What Aether Is

Aether is the natural, oscillating current that exists in all things — living and not. It is not a force you summon. It is already present. What magic practitioners do is interact with what is already there — increasing flow, decreasing it, shaping the direction of energy that would otherwise move without intent.

S'ketilis describes it this way: Aether flows like water in a current. You can increase the flow — or decrease it. That is resistance. The will to hold or release energy. The living can choose. The inert cannot.

Resistance & Conductivity

Every substance has a natural resistance — a tendency to hold its stored Aether rather than release it. This is what makes most materials stable. Soryx, the volatile plant that grows near volcanic soil, stores Aether as heat. Its natural resistance is what keeps it from burning itself alive. Remove that resistance — make it conductive — and all of its stored energy discharges at once. That is what someone did at the Ka'han Ilma massacre. They did not invent a new weapon. They removed a constraint that nature had built in.

Mage Types

The Tuuni practice enhancement magic — strengthening what already exists, amplifying physical capability. They do not train combat mages. The distinction matters: an enhancer works with a body or a material. A combat mage shapes Aether directly into force, heat, impact.

Combat mages are rare, trained, and politically dangerous. Leobia restricts theirs heavily. Inviria kills them. The Free Cities of Prala and Avaricia are where rogue combat mages typically end up — either as mercenaries or as problems.

Mage Eyes

Invirian mage lineage manifests visibly — pink irises, deep like steeped red wine. There is no hiding it at close range. Kaori carries this mark. In Keluthara, it marks her as other. In Inviria, it marks her as a death sentence.

Overview

The Murin Trading Company is a slaving operation with reach across multiple nations. It does not have a political alignment. It does not have a theology. It has clients, contracts, and a reputation for discretion. When powerful people need something moved — cargo, people, problems — across borders and without traceable connection to their names, they use Murin.

The God-King of Inviria used Murin to transport his infant daughter to her arranged assassination. This was not unusual. Inviria almost certainly uses Murin regularly. The company's value is precisely that it makes inconvenient things disappear quietly.

Operations

Murin recruits through cities like Grenhelm — hired hands who often don't know the nature of their cargo. The caravan that carried Kaori employed twenty men who believed they were on a standard pickup and drop-off. They were not told what the fourth cart contained. They were not supposed to survive long enough to tell anyone.

Narrative Role

Murin is the connective tissue of the world's worst transactions. Every nation that needs deniability eventually touches it. It is the throughline that connects events across books — not because Murin drives the story, but because the kinds of people who use Murin keep doing the kinds of things that require it.

Thardiel is named for the shard left behind when Heidaldr died. Beyond this, the records are fragmentary. What Heidaldr was, what killed him, and what the shard that became the world actually means — these are questions the archive does not yet hold answers to.

Known Divine

Shykana — Goddess of life, love, and humility. The Nhaari believe the world was born of her tears. She is the closest thing to an actively present deity in the current age.

Xeiyr — God of war and justice. The theological foundation of Inviria. Whether Xeiyr still listens to prayers is debated. Inviria's wars continue regardless.

Whiscla — God of death and rebirth. The Nhaari speak of Whiscla coming to collect spirits at death. The Kojin are referenced as divine figures associated with the afterlife in Nhaari belief.

The Firsts were the original people of the western continents. Their survivors became the Tuuni and the ancestors of Invirian humans — separated by ocean storms during the migration and diverging into distinct peoples over generations. Those who embraced magic became the Tuuni. Those who rejected it built the church of Xeiyr.

The Albaidians originated on the continent of Albaidgra — a landmass that now bears a corrupted form of their name and sits entirely uninhabited. They are as lost to history as the Firsts. No texts, no descendants, no artifacts are known to survive. They fought the Firsts for two thousand years and were eradicated alongside them.

As the Great War consumed both the Firsts and the Albaidians over two millennia, the other races of Corvalisia and Albaidgra fled — to islands, reefs, and eventually to Skan. Every boat ended up somewhere. Some far south, some far north, some made it to Skan. Most sank. The descendants of those survivors are every non-native people currently on Skan.

The Tuuni are descendants of the Firsts, separated from what became the Invirian human ancestors by ocean storms during the great migration. Over generations of isolation, they diverged physically and culturally — becoming elves rather than humans, accepting magic as an expression of strength rather than condemning it as heresy.

They share the same foundational values as Inviria — strength, unity, divine mandate — but the schism over magic makes them a theological embarrassment to Inviria. Same blood. Opposite conclusions. Neither can fully acknowledge what that means.

Currently in cold war with the Nhaari over the Ka'han Ilma neutral territory.

Skan is the primary continent of the current story. It has indigenous peoples — the Nhaari and others — who predate the great migrations. It received waves of arrivals in the centuries surrounding the Great War. Most of the political conflicts currently active on Skan are downstream of that tension between native peoples and those who arrived and stayed.

Keluthara is the seat of the Masamura clan and home of Queen Asaris. It is built into the Velathri trees — massive living structures whose bioluminescent moss traces the walls of the throne room in veins of pale blue-green. The city exists across multiple tiers, connected by bridges and walkways, the lowest tiers descending to damp stone and earth where the holding cells sit beneath the roots.

Yutom-Doan is the capital of Inviria and seat of the God-King. It is a city of iron walls and war, located south of the holy site Autum. The church deliberately placed the capital away from Autum to keep the holy site separate from governance — a decision that created Inviria's permanent dual-authority structure.

Most nations name their capitals something aspirational. Inviria called theirs The Dark Fortress and apparently nobody objected. This tells you something true about Invirian culture that no amount of doctrine can express more clearly.

Autum is where the founding monks of Inviria made landfall after crossing from the undiscovered eastern continent. They named it what it was — a great beach — in the exhausted practicality of people who had just survived an ocean crossing that killed most of their kind.

Over 1,754 years, Autum became the holiest site in Invirian religion. The church kept it deliberately separate from governance, ensuring that Yutom-Doan held political and military power while Autum held theological authority. The Masja rules from here.

Laeonis is the Commander of the Masamura military and husband of Queen Asaris. He is Nakamura-born — a clan that cultivates Soryx at the base of Smíðrokk — which makes him a permanent outsider in the eyes of the Masamura elders, regardless of how long he has served or what he has sacrificed.

He found Kaori in the mud of the Ka'han Ilma. He carried her out. He made the case that she was worth the political cost. That decision has been shaping events ever since.

Asaris is Queen of the Nhaari Masamura clan. She came to the throne young, after her father King Masamura died, with a cold war building on her borders and elders on her council who viewed her husband as an outsider and her judgment as suspect. She has been proving them wrong ever since, at considerable personal cost.

She chose to adopt Kaori — to raise her as her own daughter rather than hand her over to Invirian politics or abandon her to the consequences of her birth. That choice is the inciting act of everything that follows.

S'ketilis is a Talariin — pale gray skin, pupilless grey-white eyes, considerably shorter than the Nhaari he advises. He serves as the court scholar and magical authority for Queen Asaris and was the one who identified the Invirian royal crest on Kaori's blanket. He is currently training Kaori in Bar'rac'dan.

He does not waste words. He does not tolerate interruption well. He is almost always right, which makes him very difficult to argue with.

Shykana is the goddess most actively present in the faith of the Nhaari. They believe the world was born of her tears. When she died — or wept, or grieved — the world came into being as a consequence of that feeling. The name Thardiel holds a different explanation for the world's origin, but the two are not necessarily in conflict.

The Church of Xeiyr is the founding religion of Inviria. It holds that strength through human will and martial discipline is the highest expression of divine favor — and that magic, which reshapes reality without steel or muscle, is heresy. The church is headquartered at Autum, kept deliberately separate from the political capital of Yutom-Doan.

The Masja — "The Praying One" — holds the highest theological authority in the church, equal in standing to the God-King. Currently a woman named Celery.

Soryx is a plant that grows near volcanic soil — most notably at the base of Smíðrokk, cultivated for generations by the Nakamura tribe. It stores Aether as heat. It burns hot and slow, controlled by its natural resistance.

Remove that resistance — make it conductive — and all stored energy discharges at once. This is what was done at the Ka'han Ilma massacre. Someone with deep knowledge of Soryx and combat magic combined Soryx with a fireball to create an explosive capable of vaporizing an entire cart and everyone near it.

The Nakamura know more about Soryx than anyone. This makes them implicated in anything that requires weaponizing it, whether or not they were willing participants.

The Masamura is the ruling clan of the Nhaari, seated at Keluthara. The Unified Tribunal of Nhaari clans was established by Asaris's grandfather — a political achievement that represented a people trying to hold together what remained of their territory through collective governance rather than fractured clan warfare.

Queen Asaris currently rules. The elders of the Tribunal are not uniformly loyal. Some openly resent Laeonis as an outsider. Some question Asaris's decision to shelter Kaori. The clan that holds the crown does not hold it without resistance.