The spinning idea strikes the Draignean in the time! Draignean's time goes flying off in an arc!
Anyway, this is one of the things I slammed out while inspired by my earlier Ten Races (Do a search for Mutei in this thread if you want to look at that one) mixed with fresh and random material. The below is the most comprehensible of the things I wrote. The others are ravings on how culture, migration patterns, evolution, the sky, plants, and wind would work in the described situation.
Lychnaea
Lychnaea (Lik-nay-uh) is the name of the world of the ten races. There is no sun on Lychnaea, and all light (and thus all habitability) is given by the Phari (far-EYE) Lights.
These lights are bastions of society, wherein life can flourish, but the great lights never move. There are places on Lychnaea where the light has never touched, old places of cold and darkness, populated by ancient things that have never needed or wanted the light. Odder, there are cities within the cold darkness, immense necropoli that cannot have given home to any race for thousands of years, since before the beginning of history.
Less than a hundred years have passed since the War of the Feathers, the time the Fanai and the Keelai of the great continent Maera (May-Ra) brought their slave races (Humans, Mutei, Kadi, Aoul, Drogue, Temani, Sal-Leifnin) to war, and shattered the foundation of both cultures in the process. The slave races have been unbound, making their own culture and forging their own nations from the broken lands of their masters. It is a golden age for the former slaves, and a dark age for the masters. It is an entrepreneurial age, with power to be gained by those willing to carve it out of the decaying ruins of the broken rule of the past.
Yet something darker looms. Things stir the deep shadow, and the ancient cold of the darklands seems be more malevolent than ever before. The Lampaedus lights burn bright with cold mystery, writing sky-signs that have never before been seen, and those who dabble in the magic of the shadow seem to grow stronger by the day. There are whispers of Phari lights dimming more and brightening less during the Temprae, and of… dangerous things being written and re-written in the prophecies of light.
Phari Lights
The Phari lights are at the top of immense pillars of stone. Each pillar is different, but they all share a few general features. The pillars are vaguely crystalline in appearance, glinting more than ordinary stone should, and they appear to be completely and totally indestructible. Each pillar is carved with runes that shift day by day (The Prophecies of the Light), and are thought to predict the future, but it is impossible to mark the tower in any way. No ink, chalk, tar, or chisel can mark the surface of a Phari tower. The stone of each tower is colored, but not as though it was made of a colored stone. Rather, the stone of a Phari tower appears as though it were once grey, but has since been somehow stained by countless years of exposure to its Phari Light. Each Phari tower is at least one mile in height, and generally situated on already elevated Terrain. The tallest Phari tower, Phari-Aevitus (also known as the Light of Reason) has been measured by Academ and Sages to be approximately 2.31 miles in height. Impossibly, the great height of a Phari Tower is supported by a base that is, at the largest, 500 feet in diameter (Phari-Bae, the Light of Will). The slimmest Phari tower (Phari-Lucia, the Light of Beauty) is a scarce fifty feet in diameter, yet rises to a height of 1.67 miles! No material discovered, magical or naturally occurring, from any plane, has the strength of a Phari tower.
Phari have a light and a dark cycle that occurs at predictable intervals, but each Phari has a different interval. In turn, this leads to a series of local night and day cycles. This has, as one would expect, complicated how different nations, and even different regions within the same nation, relate with one another. Time, on a non-local scale, is typically measured by Lampaedus (See entry on the Lampaedus Lights) pulses. Phari also have a series of seasonal shifts, known collectively as the Temprae, and known individually as the as the lesser Lull, the Twilight Dimming, the greater Lull, the Dawn Dimming, and the Brightening. The Temprae is regular in cycle, such that after a Brightening (where the luminosity and radiation of all Phari intensifies noticeably) there is a period of baseline Phari activity (lesser Lull), which is then followed by the Twilight Dimming (wherein all Phari lose intensity). This is then followed by a lesser brightening, a time when the Phari return to baseline attributes (Greater Lull), which then leads to the Dawn Dimming. The Dawn Dimming is typically darker and colder than the Twilight Dimming, but will quickly give way to the Brightening with only a very brief period of baseline Luminosity. The seasons have a width that varies only slightly, and, as measured by the distance between max intensity emissions for the Light of Reason, the total cycle repeats every 466 days without fail. Other Phari will naturally have different measured lengths owing to shorter or longer light cycles, but the seasonal year can always be measured in a constant number of tower cycles.
Each Phari tower shines with a different color of light, a different luminosity, and a different degree of thermal and magical radiation. There is no determined pattern between a towers height or girth and the properties of its Phari light. Each Phari has a luminosity capable of providing effective working light in a radius of no less than 50 miles when measured of flat ground. The most intensely brilliant Phari Tower, coincidentally the tallest tower, provides effective working light in a 200 mile radius. With the exception of Mittian Phari (see below), the land grows hotter and the radiation more intense as one grows closer to a Phari tower. All towers but the Mittian have a fairly strict habitability ring: too far from the tower and you’ll freeze to death (at best), too close and the heat will kill you. Phari-Iust (The Light of Justice) has the highest measured thermal radiation intensity, creating the desert of Akka, also known as the blinding desert. Magical radiation is also variable, and much more difficult to measure quantitatively. Phari-Ghalea (The Light of Charity), is widely considered to produce the most easily used magical energy, while Phari-Striga (The Light of Power) is considered to emit the most powerful raw energy.
Some towers, known collectively as the Mittian (Mih-TEE-ahn) towers, have a cup of dark crystal directly beneath the top of the Phari tower. This crystal cup is of attenuating opacity, such that it is almost black where it emerges from the top of the tower, and almost clear at its outermost edge. This crystal effectively absorbs the Phari light, keeping the light near the tower at a uniform (habitable) intensity. As the angle decreases, the light travels farther from the tower before striking the ground and the crystal mantle grows closer to translucency, contributing to perfectly uniform light for a surprising difference. The greatest and most prosperous of cities have been built around Mittian Phari Towers.
It is important to note that the oceanic Phari, those that rise from the depths of the sea, have not been adequately measured. It is entirely possible that there are Phari in the depths that surpass all known Phari in terms of physical dimensions, luminosity, and radiation output.
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 702532 times)