The World of Aarn

The inhabitable hemisphere of the planet Aarn.

The World of Aarn is a magitech setting with a crunchy exterior of playful whimsy and a chewy center of eldritch horror.

Aarn is a setting that attempts to be as nuanced, faceted, and surprising as the real world. As an affectionate parody of fantasy gaming tropes, Aarn treats said tropes straight, applying everything imaginable that those tropes imply. How might society be truly affected by such fantastic things as magic, living gods, and unicorns?

• Magic, like electricity and magnetism, is considered a natural force in the world, studied by those who think of themselves no differently than the electronic engineers and computer scientists of Earth. Magic is a science, and the application of magic is a technology.

• The mages who instead cast through the power of divine faith do not have one consistent way of casting. As faith magic is based on belief, it works if you believe it does. Anything else involved in casting is a ritual that is purely psychological, and not the least bit magical.

• Most of the religions of Aarn are wrong, and the rest are dead wrong, especially the ones closest to the truth.

• What Aarnians worship as gods are the roleplaying characters of omniscient, timeless entities, fundamentally alien and unknowable. These entities are only pretending to have mortal whims and desires. The world is their experiment, and the inhabitants of Aarn their children, their game, their test subjects, and their victims.

The World of Aarn has been in development since October 2007, and continues to be worked on to this day, on an exterior blog and wiki.

The Planet Aarn

Aarn is a planet pockmarked by craters and blanketed by a magical storm that covers a full hemisphere, making that hemisphere completely uninhabitable. The scars it has are the result of hundreds upon thousands of years of magical abuse and irresponsible gods. Aarn is populated by sentient creatures called "Godtouched," who are in fact the poorly-conceived genetic experiments of the gods. The most currently-successful godtouched race is the Humans, who have dominated the planet by marrying science and technology with the magic that bathes the world like radiation from the Astral Sea.

The Gods Themselves

Aarn's gods are not truly real. The images worshiped as Gods that interact with Aarn's populace are, as mentioned before, the roleplaying characters of timeless, multiverse-aware entities who wish to do nothing else but experiment with the notion of causality. These entities are uncaring, unfeeling, and unknowable. The identities they play vary from region to region, based on the beliefs of their local worshipers.

The Fey

The same entities that play Aarn's gods also play Aarn's fey. In the case of the fey, these entities impose upon these identities strict limitations which put them just slightly above the level of mortal races. Despite these limitations, fey are still mind bending, sanity-searing creatures that seem able to adjust the laws of the natural and magical world to their whims. The most powerful fey are the fairies, who delight in pranking godtouched mortals by granting their wishes or tempting them with their deepest desires.

The Demifey

Occasionally, the entities playing the gods and the fey can become separated from the identities they have created. These identities become autonomous, and quickly go insane. They are no longer immortal, and in fact are less than mortal. Their next death will annihilate them utterly. They keep their godly powers, and are given a very good reason to use them; self-preservation. Demifey are the most dangerous creatures Aarn has to offer.

The Godtouched Races

The magic-capable races of Aarn are the lone survivors of ancient bloody wars of genocide. The Gods created each race by splicing together the aspects of various animals, granting the resulting creation sentience and magic, then seeing how long the race survived. The gods were arguably quite poor at creating these races, as there were once thousands of them, and all but 30 are extinct. It is likely the gods didn't know what they were doing. Godtouched races include, but are not limited to:

• Humans, who were only recently created from giants, and only giants, as their animal base component. As most civilized godtouched races that survived the wars of the gods had some form of giant in them, the god of the humans wondered what would happen if he created a godtouched race that was only made of giants. The humans promptly took over the world. And the first human civilization created magical experiments so powerful, they shattered an entire continent, creating a sea of islands to the east. Oops.

• Ardlins, a race of diminutive velociraptor-goblin-lizardmen. Their race was created not 75 years ago by the goddess of procrastination, who couldn't decide if she wanted velociraptor goblins or velociraptor lizardmen. So she settled on using all three. Ardlins have a high technological aptitude, but do not yet have the culture or education to take advantage of this trait. Ardlins are shunned and hunted because no race wishes to see them become the next race to dominate the planet. Now that the ardlins are starting to create a niche for themselves, the goddess of procrastination is starting to be seen as the goddess of plucky resolve.

• Valdrex, a race of insects whose individuals have no egos, created by the goddess of domination and conquest. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Valdrex "won" the war of the gods by killing two gods, and nearly destroying the planet in the process. They have never quite lived this down. Since then, Valdrex have become more careful, and seek to dominate the planet through slavery and economics. As a modern merchant race, they garb themselves in robes that make themselves appear humanoid, for diplomatic purposes.

• Spirit Animals, a race of sentient animals with ornery personalities. Originally created by the god of education and curiosity, they rebelled against him when he ordered that they reveal the secrets they learned to the world. Spirit Animals have the special ability to become spirits upon death, avoiding the afterlife entirely. They may then steal the bodies of other races. Those possessed by spirit animals have infiltrated Human society, and the souls of bunnies, foxes and squirrels actually control Aarn's international banking system.

• Merfolk, an aquatic race that shuns the use of all magic. Instead, merfolk use biotechnology, including mile long eel battleships, laser-firing lamprey wrist-guards, and jellyfish bubble-cities. The Merfolk are literally ruled by their god, Occus, and have perpetrated campaigns of genocide against all other aquatic godtouched races. Only the water dragons survived.

Magic

The magic of Aarn covers three distinct categories. Wizardry is the scientific magic of Humans, that obeys the mechanical laws of nature. Channeling is a custom, at-will magic system. Divine magic, also known as dream magic, is the ability for Godtouched races to borrow the powers of the gods and fey to reshape the world.

Wizardry

Aarn's Wizards use a pseudo-Vancian spellcasting system called Spellweaving, where they program spells like computer code. Typically, each spell can be used once when woven, and is stored within the Wizard's aura before use. Wizards can only cast spells that are within a certain limit of mechanical possibility. As these spells must also be pre-programmed, wizards cannot cast polymorph effects, summoning effects, effects that grant sentience, or any effect that requires intelligence, adaptability or creativity on the part of the spell itself. They can, however, cast healing spells.

Channeling

Channelers are magic users who develop their abilities naturally. A channeler is attuned to one of Aarn's 14 magical elements, which are Air (Gas), Water (Liquid), Earth (Nonmetallic Solid), Metal, Life (Living tissue), Death (Dead tissue), Kanna (A catch-all physical element), Fire (Heat), Frost (Cold), Light, Dark, Sound, Electricity, and Manna (A catch-all energy element.) A channeler's abilities are either psychic, transmutational, or psychokinetic, or a combination of these. An individual Channeler has only a few of the available abilities, but he or she can combine these abilities together to achieve greater effects. Channelers have a number of spell points they can burn each turn to use these abilities and effects as often as they wish.

Divine Magic

Mortals who have great faith, the favor of a god or fey, or are simply cloudcuckoolanders can use Divine Magic. The source of this magic is the Astral Sea, the home of the gods and fey, the location of the afterlife, and the source of all magical power. Divine magic is also known as Dream Magic, because when godtouched mortals dream, they are actually experiencing a pocket of the Astral Sea.

Divine magic is fueled by a manna point system (that is recharged when mortals dream or meditate) and the power of the spells can be augmented through varying casting methods. Divine magic has few rules save for the categories of spells, and each divine caster creates their own spells to suit their character.

The methods of casting vary widely from region to region, from chanting, to using cards and magic circles, to dancing, to wearing masks, or to the truly ridiculous, like making silly faces or eating "sacred" fruit. Divine magic is a magic that works if you believe it does, and conversely, if you believe it will not work, it will not. The culturally varied rituals involved in casting divine magic are not themselves magical, but the belief that these rituals are necessary is enough to make them so. What makes differing casting methods similar, however, is that they all involve some form of creative self-expression.

Elemancy

Elemancy is a special hybrid magic that allows a wizard with channeling abilities to create and dominate pets and constructs. An Elemancer does so by literally dividing his or her soul among many bodies. These creatures are called elementals, and are composed entirely out of an Elemancer's element. Biomancers create monsters, Necromancers create undead puppets, Animancers create constructs, and the like.

Mundanes

As godtouched races are inherently magical creatures, even those who do not use any magic can compete with the magic users. Those who do not use magic develop a high level of magical resistance, that allows them to soak spell damage. Further, godtouched races who physically train their bodies develop unbelievable levels of physical prowess. A non-magic-using swordsman can leap 20 feet into the air, cleave a thick tree with a single sword stroke, and sprint at the speed of a cheetah. It is largely this ability that has prevented swordplay from becoming obsolete in the face of magical devices that for all intents and purposes are military grade firearms.

Magitech

The inhabitants of Aarn view magic the same way we view electricity. If it makes sense to make a machine electronic in some way on Earth, it also makes sense to make the machine magical on Aarn. For instance, non-magical, intricate pocketwatches are, as they are in the real world, more expensive than their lowly electronic/magical counterparts.

Aarn's magic is also highly volatile, and magical items will explode horrifically if seriously damaged or improperly maintained. These minor catalysms are tolerated in the same way we tolerate toasters that will kill us if dropped in the bathtub.

Aarn's technological advancement is analogous to our own, and in some cases, such as medical technology, Aarn's technology surpasses ours. Aarn is filled with clockwork vehicles, airships, hover platforms, and huge city-maintaining golems.

Runecrafting

As there are electrons in all things on Earth, there is magic in all things on Aarn, especially the nonmagical things. Runecrafting is the art of drawing magical runes which resonate with the magical auras all objects have. By using runes, a character can imbue themselves or objects with channeling effects that can neither be turned off nor controlled. If destroyed or improperly removed, a rune will seriously damage the object or person it's drawn on. This effect is why runes that are designed to create spell effects, like scrolls, are destroyed upon use.

The Afterlife

Aarn's afterlife consists of nine and a half hells, and no heavens. These hells are not hellish by design, but because of bureaucratic missteps, it is quite difficult to find oneself in a hell one will enjoy. The hells are a satire of Dungeons & Dragons' alignment system, with each hell modeled after one of the nine alignments. These hells are very much like Aarn itself, with only the immortality of the residents and the bureaucracy of the demons setting the hells apart from Aarn.

The hells are seen by mortal eyes as planets orbiting a giant sun, the dream of a sleeping god named K'tellos. If K'tellos wakes, his material identity will become a demifey, and risks destroying the world.

Scattered amongst the planets and K'tellos's sun-like dream in the Astral Sea, there are hundreds of millions of stars, each star the dream of a sleeping mortal on Aarn.

Demons

Demons are the clerks of the afterlife, who created the nine and a half hells after the previous afterlife system was destroyed. They have knowledge of Earth, no access to magic, and follow earth religions. Their technology is also based on earth science fiction stories, but all of their devices are designed with a retro North American 1930s to 1950s vibe.

External Links

Aarn's first /tg/ thread

Aarn's progress blog, occasionally updated.

Aarn's Wiki, constantly updated and under heavy construction.