The World. A great irregular mass of matter and light and life suspended in space. It contains within it the Sun in a colossal spherical chamber constructed for the purpose. At great distance lies the moon, bathing the moonward world in silver light as it progresses through its phases. Yet further orbit the handful of stars, on their erratic but predictable journeys. All else is darkness.
The people of the world are shadows. This makes them uncomfortable both in the light and in the dark, forcing them to cover their shadow-flesh from the light to avoid withering away, and to avoid true darkness lest they return to that from which they came. They do not hold memories in their heads like you or I, but in their possessions. Each item is not only a thing to them, but a symbol of self. They are the sum of their belongings, and a little more besides.
As they age they accumulate things and memories to fill them with, but their shadow-stuff also grows stronger, allowing them to survive just a little more exposure to light, keep their sense of self just a little longer in the dark. Their bodies fill their containers like a gas. A larger body means more room for things, more room to tailor their physical form, but a smaller body means their shadow-stuff is more potent, less fragile and more suited to workings.
Folk come into being when memories are left behind in the twilight, usually by accident, and most do not survive long before succumbing to light or to darkness. Those who do survive find themselves one among many in a world teeming with folk and other life.
They are the creators of their own world. From darkness their workings can sublimate stone, water and ash. With memories they further differentiate that crude matter into myriad forms. Light may be woven into the base patterns, sunlight turning iron to gold to glowing orichalcum which will be used in lanterns far away from the central Sun.
Light comes in many forms. First, sunlight. Golden and tautological. Second, moonlight. The moon is a relative newcomer to the world, appearing in the record only after the Sun was encircled in stone. Then the three invented siblings of firelight, arclight, and luminescence. Firelight was only created with the invention of combustibles, luminescence with the development of biology. Arclight is the newest, created with careful manipulation of the recently devised electric. Finally, elusive starlight touches faintly on the world, drowned out by all the others and barely noticeable in the everpresent dark.
Life resembling that which we know, usually referred to by the folk as flesh or vine to distinguish between plant or animal, was created to unknown ends. Plants were created first, then insects and the small creatures of the world. Bigger and more complex forms were thought up later. The arts of creating life from nothing were lost, now novelty is only created through the recombination of existing traits or careful modification to that which exists. Mushrooms, slimes, and molds (collectively called rot) were created as a mistake, but have found a surprising number of advocates. Each of these things, vine, flesh, and rot, are unrelated. Life was created three times with three different patterns, and it may yet be created again. Microbes are a fantasy, you cannot create what you cannot see.
The creation of complex biology created new developments in embodiment. Folk have always been able to add matter to their persons. It sometimes becomes useful to have extra arms for example. But organs are a new phenomenon, as they have paved the path for new sensations. Shadows are quite capable of sight and hearing, and have been fond of scents since time immemorial but touch and taste were foreign. Other organs such as stomachs, hearts, and nerves originally designed for the maintenance of fleshy appendages have revealed their capacity for the darker sensations of hunger, heartbreak, and pain. Even more concerning are the rumors that some shadows, once embodied for extreme periods of time, lose the ability to remove these extra components, facing death when they inevitably wear out.
The encirclement of the Sun was done long, long ago. The sphere is offset such that some parts of its surface are closer than others, leading to differing temperatures in the eternal day. Its surface is a patchwork of glittering ocean and ancient sands, marred with an expansive lush jungle. The desert landmasses of the encirclement are controlled by various splinterings of the Church Solar, each considering the others heretics for their disagreements on theological questions. What is the Sun? Was it begat by folk, or folk begat by it? What is the nature of its light, and why does it burn the worst of all? These questions are debated with ink and with steel. Here folk are urban, hiding in shaded cities from the damning light which brought them forth. Legends circulate among them of hermits and prophets, the strongest and the oldest, who wander the sands alone. The seas are plied with boats and ships of these cities, but also of itinerant freefolk. With no need of breath, there is nothing stopping underwater settlements, and many folk take on aquatic forms beneath the waves. The jungle was an intrusion of the lifemakers, needing sunlight to fuel their creations. Once expansionist but since tamed by treaty and time, some still work to spread its borders.
The moon waxes and wanes from its fixed position, defining both time and space. Moonward and Darkward are the two principal directions of the folk, and its cycles inform their long calendars. As the light comes and goes, it shines on a monument to its glory, or to folk’s hubris. The Moonbridge is estimated to be a quarter completed, reaching out from the great uneven mass of the world towards the divine moon. Here the phases are more than an arbitrary tally of passing time, instead a fact of life as workers hurry to build the bridge further before it is once more enveloped in darkness. The greatest stoneworkers of the age are drawn here, embellishing the bridge with sweeping spans and arches. The work is opposed with vigor by secretive star cults among other groups who wander the outside surface of the world, where stone terminates in darkness.
The vast majority of the world between these two extremes is shadowlands, beneath or above the surface of the encirclement, depending on how one orients. Mostly they take the form of long dark corridors of stone, formed and shaped by unknown folk long before the arrival of the moon. Outcast or uncontacted folk wander here with lanterns filled with old sunlight, making their small places in the world among the ancient labyrinths. Innumerable corridors were flooded when the oceans were filled, and abandoned biological creations wander. The largest settlements maintain networks of lenses to pull sunlight down into their domains in order to keep away the dark. These cluster in groups and bands towards common goals or against common enemies. The most notable in recent years is lensless Arctown, where the secret of the electric originated and is kept. It glows blue in its spider’s web of copper cabling in fierce defiance of the Sun.
And so this is where the folk live their half-lit lives, forging memories into form. Those who survive their unlikely creation find comfort with others of their kind, working towards goals material or ideological. They break into innumerable cultures and sects, which split, merge, and re-interpret. All the while they grow older and stranger as they shape themselves and the world around them to suit.
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