that comes inside their territory to tiny little pieces. If you ever want to kill a troll (God knows why you would want to do that totally insane thing) beware of their high regenerative powers. Medium sized cuts stop bleeding seconds after they are made and small cuts heal almost instantly. This means you need to use magic, preferably fire magic, or if you are good enough, scratch that, I mean insane enough, you can use huge 2-handed swords and aim for the throat or eyes. Honestly, last time group of adventuring swordsman went to kill a troll, 17 of them died, and the 3 that managed to escape, refused to talk about the experience. To this day, it has been known as one of the biggest blunders an adventurer party has ever made.
.)Wabbits – Next on our list is the mighty wabbit! This evil incarnate feasts upon woman and children alike. Every day we lose half our population to the menace th… Okay, I can’t keep going on with a straight face. Wabbits are what happens when you breed wolves with rabbits using mana as a catalyst. The original intention was to create something similar to war-dogs with amazing jumping abilities, to hone in on enemies faster and to decrease meat consumption by adding grass to their diet. The final product, however, was a failure on all fronts. Not only did it make it hard for them to consume meat and grass, so they had to rely on specific forest berries for sustenance, it also made them lose any grace of wolf speed and rabbits leap. While their inborn instincts still make them hunt other animals for food. It almost always ends with them misjudging their physical abilities and landing face first in trees. It’s a wonder they managed to not go extinct by now, but the combination of fast breeding rate of rabbits and some researcher who felt sorry for them and introduced special berries as food in local forests, they somehow held on. While the meat is not particularly tasty, people still hunt them for it.
.)Wispfox –
Man1: “It’s a wisp!”
Man2: “No, it’s a fox!”
Scholar: “It’s wispfox!”
Man1: “What’s a wispfox?”
Scholar: “Who cares? At least it’s not trying to eat us like everything else in this bloody forest.”
As a resulting combination of two cunning beings, we get a fox that doesn’t need food or sleep and has gained the ability to use illusion magic, thus wispfoxes have no real natural predators. Little is known of their lifestyle and reproduction though they are called forest guardians and trickster spirits. Nobody can say for sure if they are really guarding anything, but they do like playing tricks on people. Thankfully, those are mostly innocent and almost never end in death or injury. There are few guesses as to why they are so playful; most common one is that because of the loss of need of sustenance, their lives are so boring that they search for entertainment in games and tricks. Another one stems from the fact that both creatures individually are famed for their cunning and tricking so, the combination of two started to define their lifestyle and took over their basic instincts.
Various items:
.)Crystals/gems - while uses vary greatly with the skill of mage who uses it. In general crystals and gems can contain magic inside them. It’s like a magic storage item. Novice mages can add triggers to them essentially making a spell with a switch or in my case it might as well been a bloody magic mine.
*Quartz crystal - Most commonly used magic storage device and cheapest.
Various terms:
.)Mage - A powerful individual that can draw from the world’s mana, to bind its power to his will, and create feats not possible through conventional means. Technically everyone’s a mage, at least a sleeping one. More practically, to become a mage one needs to go through what is called awakening. Nobody really knows how to induce a state of awakening with 100% surety, but many agree that experiencing life and death situations or by meditating, one is more likely to awaken. Even then, only 1 out of 1000 people become an awakened mage and even less of that go further to become novice mages. Mostly because they don't even know they have awakened. Not all people after seeing visions think they have awakened, most just think they had drunk too much, got drugged, dreamed the whole thing or received a sign from God. An awakened person only differs from a mage with having the potential to draw in mana, having potential and actually doing it is not the same. In some strange cases, mostly the ones in life and death situations, a person can not only awaken but even cast his first magic spell. This usually shows what type of magic specialization one is most suited for. For example, casting a fireball to kill your enemy in a desperate situation, might lead to you either being suited to specialize in casting fireballs (duh…) more open path of fire element or the broadest path of destruction magic. While casting spells like healing may lead to specialization of healing mage, white mage or support mage. That asshole who cast flash on the crystal ether belonging to a white / fire/ support/destruction school of magic. In this case, I can't really be sure. There are too many possible combinations, to have a blind guess how the spell in crystal worked. It might be one of those as the most likely scenario or he could be water mage that focused light by forming ice for all I know. Though in that case, he was at least apprentice mage for sure. As doing that with water is much harder than just unleashing light as a white mage. As you can tell, you can do the same things in many different ways, each having their pros and cons.
Drawing upon mana and practising spells can increase your mana pool and make you better at controlling mana (this leads to you wasting less of it while making a spell), thus letting you cast more spells before getting tired of mana lack. Being novice/apprentice/etc. is more of a mage guilds guideline at how strong a mage is. As the test for next level checks how large is your mana pool and how complex spells you may cast. Though again, in the end, while you can check mana pool capacity pretty well, checking spell control and spell complexity is harder and is mostly done with larger margins for error. If one mage professor says your firestorm is complex and you have good control over it and another says, that this is the worst spell control and complexity he has seen, who's to say where the truth lies. In the end, all that matters are the results you can produce in real life and death situations, and it’s not unheard of that an apprentice takes down adept.
In the end, you can follow these guidelines - If you can instead of simple flame cast a giant fireball you are probably an apprentice. If you can produce grand fire spell of pyroblast you are probably master magician, and If the sky is covered in falling fireblasts, with firestorm raging all around, you might be an archmage or you might have sacrificed your soul to an evil spirit for a chance to do some serious damage to your enemies after which you will proceed to die in orderly manner as your soul gets consumed.
*Mage class:
* Novice Sorcerer
* Apprentice Sorcerer
* Adept Sorcerer
* Master Sorcerer
* Grandmaster Sorcerer
* Archmage Sorcerer
* Legendary Sorcerer
*List of magic user classifications:
There are 3 kinds of mage, those that tend to a role they feel suit them most, those that tend to use a single element and those that specialize in a single thing and then pushes that single thing to a perfection. The commonly preferred way is to chase the middle path of elemental magic as the 2 big spell utility paths are too diverse and can lead you to become master of nothing and novice of everything. While the specialized path may leave you with too many openings. So sure you can master all the elements and become legendary avatar of nature (granted you get to live for few tens of thousands of years to fulfil that) or you can specialize in healing and get killed because you have nothing to protect you, or you can do as most of the mages have done, and go for a single element that you feel is the most compatible with you. That should cover most of your bases and is the safest road.
Destruction magic is for people who hate having unbroken things lying about. They usually pick the most powerful combinations of spells, such as fire plus lightening with a bit of earth. Fire for direct targets, lightning from sky and earth from underneath your foes.
Support magic includes all healing spells, buffs, shield and other things that don’t blow your enemy straight apart. For some reason, support mages tend to be less aggressive that destruction mages. We will never know why (sarcasm ensues).
* Destruction magic
* Support magic
Every element can be used under any magic style choice. It's just that it’s easier to set people on fire than to cast protective fire shield that doesn't simultaneously cook your ally alive inside it. That’s why some elements are more suited for different styles of magic. White magic for healing, earth for defence, fire for pyromaniacs, etc.
* Elemental mages
=Fire
=Water
=Earth
=Wind
=Lightning
=Wood
=White
=Dark
* Specialized mages – I know I shit talked specialized mages, but not all is bad on that front. Specialization can be pretty much anything from any element. From a guy who can do wonders with metal (as metal is part of the bigger school of earth magic) creating mechanical marvels and durable armour to a guy who can use wood magic to only grow pretty flowers. In the latter case they are called flower mages and depending on their skill level are either ridiculed by their peers or showered in money by some of the empires princesses as they tend the royal gardens.
.)Mana - In simple terms it’s a source of all magical power. Though for all the mages know about its origins, it might as well be Gods smelly body odour that flows around the planet. The only thing mages have discovered about it - it's almost everywhere, some places more than others, and that it is necessary for magic (duhh. you could have figured that out yourself). Most magic creatures need mana to stay "magic" (another duhh.) Well, I guess as long as it works I’m not complaining, who needs to know what godly armpit it crawled out from. You don't need to know what’s in the air for you to be able to breathe, you do it anyway, same as mana, and while some people definitely want to know, nobody has any concrete evidence to its origins. Oh, and using it gets people tired, as you start lacking mana in your body after emptying your mana pool. My guess that it's the Gods way of balancing things out, so people don't just go around shooting fireballs left and right.
Monster/creature/animal representations:
1. Brahham
Brahham [http://i67.tinypic.com/24o0iv7.png]
2.Wispfox
Wispfox [http://i63.tinypic.com/21kkpzn.jpg]
3.Wabbit
Wabbitpic1 [http://i68.tinypic.com/34fxohs.png]