Whenever I Think About Advancement Of The Elves Compared To Real Life Human Technological Advancement,

I finally took the time to photograph my vintage dip pen nib collection, and I need to share with you all how wonderful and diverse their designs are.

These two are my favorite. Just look at them! One of them is named Gorille and the other Mephisto, but to me they're little pumpkins.

And of course you gotta love the Pinocchio nib. You get to write with the nose of a tiny guy! Just not something you get to do anymore.

Universal Lore- Part 4, The Elemental Planes

All life has the drive to evolve, whether they know it or not. Some are fated to lose the race of genetic and intellectual superiority, some never achieve the creation of civilization, and it is debatable whether or not some will ever even achieve sentience.

Some beings are beyond evolution in the High Realms they isolate themselves in, beings that perceive themselves as the closest to the ideal of perfection and thus are stagnant so long as they believe so.

Some beings are the purest form of evolution, elemental beings that can alter the shape and thought of life through assimilation but could be mistaken as mindless to those that fail to understand a simple truth: the purest defiance of fate is evolution.

If the High Realms represent the driving hand of fate, the Elemental Planes represent the breathing will of life.

These elementals, of course, have their own realm, or rather level of existence, that they are born in- physically it is beneath the Lower Realms, but is as deeply intertwined to the other's existence as are the High Realms and Lower Planes, and is (if anything) closer to mortals than High Realms beings are.

The purest of elements are Stellar, Flame, Air, Earth- the first elements that drive evolution before water and nature come forth, and thus these elements are the ones that make up each sector of the planes where the first elementals came.

The planes form as a vast cave system would, the four largest chambers each holding an elemental core, and from these cores do the energies coalesce and birth new elementals into the current Existence.

The elementals, though beings of pure energy, are unstable lifeforms in their first century of existence, and there is a high chance for their forms to separate into core and body.

The body is capable of developing its own core through the energy created by the division, and so it becomes a physical elemental. The core does not develop its own body, but in exchange gains greater intelligence, and so it becomes an ethereal elemental. On occasion, one half may not become an elemental at all and collapses back to a basic energy state that lacks consciousness. Some elements are more prone to splitting compared to others, and some may only form as a specific type by default.

Air is closest to the ideal of formless freedom, and thus they may only become ethereal elementals.

Stars are second closest to the ideal of steadfast perpetuity, and thus they may become both physical and ethereal but have a greater tendency to form as the latter.

Flame is closest to the ideal of mastery through trial, and thus they may equally become physical or ethereal.

Earth is the closest to the ideal of corporeal self, and thus they may only become physical elementals.

The few elementals that remain whole in both physical form and ethereal mind become Potentates that anchor the Planes, voluntarily falling into eternal stasis until their cores burn out to maintain the existence of the realm.

But what of the impure elements that too drive evolution, and what of hybrids of the four?

They do not exist on the Elemental Planes, instead being born upon individual worlds in the Lower Planes and the in-betweens of space.

Some are "natural" in a sense, water and nature elementals while not being true elementals are at least considered half-elementals and naturally come into existence upon worlds with Potential, although they are a sort of byproduct of evolution. Due to this, they can freely choose between a physical or ethereal form.

Some are created unnaturally, being hybrid elementals born from the collision of pure elementals and/or half-elementals. Whether they are physical or ethereal is dependent on the property of the material they resemble, with storm elementals being ethereal and crystal elementals being physical.

All, however, are capable of assimilation and all share the drive to evolve and become greater beings. They seek Potential and to spread their influence, either being born from said Potential or drawn to it from the Elemental Planes.

When a world meets the threshold of Potential either through an event or natural evolution, Elementals will cross into it and fuse with certain mortals to their whim, merging their ideals and thought and spirit and form in order to create an "evolved being".

These evolved beings become almost a separate race from the race they came from, with some being genetically different(or may not even have genes left) and some still having genetic similarity to their original race but difference in ability and appearance, though all will now have a core akin to an elemental's, and so their lives become intertwined with the power of the core and the ability to pass onto the Realms of Death is forfeited.

When the core's energy fades or the core shatters, so will their consciousness, and they too will meet the same fate as an elemental that fails to return to their birthplace should they have one- reversion to their element's base material.

Such was the fate of the Sky Lords of Avianaen that became no more than the passing breeze, and so did the silent Åskorhaia sentries that became stone and Mountainheart.

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Taglist for writing-

@aneci

If anyone else would like to join the taglist, feel free to DM me or send in an ask! I will also have a separate taglist for art posts.

Oversimplified Elvaria Lore- Part 2, Classical History, coming to a place near you

When? No idea, but heads up that it will be split in half because it's going to be long as crap. First half is the Age of the Cycelian Empires, telling of the three(four originally) kingdoms that came before the modern ones. Second half are The Age of Shadows and the Age of New Kingdoms following the end of the Cycelian Empires from an event called The Fall. By the way, if these oversimplifications aren't doing it for you, feel free to either ask in my ask page for more detail or comment on a blog for the proper bullet point form. There was once a full story format but that got scrapped because of lore revisions

Side Note To Fan Fic Authors

Here’s the thing.

I read a lot of scripts.  A lot.  From professionals to aspiring writers to complete newbies.  Features and pilots.  Specs and treatments.

And 8 times out of 10 the fan fic that I’ve read over the last, oh, 15 years is leagues better than this stuff.  It’s more inspired.  It’s more compelling.  It’s genre bending and creative and heartfelt.  It’s well-paced and intense and funny and sexy and meaningful.  It’s smart and thoughtful and good.  It’s novel-quality.  Better than, sometimes.

Rare is the script I don’t want to put down, but how often have we stayed up until 3am to get to the last chapter of a 100k fic? And it’s not even a fan fic author’s day job.  This is what they do on the side.  In their spare time.  For free.

So my point is, fan fic authors, you’re good.  You’re good writers and great storytellers.  I know it doesn’t always feel like it, especially if you’re one of the authors who’s not a BNF and doesn’t get the notes/hits that a few do.  And  because some people still view fic as “not real writing.” You guys know the shit that gets made into movies.  You’re better than that.  So be better than that.  If writing is what you think want to do, then just know you’re already doing it.   You’ve already started.

And you’re more talented than you might think.

Guess what, the bots are evolving They sent crap to my askbox you've got to be kidding me

Universal Lore- Part 2, The Realms of Death(The Realm of Endless White & The Realm of Skybeasts)

When observing the order of realms in this existence, it is fair to say that the High Realms are roughly in the same level as The Realm of Endless White, but most denizens of either will never encounter the other.

This realm is, as it is aptly named, pure white. There is no civilization there, and when first entering it may seem that there is simply nothing there at all. It is simply a realm of expansive ground that has no variation in topography- but there is "life", or rather the remnants of life.

To explain the Realm of Endless White, you must first know of the Realm of Skybeasts, where all dead from the Lower Planes must pass through first before they reach the White.

Whether they have sinned or were gracious in life, or were mere children or elderly before their deaths, all life of the Lower Planes is sent here and enters through a doorway known as Telvorshei Ermelorisk, or "From Where We Emerged". No living being*¹ has ever crossed through this entryway or has gazed through it to describe its appearance- but for those nearing death and those who have already died, on both ways there is only a white light within the doorway. High Realms races are unaware of the existence of this realm and none have ever entered it*².

The doorway is located in a fixed spot within the Realm of Skybeasts, but whether the entry into a realm of death is a peaceful or horrifying ordeal is a matter of your own luck. As anyone who has died would quickly find out, the Realm of Skybeasts, also known as The Plateau, is filled with strange beasts known as skybeasts, and the vast majority of them are incredibly aggressive and possess a great many ways to kill a soul, including various venoms, spikes, and teeth.

If a soul did not get mauled by a skybeast as soon as they emerged, they will very quickly also realize that in contrast with the inviting clouds that create the ground of the realm, there are a great many eyes that dot the sky in all sorts of colours and forms that a mortal never would've thought existed. On a calm period, these eyes are inactive and appear to not be present(thought if you look closely they are closed). On an active period, they will randomly emit blasts of energy that can disintegrate any soul they land on. In the distance there is also a giant gaping maw that opens during these active periods and vacuums up souls that happen to be near it.

If you manage to survive this and travel in any direction away from the maw, you will come across rudimentary shelters and outposts surrounded by fences made of various Skybeast parts.

These are the only major signs of civilization and a souls' best chance of making it to the Realm of Endless White.

The outposts are roughly the size of a town and they have very simplistic names, with the inhabitants are a mix of races from across the Lower Planes. There is no major language barrier as souls appear knowing a common language along with whatever is their native tongue, but abstract ideas that are unique to specific worlds are not automatically learned by souls from worlds without them.

As for the condition of the people and whether or not they can die, people who die at the age of adulthood for their kind will appear in the Plateau at their peak strength in life and with whatever they had on their person when they died(if they were stabbed or shot they carry the thing that was stuck into them too), but are incapable of learning new spells from other souls. Children and adolescents will appear at the age they died but will be able to grow up to the age their species considers as mature and can learn new spells. The only ways to permanently die in the realm are to be consumed by the maw, be completely eaten by a skybeast, or be blasted into smithereens by the Eyes. Souls that suffer a temporary death may slowly regenerate if a part of them remains or will reappear at Telvorshei Ermelorisk.

Life in these settlements is considered somewhat tribal, with the main concerns being food(appetites are significantly slower than in life), shelter, hunting and resource gathering, and weapon crafting. Some settlements that are close to each other will choose to specialize in weapon crafting, some in building, and some in medicine. Souls that are known to have a violent nature that cannot be persuaded to become skybeast hunters are kicked out of the settlements and left to fend for themselves.

Banditry does exist in the Plateau but is rare as some settlements may have domesticated the more tame skybeasts. Whether or not a settlement is raided also depends on the actual species(plural) in the settlement and what kind of technology the people have, so a bandit group composed of species without magic would not try to go against a settlement composed of species with magic or with technology sufficient enough to compensate for a lack of magic.

Now, the Plateau does have a sort of leadership, albeit very distant from the regular souls.

The beings are not of any race among the souls of the Plateau, so souls that have encountered them before(and have the concept of divinity on their world) view them as strange gods. Those from races without the concept of divinity have two different views, one being that they are of a long extinct race and have evolved after spending many uncountable years in the Plateau, and the second that they are actually native to the Plateau but evolved to become more intelligent than the skybeasts.

The leaders themselves are known as the 7 Elders by souls and are split into two groups: The Supreme Ones and The Fragments.

From what little souls have heard about them, their names have the prefix "The Elder of" and are something akin to Many Eyes, Many Arms, Many Legs, Fragmented Life, Fragmented Death, Fragmented Time, and Fragmented Space. The maw in the land and the eyes in the sky are part of what used to be an 8th Elder known as Many Mouths, according to souls that have been in the realm from the first few thousand deaths in existence. Now, the 8th is known as The Devourer of the Plateau.

The Elders live in a very out of place citadel with geometric patterning and a large central chamber that few have ever seen, and it is generally accepted that the Elders are strange in that they have never left the Plateau.

Souls are able to leave the Plateau whenever they hit a kill quota of skybeasts, and this number tends to be higher for those that have committed something their society considers to be negative and lower for younger souls that couldn't actually commit anything considered a crime, but it isn't uncommon for souls to have quotas that are unreasonable for what they have done in life.

The Elders, though, have been present for as long as anyone knows, unable to pass on or perhaps unwilling, as the Devourer has consumed some trillions of skybeasts but has yet to disappear.

And so the focus must return to the Realm of Endless White, also known as The White or The Expanse, to complete this description.

When a soul has reached their kill quota in the Plateau, they will appear in The White in simple garb considered to be casual or sleepwear from the species they came from. In The White there is no need to eat or sleep, only to just exist. Desires such as lust or greed do not exist, and so the personalities of the souls that make it there are very watered down. Some souls choose to lay down and sleep until the end of everything, and some others choose to travel around and learn of the many races in existence with there being no skybeasts to fear anymore.

Curiously, some Altersaeans, Spaelculans, and Tilemgians have appeared in this realm before, but not many of them.

Now, the only way to permanently kill a High Realms being is to slay them in their home realm under specific circumstances and methods, which will lead to two outcomes for them: one is two simply cease to exist, the other is to appear in The White. Due to The Tearing, there are a fair amount of Tilemgians there, but all the High Realms races that appear will lose their connection to their creators and thus their abilities, with some also facing severe memory loss.

Voiskanans are believed to also follow these outcomes, however what few Voiskanans that are seen to make it to The White only maintain their existence for a few seconds before fading into nothingness, as their souls will always be incomplete and thus return to their origins.

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¹- The most immediately noticeable case is with Yūregian undead, which are technically not alive but also aren't fully dead. A Yūregian necromancer can raise a body if it's intact enough, but on the soul end, the closer a Yūregian soul gets to reaching the quota, the harder it is to raise them into undeath. If the soul manages to meet the quota, they can no longer be raised as The White fully severs the connection between the Lower Planes and Realms of Death. However, this almost never happens as necromancers are fast acting enough to prevent a soul from being in the Plateau for more than a week. As to whether the necromancers know of the Plateau, the memories of it are wiped from the undead individual and are restored temporarily each time they return to it.

²- Tilemgians may become the first exception to this as they are now semi-mortal after the Tearing of Boriasonde, so it's possible that a few that don't end up ceasing to exist after death will end up in the Plateau. Alternatively, the descendant races of them that are scattered throughout existence could reach total mortality close enough that at some point they'd be admitted to the realm as any other mortal race would.

There will be a short story posted at some point that will explain the origins of the Elders, so look out for it! This post will be linked to it too.

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Taglist for writing-

@aneci

If anyone else would like to join the taglist, feel free to DM me or send in an ask! I will also have a separate taglist for art posts.

heya! I don't know if you celebrate but:

merry christmas❣️🎁 and a happy new year!✨

Hello!!! I don't really celebrate but happy holidays to you too 🎉!

If you're from NA I hope you're doing well and keeping warm these past days, the weather is brutal right now-

Oversimplified-ish Elvaria Lore- Part 2, Classical History(Age of the Cycelian Empires)

We cut back to Elvaria lore where we ended off last time, being there's now whole ass kingdoms that are quickly becoming empires Big 3 are Solaris, kingdom of the sun, Lunaris, kingdom of the moon, and Urthalis, kingdom of the sunrise and sunset There's a 4th smaller kingdom that is on the same continent as Lunaris called Estellis, which is the kingdom of the stars There's also a massive storm in the center point of where all the continents would meet Remember the Åkthora? Yeah they're the ones that are living on a small floating set of islands surrounded by extreme storms, and now they're known as Åsterlis but still isolated Miners quickly discover veins of Asurei which are the energies that course through the world Golden Age incoming with breakthroughs in magic and practical application of Asurei into inventions, turns the big 3 kingdoms into empires Golden Age would become known as The Prosperous Gold or Golden Age of the Prosperity Technologically, the world would hit something similar to the 1990s Estellis was particularly advanced but hid their hyperadvanced shit underground after they found out about something they weren't supposed to

Estellans hit a technological point equivalent to the not so distant human future Asurei experiments start early on in the Prosperous Gold and continue for thousands of years Estellis is absorbed into Lunaris via treaty somewhere at the 50,000 year mark An organization called the Accord of Oracles rises into prominence as trusted aides of royalty, and the people in it are blessed(or cursed?) by otherworldly beings with control over time to give them foresight -Roughly 490,000 years of experiments and prosperity pass by until the oracles warn the empires of the end of their glory through an event that will come to be known as The Fall They warned them of the folly of careless experimentation and complacency with the world with no cautions, but at the meeting of the empires, they were written off as madmen The Empress of Urthalis completely disregarded the warnings as she believed that Urthalisan technology was flawless, and the suggest otherwise was a slight on her kingdom's intelligence The King of Solaris believed that the oracles had begun speaking nonsense and had lost their gifts, only becoming doomsayers to sow chaos among the rulership of the empires The King of Lunaris briefly considered the possibility that the warnings were true, but decided to write off his worries and trust in the judgement of his fellow monarchs The representatives with Lunaris that represented the old kingdom of Estellis would side with the oracles, not doubting the truth of their warnings

These representatives held no true power though, and ended up being removed from their positions by the judgement of the 3 monarchs under the reason of doubting the prowess of the empire and conspiracy. The Accord of Oracles was then forcefully dissolved and the Asurei experiments continued as those 10,000 years slowly ran their course, until that fateful day where an oversight in Urthalisan storage chamber systems caused pure Asurei energy to leak and then explode. These chambers were each roughly the size of a lake and were spread across and around the capital city of Urthalis, and the detonation of one set off all the others, creating a massive blast that would decimate roughly 6,300 km of land from the force alone The rings of destruction around it brought debris that rained down on many more people and choked the sky with dust and rubble, but what would kill the most people would be the Asurei contamination itself There was a good reason why the most potent Asurei ran deep within the group in veins and the commonly used Asurei was impure and in less concentrated amounts in the air, and that was because pure Asurei was pure poison and acted similar to radiation This would mark the end of the Prosperous Gold, and thus the empires fell in under a week, them now realizing too late that their mistake to not heed the words of the oracles was fatal This event would become known as The Fall from then on- the fall of the Cycelian empires and all they had worked for, and the fall of the people as the world descended into darkness and chaos- But this is not the end of Elvaria's story.

Anyone begging you seriously please comment, the only things I have on hand are tales(not even a large amount of them), old info I may or may not have to edit(and even then content to recycle isn't a lot, it's maybe two or three posts), and artifact lore which never got anywhere when I started thinking about it four years ago

So now that the high realms are done we're going downwards in this order:

Part 2: The Realms of Death- Realm of Endless White + Realm of Skybeasts Part 3: The Mortal Realms- Lower Planes + Lesser Realms

Part 4: The Elemental Planes- Realms of fire, air, stellar, and earth(all in one go) Some of these will be more lore heavy, some will just be explanations of how they work. These are also paired by if one is necessary to explain the other or if there's just not enough info to justify making a whole separate post.

Also yes I'm going to be posting throughout this week now that I'm finally able to fuck around(temporarily). Just not daily posts because I'll probably go crazy or hit writer's block again if I do that.

Big question though: What would you all like to see when the focus goes back to Elvaria as I finish up the universe building?

Oversimplified(?) Elvaria Lore- Part 4, Kingdom History(Key Points, Major Kingdoms H-Z)

Hikarina- The Alshaljilan Bloodline and the Tear of the Eclipsed Sun

During the establishment of Hikarina, one of the surviving Solarians' descendants happened to maintain ownership of the Tear of the Eclipsed Sun, an old artifact created during the peak of the Cycelian Empires era that meant to embody the might of Solaris. Inside of it was bits of power from every Solarian that was alive during the time. So they're a descendant of the artifact keepers of that era that were entrusted to keep documents of everything powerful created in the kingdom and also protect those items, but the only thing that their ancestor in particular managed to keep ahold of was the Tear The Tear is powerful enough to allow more sunlight to pierce through the sky filled with debris and more shit starts to fall from the sky, and is also strong enough to create a barrier around the new kingdom of Hikarina to leave it in eternal day. Become of that individual holding control over the Tear, they ended up becoming the leader of the new Hikarinans and would build a central cathedral in what'd come to be known as Arenlia to house the Tear. This individual would also establish the Alshaljilan bloodline, which was the previous ruling bloodline of Hikarina. So that bloodline disappeared during the years right before the Warring Era, with every last one of the 10 members that existed at the time having mysteriously just vanished This created a massive power vacuum of different noble families fighting(not a war just a lot of arguing and bribery) over which would become the next ruling bloodline, and in a century the kingdom went through 5 different families. Eventually the Falisthena bloodline arose out of nowhere(literally no one had ever heard of them) and people got sick of the chaos so the majority of the population ended up following them. The ones that didn't were either threatened to accept the new leadership by others or vanished without a trace

The Falisthena bloodline doesn't suck at leadership so for now they've remained in power and not a lot of people complain about them politically

Jivankova-

Nothing really happens here, but when the Urthalisans came across them, they found the Urthalisans interesting and let them stay, with some people adopting the Urthalisan culture over time. Since then, the Urthalisan culture has changed a lot, but the original Jivankira Elthir culture has endured

Lustarise- The War of Shattered Ruby

This was in the Ember War post but giving a bit more detail

So the Geintori are Lustariseans that absorbed a shard of the core of a crystal elemental by either accidentally touching one thinking it was just a regular crystal on the ground or having a dying crystal elemental assimilate itself to a Lustarisean through merging its core with their heart

When Geintori started becoming a thing, the Lustarisean population basically went from viewing them as regular members of society to something to be researched Some Geintori didn't mind because they were hoping there'd be a way to reverse the process, some felt their personhood(elvenhood?) was violated by the research protocols One of the Geintori that was part of the latter group was Kougyuku-rub(formerly Enshoukei Kougyuku), the brother of the Shin'nyo Apolis'Asuremant at the time Enshoukei Riebuno, with both of them being ruby Lustariseans The Geintori of course got very sick of this very soon and planned a whole revolt to gain some sort of sovereignty to they wouldn't have to deal with this if they didn't want to, so Kougyuku used his leverage as Riebuno's brother to convince the team of researchers on him to let him loose and then went on a spree of freeing Geintori on the research centers A war broke out very quickly in some of the cave chambers and a plot to assassinate Riebuno was created, with Kougyuku volunteering himself to take on the task Riebuno heard of this very soon and turned up at the front lines closest to the capital to duel Kougyuku, with the terms being if Kougyuku wins then Lustarise will allow the Geintori to become a sovereign kingdom, but if he wins then Lustarise will not hesitate to quell the Geintori population with a sound based weapon that'd shatter them all as he had been lenient with them initially The duel happened and it turned out to be a draw, with Riebuno taking a large crystal spear to the heart from Kougyuku's power and Kougyuku shattering into glittering dust and ruby shards from taking on a blast of Riebuno's power point blank(he was not the High Asuremancer for no reason) Honoring the duel's terms but also recognizing that this was a tie, Lustarise would agree to let the Geintori gain partial sovereignty as a sub-kingdom rather than a whole separate kingdom, but threatened that if another war broke out then they'd use the aforementioned sound-based weapon The Geintori would accept as this was better than nothing and would gain part of the Lustarisean cave system to claim as their territory, calling the new sub-kingdom Geintora The war would be named the War of Shattered Ruby in honour of Kougyuku and Riebuno, as agreed by both sides Some shards of Kougyuku still exist, but the amount of him turned to dust means he cannot be reformed and using substitute pieces to replace his missing parts would end up creating an entirely different person. These shards and a fragment of Riebuno's crest are stored in the central building of Geintora and Kangasaki Kyusen respectively

Walekria-

N/A shit doesn't really happen there

Yukiosa- The Tale of the Brood of Orvalak

Read here

Yūregina-

N/A shit doesn't really happen there that's worth noting and hasn't been said already

Zodiana-

N/A shit doesn't really happen there