Starlend
The Great Northern Kingdom of The Mountain: Starlend oversees all material forms, their constituent parts, and the processes and laws that govern their operation. Starlend is the Upper Realm Kingdom that governs everything we use, wear, stand on, breathe, think with, etc etc etc. They are in charge of all matter across all universes. Their Queen, Em the Immaculate, is not only one of the most physically-powerful beings across the Holy Verses, but definitely one of the most striking to behold, though considering what she is, that’s not difficult to believe. As matter can be composed with any traits whatsoever, even gas can have sentience and a soul, and as it is, that certainly seems to be the case with the denizens of this literally celestial land. Being a living stellar body like her fellow Starlendians, Em is composed of a singular intelligence emitting elemental mass, this can be a simple element, like carbon, or something more complex, like a supernova, nebula, or a radioactive element. In Em’s case, she’s an entire star-cluster’s worth of energy jammed into a single package, and that tends to make her very, very, very bright.
Wear Sunglasses
The emissaries of Starlend “install” their mass across the World of the Pools by regularly sweeping across it and selectively seeding appropriate amounts of themselves into it. There are huge numbers of emissaries controlling the more rudimentary elements, but the higher up the hierarchy we get, the more defined and rare the findings can become, there are even those, like Em, who can fundamentally restructure the abilities of elements – and she’s done it before. While it is considered deeply problematic by Mountain Society Terms, Starlenders have been known to mettle in the affairs of the Lower Realms many a time. What began as simple “hints” using stellar phenomena ( “Hey, look at that shooting star!” ) eventually became intercession on the levels of Breathlend, which has stretched the rules more than a couple of times. There are many occurrences of this, but the most noted would be the bestowing of Monument upon the to-be Knight Order, urging her to take the battle against Chaos, who Starlend’s emissaries see to largely be the greatest threat to The Verses due to his uh… well, let’s not get into that just yet. Just like Oidhche, Chaos appears to have some unknown trait that these sentient celestial bodies find particularly perturbing, though what it is remains to be seen. …Could there be something that they know about Ether-creatures that we do not? The plot thickens with each new discovery!
Breathlend
It’s a question that carries with it the endless fascination of a quintillion nervous dreamers. “What happens when we die?” Some believe we are judged by our actions during life, as a sort of moral litmus test to prove suitability for living the next. Others believe we may reincarnate, our elemental spirit being reforged into a new body to go for another round in the grand banquet of life. Still more believe that we simply cease, finally knowing the rainy-day peace we always longed for, but could never find the words. Between these, there’s a thousand more even more specific views: some wonderful, others hideous, but all attempting to answer that one key question.
Today, curious traveler, I give you the answer you have been waiting for:
Yes.
There you have it. You’re right. In fact, everyone’s right… sort of.
This isn’t to say the theory of Unitarianism is overtly correct in this case, because technically speaking everyone gets to go to their own place rather than everyone going to the same one… or at least that’s how it was supposed to go.
Let’s talk about Breathlend.
Composed of a wildly-overworked force of grim reapers and grand deliverers (the less popular but more-welcome cousin to the reapers) Breathlend works in the tireless pursuit of ferrying souls back and forth between layers of lower reality.
Did two lovers just hatch a new biological frame, and it hasn’t yet achieved sentience to create its own soul? Slip a reincarnation in there!
Did old man Jenkins finally take his final dive into the bayou? Yup, better go grab him and ferry him off to Heaven.
Now this may come as a shock to you, considering one would assume a “final destination” to truly be “final” but it turns out that the head of Breathlend, the rather quiet Cahl, is a bit of a golden heart and very much prefers getting people to their preferred place of rest.
“Any afterlife you want!” could be said to be their original motto.
Due to the continuous psychic ideation of sentient life, before long this outpouring of thought streamed into the collective unconscious and began budging out room in the undefined space of the Lower Realms. Like water digging over millennia into the faces of a mountain, sentient thought cuts its way slowly and with all certainty to create verses that gain a life all their own: an entire universe formed from the products of the mind.
For most sentient life, all this thought of the afterlife provides a “trail” to these realms that they’re defining with their imagination, so once they’re dead, the Breathlender assigned to them already has their road cut out for them: they simply ferry the detached soul along their personal little towing line, and deliver them.
That’s usually how it goes, but every now and again there are individuals that “uncoil”: those who have thought so little of the afterlife, or perhaps have thought so much of something in a certain way, that they end up manifesting something they do not desire as their eternity, like knocking on the door to the wrong pub, or simply having no pub to go at all.
It’s not a perfect system. It’s been a topic of debate among the Upper Realms (particularly Inklend and Breathlend, considering the other two kingdoms aren’t… what we might say, very social) for some time, but Cahl won’t budge on everything…
Rest assured, a soul tends to reach their preferred destination eventually, but this process can take… well, millennia, depending on how the metaphorical coffin crumbles.
Breathlend is unique among the Upper Realms, as it is the only kingdom up here that recruits from the Lower Realms, aka the World of the Pools.
Prodigious preservers and deliverers of life, as well as the takers of life are all considered for employment, but no more are as revered (and reviled) as the mythical La’Coss family.
Starting out with Jack La’Coss in the last days of good ol’ Lati, he was a man who stacked bodies like no one else before him. Abusing stolen arts from the old academy, he accessed manners of directing and defeating the perception of other creatures until one day he had finally cleared out his entire city block.
His story is an interesting (and almost unbelievably violent despite it being true) tale for another time, but it’s the end that matters here.
Jack’s final target came from someone who he was certain he had already killed, as he had practically assassinated every man, woman, and child under the false pretenses of his maniacal work.
Rounding the corner to his target’s purported destination, he found Cahl in the alleyway, who was more than a little displeased.
The Upper Lord of Life and Death took Jack to the local, quite deserted public house to have a chat.
As it turned out, Cahl was more than a little disparaged working overtime on Jack’s account. Cahl in those days was already spectacularly busy – passing his astral force between all dimensions all at once to ferry everyone. As a generally good-natured fellow, Cahl understood the casual murder here and there, as well as the well-intentioned but ultimately misled leaders that might lead their countries into war, but Jack? Oh no.
Jack murdered constantly, sleeplessly, and with an efficiency that would put even the Librarium A.C.E. robots, not to be created yet for thousands of years, to complete shame. Jack mindlessly completed his tasks on the slightest pretense: first of desperation, then of duty, then pay, and finally: artistry. All he wanted to do was kill. He believed it was his only way of communicating with people by that point.
For that, the first of the human reapers was offered an ultimatum, join Cahl and take his share of the work, or be murdered instantly, lifted up from his shattered coil into the upper etheriums of the Verses, and cast out down upon the Foundation of The Mountain: a land of which no person, being, or spirit has ever returned.
Far from a raw deal, Jack was motivated to live on and do what he had grown to love, moving spirits from place to place.
Equipped with tools of spiritual manipulation that easily surpassed his own, Jack descended into the annals of history as the very first assistant of Breathland.
Cahl found him a lady of considerable efficiency, a fellow assassin by the name of Agari, and the two of created the La’Coss family of grim reapers: all bestowed with the similarpower and the same expectations of duty as their forefather.
Recruiting on among great preservers, creators, and takers of life, Cahl has significantly cut down on his workload. There are whispers that he did this to raise a private army of his bidding, one that could take the sword to the other three Upper Kingdoms, but personally I think he just was really tired. I can hardly split my psyche between two universes, let alone two billion, so I’d image he really deserved the break.
That said, it takes someone with an outrageous amount of pull to keep the reaper’s scythe at bay these days, because while Cahl doesn’t have to stretch about and throw souls around as much, he certainly has quite the efficient force of undertakers for any more “involved” work he might have for them.
Of course, he would never admit to meddling in the affairs of the Lower Realms past those within the line of his duty… but again, it’s hard for everyone to be watching, even Inklend.
When certain individuals in the Lower Verses attempt to bend the rules to take control of Cahl’s domain of life and death – perhaps he knows something that we don’t?
Dreamlend
Dreamlend is the most secretive among the four “Upper Realm” Kingdoms of The Mountain, and owns quite the role: the inspiration and delineation of knowledge through dreams, to those both waking and sleeping.
The realm of Dreamland is the smallest of the four kingdoms, consisting only of a few kilometers of brightwood, surrounding the kingdom’s one significant landmark and capitol: Somnae Keep. Somnae is considered by most to be the largest structure in the upper realms, and likely the largest structure ever created. This mountainous castle towers above the land at roughly seven kilometers high, though due to its dream-like quality, this measurement has a tendency to fluctuate significantly.
A structure of this size could be expected to hold tens of thousands of souls within its walls, and yet in the modern age it is known to hold only two people: Dreamlend’s Queen: Clouu (Clah-uu), and the last surviving in its order of knights: Xylgatyl (Zill-gat-ul).
It is said that even before the time of the analysts of Inklend, there was a great battle between Dreamlend and some unknown force. The entirety of the kingdom deployed to destroy their enemy, leaving behind only then-Princess Clouu, and the youngest knight to serve as her retainer, Xylgatyl.
The results of the great battle was uncertain, but whatever happened, the gates of Somnae has opened only a single time between today and that grand battle.
It’s assumed among us Upper Realm society that the two of them are still alive in that keep somewhere, and surely someone must be up in there, considering sentient creatures are still having dreams.
While we’re on this, let’s explain a bit of that whole “delineation of knowledge”, shall we?
Dreamlend, as the Upper Realm kingdom presiding over inspiration and dreams, is also as a result the realm that oversees the various forms of technological and cultural advancement across the Verses.
While this may sound simple in theory: sprinkle some magical dreamlender dust here and there from the throne of Somnae and connect the dots for a scientist in some far-off lower realm so they can understand nitrate fertilizer – grand stuff for certain, but the implications are quite a bit greater when one takes into account the full breadth of the kingdom’s powers.
The original holder of The Mountain-Blessed Throne of The Dreamer, High King Lorest, held a significantly-different view of lower societies than his daughter. He believed in keeping groups of sentients unique and thus distinct, allowing them to create new inspirations. Clouu, on the other hand, believed that there was a grand threat mounting over the horizon, and so she picked the language of the most magically-advanced society in the lower realms at the time: Lati, and planted the seeds of their language: Latin, across all the realms.
Steadily, the concepts of language and culture from the building blocks of Latin aided societies in developing common tongues, and after some millennia, many of those realms connected by Starlendic space gates shared the language as the “interdimensional standard”. Make no mistake, she has irreparably changed the course of history in doing this. She appears to be leading sentient life toward a singular purpose of some kind – as to what, I cannot comment on.
As Clouu is presumably busy inspiring the lower universes, Xylgatyl stands guard, immersed in the endless flow of knowledge channeling from the throne and out into the realms. Now, this is just me, but there seems to be something a little wrong with it all. For what reason are they closed up? I mean, I’m no expert, but if you wanted something to “flow” freely, I would imagine that those huge doors are blocking the current somewhat, don’t you?
It’s a mystery that remains, and one that Rondi herself in particular took great umbrage to this realization.
