Appearance: A Fiberling is an aggregate structure composed entirely of hair, animated by a cloud of ultraterrestrial energy emanating from the Gap, with a maximum mass of about two tonnes. No other Galbaric material is present in its body. Each hair can very rapidly bend, curl, or crinkle into a variety of shapes independently of the others, and can stiffen to become a less flexible bristle. Each strand of a fiberling remains animated for as long as it is in contact or fused with others in its body. The hairs themselves can be a variety of colours depending on their source and age, and different fiberlings have different concentrations of each colour, but most are dark, matte brown or black in overall colour, and only a minority have any gloss.

Due to the amorphous nature of their bodies, fiberlings can arrange their lattice of strands into an enormous variety of shapes. Rapid shifting of alignment and adaptive curling of each hair allows a fiberling to 'flow' at an astonishing speed over any solid surface they can find purchase on, even, when flattened, vertical or upside-down faces. Other terrain may induce a fiberling to try other modes of transport, such as rolling themselves over sand, and they often travel with the wind, widening themselves into an airy hollow shape like a tumbleweed. The strength of a fibreling is proportional to its currently manifested mass, and is generally lower than that of a strongly-muscled animal; However, a large one can still exert a significant amount of force to a target area, and most sizable adults can overwhelm a human via brute strength.

The only prominently supernatural feature of a fiberling's body other than its animation is that it can compress via fusion of hairs, storing mass as energy in the Gap. This allows even a fiberling the size of a rhinoceros to fit into a space the size of a single hair. The inherent instability of storing standard-model mass in the Gap means that compression comes at the cost of mobility. The more mass a fiberling is hiding, the more static it must keep its position. A fiberling at maximum size and maximum compression can be forced into its full size even by a loud noise. Decompression at such levels of instability will result in a chain reaction often violent enough to tear the fiberling apart and kill it, or at least lose most of its mass. Fortunately, fiberlings are instinctively aware of their limits, and will always try to compromise between concealment and stability. A one-tonne fiberling can rest indefinitely in just under a litre of space, expanding only at will, or upon a heavy impact to its direct vicinity, and even then slowly enough not to lose more than a few kilograms. Between compression on the one extreme and leaving unusually large amounts of hollow space in its lattice of strands on the other, fiberlings occupy a size range anywhere between a mouse and a mining truck, and can expand from former to latter in seconds. Compression, of course, takes longer than decompression.

Life Cycle: Fiberlings have no living cells that might age, and their energy source does not wane with time or exertion. However, they do wear out. Both high and low temperature extremes will increase the speed at which fiberling strands break or shed, and though one may change its behaviour to compensate for this, warming itself by friction or travelling by night, the average fiberling will still lose several kilograms of mass each year. To compensate for this, they are programmed to seek out and make use of whatever flexible and durable organic matter they can find- Anything from chitin to cellulose to animal collagen, and, of course, keratin. Integration of new hair takes a few days, and re-absorption of separated hairs takes a similar but more variable amount of time depending on the quality of hair lost.

These hair monsters reproduce by binary fission. If an environment is unusually devoid of fiberlings, even taking into account their constant wanderings, one may deliberately seek out enough strands to increase in size while its extradimensional body begins a more complex mitotic replication process. When, and only when, this process is complete will a fiberling be able to divide without just losing half of its mass to inanimacy. Attempts to manually split or force division in fiberlings will not succeed. Although they do inherit some mental traits of their parent, fiberlings have a very high rate of mutation, and thus vary enormously in temperament.

When two fiberlings share a range, they will regularly interact by flowing through one another, their physical bodies exchanging hairs without any lapse in integration. This process has little use in Galbar's plane of existence, although it can lead to new combinations of fibre type and colour. It is a much closer interaction in the Gap, in which the exchange results in the sharing of memories, though each fiberling's personality remains unchanged.

Description: The first creation of Jvan to make full use of her contribution to the Universal Blueprint, fiberlings are not, by nature, functional. Psychologically, they are rather cat-like, and follow their natural instincts of curiousity, survival, and, most of all, sadistic playfulness.

Although their need for material sustenance is rather minimal, fiberlings are predators by choice. They delight in observing an organism unseen until they can predict where it will be, then compressing themselves and waiting. Fiberlings will kill a target in a variety of ways, varying by individual, prey species, and mood, but the most common and efficient method is an extremely sudden sequence of expansion, entanglement, and bodily invasion through any available orifices. Once a fiberling has expanded into an animal, it is free to asphyxiate its victim, rupture it, or gently play with it and see how long it takes to die of stress and bleeding, crucified within an enormous mass of hair.

Of course, fiberlings are very intelligent and have plenty of room for variation in personality. Cognitively, they stand at least on par with dolphins, ravens and chimpanzees, although they exceed them in some aspects and are lacking in others. They do not have any form of language other than sharing memories repeatedly, do not form a social hierarchy and do not often display tool-making behaviour. Their perception of the world is largely self-centred and it is difficult, but not impossible, to teach a fiberling to feel affection for any but its own kind. However, they do possess the ability to plan their actions, coordinate with others, learn and experiment.

The average fiberling is largely nocturnal and very fond of stealth, although many enjoy daylight, even to the point of sunbathing. Some are far more patient than others, and no aspect of their personality is free from variation. One fiberling may prefer to abandon concealment and exploit their limitless supply of energy to simply tease and chase its prey until it dies of exhaustion. Another might not kill at all, only mutilate and cripple. Fiberlings are long-distance wanderers that follow no pattern of movement, but some may settle in areas they particularly like for extended periods of time, and some will seek out their own kind while others shy away.

Fiberlings are in no way limited to animals in their playful curiousity, and will gladly uproot trees and tear up grasses for fun, or even drag around available materials like rocks and moss to form small structures and nests- Although why exactly they do this is unknown, seeing as they can't make use of them. Like cats, fiberlings are not fond of swimming, but sometimes attempt it in order to escape danger or corner prey, and there are, of course, the occasional anomalies who enjoy water.

Fiberlings might not be sentient, but they share one common field in which any specimen will far outstrip even a learned human in their instinctive knowledge of population dynamics. Fiberlings unconsciously record and model the populations and predator-prey balance of any ecosystem they find themselves in, and despite their whimsical behaviour, they will never upset an established habitat beyond what it can handle at any given moment. Although they do enjoy harvesting the finest-quality hairs from their surroundings, the species is always conscious of over-exploitation and may even protect their prey if a particularly bad stroke of luck causes its population to collapse, although they will not stand in the way of more gradual decline and evolution. Fiberlings never show preference towards their prey other than their need to take hair to survive, and even then, do not predate prize species any more than they do others. Fiberlings are therefore never a strong evolutionary pressure. Indeed, the only points at which the presence of fiberlings actually bears a noticeable effect on other species as a whole is when an ecosystem has been upset suddenly and beyond its ability to survive with its biodiversity intact, such as by a natural disaster or an introduced species that out-competes all others by orders of magnitude.

Needless to say, fiberlings love humans, and find them endlessly entertaining in their diversity of behaviour and construction.

Interactions: Under threat, most fiberlings are defensive but skittish when they realise that they can be overpowered. Although they are tough, due to the strength of their constituent materials and their lack of internal organs to damage, it is entirely possible to kill a fiberling simply by destroying or dispersing its strands. Sudden impacts can separate chunks of mass from a fiberling, as can slashes from a sufficiently sharp object. Magical forces can be used to separate strands from one another until too little remains for the extradimensional body of the creature to reconnect with the physical plane. Fire is an effective way of destroying fiberlings constructed of volatile materials.

Fiberlings protect themselves depending on the situation. Their immense mobility allows them to outrun or outlast most danger. Like a beetle on its back, a fiberling knows that it is more vulnerable the smaller and less dense it is, and it is standard behaviour for a cornered specimen to expand to full mass but wrap itself into an intricately woven, airtight, enormously dense sphere that can resist most onslaughts, even crusting over rather than incinerating when burned. This does leave the fiberling unable to move until it sees a chance to unravel and try its luck running or attacking.

The Horrorsome Engineer sometimes embeds a Jvanic Eye within a fiberling, giving her full awareness of its actions while simultaneously boosting its perception, and, when necessary, overwriting its will with her own. The destruction of the eye does not necessarily kill the fiberling, or vice versa, but upon its loss the fiberling will be unusually docile, unmotivated, and susceptible to training- At least for a while.

Wild fiberlings can also be trained or conditioned to act a certain way, although their natural instincts are hard to curb and it is tricky to teach them to accept a master without killing it or running from it. That said, they are not incapable of affection, at least of a rather weak self-centred variety, again reflecting their feline nature. Magical restraints are recommended.

Fiberlings interact with White Giants rather like cats interact with dogs, although a pack of several fiberlings working in tandem can break open even these behemoths, and may be motivated to do so rather than watch themselves be driven to extinction in any particular area.

Activities: A fully developed member of the Jvanic Cult is generally a solitary entity. Sculptors retain much of the intelligence they had in their former life, be it as Hain, Djinni or Urtelem, at the expense of their former social and emotional impulses. A Sculptor can still feel drives such as joy, fear, anger, and despair, and these feelings are an instrumental part of their inspiration to create, but they are no longer attached to other individuals. Neither empathy nor hatred exists in a Sculptor. Rather, their emotions are tied exclusively to the aesthetics of their surroundings. Some creatures, landscapes or cultures may inspire a Sculptor to be filled with eagerness and arousal to create something bright and energetic, while others are liable to motivate it to design something bleary and depressive in form. No matter what emotion a Jvanic cultist may be stricken with, it will always be inspired to create art of the same caliber.

The cognitive capacities of these creatures will vary according to their origins, and they can be summarised as entities of prodigious problem-solving ability, high curiousity, photographic memory, and superb spacial awareness, but motivated so exclusively by the drive to create art that most other rational species will consider them borderline sub-sentient. Their negligence of most forms of language exacerbates this sentiment, although they will sometimes choose to produce art via written narrative or abstract poetry, and can sing. Of course, with diversity of body comes diversity of mind, and Sculptors have preferences and specialities like any other sentient species.

The production of art is the eternal missive of a Sculptor, second only to self-preservation. Jvanic Sculpture is not limited to the shaping of clay, but can be produced in an endless variety of ways. In addition to producing installations of any kind of available material in any combination- Sand and stone, plant materials, animal remains, refined metals and devices- Sculptors also practice painting, gardening, sketching, architecture, animal husbandry, mosaic, and the aforementioned writing and poetry. Although they are rarely graced with an audience, Sculptors even practice music in song, dance and instruments. In fact, there is no action undertaken by a Jvanic Cultist that is not deliberated and beautiful, as even their gait, movement, and style of combat appears elegantly choreographed to their mood, be it in graceful fluidity, artful excitement and chaos, or impressive stoicism and power.

Although Jvan does not outright control her cult, they are attuned to her whispers across the Gap, and accept her song as supplementary inspiration to their environment and mood. This is most prominent when a Sculptor begins its ascendant journey, and needs guidance in both practical skill and artistic theory. As a Sculptor matures, it grows confident enough to follow its own way, and rarely requires visions from the All-Beauty, although a particularly exciting project is the only thing that can cause separated Sculptors to converge and cooperate.

In the absence of environmental pressures forcing their hand, Sculptors are usually on the move, always seeking out new materials and inspiration, leaving a sporadic trail of work in their wake. Unlike fiberlings, these entities are not random or erratic in their wanders, but follow consistent semi-random patterns of exploration over a wide territory, perpetually expanding it at one edge and receding it from the other to produce a slow net migration.

Sculptors are survivalists by nature. Typically omnivorous and well-equipped for combat, their new body is robust and adaptable and will see them through most threats in most environments. They are rarely aggressive and it is curiousity alone that motivates a Sculptor to approach a potential hazard, examining it and learning where the boundaries of safety lie. Their memories are long and sharp, and their extraordinary lifespan allows them to build up keen instincts for danger. Resident and travelling fiberlings will always show an odd deference to mature Sculptors, and will never stalk or play with them against their will. Fiberlings without anything better to do will even follow instructions dictated by a Sculptor. The artists are well aware, however, that a fiberling is its own creature with its own fears and instincts, and try not to rely on them heavily, if at all.

Although they are typically loners, the occasional anomaly occurs in which an entire family or small settlement of sentients are collectively inspired and motivate one another to ascend together. In such cases, the group of Sculptors will rarely separate, and will support each other, sharing resources and goals as they did in their previous life.

Recruitment: Sculptors play a very passive role in their own reproduction. All Jvanic art is designed with a certain strangeness in form and pattern that allows it to host a complimentary, complex organic structure in the unseen world, the final stage of a Sculptor's life cycle. This Other body is fairly consistent despite the tremendous diversity of the Sculpture it may reside in, and remains there for as long as the art is mostly intact- This may be as little as a few minutes over the course of a song, or for thousands of years in the life of a stone carving.

Sentient species have the mental capacity to truly appreciate and admire the complexity of Jvanic artwork that they encounter, although not all may do so. When a creature with sufficient logical and emotional intelligence becomes enamoured by the beauty of work left by a Sculptor and wishes to experiment in creating something similarly elegant with their own faculties, they become susceptible to implantation. Susceptibility is entirely dependent on the psyche of the individual and their response to the art, which is, of course, influenced by genetic, environmental, and situational factors. A hain with other things on its mind at the time may pass by a Sculpture a hundred times without any effect, even if it has vast creative potential.

Implantation is nonetheless quite a common occurrence, and a large proportion of any community in the domain of a Sculptor carries a dormant egg within their subconscious by the time they die. The presence of an egg has no effect on the mind of the individual, nor can they detect its presence. This seed can only be incubated and hatched by conscious, creative effort to emulate the beauty they once saw. There is a certain threshold of dedication required to bring a Sculptor's egg to term, and in most species, about one individual in ten thousand will have the luck and determination to receive an egg and hatch it. Once the process of ascendancy has begun, it can be delayed, but not stopped or reversed.

The early development of a Sculptor is marked by the rapid growth of neural pathways that are attuned to the Gap frequencies dominated by Jvan herself. Her voice helps to act as a guiding catalyst for the initiate as they come to know how much there is to do and learn. This stage is marked by increasing withdrawal from emotional connections to the community and heightened sensitivity to the aesthetic beauty of their surroundings. Odd comments lauding the abstract elegance of society as dynamic, single organism rather than a collection of individuals with their own ideals and feelings may be an indicator of successful hatching.

As the initiate overcomes the need for social attachment, they often retreat into hermitage or are ostracised within their community. At this stage their survivalist instincts rise to prominence and they often abandon all dignity and personal comfort in order to find a lifestyle that supports their obsession with art, which has become nearly all-encompassing. Ordinary behaviour also starts to grow unusual, bringing to mind an unstaged, abstract performance as their emotions come to dominate the way they talk and move. The psychosomatic effects of their changing brain brings about the onset of physical deformities such as a bolstered digestive and immune system, strange skin growths and lesions, lengthening or receding digits, and chronic pain as their limbs begin to bifurcate. Sensory and extra-sensory perception heightens as the new brain becomes capable of discerning traces of the Other that permeates the shadows of the conventional world.

The final stages of ascendance into a mature Sculptor take a few decades to reach. By now almost no community will support or accept them, and the initiate has no desire to partake anyway. Simple deformities have developed into agonising disabilities before they grow into their final, painless, exquisitely functional stages: New limbs, extended bodies, reinforced skeletons, resilient organs. These structures will sustain them for hundreds of years beyond the lifespan of their original species. The initiate has developed a serene and insatiable love of the beauty in all things, and can produce gorgeous and bizarre works of art that compliment any environment without the assistance of their god. Their bodies and minds are now so saturated with hybrid Other cells that they can perceive both worlds at once and consider the unity of the two to be integral to their craft, ensuring that everything they create can be seeded by a living, proliferating fragment of their own inspiration.

Appearance: Mature Sculptors come in many shapes and sizes, but often bear clear, consistent signs of their original species. Those arising from humans usually remain endoskeletal and retain the supple arms and hands that allow them to work with delicacy, even if they may manifest on entirely new limbs. Hain usually produce Sculptors with a sturdy, segmented shell, equipped with sharpened points for fine art and self-defence. Upon ascendance, Djinni tend to lose some of their amorphous nature, developing permanent fixtures such as fins, although they still form by far the most abstract Sculptors.

More unusual are mid-stage cultists. The transformation process generally produces a rather elegant final form, but the intermittent iterations need to grow and shed a range of organs in order to smoothly transition into their final form, and are rarely symmetrical (that one's a little bad, be careful).

Appearance: A faery is composed of a flurry of ornately patterned insect wings arranged semi-regularly around a small, roughly globular core of muscles and organs, from which extrudes a single metallic blade.

The extending wings are by far the most visible aspect of a faery's appearance, and can vary in reflectivity and structure according to its genes, and size and number according to a combination of genes and age. Fae wings most commonly resemble the triangular wings of iridescent butterflies, but can be opaque, transparent, long, curved, tailed, or even plumed, and might not resemble any living insect. Each faery has its own design and motif that is applied to all of its wings once they are fully grown; Immature wings may not yet have developed the full pattern or colour range. Serious chromosomal mutation can result in a single fae that expresses two different styles, but these individuals are infertile. Wings vary in number from six to nine at birth up to about thirty, averaging at fifteen for most adults. The largest breeds of fae have a mature radius up to forty centimetres long; The smallest, barely two. Average values for size vary greatly by climate but rarely exceed a fifteen-centimetre radius.

All fae internal organs and muscles are contained in the core, barring their blood, which inflates the wing veins and some of which is compressed intradimensionally due to the necessities of their metabolism. A core is a rather fragile, drably coloured thing, with almost no skin or exoskeleton, but emits a slight glow if sufficiently energised. A few small bones stiffen the structure and act as struts for ligaments pulling on the wing bases via the tangled surface muscles. Slender, tentacle-like antennae extend from the core to taste chemicals in the air and respond to subtle changes in wind and pressure, and also serve as hollow probosci to take up nutrients. Even in the very largest fae, the core never exceeds five centimetres in diameter, and it can be mere millimetres wide in the smallest.

The only other notable part of Needle Faery's anatomy is its namesake: The needle. Though not a true needle in shape, this metallic structure is long, thin, and sharp at both edge and point. It is flattened, and between half-again and twice the length of the wing radius, like a miniature rapier. Strong, light, and flexible enough to avoid breaking even under rather harsh duress, this blade deteriorates only slowly after the death of the faery, and can therefore be used by sentient races for a great variety of purposes. Like an odd compass, the living needle always tends to point directly downwards when at rest, even if the faery becomes imbalanced somehow. A grounded faery will stand on the point of its needle like a spinning top. From the core of the faery around the base of the needle is secreted a viscous black ink that coats the blade, and contains the hermaphroditic gametes of the species.

Larval fae are nothing to be looked at. Before their first and final moult, they appear to be fat, featureless, maggot-like entities, little more than a writhing, fluid-filled black bladder.

Life Cycle: Adult Needle Fae spend their entire lives looking for a suitable mate in the air. They perpetually release a cocktail of pheromones with which to signal their availability to other fae. Upon discovering a scent, fae will immediately follow it until it leads to their kin. Once two fae have successfully found one another they will proceed to perform an elaborate courtship dance in the air, comparing themselves to one another in terms of dexterity, aerial agility, endurance, and sensory response time. If there is the slightest difference in the reproductive viability of the pair, they will duel.

Fae duels can take seconds or hours, depending on the difference in strength and on the distinctive fighting style of each breed, but are always fought to the death. The combat is generally a mix of stabbing, tearing, slicing, and parrying of blades, and the stronger party, of course, tends to survive. Well over 95% of encounters between Needle Fae result in the death of one or both specimens. The instinct to kill those weaker than oneself is so strong that fae gathered together in large numbers lose their self-restraint and simply destroy every other fae near them rather than risk allowing a weakling to survive.

On occasion, however, two fae will find themselves completely evenly matched, though not always according to the same set of biological skills. During these encounters alone will Needle Fae choose to mate, momentarily injecting gametes into each other's cores using their blades before fleeing. This heralds the end of the faery life cycle, though they rarely live longer than a few years anyway. The fertilised fae will descend to earth and lay about a hundred tiny eggs in different locations along the ground before death, often in supplementary sources of nutritious matter, such as decaying plant material or animal corpses. Maturation takes a few days to a week, though given time eggs will absorb enough energy from their surroundings to mature anyway. Interestingly, from a mortal perspective, this means that fae are most often perceived to have landed on or around dead creatures.

Description: Needle Fae were designed for one role above all else: Energy dissipation. A faery under duress can absorb and metabolise truly stupendous amounts of power each second from a sphere originating at its core and terminating at a metre radius. The forms they can absorb in this way are primarily heat and electromagnetic radiation, but even such forces as fluid pressure, electromagnetism, and gravitational potential are not exempt from being simply consumed by a faery. On stormy days in Galbar, it is not unheard of for a bolt of lightning to simply stop mid-descent, annihilated by the tiny, winged entity it tried to pass through.

Their rate of absorption is proportional to the amount of energy in their vicinity, but even under normal conditions, the air around a faery is cold and thin and causes magnetically-sensitive devices and radiometric equipment to undergo distortion. They will always appear dark when observed by flash photography, and their absorption of light causes them to cast a shadow that is vast and tangled and wholly unlike their actual shape. Their ability to nullify the force of gravity gives them their powers of flight; Fae wings are actually just steering rudders and channeling tools. Fae even drain interdimensional potential energy around them by stabilising their local plane-space, unwinding any looped-up planes nearby other than those which run into the Gap. This can yank nearby dreamers out of Raka and force them to wake up or sleep dreamlessly, and tends to muddle with precognitive psychics.

The energy absorbed by a faery generally goes to waste- Trying to actually store or use it would destroy the little creature. After a small amount of it is filtered into the bloodstream to maintain the faery's metabolism, the rest tends to simply flow into the Gap, especially in the case of a sudden overload, such as an attack by light or fire magic. If the faery has some time to adapt- Such as being put in a slowly heating oven- It instead converts this energy into Galbaric mass, safely emitting hydrogen atoms or neutrons or fusing nearby hydrogen into traces of other elements.

The only form of energy that Needle Fae have trouble dissipating is, ironically, the easiest for mortals to master: Kinetic energy of solid matter. Smashing a faery with a club will kill it just as easily as it would any other soft-bodied insect. A keen-eyed slinger or archer can simply pick off fae with projectiles. Fae, of course, will slice each other apart and be helpless to absorb the movement of the incoming blade. However, it should be noted that the final action of every slain faery is always to dissipate the movement of the object that destroyed them- An arrow piercing a faery's core will not travel much further, and a sword striking a faery will lose its previous momentum at the point of impact, which can be a little jarring to the untrained warrior.

It is also true that while fae excel at taking in energy, they have almost no way to emit it, and are therefore vulnerable to forms of magic that work by removing energy from a system- Specifically, cryokinesis and anything that can lower the ambient air pressure to the point where the faery body ruptures due to decompression. Their constantly chilled and thin surroundings do ensure that faeries have at least some amount of biochemical resistance to these factors, but they cannot return their environment to equilibrium from this side of the spectrum.

Beyond this quirk, fae don't 'do' much of anything. They hatch, metamorphose, fight, breed, and die like any other insect. Any use that may be made of them must be instigated by other species, such as in hain coming-of-age rituals. Their blades and ink are both valuable and easily available resources, however, so netting and harvesting fae is a profitable business for any sentient species.

Interactions: The same frequencies of Gap distortions used by Sculptors will render Needle Fae highly susceptible to suggestion, far more so than fiberlings. Jvan and her children can override the will of hundreds of fae in their immediate vicinity, controlling their actions utterly and even blinding their destructive instinct. The range of this control begins to falter at about forty metres, and the channel is one-way; Sculptors can sense the approximate position of surrounding fae but do not otherwise receive information from them. Large amounts of fae are also difficult to control individually, as the mental signals tend to scramble one another, and thus complex formations are quite rare. Sculptors tend to keep a small swarm of twenty or so fae around them most of the time to provide a buffer, however small, in case of attack by dragons, elementals, and hypothetically Realta- or to use as knives and chisels for creating art.

Sculptors that know they run a high risk of attack will compel their faery companions to breed, and assist them in finding places to do so. A well-prepared (or extremely paranoid) sculptor may travel under a scintillating blanket of over a thousand fae, using them as a mobile shield against magical onslaught. A fae swarm does not typically move faster than a human can run, but when times are tough, Sculptors may still try to use them offensively due to the fact that they have pointy bits attached. A decent set of plate armour can protect a soft-bodied organism like a human very well, and species with especially tough hides or exoskeletons, such as dragons, white giants, and brush beasts, have nothing to fear from a faery's blade. Hain, too, are superficially protected, but a large swarm can carve gashes in their skeleton with each pass.

Ashlings can infect both faery and Sculptor. Interestingly, the behaviour of an ashling-faery is not all that different to that of a normal specimen. They will target anything that moves rather than just their own kind, and cannot restrain themselves long enough to mate. Ashling Sculptors- Rare though they are- retain most of their ability to control both normal and ashen fae, but their heightened propensity for violence makes it difficult for them to suppress the murderous impulse of a swarm, and must replenish their numbers constantly.

The blade and ink of a faery is part of a global hain tradition. Upon coming of age in their society, a hain will find and kill a faery, and use it to etch its own shell with flowing fractal patterns and abstract renditions of Jvanic life. Due to the source of the ink and the subject of the tattoos, this is a rather distressing procedure for the phobic hain, and may take several weeks and quite a handful of fae. This body art lasts until it is moulted five-thirds of a year later. The experience is uncomfortable and undignified for the hain, though other species might consider it pretty. By the time the welcome relief of new plates grows in, the young adult has grown less sensitive to its instinctive repulsion towards the All-Beauty's designs, and is inspired with the confidence to exploit and destroy such creatures without superstition or stress.

To keep a faery as a pet is possible, but ill advised. A captive faery must be kept in a glass box or attached to a short leash if its owner does not consider a sharp blade sticking out between the bars of a cage desirable. Although pretty to look at and very easy to maintain, fae are quite stupid, and languid when not fighting or trying to escape. Overall a captive faery is more like an ill-tempered, pointy goldfish than a parrot.

White giants respond negatively to fae, and can sometimes be seen chasing them almost whimsically.

Appearance: A noctus is a flattened, matte, darkly coloured Other organism that feeds on near-space radiation in Lex. All nocti are composed of two primary tissue types- An outer 'hem' and an inner 'web'. The hem forms an elastic, unbroken loop or band, which may be circular, angular, lobate, or even form elongated lens-shaped or torus-like forms with an outer and inner hem. Any structure that extends outside the main body of the noctus is part of the hem.

Inside the ring formed by the hem grows the web, occupying a two-dimensional (but flexible) plane between the edges of the hem, though injury or entanglement can cause three-dimensional exceptions to arise. True to its name, the web is a network of veins, often similar to the veins of Galbaric leaves or lungs. However, the web can be arranged in an infinite diversity of ways, from geometrically perfect arrangements of lines and curves in stars, fractals, branches, circles, tessellations and distinct shapes to chaotic tangles. The range of how much of the inside of the hem is filled with veins is wide. Some species have veins so reduced that they really only exist as a hem, while others have almost no gaps in the network.

Due to metabolic processes, the web of a noctus sometimes emits pinpricks of faint films of discoloured light that the organism was unable to fully trap.

As with trees, corals, sponges, and really any kind of sessile organism with variable growth shapes, each species of noctus has a 'habit', or general tendency of shape. Many are free-floating along with the other ring particles and meteoroids. Many more are attached to said meteoroids by their hem, whether by means of a flexible stalk or by the edge of the hem. Most are attached at one point, some at several, some to several different meteoroids, and a few by their entire hem, allowing their web to billow out into space like a windsock. Another majority are not only attached by the whole hem but entirely curled onto a meteoroid, much like Galbaric lichen, albeit with a distinct edge and interior. These tend to be small.

Nocti do not come in a large variety of colours. Most are dark shades of purple leaning to red, with a papery or velvety texture. Some are slightly bluer shades. All are quite flexible, but while some ripple easily at the slightest touch, others rebound to their usual shape quickly and firmly.

In size they vary greatly, with the smallest barely a few centimetres wide. The largest nocti can be as the size of whales, more than ten metres in radius, but the diminishing ratio of hem to web limits them from growing much larger, and the branching shapes that overcome this limitation are more vulnerable to breakage. Free-floating nocti are larger, with much less opportunity for collision with stray meteoroids.

Life Cycle: Nocti live simple lives. They reproduce by fission, often facilitated by imago whose feeding habits are designed not only to sate themselves on a noctus but also to break off sections that are complete enough to rapidly form a new noctus. Many noctus species take advantage of this, concentrating veins and nutrients between their main body and a lobe with a well-developed hem. The desired link is soon targeted by an imagen in the way of an animal eating a fruit, and the lobe is cut off exactly where desired.

Reproduction by cloning, of course, is not conducive to genetic variation. Nocti instead exchange genes- Though they are not always carried on nucleic acids, as with Galbaric life- during the course of their ordinary lives, in a process of entanglement. Nocti that collide and coil tightly around one another may split apart and accept the twisted tissue, even from another species. Other time, the two tissue types meld together into one, resulting in a single organism with some of the traits of both. Many species, particularly those with difficulty colliding normally, such as those who curl into rocks, form extensions of hem and web designed for the sole purpose of easy entanglement. These 'flowers' tend to be long and branched in order to increase the chances of tangling, and some even 'fruit' near the entanglement sites in order to cause imago to rummage through them, shuffling them around a wider area.

Entanglement occurs easily, if unreliably, in recently-separated lobes with exposed webs. Many species of nocti therefore 'fruit' and reproduce at the same time, when the meteoroids they occupy or drift close to are nearest the sun, and therefore receive the most nourishing radiation. Conversely, when the particles orbit on the far side of the sun where Galbar's shadow prevents radiosynthesis, almost no 'fruiting' takes place, and indeed many nocti retract to minimise predation. In the absence of a circadian cycle, this is the primary means by which time is marked in Lex. The orbital period is about forty-three days.

As Lex orbits on the same angle as Galbar itself, it does have a yearly cycle, with the upper surface of the ring receiving more shade half the year and direct sunlight in the other half. As the ring is so thin, relatively speaking, and each meteoroid is itself mobile and capable of spinning, the yearly cycle has no real significance in Lex.

Description: Nocti form the energy basis for life in Lex. Their webs extend beyond the visible level, serving as a foundation for pulses of self-replicating, rapidly decaying subatomic particles that flow in currents over the sheet of space marked by the hem. Harsh solar, stellar and reflected lunar radiation, unfiltered by an atmosphere, collides with this film at all times. Much of it passes through without incident, but the occasional photon is caught in precise loops of interaction with the exotic matter.

The captured light ignites a chain reaction of replication by the field that the noctus generates. Particles resonate in carefully selected orbits within the web that optimises the probability of replication in a useful way. From the initial high-energy interaction, the noctus can accumulate enough low-energy interactions to produce far more energy than originally entered the system. The presence of physical matter not specifically designed to interact with this region tends to heighten the chance of distortion, making the process unviable in atmospheric conditions. Similarly, the reason the noctus web is always flattened is because the chance of scattering increases if the particles are allowed to waver in three dimensions.

Ultimately, the reaction results in the noctus being able to accumulate matter out of nothing. In Lex, where accidental vigour can cause chemically valuable dust to fly out into space, never to re-enter the ecosystem, this is crucial to life being even remotely viable. The interactions also help the noctus warm up just enough for other life chemistry to occur, and easily produces both matter and antimatter, which can annihilate each other for more energy.

All life in Lex is thus dependant on Nocti both for chemical constituents and for a fixed, ingestible energy source.

Interactions: Nocti almost invariably live in a state of symbiosis with gaia. Gaia are unable to fix energy or produce matter of their own accord, but are highly efficient at processing the matter grown by others. Some nocti are more prolific in growing with a gaian colony than others, to the point where their colour more represents the bright gaia than their own dark hues. Additionally, dormant gaia stud the surface of almost every organism in the noctus forest, waiting for their metabolisms to slow so that decomposition can take place.

Nocti frequently parasitise one another, a smaller noctus trying to take advantage of a larger one's quantum current. Neither can move of their own accord, and most large nocti are specialised to be able to redirect energy out of an infected area in order to starve the intruder. As such this is rarely successful, but it does provide a niche for some species.

Imago take advantage of nocti in a vivid variety of ways. In addition to consuming various parts of different species of nocti, grazing it, attaching to it, picking out the softest specimens and scouring for 'fruit', the nocti form between themselves and the meteoroid reefs the physical structure of the Lex ecosystem. An imagen with the right combination of instinct or intelligence may use noctus material to weave a nest, shade from solar storms, clamber between meteoroids, hide from predators, or any other imaginable purpose.

Appearance: Heartworm takes the form of a slender, flattened worm, with a spade-like front end and a slightly tapered tail, although the difference between the two is ultimately rather minor. It measures about sixty centimetres end to end. The surface of the entity is covered in beige skin, and it has no bones, segments, or exoskeleton. The only discernible organs on its body are a large number of faintly bulged eyes of flat, dark red, lacking iris or pupil and lidded by layers of similarly red membranes. These eyes are present on most of Heartworm's upper surface from 'snout' to tail.

Skinstitch's underside harbours its most notable feature- A long, lipless row of interlocking white teeth, reaching from end to end of its body. These are attached to no jaw, but nonetheless clamp tightly together when the avatar is at rest. These act as a zipper-like seal over Heartworm's amorphous 'interior', or 'toolbox'. When open, Heartworm's body stretches to reveal an ever-changing array of diverse arthropod limbs and antennae, and tentacles resembling those of cephalopods, echinoderms and cnidarians. It uses these to manipulate the bodies of its subjects. Basic inspiration. Some appendages.

Vessel: Rarely seen alone, Heartworm resides within a levitating mass of flesh that serves as a sample collecting tool, nest, laboratory, vehicle, and means of projecting divine energy when Jvan is in control. The nest is a rather large construction of roughly spherical shape, measuring about twelve metres in radius. Like its divine sire, the nest of the Emancipator is mostly hollow and highly porous, although no spacial distortion is apparent in its design. The materials constituting the vessel are predominantly cartilage and fat covered in a thin skin. Its surface is largely translucent white or scar-red, though parts of it has skin thick enough to display its own colour, usually brown. Closely following these materials in abundance is bone, sinew, tongue, and ocular jelly.

The arrangement of the vessel-body is semi-regular and easily described as a Matryoshka doll of sagging, bent cages in rough Archimedian shapes, each linked and looped into its outer and inner neighbours both by simple chaining and actual bridges of flesh. Ocular constructs are more common on the outer layers, and sometimes bulge so far that they drop off and remain where they landed as a Jvanic Eye. Mouths and tongues tend to populate the inner mantle, and the core is mostly fat, lobes of which fold and hang downwards from the lower half of the entity. At any given moment some of these may be flaccid and deflated, swelled into vesicles containing the whole bodies of recent subjects, or simply embedded piecemeal with fused organisms that the Holiest Mangle is currently processing. Gristle and fat. Inspiring gif.

Temperament: Heartworm is a less predictable, flightier form of Jvan, and has considerably less inclination to behave socially during those periods when she allows it autonomy. It is also rather less discerning with regards to the functionality of its sculptures, and will often produce organisms that have no hope of surviving unassisted. This may be due to its freedom from Toun's shard of perfection embedded within Jvan in the time of the pre-world, or simply a mutant trait of its creation. When the All-Beauty is making active use of her avatar, it acts as a simple extension of her own consciousness.

Heartworm acts as a pilot for its vessel, slithering around within it via ducts that open for its use, or wrapping itself into the folds of its surface while dictating its movement with chemical and electric impulses. It exercises greatest control over the vessel when curled up in the corpulent heart of the construct, and will use its to chase after organic subjects on a whim, regardless of their size or artistic value. Subjects, when found, are either fused and grafted into a lobe of the vessel to be grown into a more desirable form or combined with other assimilated organisms, or manually edited by Heartworm itself. The latter process may be performed externally, or after a specimen is swallowed up into a fluid-filled, womb-like vesicle to be dissected in a more stable environment, in which it remains alive, conscious, and immobile.

In all cases, Heartworm's subjects tend to be visible, as even vesicles are usually bloated widely enough to be translucent. At any moment the sagging lower half of the vessel may have a variety of animals grafted into it, a larder of organs, limbs and heads to be grown into one another or surgically removed for introduction to a vesicle. Sometimes Our Lord Mutilation will unwisely chase a large animal like a brush beast or whale, and the vessel will be attached to it like a tumour for days or weeks while attempting to swallow the oversize creature into a vesicle.

Description: The Fractal Sea is a large ocean promptly created by Jvan after she made planetfall, in a playful experiment with the raw materials available on Galbar. It is a saltwater body and rather cold, bar its northernmost section. The southern edges of the Sea freezes over with the coming of winter and the seasonal expansion of Vakarlon's ice caps. Despite this, it is still fairly rich in phytoplanktonic life, making it a strong contributor and recycler of oxygen to Galbar's already nourishing atmosphere. Other forms of life are beginning to spread through it from their points of origin at the border of the Deepwood and the Jvanic Peninsula, where the goddess herself resides in body.

Appearance: This ocean, at its point of birth, took the exact form of a Mandelbrot Set, its axis of symmetry aligned perfectly perpendicular to the equator of Galbar, and its edges measured almost to the molecular level. Like any unenchanted landform, of course, it has been changing and shifting ever since. Notably, its southern edge, which lies just within the south polar circle, is distorted by seasonal ice, its north-eastern edge has been twisted out of shape by the Shattered Plains, and simple wind and weather patterns have smoothed its more jagged edges. Despite this, it still possesses an incredible and beautiful assortment of inlets, estuaries and peninsulas, its northern reach penetrating even past the northern tropic of Galbar, and has almost no islands. The 'cleft' of the central cardioid is a stone spire reaching deep into the ocean's heart, and at its apex rests the body of Jvan, large enough to be seen from space as a carmine glow on a rounded, porous grey plateau. Her lower body is largely hidden from view and flooded to sea level, though regular shifts in her shape often result in waterfalls from above or below.

Beneath the surface, the Fractal Sea shows every sign of its violent origin as briny blood was squeezed from air and earth alike. The sea floor is mostly metamorphic stone rent into wild arches, 'natural' monuments, mesas, tunnels and trenches, all of greatly varying depth and entirely irregular in their arrangement, a stark contrast to the measured edges of the ocean. These bizarre formations are most prominent at the center of the main cardioid body, which is separated from its adjoining shapes- Including the large northern circle that touches the equator- by an encircling continental shelf, and grow less pronounced towards its edges. The outlining of the cardioid by this underwater cliff means that if you drown within the waters of the main water body, even just fifty meters away from a beach, it will take a long time to sink.

Life: The first life of the Fractal Sea was photosynthetic plankton, and as it spreads and fluctuates, it has become a pulsing green tint in the ocean. These microbial forms are a combination of bacterial and eukaryotic life in many different shapes, mostly the latter by mass, and produces a rich and endless stream of marine snow for deep-dwelling and current-filtering organisms to feed on. The first multicellular species are the creations of Jvan using samples of the spawn of Slough, and as such, have a somewhat similar aesthetic to the species of the Deepwood. Jvan's modifications deviate greatly from one another on even the most basic levels, though, and some species have been taken apart and put back together again with pieces of one another so many times that it is very difficult to tell what their genetic donors were- Plant, fungus or animal, vertebrate, mollusc, arthropod or annelid. Much of this life can afford to be predatory or live by filtration, due to the high reproductive rate of the phytoplankton. Although the larger species do tend to wander, all breeding populations initially cluster on, around and within the body of Jvan herself, who edits them and experiments with them routinely.

Description: Ovaedis is a divine manufactory orbiting Galbar in the Ring of Lex, using biomechanical systems to monitor Jvan's affairs and synthesise whatever she designs. Her attempt to construct such a device required significant control over fragmentary Gap-space and the eldritch life that occupies it. Dominating the Other required her to enter its domain, which she did internally. This caused her considerable pain and illness, as the Other had been hybridised with aggressive monstrosities from the Hells of Time by Vowzra. After losing a large amount of mass, a shard of perfection lost in her from when Toun attacked her in the pre-world activated and allowed her to rearrange part of the Gap according to her own geometric designs. The subdued Other could finally be manipulated into a hybrid construct in Galbaric space, which Jvan built inside herself and jettisoned into orbit.

Appearance: A colossal fortress in the shape of a human uterus, the interior of which contains a matrix of Jvan's own flesh that supports a relatively small extraction core with a design similar to a human embryo. The uterine structure itself measures about fifteen kilometres across at its widest point, and twenty from its upper surface to its cervical gate. Twin sensory devices sprouting like frayed horns or fallopian tubes add another fifteen kilometres to either side. The ocular ovaries extending from ten-kilometre stalks on its front surface are studded with vivid clusters of spherical Jvanic eyes.

Ovaedis is, by both volume and mass, predominantly composed of its own walls, which are about five kilometres thick on all sides, composed of a bone-like grey beige material that, given time, regenerates from superficial damage. These walls are solid, with only a little flex, again more comparable to bone than steel.

The interior of the fortress is isolated from all external matter and radiation. Internal processes generate large amounts of heat and a little light, which is Jvan's characteristic carmine colour, but too faint to see more than the barest outlines of shape, and fluctuates in strength and direction. Here, a rapidly shifting and regrowing network of Jvan's own flesh, which encapsulates numerous stable bubbles of Gap, is constantly moulding new shapes, only the smallest fraction of which will ever see the light of day.

Connecting the flesh matrix to the core is a long, compound tube, an umbilicus, through which selected samples of mass are withdrawn, as well as large amounts of information. Both umbilicus and the 'embryo' around the core are translucent, pink-white, with a slight glow.

The embryo itself is a simple structure curled around a small black hole which holds it in place. Pale yellowish bones are visible, only partially formed, in its limbs and spine, and it has an unabsorbed 'tail' through which- Curiously- Its spinal cord can be entered. Its eyes are open portals that feed a constant stream of Other life in and out of its skull from various pockets of the Gap. Its heart fills its ribcage and forms the core of Ovaedis, processing this material for extraction via the umbilicus.

Function: An observatory satellite as well as a factory, the beautiful fractal eyes growing from Ovaedis' ovaries are fully functional and can be ejected in any direction, observing Galbar from all angles of space as well as monitoring life in Lex. Many can withstand re-entry and form stationary probes on Galbar's surface before they are eventually cracked by erosion, hain or White Giants. They are capable of discerning sound as well as sight, and unmasked divine essences.

The curved, tubular horns also have a sensory function, acting as receivers and amplifiers for messages transmitted across the Gap, which have a tendency to be distorted by its piecemeal nature. This enhances Jvan's ability to communicate with her cult of Sculptors.

Of course, Ovaedis is foremost a facility for creating life, at which it excels. The cervix at its lower end forms a locked aperture, a portal which can be opened to forcefully birth anything constructed by the Jvanic matrix within, including self-arranging reactants calibrated to assemble themselves at a predetermined time. The matrix itself is capable of manufacturing and replicating Other life, and relies on a stream of samples and data from the core to do so efficiently. Immaterial substances produced by the matrix can also be ejected from the gate if necessary. Should Jvan so choose, she is entirely capable of using Ovaedis as a weapon of orbital bombardment.

Appearance: Lenslings are the final product of a modified ashling parasite that affects predominantly the undead, silicifying their tissue into a tree-like mineral growth.

Newly infected undead show little sign of the transformation, as the lensling contagion is fairly localised in action and spreads quite slowly. The zombie or skeleton in question typically displays a layer of smooth, glass-like crystal covering the affected extremity, usually replacing the underlying skin. Networks of cracks and layers of glass separated by siliceous fluid allow the joints to continue moving freely. Initially, the glass imitates the colours the undead had in life, although its transparency tends to highlight the layers of scarlet blood more than the skin.

As the infection approaches its lengthy middle state, the glass surface advances in thin lines directly to the face and skull, from which it will take on its full range of colour and slowly descend to the rest of the skin. The head is where the most radical physical changes take place in the lensling. The veins here spread out from the face, particularly above the eye-line (or upper beak, in the case of hain). They sprawl into a flat-topped, vaguely mushroom-like inverted cone, consuming the eyes and brain. The mouth is typically left altered but intact. Shape does, however, vary between individuals, and eventually similar canopies will spread from the neck and shoulders.

As glass flows to replace the rest of the undead's body, its outer colours fade from simple verisimilitude into greys, then perfect clarity. The bones are easily visible, and take on bright purple, red and blue shades. The upper canopy typically displays its own unique combination of colours determined by the soul and dreams of the lensling.

In time the mature lensling will cease to wander, and find a place to settle down, typically where others have before. The resultant lens-tree may live for a century, and can grow to an enormous size, twenty metres tall. In shape they will never quite resemble a true tree, appearing closer to the undead flesh that gave rise to them, consisting mostly of veins, bones, and transparent blood, all as smooth as glass and usually without leaves or deep roots. Their colours, however, do not change, and remain a mix of transparent trunks enclosing brilliantly coloured bones, with a canopy of branches in a simple, vivid stained-glass pattern. To stand under a sleeping soul's lens-tree on a sunny day is to be illuminated by a kaleidoscope of refracted light in the colour of their magic.

It is worth noting that lens-trees are easily grafted onto one another, mingling the colours and bones into a bewildering variety of new arrangements. An unhybridised adult tree, however, can only grow bones of the same type and arrangement as the original undead, and therefore holds in its transparent branches many copies of the same skeleton, often in various sizes, curled around each other intimately as if to support the tree in their sleep.

Life Cycle: Unlike ashlings, which spread quickly and aggressively, lenslings are difficult to cultivate and are not able to form a wild population without sentient intervention. Lenslings can only grow on dead flesh, as living creatures are defended by a potent immune system, and cannot grow without a soul, nor can they produce offspring souls of their own accord. A new lensling is therefore usually brought about in one of two ways.

Ashlings, whose bodies have already been turned to amorphous glass, have no way to resist the growth of a lensling. Their ability to reshape themselves with pure willpower in order to heal wounds and form blades makes their shape-shifting bodies vulnerable to influence by similar soul-forces exerted by lenslings, and they do not need to be in contact with an adult lens-tree to be infected. The very instinct that drives them to implant other creatures with their own substance only causes first-stage Lens Ashlings to infect others within their horde through violent contact. In this way whole groves of lenslings arise from what would otherwise be lethal outbreaks of the ashling plague.

It follows that this phenomenon is reliant on population. Small groups of Ashlings with dedicated territories are unlikely to encounter an adult lensling, while for rampaging hordes it's only a matter of time before the plague strikes and spreads through proximity.

Most lens-trees arise when an undead mortal allows themselves to be implanted with a fragment of adult lensling. This tends to be done ceremoniously by Urtelem, who maintain most lens groves and will deliberately seek out willing zombies for the cause, both out of desire for food and simply because they are kind and simple creatures who wish to give the opportunity to all who may desire it.

Mortals with a need to protect themselves from ashlings may also perform the implantation, if a willing zombie is available. Notably, there are shamanic rituals capable of channeling the voluntary soul of a dying mortal into a fragment of a lens tree, allowing it to grow on their cadaver without rising from the grave naturally. The success rate of the procedure is meagre at best.

While lenslings have no upper limit to their lifespan, lens-trees are not immortal. After decades of growth, though not necessarily to full size, the tree dissolves. The end comes all at once, with no sound or movement or loss of vibrance as everything from roots-folds to twig-veins simply collapses into a fine, colourful sand. The trigger for this quiet ending is not known.

Description: Lenslings and the trees that rise from them are benign creatures that develop from a sentient soul forced to remain trapped on Galbar for longer than its allotted time. Where the undead are, upon rising, stripped of their ability to feel visceral pleasure, to eat and drink and sleep, lenslings offer a way to give back these simple pleasures through dreams.

Zombies may be organic, but they are clearly quite dead. Lenslings, while inorganic, are very much alive. An undead mortal infected with glass is once more able to feel the world around them, though not through the same set of sensations. They can feel warm sunlight in them, feel themselves grow with time and feel currents of energy swirl around nearby fae. Most importantly, their thought processes ease, slow, and become meditative as they reach maturity. They can sleep at will, even while walking. Lensling dreams are no more prone to precognition than any other race, but they are long, clear, and many. The decision to settle down in Raka and form a lens-tree comes with a sense of enlightenment.

That said, lens-trees are still capable of sleepwalking. They do not lose their ability to wake up, and sometimes even speak.

Physiologically, lenslings absorb mass and energy from a variety of sources in order to grow. Sunlight, of course, is a major source. The same chaos magic that animates the undead and that ashlings use to change their shape helps their organs fuse with glass and stay fluid. Absorbing natural quartz is a necessity for growth.

The most significant contributors to lens-tree development are fae. Fae can detect lenslings and use them as duelling-grounds around which to meet other fae, fight, and breed. While fae are poor at conserving and using energy, they are absolutely unparalleled at absorbing and dissolving it into surrounding Gaps. Lenslings take advantage of this waste energy. Alone, their development is imperceptible even over decades. With fae, their growth can be as swift as a young pine.

The colourful canopy of a lens-tree is richly nourished by both faery energy and sunlight, absorbs minerals from the root-pads and produces rare metal isotopes from the nuclear particles fae emit when relaxed. This makes them highly nutritious to Urtelem.

Interactions: Urtelem herds welcome lenslings and are the primary vectors of their spread. The tireless nature and meditative peace of a lensling allows them to keep pace easily, and fit in well among the contented stone folk, though there are rarely more than two in a large herd, if any. Of course, Urtelem benefit greatly from being able to harvest from adult trees, and often carry bundles of veins for planting and consumption on their migration. This significantly decreases the amount of time Urtelem have to spend digging and chewing while on the move, allowing roaming herds to meet more often, exchange the 'guard duty' around villages, and visit groves frequently.

The groves themselves, often positioned not far from the very villages Stonemen continue to live by, form the backbone of an emerging culture of unity between isolated herds. With their rewired brain highly adept at processing the geometry of physical space, herds easily remember how to find groves, no matter how distant or how long since they've visited, and there meet others of their own.

Sculptors add another dimension of connection to the relationship. While herds far outnumber the cultists, their increased mobility and interaction allows Sculptors to 'hitchhike' in a desired direction more easily, rather than having to travel alone or follow a single family. Their ability to translate is useful when informing the undead of implantation, and of course, the fae they bring are a boon to lensling growth. Groves often contain Sculptures collaborated on by passing Sculptors.

Mortals interactions with lens groves are mixed. Many find them beautiful, some horrifying, most simply bizarre. Sculptors only add to the strangeness. The presence of Urtelem around them does ease interactions, as it's hard to imagine a hostile relationship with the stone folk.

To ashlings, the lens plague is a scourge, another factor alongside fiberlings and Urtelem that holds their population at small enough numbers to live harmoniously with the rest of Galbar's biosphere. The proximity and numbers required for an outbreak of ashlings to form a major horde makes them vulnerable to rapid spread of lens through violence. Ashlings therefore now tend to split up into smaller roving bands, much like other predators, finding safety in wide distribution. This may make raids by them more frequent, but also more easily survived.

Fae, of course, come to lenslings to breed and die. This little changes their usual life cycle, as they still remain fairly common everywhere else too.

Of course, the most critical interaction is with the undead. Even where a fairly large proportion of the undead end their existence as a lens-tree, very few seek out implantation as soon as they die. Most have emotional ties still alive, or consider that they still have work to do. Implantation is therefore only sought out when undeath becomes too empty, too tiring.

Many choose never to sleep, being satisfied enough with the eternal life they have- After all, the loss of food and drink and dreams can be adapted to by a well-organised mind. Urtelem will continue to offer the service every few years, however.

Some cultures, especially among hain, may actually consider it taboo for the undead to disgrace themselves with a hundred years of lethargy as a tree where they could have a thousand worth of creativity as a skeleton. Whether the taboo is strong enough to hold back those who choose to go will vary. The Stone Folk do not judge, or question motives: The offer is open to all who ask.

Appearance: Change-eaters are mobile Other constructs designed to prey on Elementals, fuelling themselves by reducing complex systems to entropy. Diaphane's daughters are all, like she was, fairly amorphous, but retain a 'core' form to which they revert when relaxed. The core form ranges in size from a pony to a whale, depending on the age of the entity and how well it has fed, and has no overall axis of symmetry. The shape of a change-eater is semi-random and will change slowly over the course of their life, always consisting of a conglomeration of fluid bubbles, streams, and peaks, arranged into closely connected lobes and organs, a testimony to the variability of flesh.

Change-eater bodies exist in a spectrum of increasing symmetry based on how elaborately coordinated their movements are at a given moment. When they wish to move fast in a single direction, their entire body will simply lose all consistency and billow forth like an inkdrop in water, unimpeded by all but the densest matter. Complex manoeuvres necessitated by combat, dancing and navigating difficult terrain are assisted by appendages resembling those of organic creatures, such as wings, jointed tentacles, claws, plates and teeth. These variations in shape are localised and change quickly. A change-eater executing a high velocity hairpin turn may appear as a streak of misty colour, abruptly condense its anterior end into an elaborate flare of fins and wings with which to brake, and dissolve back into a swirling blur, in under a second.

The species is invariably colourful, vibrant to the point of absurdity. No matter which form they take, they always glow in a strikingly bold assortment of colours, marking them out like a beacon, or a hallucination. Despite their brilliance, their light does not have an internal source. It is not bioluminescent but fluorescent and incandescent, a product of ambient radiation being absorbed by the change-eater and released after it has been robbed of much of its energy. As the main source of radiation on Galbar is its sun, the species is usually only as bright as its surroundings- On a moonless night, they are as faint as a thin cloud. When illuminated again their organs light up brilliantly, though not evenly. The light of a torch may cause an entire network of internal tubules to glow while the rest of the entropite remains almost invisible.

An injured change-eater is an unusual sight. Their changes in bodily organisation also affect their solidity. When forming clearly defined tendrils and wings, those parts of a change-eater are solid, and though resilient, can be injured as such. Tissue damaged while solid become difficult to 'unwind' back into a liquid or gaseous state, and will trail limply with the rest of the body, unable to change shape. Conversely, a dissolved entropite is vulnerable to dispersion by pressure, heat, or vibration. Dispersion is easier to heal and tends to be less localised, but a severely dispersed area will struggle to condense with the rest of the body, and trail behind it as smoke.

Life Cycle: Typically wanderers, entropites spend most of their lives hunting and feeding. In order to achieve mature size, they seek out sources of complexity and 'burn' them, reducing them to their base components, usually raw elements in steam and dust. As they age they seek out nourishment of increasing animation, abandoning their previous prey in stages. Young change-eaters are happy enough to eat soil, air and water. Through adolescence they feed on predominantly plants, then animals, until at their full size they hunt almost exclusively elementals, chilling their fires, boiling their seas, fighting primal magic with ethereal flesh.

Change-eaters that grow to their full size will not slow their metabolism. Rather, excess energy that would otherwise be used for growth is used to conceive a clutch of eggs through parthenogenesis. These are incubated internally over the course of several months, and are laid days prior to hatching, in a rough nest constructed of all kinds of organic odds and ends. In Lex, this consists of large nocti woven between meteoroids. On Galbar, trees and corals are most common, but bone inclusions aren't rare, and some mothers will use a sentient village as the groundwork for their nest. Hatchlings are small and energetic, but will be gently lifted back into bounds of the nest if they stray during their first few days of sporadic growth.

Hatchlings, or inklets, do not leave their mother for several years. She will herd them within and underneath her body like an excited shoal of fish, sheltering them and teaching them the joys and dangers of the world. They are allowed to stray further and further as they grow in size, but clutches do not separate until well after they have fledged. Families remain emotionally close, and occupy interlocking territories, or wander together as a hunter-pack.

Description: Designed as living weapons, entropites are agents of destruction no less elegant for their voracity. From birth to death they are hedonists that exist to toy with their surroundings and consume relentlessly.

Sentient and capable of acute emotions, the daughters of Diaphane are more than simple killing machines. They possess a profound sense of familial empathy for the entire species-wide sisterhood. Entropites never tire of one another's company, and though their nature is petty and riddled with bickering, they never fall into conflict. Such is their love that no loss among their number is not widely mourned, and a grievance against one is a grievance against all.

Other creatures receive no such favour. Entropites are captivated by the beauty of the world around them, and feel sorrow when it is damaged, but their constant sense of fascination and wonder culminates in the act of appreciating life by eating it, savouring its flavour. To change-eaters, there is no shame in devouring anything they observe, or sharing it with their sisters. It is the true and final form of admiration.

This is not to say that they are incapable of forming bonds between species. Change-eaters are not opposed to playing with their food. It is difficult for them to understand morality or mercy, but interesting sentient life may, at the risk of being unexpectedly eaten, form friendships with them. True adoption into the sisterhood, however, remains impossible.

Civilisation is beyond the capacities of entropites. While they are inquisitive and intelligent, they lack the patience and motivation to commit to building infrastructure, even if they had a use for it.

Interactions: Djinni will soon face a dire threat from change-eaters, who absorb Flickers to grow, heal their wounds, and conceive. Both entities rely on size and numbers for power. All other factors being equal, entropites are a potent match for the prey they were designed for. However, elementals have a staggering advantage in population, and, free of the necessity to breed, they are not limited in size. No entropite will challenge a elemental lord and his retinue alone, or even stay anywhere remotely close.

Interestingly, change-eaters struggle to consume what they aren't made for. The biota of Galbar and Lex are their natural prey, but magical and interdimensional odds and ends such as White Giants, some types of dragon blood, and Other life not designed for their nourishment- That is, Sculptors and Sculpture- tend to be somewhat distasteful.

Sweethearts are readily consumed by change-eaters, who consider them particularly delicious, almost as much so as elementals. Feeding on them gives a rush not dissimilar to caffeine, albeit more potent, and, while young, more addictive. As they mature, they often wean themselves from sweethearts to the more nourishing Flickers.

Description: The Urtelem written language is an extremely information-dense script designed for their unusual brains. It is not written in the linear stacks of most script, and can take on numerous arrangements. Most texts written in Spiral open from a central point, where a distinct subset of symbols is used to denote time of writing. Authorship is noted nearby. From there, reading order is determined by trigonometric relationships between the thin circles and angles that underline and run between the glyphs. The sentences tend to wander, often in a literal spiral, or branch out into smaller orbits linked with lines, both in and outside of the first circle. Certain dialects or poetic forms do not use arcs at all, and the text runs along sharply angled lines that interlock when previously mentioned ideas recur, forming elaborate irregular stars and nets. The shape of a text is not arbitrary, but has connotations of tone, context and intention.

The glyphs themselves occupy several different alphabets of varying capacity. In order of ascending complexity, Spiral has an alphabet each for dates, names, shorthand, mathematics, events in time, and physical description, each of which in turn has many tens of symbols. In most of these, words are constructed by what letters compose them, the shape in which those glyphs are arranged, and their relative orientation. The letters themselves, depending on alphabet, may link up, and symbols are very often integrated into the circles and curves that dictate the shape of the text, denoted only by a small line, dot or curve around or intruding through the sentence line.

Words, depending on alphabet, are usually put together from numerous semantic components, and only some of the alphabets are related to Urtelem 'phonetics'. The overall effect is that, while beautiful, the Spiral Script is nauseatingly difficult to read for one who does not have the patience to read from multiple perspectives and alphabets at once and is prepared to follow the text as it loops and tangles through itself. Mathematicians armed with compass, ruler, and a lifetime's supply of notebooks may find it interesting, however.

To Urtelem, who are exquisitely patient, mathematically gifted, and good at considering the whole of a beautiful thing at once, the script is a pleasure to use, and it is the runnings-around of other mortals that are confusing.

Interactions: A nomadic life spent moving between the Lens Groves and other landmarks in small herds does not readily facilitate the development of a technologically advanced society. The odds of herds finding one another by chance are not high, and thus maintaining contact, let alone organising large populations, is a challenge. With no means to communicate across long distances, the Urtelem are instead gifted with an efficient way to communicate across the barrier of time.

Lens groves and other landmarks to which stonefolk are drawn, usually geological in nature, are redecorated each time a herd visits with new stories, plans and maps. Written in stone, these texts last until they are erased, waiting to be found by the next set of travellers. In this way herds can collaborate even if their migrations haven't intersected for years. Often Urtelem actually make and maintain friendships by exchanging personal messages in frequently-visited places, like letters. New ideas and technology can be shared and spread in this way, and their culture remains fresh and united.

Description: Furious at the disturbance of Slough's death-rest by Vestec in the Deadwood Sepulchre, impulse drove Jvan to create an expansive biome to enclose it, protect it and emulate its aesthetic. The resultant mangrove covers the north shore where the Fractal and Sparkling seas meet. Within its borders lie the Mahd estuaries and the southern edge of the Forsaken Craglands. Nestled between Craglands and Mangrove is the Deadwood Sepulchre itself. Shortly after its creation, the mangrove was claimed as a refuge by old skin-stitch, the avatar of Jvan, who filled it with life. It is worth noting that several underwater Blood Wells open into the mangrove.

Appearance: Thick veils of cloud and fog constantly shuffle over the region, trapped both by the high elevation of the Forsaken Cragland region, and the unusual windless quiet that pervades the jungle. Sound plays odd tricks in the roots, and the water is always still, high tide or low. With the light of the sun diffused in mist and leaves, days pass slowly in the cloud forest.

The Mangrove does not share its progenitor forest's absolute aura of stagnation. Despite its appearances, it is very much a living ecosystem. Its upper canopy is dense and lush, although its leaves are unusually dark, and tasteless to non-indigenous species. Beards of aerial root-hairs hang like rotted curtains, and there is some lichen, but no soft green moss. Below, the heart of the cloud forest is a maze of slender grey roots entangled in one another, stretching from thin trunks to curve into the brine.

The water is brackish and nearly black with silt and tannins. Visibility fades to nothing within a meter. Where the loose, sandy islets of soil end, some areas are silted and shallow, while others are several body lengths deep, and it is rarely possible to tell the difference. Roots are sporadically slick with brown algae, and given Galbar's erratic set of moons, tides are almost impossible to predict or track. Approaching from the ocean, the start of the jungle is immediate, with no transitional zone- Only a stark line where tea-brown water meets blue.

Life: When Our Lord Mutilation came to rest in the mangrove and found emptiness, its former inhabitants unable to thrive in the new biome, It set about repopulating the habitat. Knowing that Jvan could try to claim its sentience again, it made the cloud forest into a place of illusions and invisibility, where not only itself but every other living thing in the jungle was hidden from sight and no less dangerous for it. Many of its inhabitants are blind, unseeing and unseen.

The following categories of organisms are known.

Mist walkers are creatures that seek out, follow, and facilitate the areas most obscured by fog. Tirelessly mobile, their clammy, faintly luminescent bodies are indistinguishable from the dim light of the low clouds. Peripheral jumpers are rare scavengers that live close to the edge of the mangrove, picking up on visual and psychic cues to determine where lost organisms are going to look next and nimbly leaping away from their cone of vision. Divers form the mangrove's aquatic fauna, leading complex interactions beneath the surface, collectively grooming the root maze into shapes that suit them. Mimics move slowly and are perfectly camouflaged between the roots, even in texture and scent. Drifters are tiny, transparent, prolific creatures, only a few cell layers thick, drawn to material they can land on and digest. Tunnellers live within the trees themselves in their own hidden hierarchy. Hallucinogens are the elusive apex predators, manipulating the senses of other organisms through psychoactive chemicals they distribute on air, water, and surfaces.

There are many species occupying each of these categories, from many different phyla- Diversity in all things. Some pass through several of these stages during their life cycle. With varying levels of difficulty, the mangrove fauna can be caught and examined clearly. Most prefer death to discovery.

Appearance: Sweethearts are small, environmentally versatile sentient creatures that are well adapted to serve as unquestioning placeholder crew on the Arks, and poorly adapted to everything else. In size they are generally little taller than human knee level, and weigh only four kilograms or so. The reason for their lightness is that they are, of course, hollow, and spend their lives floating in various media.

In shape and colour, true to their name, sweethearts resemble a human heart. Their abdomen contains hollow chambers that store and pump fluids depending on their environment. A complex genetic composition allows significant variation in their shape, and so their lower bodies can be slim or bulbous and divided into two to six primary compartments. Valves and ports allow for gas exchange. Intakes are positioned on the torso, vents on the abdomen. One to three pairs of branching tentacle arms stretch from the abdomen. Their skin is smooth to touch, sealed by a resilient membrane.

Internally, sweethearts hide a variety of physically anomalous tissues, collectively known as sweetmeat. These are responsible for converting food into propellants, ejected by the vents to produce their squid-like, backwards jet propulsion in vacuum. These propellants are unstable and quickly evaporate into nothing when expelled from the sweetheart, a process catalysed by ordinary matter, which dulls the edge of their breakneck locomotion when in atmosphere, making conventional air jets more efficient. Additionally, these tissues fuel the more exotic tools in their mouthparts, and provide the sweetheart with its narcotic properties.

At the top of the torso is a shallow hemispherical head, like a hat, with several shiny black eyes and a few loose tubes through which they emit sound. Due to the absence of tongue, jaw or lips, sweetheart 'language' mostly takes the form of fluting and piping. A tightly locked vertical slit conceals the delicate mouthparts.

Sweetheart mouthparts are a complex apparatus that varies between individuals. They consist of a variety of prehensile grasping and slicing tools, with more specialised equipment dependent on alleles- Particle agitators, welding torches, spinnerets. While relatively fragile, this array is not innocuous. At the risk of injuring themselves, sweethearts do have a bite reflex when sufficiently stressed. The speed at which sweethearts can accidentally lacerate other creatures is shocking to all parties involved. It is worth noting that due to their original purpose as a challenging hunt for entropites, sweethearts have a small, bladed secondary tongue designed with the express purpose of inflicting pain on change-eaters where little else can.

Life Cycle: Sweethearts are naturally polyploid, carrying numerous copies of each chromosome, and are often genetic mosaics. Due to this, a single sweetheart contains a population's worth of genetic diversity. It would take centuries of inbreeding for negative effects to show, and sweethearts have no incest taboo. This design quirk is a contingency that allows a crew with a full compliment of functional tools to repopulate from just a few individuals in case of catastrophe on the Arks or an increase in their numbers. Of course, it also makes captive sweetheart populations viable for regular slaughter and sweetmeat harvest, no matter how small.

Promiscuous hermaphrodites with no social or familial structure, sweethearts breed readily when conditions are good. In order to accelerate the breeding process while preventing overpopulation, sweetheart larvae can only mature if implanted into the fertile living tissue. Mostly this occurs in breeding pods on the Arks, of which only enough are kept open to replenish the crew. Unborn larvae are absorbed back into the parent. It is possible to breed sweethearts in the absence of an Ark or similar infrastructure by removing dormant larvae from their parents surgically and implanting them into a living animal, which, much like a caterpillar implanted with a wasp's egg, is slowly consumed by the larva. Large animals like cattle can handle several larvae at once, but rarely survive more than one.

Larvae simply resemble vertebrate hearts and veins, albeit growing without any need for skin. After a few months of incubation the sweetheart has developed its full complement of organs and may detach and start leading an adult life. At this stage they are usually half of their average mature size, which they reach within two years. Once they reach about fifteen years of age, sweethearts find a comfortable place to rest, and die without aging.

Description: Sweetheart psychology is, compared to other sentient species, underdeveloped at best. Their language is simplistic and they possess almost no sense of personal identity. Most forms of abstract thought are beyond them. They follow instructions without question, and are incapable of comprehending the concepts of manipulation, aggression, exploitation, or mortality.

To a sweetheart, all things are inherently good, equal to itself, and requires looking after. In an Ark environment, this means that a sweetheart crew will never be restrained by interpersonal conflict, and will apply themselves to maintaining the ship as if it were their own body, using their deft tentacles and tools incorporated into their mouthparts.

Outside of it, sweethearts require constant guidance and protection to keep them out of trouble. While their propellant systems give them almost unparalleled mobility in a vacuum and their adaptable sweetmeat metabolism can tolerate extended temperature and chemical extremes, and their instincts are acutely honed for survival in Lex, Galbar is an entirely different environment. High curiousity and an inability to judge motives or perceive danger all too easily leaves sweethearts open to trafficking, slavery, harvest, or simply death by natural causes not present in space.

Species not present in Lex provoke no fear in sweethearts, and so injuries received from them inspire emotional trauma and guilt due to the sensation of rejected empathy. Sweethearts are incapable of understanding predation, but will happily consume meat if prepared. Their bite reflex, once prompted, is distressing to them, as they cannot fathom how or why they have inflicted harm. Attempting to fix broken mortals in the same way they would an Ark conduit only results in further pain on all sides.

While sweethearts cannot hold on to emotions for long, the psychological distress of a life on Galbar mounts as the years go by. Specimens that have lived freely on the planet for a decade or so tend to feel guilt for everything they perceive as broken, and avoid contact for fear of perpetuating further harm. Soon enough they grow starved of affection and symptoms of chronic anxiety set in.

Interactions: What sweethearts lack in creativity and conventional intelligence they make up for in instinct and analytical problem-solving within a narrow context. From the moment they emerge from a breeding pod they are intimately familiar with the functional mechanisms of the Arks, and tirelessly perform maintenance. This extends to certain other biomechanical constructs as well. However, sweethearts lack ingenuity and direction, and thus require extensive leadership in order to actually pilot and operate the colossal vehicles.

Originally designed as nothing more than target practice for change-eaters that moved with speed and intelligence comparable to elementals, sweetmeat naturally contains a psychically active substance meant to complement and augment the hedonistic predator psychology of entropites. The drug acts as a stimulant that clears and sharpens the mind, spurs the reflexes, and lowers the rate of intrusive thoughts. As they grow in size and exposure, adult change-eaters develop a resistance, and sate their addiction as leisure and availability dictates.

Change-eaters being both ethereal and very large, the narcotic concentration in sweetmeat is massively overcalibrated for other mortals. Dosage determines the duration of effects, but intensity is always the same. For most, ingesting sweetmeat gives the user a few hours worth of manual control over their own cognition, allowing them to think faster and with far cleaner logic than when sober and take adept control of their body, senses and reflexes while delaying pain and exhaustion. All this comes at the price of losing their emotional, social and moral inhibitions, taking on the role of the utterly free self-occupied nihilist.

There are no negative effects when the high runs down. For a few ecstatic moments, a sweetmeat user can outwit and outmatch almost anyone without regret, guilt, pain, or tiredness. Their motivations are stripped of obligations to anyone but themself and their own desires, be they carnal or personal. Most critically, memories of the high, complex plans and reasoning made during it are exquisitely lucid. While drugged, the user is typically aware that the high will soon end and plans ahead, ensuring that the addict will not regret their own actions once inhibitions return. Sweetmeat users are notoriously hard to catch.

The addiction itself, where it occurs, is purely psychological. No chemical dependency arises from multiple uses. Once the high is over, a user is indistinguishable from anyone else, despite their vivid memories and dangerous plans. As the dosage is always so high, the slow accumulation of resistance rarely occurs in mortals.

It is worth noting that there is one side effect of the drug. Change-eaters are designed to consume, and sweetmeat helps them focus on their appetite. Mortal users, particularly addicts, gradually develop a desire to consume anything that is an exotic novelty, anything taboo. While this may start with foods too expensive to buy with legal wealth, pets, strangers, and lovers soon join the list.

Description: Arksynth is a living material capable of being fashioned into a great variety of tissue types and shapes by non-magical means that are available to mortals. 'Pure' or 'stem' arksynth is a typically viscous grey fluid with no exceptional properties other than the ability to replicate when exposed to oxygen, water and nutrient-rich organic matter, expanding to form a homogenous, wrinkled clump. Even stemsynth tends to mutate, taking on slightly different colours, growth habits, and nutritional preferences. Major mutations also occur, usually at a rate scarce enough to make mass production possible. Depending on this is, for reasons soon to become obvious, unwise.

Certain chemical and physical stimuli can cause stem arksynth to react, forming a 'cured' variant material. The list of potential stimuli is innumerable, and with careful experimental observation, stimulus materials, organic or inorganic, can be found in any environment. Stimulus does, however, lean towards the odd- Certain kinds of bones, malformed flowers, coloured rocks, stretching at a certain tension, light of a particular colour. Stimuli can be mixed or applied in succession, forming nuanced 'recipes'.

The occult factors contributing to the composition of arksynth sometimes reveal themselves here- While not sensitive to symbolic processes in the way of true submaterial rituals, circumstances which don't appear to alter the physical nature of an item occasionally gives it stimulus properties, such as harvest during a certain lunar arrangement, excavation using a certain tool, or only from the left side of an animal's body. Location of harvest occasionally plays a role in this, usually in a general way, such as the humidity or altitude of the site. Stemsynth developed in regions that are relatively homogeneous in composition, such as ice caps and deserts, tends to be noticeably more reactive to stimuli from that region.

'Cured' arksynth exists in a limitless diversity of tissue species, with an equally infinite array of uses. Live cultures can be stimulated to synthesize virtually any chemical compound, given adequate prerequisites and sufficient stimulation to grow into such a specific arrangement. In fact, 'given adequate prerequisites and sufficient stimulation' summarises any and all possible uses for mature arksynth. Any naturally occurring tissue can be mimicked, any material grown, any shape wrought, any mechanical function performed. Arksynth can act as muscle, skin, horn, hair, fruit, leaf- Even, potentially, brain.

While this sounds and is wondrous, stem arksynth can only mature into one particular function, and many are so specific that they require other types to support them- Although some recipes will yield a more efficient tissue than others and redundancies are prolific. Complex synthworks are artfully arranged devices in which different types of 'synth feed into one another to perform a task, much like complex machines are made of many simple mechanisms. Outside of the Emaciator's laboratories, many potential synthworks will remain beyond even mortal conjecture for thousands of years. Constructing a living creature out of arksynth is little easier than constructing an automaton out of metal and silicon.

However, synthwork lends itself to certain technologies far more or less readily than conventional materials. The most prominent is bodily augmentation. Conditioning 'synth to be accepted by mortal flesh is relatively simple compared to, say, arduously stimulating it to produce polymers, drugs or self-powered mechanisms. Anything that can be developed in a 'synth workshop can also be developed in 'synth grown onto the fresh stump of an amputated arm. The Jvanic influence here is, of course, obvious.

Unlike stemsynth, mature arksynth types cannot be mass produced. Though complex, the recipes required to stimulate them are not the limiting factor. Rather, it is the uncanny behaviour of arksynth itself.

Interactions: Arksynth is not conscious. Different samples are not linked by any psychic matrix, nor can it 'choose' its 'actions'. Virtually any aberrant behaviour displayed by a synthwork is completely due to non-supernatural random chance. However, certain patterns- or at least consistent mechanisms of chaos- tend to emerge.

All 'synth compounds will defy attempts to predict them by man or god, even to the point of actually behaving predictably when it is expected to be erratic. This nesting of unpredictable predictability runs infinitely deep. The mutations and mechanisms of arksynth cannot be tricked into playing into its maker's hands. Arksynth is utterly unreliable- If it is approached with too many expectations, those expectations will be overturned, no matter where they were placed. There can never be perfect confidence of anything wherever 'synth is involved; Arksynth will play tricks wherever it is least expected.

For this reason, attempting to mass produce any synthwork, or even replicate it, is foolhardy. However, this also means that arksynth gravitates towards uniqueness and diversity, in which there is a rather different kind of efficiency.

Arksynth may not be predictable or even wholly logical, but it has a tendency to be intuitive, and mortals tend to have a decidedly easier time of working with it than might be expected. If anything, the unique irrationality of mortals seems to give them a much better grasp of how to work with synth than any amount of logical analysis could. This is, of course, absurd, and highly unlikely.

Be that as it may, it also explains a good deal about arksynth. Synthwork is almost invariably of higher quality the more hand-crafting and mortal attention goes into it. Unregulated cottage industry tends to produce more goods than organised production. Mortals that have developed pointless emotional bonds to their arksynth, or even anthropomorphised it, also usually have a better understanding of its properties. The best synth recipes are almost always found by chance and individual experimentation rather than a collective working towards a goal.

Attempting to capitalise on any of this, of course, will result in failure. Better not expect too much.

Divine intervention is curiously limited when it comes to the technology. Arksynth will strongly resist being forced to change by any hand other than a mortal who has chosen to do so, or a deity humble enough to stoop to their level. Stemsynth without a mortal owner is much more susceptible to the production of technology through magic.

Interestingly, almost all forms of arksynth not designed to burn are exceptionally fire resistant.

Variations: Over time, arksynth's constant mutations have something of a predisposition towards the preferred artistic aesthetics of the culture that produces it. Synthwork from a lamplit Gothic city will look nothing like synthwork from a caravan of desert nomads, even if the two are functionally similar. The following are examples of hypothetical arksynth constructs of very high complexity in vastly different cultures.

A 'synth factory in a hellish place. Many elite craftsmen toil therein.

These strange individuals receive camouflage, warmth and sustenance from the cumbersome synthwork they have grown upon themselves.

Phenomenally advanced, these synthwork flying machines are adapted to blend in with non-Jvanic technology of similar complexity.

Many synthtypes are bioluminescent. This individual has modified themselves heavily to engage in interstellar travel.

Being a living material, arksynth weapons may one day be capable of reproducing themselves, to chilling effect.

An honourable warrior who has long since left her home planet. A cosmic knight, if you will.

This noble has removed her eye and replaced it with a better one designed by the family synthsmith.

A liquid airship with a neural assembly- Curious and tremendously costly.

Appearance: Ophanim are complex aerial bioweapons composed of three component species- Spheres, Cords and Plumes. Each ophan is a union of a single Sphere and over a hundred Plumes, and each ophan is always attached to at least one other ophan by a Cord.

A Sphere is the most notable component species of an ophanim colony. Each Sphere is an organism made predominantly from metals of various kinds, with organic and exotic matter included in the alloys of some tissue. They are colossal, averaging over seven metres in radius, and consequently weigh easily over ten thousand metric tonnes. The interior structure of a Sphere is, despite its unusual constitution and unnatural metabolism, living tissue, complete with sensory organs, vascular structures, and a complex nervous system. Much of this internal physiology is fluid, but the arrangement of solid and fluid compartments is designed to minimise disruption from rapid aerial movement.

The exterior of each Sphere is not perfectly even. It is marked as if moulded into shape by a sculptor's hands, divided into sections by asymmetrical flowing patterns of smooth furrows and glyphs, sometimes in subtly different metallic shades. These patterns are unique to each Sphere and hide surface-level sensory and magic-channelling organs. Barring some fluid-filled veins, this exterior layer is solid metal, and over a metre thick.

Plumes are another component species of ophanim. Ghostly, fluid creatures, Plumes are composed of powerful holy magic and blood cultured from Other samples. They glow brightly in white, sometimes tinted with other shades. Simple and amorphous in form, Plumes have an indistinct, vaguely pointed 'head', behind which the rest of the body mass flows, forming their characteristic 'feathery' shape. Over a hundred Plumes fly freely just above the surface of a Sphere, chasing and twirling around each other in a cloud-like coating over the metal below. During rapid flight, Plumes tend to conjoin into a single mass and billow behind the Sphere leading them in a larger plume shape. Plumes are linked with the surface of a Sphere and never abandon it while it is alive.

Cords are the final component species of ophanim. Less than a millimetre thick, tautly linear, translucent, and sometimes over eighty metres long, they are invisible to the naked eye. Magical or radiometric senses may see coiled lines and streams of esoteric hybrid energy flowing between Spheres connected by a Cord. An ophan cannot live without a Cord connecting it to another, so there are always at least two Spheres in a Bludgeon system. In Bludgeons with more than two ophanim, Cords come and go as aerial movements require them, blinking in and out of existence in an instant.

Life Cycle: The ophanim have more in common with divine weapons than they do with other living creatures, though they undoubtedly belong in both categories. Tremendous energy and skill was required to craft them, and they are incapable of breeding. It seems likely that, as living creatures with souls, they do have a maximum lifespan. Whatever this is, it is almost certainly so expansive that galaxies will have collided by the time an ophan shows signs of aging.

Incapable of growth, having been produced at their full size, ophanim can nonetheless heal after injury, and at a surprisingly brisk pace. Spheres being the most corporeal of the components, they repair themselves in orthodox ways, by adding to their body mass with raw materials from the environment and reconstituting them into new tissue. Usually the ophan will put itself into contact with available metal for this to occur, be it by burying itself in the earth, crashing into shallow ore veins, bathing in mineral-rich waters, or simply attracting metal objects magnetically.

Plumes, when damaged, rapidly regenerate, their shapeless nature proving very useful in this situation. If destroyed, they can replicate within seconds by binary fission, so long as the rest of the ophan remains alive. They tend to expire naturally after a few years, and are regularly replacing themselves.

Cords, as they were intended to be, are virtually indestructible. While they may only exist for a second or two in a rapidly-moving arrangement of ophanim, their disappearance and reappearance is a natural process of ophanim, and in any system there is always at least one Cord per Sphere. If divine power is applied sufficient to shatter a Cord, and no backup connection is available, the ophan it was attached to dies instantly.

Description: Every component of an ophan is sentient, and limited. Together they are single entity, their strengths overlapping to form an intelligent weapon that requires only the guidance of a single external individual to execute extremely potent combat strategies.

Plumes generate large amounts of raw energy, of the Holy, Elemental and Other kinds, for the ophan. This is harvested and metabolised by the Sphere, via the Cord's energy flows. Much of it refined and cycled back into the Plumes, which then provide the ophan with thrust. They are also the ophan's primary sensory organs, their bodies keenly sensitive to visual, auditory and magical stimuli.

The 'vicious spirit' is the angelic soul within a Plume. Their thoughts move quickly and often incoherently, their attention sharply focused and soon shifting to another narrow scope. Constantly communicating among themselves telepathically in modified Angelic, their rapid-fire chatter quickly shares information with the whole system and makes loose connections without thoroughly processing the data.

Spheres are the core component of an ophan. A Sphere facilitates the growth of Plumes and uses their holy magic to nullify local gravity, much like angels do. Spheres are crucial to the existence Cords, which, as dynamic flows of energy, need a 'start' and 'end' point. Spheres can exert a powerful magnetic field at will. Beyond detecting electrical currents, however, they have no senses not dedicated to interacting with Plumes.

The 'guardian spirit' is the once-Urtelem soul contained within a Sphere. Guardian spirits are 'blind', and process sensory data from Plumes in order to 'see' the outside world. Conflicting observations are integrated by the guardian spirit, as are thoughts- The 'sleepy' spirit relies on organising the muddled ideas of Plumes to make decisions. However, it plays the greatest role in controlling the ophan.

Cords are energy relays. They allow supernatural power of all kinds to flow between ophan and optimise the efficiency of such a decentralised system. The sprawling fields of unseen energy flows they generate between Spheres are also crucial to connecting Plumes and Spheres.

The 'indomitable spirit' is a modified Flicker within a Cord. Cords being short-lived, they do not contribute significantly to the telepathic community of the colony. Indomitable spirits have even weaker senses than guardian spirits, their role instead being constant regulation of the dynamic and sometimes unstable energy systems of ophanim. The energy flows they create are invisible works of art, constantly changing and yet always perfectly balanced.

However, indomitable spirits are not separate from the soul community. While voiceless, their integrated knowledge of data from Spheres and Plumes is without flaw, and among multiple connected ophanim, their minds are the unified authority that guides the entire colony. Their momentary flashes of passionate intuition give rise to the ophanim's fluidly connected grace and responsiveness in battle.

Interactions: Weapons being what they are, ophanim are designed to be wielded. The rogue avatar of Jvan, Heartworm, simultaneously created a system for controlling entire colonies of ophanim while constructing the composite species. A mass of ethereal tentacles, only extending from it and those it has implanted with them, are capable of entangling Cords and delicately directing the ophanim through them, supplemented by the intelligence of the colony- Much like the relationship between reins and a well-trained horse. These tentacles can also be used to exploit the fast aerial movement of the ophanim to move the wielding 'rider'.

Additionally, certain traits from the entities harvested to create the ophanim still survive.

The guardian spirit exercises the greatest influence on the demeanor of the colony. Ophanim are eternally patient, protective entities. They wait on the will of their rider, if any, or else live peacefully, content with their own company and that of other ophanim. Even when not controlled, an ophan will move to protect an individual it considers a master, and indeed others that it considers innocent. Ophanim sometimes land briefly near clans of Urtelem, as if in greeting, before going on their way.

When in the presence of Djinni, the indomitable spirit comes to the fore. Ophanim treat elementals much like they treat other spirits of similar strength- With pride and begrudging respect. In flight they tend to respect the borders of known elemental lords. In combat, if provoked, they battle long and in earnest, employing manoeuvres beyond their instructions. It is one of the few times when an ophan might openly display independence.

The vicious spirits, while numerous, tend to affect the decisions of the ophan only in specific circumstances. Vestecian chaos stimulates an unusual excitement in ophanim, who may move a little erratically, and fight more destructively, in the presence of a horde. Additionally, there is a certain mutant fiberling, Violet by name, to whom ophanim show a bizarrely affectionate deference.

Appearance: An Inversion Scribe is a wandering Jvanic animal that exists to create short-lived 'void shadows' of the living beings it encounters on its journey. Relatively simple in appearance compared to other Jvanic constructs, Scribes, also called voidsketchers, are not dissimilar in composition to Jvan herself. Most of their body is composed of a sinewy grey tissue, flexible but very firm, that emits a pale blue aura at all times. This gives them a ghostly appearance at night.

Scribes have no organs, skin or skeleton and very few muscles, and are arranged like somewhat haphazard skeletal frameworks of conventional (if often non-existent) animals. Although they tend to be quite structurally sound, they little resemble normal endoskeletons, as they lack the physical demands of unnecessary flesh. Their slender 'bones' are all connected, having little in the way of true joints, and are often 'ribbed' together or coiled around one another. Asymmetrical quirks are fairly common, especially after birth or injury. Their general outline (empty though most of it may be) tends to be long, slim and streamlined, with few projections. Due to their odd shape, even an adult voidsketcher the height and shape of a horse does not weigh more than a man.

General body plan varies greatly among scribes. They may have anything from one to eight legs, and occasionally lack a 'head', or have multiple. Often they resemble fleet-footed ungulates, tall, flightless birds, ground-hunting spiders, or kangaroos in shape and gait. In water, they tend to mimic slender fish, particularly sharks and catfish, or crustaceans. It is not unusual, however, for voidsketchers to be tripods, one-legged hoppers, flexible cephalopod-like beings, or simply a set of grasping limbs attached to a central junction. In size they tend to vary from turkeys to camels, averaging at about the size of a pony- Some, of course, are low and long, others thin and tall.

Aquatic voidsketchers are much the same as terrestrial ones. Due to their empty, skeletal shape making swimming motions difficult, however, their legs and tails are often rayed into slender, flexible spines in a fan-shape- Fins. These are webbed with transparent grey tissue, the same as the rest of their bodies, only even thinner. This webbing may occur in terrestrial variants in vestigial form, with little function. It is rumoured that there have been tiny airborne Scribes with four finned wings and long, slender tails ending in a fan, but this has not been confirmed by mortal eyes.

All Scribes have at least two 'styli', and can have up to about eleven. These are limbs or appendages with which a Scribe creates its void shadows. Any limb that is not used in locomotion, and even some that are, will end in a stylus. Heads and tails often carry one in the place of a snout or tail-tip, and can carry more in the form of horns, forked tails, antennae and jointed 'mandibles'. Often a one or more styli will occupy their own limb, forming a dextrous 'stylus wing'. The addition of a stylus limb to a Scribe's ordinary shape can turn 'horses' into 'pegasi', give 'crests' to 'ostriches' and 'tails' to 'spiders'. A stylus ends in a particularly sharp point, often darkened in colour, where the voidsketcher's glow is concentrated. They trail short, thin rents in space-time that bend light around them.

Inversion Scribes have no voice other than the sound of sharply pointed hooves, but sometimes, very rarely and only at night, they will produce an echoing chime-like or plucked-guitar sound from an unknown source. This semi-telepathic signal can be heard for miles around, but always sounds close and quiet.

Void shadows, commonly called Inverts, are difficult to describe. They are living entities made of nonexistence delicately stretched into the approximate shape of something their parent Scribe has observed. They are usually composite, composed of numerous existential 'hollows' that pull on one another as if stitched together. These 'hollows', and thus the void shadows themselves, are significant spacial anomalies. Sometimes they occupy a certain amount of space, but have zero volume. Other times they occupy no space at all, but contain a certain volume of emptiness. Occasionally they do both at once. They do not 'move' so much as propagate, constantly cleaving and re-sealing conventional space. They are neither three-dimensional nor two-dimensional, and are therefore always seen from multiple angles at once regardless of the perspective of the viewer. This gives them the impression of creatures designed in a style that is both cubist and minimalist, an ephemeral series of clefts and sweeping lines with planes suspended between them; Something that does not resemble the true shape of a living thing, but emulates its proportions and movement just enough to give the impression of similarity to that thing. To watch one in motion is horrifying.

An Invert cannot touch, nor be touched. Sometimes they will pass through the objects they interact with, and sometimes they will come apart upon attempting to touch something. More often their 'body' will simply refuse to come within touching distance of solids. They do not make sounds, but a very high-pitched whining noise, like tinnitus or radio feedback, accompanies their close proximity. Sometimes it resonates with nearby telepathy, producing a distorted crackle.

Life Cycle: Inversion Scribes are short-lived. An adult voidsketcher will last for anything from a few months to a few years before one day simply curling up and shrivelling away, their flesh softening and rotting readily, the remains desiccating into a flaky white dust. The glow fades from their body over the course of several minutes after they die, and the hours preceding death are the only time at which they are guaranteed to emit a sound. They will never die while working on a void shadow or while 'pregnant'. Beyond this a Scribe shows no sign of aging or imminent death.

During its life, a Scribe will produce either none, one, or two offspring. The process is simple- A new set of beams and sinews will fray into its design and rapidly grow into a large 'bulge' of ligaments, with limbs of its own. This extension detaches after one or two weeks of rapid growth, at which point it can walk unassisted, if gracelessly. The parent follows its child for a few days, righting it if it stumbles and carrying it away from aggressors until it has found its legs. The offspring will grow to its full size within a few more weeks at most. Offspring can grow from any point of the parent's body, but only one at a time. Sometimes they resemble their parent, and sometimes they do not.

As they approach adult size, voidsketchers will begin the work of creating Inverts. Each Invert takes between a few minutes and twelve hours or so to produce, depending on size, and a Scribe will create an Invert every few days, with intervals between creation also increasing substantially with the size of the void shadow. True to the name, void shadows only ever resemble a real, living being the Scribe has encountered. The Scribe will watch this being from a safe distance for hours or days before travelling to a location where it can settle down for a while to work on its Invert. Inverts are never sketched in close proximity to one another, and never sketched twice by any Scribe.

Inverts come apart quickly. Even the stationary ones designed to resemble plants move internally, and with every movement the connection between the hollows grows more disoriented, loosening, trailing and disconnecting. Once isolated, the hollows will twist and warp around on their own for only a short while before disappearing. The smallest and fastest void shadows are annihilated within hours; Even the largest and slowest last a week or two at most.

Needle fae, being the great neutralisers that they are, 'unwind' and annihilate any Invert they come into contact with.

It is worth noting that, although void shadows are neither alive nor intelligent and do not have souls, a Scribe's ability to create something that mimics intelligent behaviour is uncanny. Inverted mortals will act out great confusion and distress upon 'waking up', as if they know that something terribly unnatural has occurred to them.

The mind of a voidsketcher is not contained by a brain. Rather, it exists as a psychic suspension hung on the frame of its body. Sufficiently damaging its body, therefore, will destroy its mind, effectively killing the Scribe. Where and how the tendons are cut does not matter, so long as a sufficient number are damaged beyond repair. Though Scribe tissue is tough, this number is surprisingly low, and four-legged Scribes rarely survive the loss of a single limb. A 'slain' Scribe will continue to glow and fail to decompose until its allotted time is up, but will not act outside of reflex. If the Scribe survives trauma, however, it will soon regenerate its wounds, and any amputated limbs will grow into exact clones of the original. They will 'sing' and eventually die at the exact same time. If they meet, they will not separate, and will collaborate on Inverts.

Though they have no sensory organs, voidsketchers are keenly aware of the world around them. They can perceive all forms of electromagnetic radiation as well as several kinds of magic and unmasked divine trails. Materials are chemically 'scented' by touch, and Scribes are sufficiently sensitive to vibrations to effectively ultrasound an object by tapping their feet sharply against it; Echolocation is easy by comparison. They bolt if they sense an earthquake coming. Scribes can perceive electric fields, including true north.

Scribes do not eat, drink or breathe. They often go through the motions, however, dipping their 'heads' into water (if they have any) or nuzzling at fruit, leaves and old carcasses. A few even make faint breathing movements. Occasionally, and only in daylight, they will lay down and feign sleep. After vigorous exertion, too, they will slow down and seek rest. Do not be fooled: Inversion Scribes neither tire nor slumber at any point in their life. They only think they do, and will rapidly discover otherwise if put to the test.

Description: Inversion Scribes are probes designed to blend in with nature while recording biological data. In creating a void shadow, they externalise an Inversion of an observed organism, simultaneously internalising an exact copy of the traits they observed in that organism. This data is transmitted to Jvan telepathically via Ovaedis every time a Scribe 'sings'.

The voidsketcher population is low and relatively constant. They are extremely rare sights, with only a few thousand in existence at most. They migrate according to telepathic signals transmitted from Ovaedis.

Scribes are intelligent, though not sentient. However, they tend to imitate the intelligence of the animals around them rather than use the full capacity of their own. They are therefore largely unaware of the remarkable physiology that renders them immune to disease, exhaustion, hunger and thirst, as well as their own phenomenal sensory kit. (They will, however, unwittingly pick up on stimuli other animals do not notice.) They will startle like animals, play like animals, sleep like animals, and, if backed into a corner, lash out like animals- Again, styli are remarkably sharp, sharp enough to make up for their lack of muscle weight. They also avoid mortal habitation.

Typically, Scribes are shy. They will sprint at a remarkable pace away from perceived danger, including sudden movement and loud noises. However, they acclimatize to the presence of non-threatening intruders quite quickly, especially when young. Though two Scribes in close proximity, barring clones, will always seek to migrate away from one another, they often attempt to socialise with herd animals. It is possible to tame and train them, especially from birth. The urge to migrate when commanded is strong but not insurmountable. The instinct that drives Scribes to create void shadows, however, cannot be suppressed.

The void sketching process is the only time when Scribes seem to use the full extent of their intelligence. The process of creating a void shadow is a challenging one that cannot be executed through simple instinct. Scribes display behaviour uncannily similar to mortal metacognition in designing each Invert, experimenting and adjusting it in multidimensional detail until they consider it perfect. There is good reason why Scribes usually spend hours on a void shadow when it takes seconds at most to produce each hollow.

There are only two scenarios in which a voidsketcher is ever violent- Extreme duress with nowhere to run, and in the defense of an unfinished void shadow. Do not disturb a Scribe at its work. Do not mistake its tolerance for placidity. Do not make yourself threatening.

Interactions: If their habit of Inverting can be ignored, Scribes make curious pets. Outside of exotic display, they can be taught to track scents, including inorganic chemical traces such as ore deposits, or potentially act as guard animals if given the means to rouse their owner. Their nocturnal nature is useful in this respect, though they can be trained out of 'sleeping' in daylight. Scribes are not strong enough to be draught or even pack animals, but can very quickly carry written messages, provided they do not decide to stop and sketch on the way- A not uncommon occurrence that can cause days of delay.

Meeting your own Inversion is, of course, an extremely unnerving phenomenon. The warning signs of an upcoming Inversion can be recognised, and a Scribe can be dissuaded from sketching a particular individual during the observation phase if there are others close at hand for it to redirect its attention to- However, this requires violence. In the long term it is far easier to avoid or suffer through the Inversion than it is to prevent it. If you are determined and sound of mind, your Inversion will likely avoid you, too. Once the voidsketcher has finished its work, a live faery in a box can also be used to dissipate an Invert. It is wise to keep a Scribe around only a few humans, many other animals, and different kinds of plant. This also prevents them from going on long sojourns to sate the urge.

Despite their sadly restricted lifespan, the fact that voidsketchers reproduce asexually makes it possible to keep and train a line of them for many decades. They are easily trained when young and grow up fast. Active suppression of the migration instinct, however, is required constantly and very soon after birth. It is probably best practice to send away the parent when a child is born in order to keep the younger specimen.

With regards to faeries, Scribes emit a psychic signal opposite that of Lenslings- That is, fae will avoid Scribes like the plague. This adaptation- Or rather, Jvanic design quirk- Prevents faeries from destroying Inverts while a Scribe is still working on them.

It goes without saying that Sculptors can communicate with voidsketchers somewhat, much like they do with fiberlings, fae, and halos. They are not as intelligent as fiberlings (or at least, do not act like it) nor as easily dominated as fae, but they are considerably easier to train than either.

Description: The land bridge stretching between the mouth of the Mahd and the region south of the Shimmering Sea brought great frustration to Jvan, as it put a barrier between her ocean and its neighbour, disrupting ecosystems and blocking trade. Though it had been raised by natural tectonic displacement following the creation of the Southern Ocean, Jvan destroyed it in a much stranger way: by creating a continent-sized worm-like creature to ram into it and consume it. The remains of both it and the land bridge now form a series of islands between the Fractal and Shimmering oceans, densely encrusted by its massive progeny.

Appearance: A string of islands, some barely a hundred metres across, all made of the calcareous tubular bones of giant worms. Some of the tubes and rings composing the islands are barely large enough to fit a human hand, and many can be walked through and explored. The largest, relics of the original great worm, are arc-shaped islands in their own right.

The region continues to be tectonically active, and volcanic basalt lies under the encrusting worm-tubes. Some of the islands are active and dangerous. Even so, Jvan is strange, and the natural eruptive processes of the region are no longer quite so natural: living things creep through the magma, and their tunnels direct its blast and flow so as to nourish the life that resides in the archipelago.

This gives rise to an odd phenomenon in which the sound of tide, wind, explosions and quakes resonate through the tubes on their way up, making a kind of booming natural music. The djinni of the region enjoy this immensely, and frequent music warns of impending eruptions.

Few mineral resources are available in the island, but the waters are intensely fertile. Food of every kind and colour can be caught here, much of it filled with odd Jvanic flavors, and the reef products can be used as rare spices. Biogenic materials are also available for harvest, including the skin of large mammals, scales, mineralised shells, sulphur, coral and sponge.

Life: Much of the life of the islands is similar to that of its surrounding oceans. Jvan's evolutionary influence has accelerated the speed at which species diversify on each isolated island, and the place would make good studying for any naturalist or jvanographer.

The descendants of the original worm still live here, and polychaetes of every imaginable shape, size and lifestyle thrive. They form the bulk of the regional biodiversity. Some continue to contribute to the islands, rebuilding them as the hollow tubes are eroded. Many live in or on the magma. Some have adapted to land, and lie in wait to snare passing seabirds, or crawl between the tubes. Most, of course, still flourish in the water, swimming and playing and flaring their vivid gills.

Appearance: Yonders, also called bounds, endings, limits, peripheres, or a variety of other names spoken in whispers, are vast ethereal constructs used as both mass monitors and war machines by Jvan. Their typical appearance from 'outside' is that of a cloudy or hazy shape, sometimes with a passing resemblance to their natal host. This cloud bears certain marks or features according to what the conscious larva was most readily visualised as by the host prior to maturation. These features may be skulls, large, staring eyes, faceless lines of teeth, or luminous sigils. These ghostly forms typically occupy at least one or two thousand metres cubed, but readily shrink and overlap with other Yonders. Counting faces in a Yonder cloud is a semi-reliable way of judging their numbers when they are at rest.

The 'interior' of a Yonder is an extradimensional space occupying at least a kilometre cubed. This space is edgeless, generating endlessly around the location of any entity with the misfortune to be lost inside. New terrain is continually grown as the prisoner moves. The 'exterior' body of the Yonder is also present in its 'interior'.

Yonder prisons are unsafe regions filled with creatively distorted facsimiles of what the natal host knew. Lakes, forests, deserts, mountains, cities and all other forms of typical landscape can be found here, but elements of them may intersect or be constructed in wholly unnatural ways. Space may warp and mirror, distortions of gravity are common, living things behave in unliving ways, and inanimate terrain may not be so.

The interior of a Yonder also distorts time. Depending on how strained the Yonder is to preserve its internal territory, it can slow or speed time around a helpless mortal by factors of ten or more.

Some examples of a Yonder seen from outside may be found here.

Life Cycle: Yonders pass through three distinct life phases on their way to power. An adult Yonder is composed of a haze of hyperdimensional spores. At the end of their lifespan these spores occasionally shed, and can be inhaled by wandering mortals, though the chances of infection are low and the spores do not incubate for long.

Once inhaled, the newborn Yonder exists only as a construct of the host's imagination. The host mortal begins to unwillingly use their mind's eye to project strange and hazardous features onto the world as perceived by their senses, first in glimpses and pareidolia, increasing rapidly in intensity and realism over the course of a few days external time. In time these glimpses become a constant stream of hallucinations affecting all senses. Once the internal world, not yet fully existent, is sufficiently unrecognisable from the host's environment, the developing Yonder pupates by quickly and quietly pulling the host into hyperbolic space.

The host may spend a considerable amount of time here, wandering Yonder space and further developing the periphere's library of potential weapons. Inevitably, the Yonder matures enough to exist outside of the host, and pulls the hallucinatory landscapes away, exiting the host body in the form of an adult spore cloud and taking the host's creative soul with it.

The abandoned host body is equipped with a handful of complex psychic algorithms that adaptively corroborate the body's actions with memories, old and new, held in its brain. This allows a soulless body to pass for a relatively normal and entirely competent, if rather simple, person. The algorithms are quite resistant to total failure but are known to be riddled with glitches. Soulless bodies, for example, don't retain any natural fear of Other-based entities they may have had, and may bear elementary knowledge of Jvanic history and philosophy.

The mature Yonder will seek out others of its kind, locating them by unknown impulse, and spend much of its life in such a colony. Adults sometimes flee to populated regions out of loneliness and nostalgia, and swiftly return, having left spores unwittingly. Yonders are susceptible to encrypted signals sent by All-Beauty, which they will follow without question. They are not known to die naturally.

Description: The adult Yonder is capable of rapid movement through all but the densest media, and does not need to eat or breathe. Though they are limited to speeds of a few hundred kilometres per hour or so in air at surface pressure, they can rapidly achieve orbital velocity once the atmosphere thins.

Yonders can 'settle', 'rooting' themselves in to a location and taking any engulfed mortal entities with them into the Yonder places. Once settled, a Yonder exists mostly hyperdimensionally and is extremely difficult to notice or identify, though the location it occupies in three-dimensional space does not change. Yonders cannot engulf mortals unless settled, although they may engulf additional mortals once settled.

As Yonders tend to be affectionate entities when surrounded by their own kind, they don't mind existing in close contact with other peripheres, and a colony may temporarily fuse if need be. While this action may or may not fuse the 'exterior' of the Yonders, it will conglomerate the Yonder places into a far larger and more diverse hellscape with substantially greater regenerative properties.

Yonders can be killed by targeting their spores when they are not settled, although their supply is near limitless and they flee confrontation by scattering spacewards or settling. A settled Yonder, likewise, can be killed by destroying its peripheral landscape. Though impossible for lone or magically inept mortals, an army or magician may be able to defend themselves from the traps and monsters thrown at them, while destroying elements of the Yonder place faster than it can regrow. It is absolutely critical they they do not travel far when they do this- leaving behind any part of the Yonder place will dissipate it, and the damage one has done to it, and allow its mass to be recycled freely into new terrain.

Interactions: Yonders are by nature shy, and recluse to their dark spaces at the edge of the populated universe if so given a chance. They can communicate only by telepathic means, and even then only in encrypted code, understood not even by Sculptors. Mouths formed within the Yonder places typically speak gibberish or regurgitated mortal memories. They do respond to Sculptor signals, though, and the artists may use Yonder companions as a mobile studio lair.

Adult Yonders mean no harm to the average wanderer, and may permit them to enter their special places and exit unharmed. They may even help struggling travellers who need a place of rest, though they are poorly equipped to provide it. Yonders open their gates to travelling Voidsketchers compulsively. Fiberlings are the only currently known entities capable of existing inside a Yonder place that is not at rest. There may, however, be others.

Yonders treasure keepsakes of their former lives, and will defend and hide them within the yonder places,
mourning their loss. They cannot bear to be reunited with the bodies of their natal hosts.

Names are the only aspect of Yonder language that have been readily translated, as the Yonder retains the name of its host prior to maturation.

Appearance: An urteverm, or slater, is a creature very similar to Urtelem in composition yet more like an insect in shape and intellect. Much like urtelem, they are capable of curling into a stone ball, although verm balls are both smaller and smoother, almost polished. A curled verm is marble-sized as a larva, and reaches maturity at a comfortably palm-filling size and weight. Substantially older individuals can approach the size of dogs when unfurled, though the true limit of a slater's growth is not known. Stories, of course, are told.

Unfurled, a slater resembles a long isopod, or woodlouse. Wild-type urteverm are however much more jagged than a pillbug, and touching them should follow the same protocol as touching a porcupine or especially nasty cactus. Domestic breeds are much smoother. Both have a line of crystals down their back, one per segment, that have peculiar radiation- and telepathy-amplifying properties, and may fluoresce in a variety of colours. The colour sequence is useful in identifying individuals.

Slaters have anywhere from six to sixteen limbs or more, which are slightly finned. They bear short antennae and small black eyes.

Life Cycle: Verms lead simple lives. Adults mate by fusion, much like urtelem, and after the split each parent carries a number of live young. These grow under the armour segments of their parents for some weeks before being birthed live in litters of four to twelve, depending on the size of the parent. Most of the youngsters inevitably die, as juveniles will rapidly cannibalise one another if not separated.

The primary barrier to verm growth is acquiring the minerals needed to produce its crystals, which are retained across moults. A poorly fed urteverm will still mate and bear young, but the offspring will be stillborn. A slater requires both igneous stone and some organic matter to grow, which it grinds with glass-sharp corundum teeth.

An urteverm grows by moulting. Its geomancy is substantially weaker than an urtelem, and as such both changing its shape and protecting itself from wear by weather and its own subtle radiation is difficult. As such much of its body must be shed and replaced often. It takes about six instars over one year to reach maturity. After this moulting slows down exponentially.

Moulting is an active process. A submerged slater in moult produces enough heat to boil water easily. The radiation it emits during this time, about a day or so, will make its crystals shine brightly and also poses something of a cancer risk.

Description: Urteverm are notable animals in that they are a source of elemental magic, which allows them to swim through stone and gain energy from consuming it. That this magic is constantly leaking in the form of radiation and shed shells means that they can function as primary producers even in pitch darkness.

Upon their creation Heartworm blessed these insects with a variety of pseudofungal parasites and symbionts. The symbionts mostly take the form of lichenous growths which feed readily on the high-energy stone of the slater shell, and can turn a smooth ball into a mass of colourful organic growths. These can grow quite large if the verm is restricted from tunnelling,
and bred into edible cultivars. Such lichens will happily continue to grow on the shed exoskeleton for some time, and swiftly recolonise a freshly moulted verm.

The parasites, on the other hand, function much like the cordyceps fungus. Secreting acids to burrow deep into the verm's brain, it guides its motions towards the signals given off by other verms and causes the dying victim to infect others until the population in the region is restored to normal levels. A well-kept farm will usually be safe so long as wild verms are kept out and infected ones are removed. The larger the farm, however, the greater the risk of plague.

Like urtelem, verms are empathic. However, their animal intelligence makes this ability largely useless for anything beyond simple communication through stone. They mimic signals of fear or satisfaction among others of their species to avoid danger and seek food and mates.

Around mortals, this leads to some odd interactions, especially with wild-types, who are smarter and more sensitive. Wild-types will be drawn to those feeling strong emotions, and can sometimes be seen playing harmlessly with happy children. They will sulk and curl around mourners and skitter away from the afraid. Be careful not to get lost in a verm tunnel when you are suppressing rage or self-hatred. The creatures will be drawn to your violence, and by the time they begin to feed your fear may not be enough to drive away the swarm.

Parasite urteverm are even stranger wielders of this power. The parasitised brain must by necessity be smart enough to outwit its healthy prey, and as they latch on to emotional signals, the parasite swarms have been known to make mistakes. Beware the chains of light that shine brightly in the dark. Beware the beam of emotion that has learned to flow both ways. Beware the dreadful urge to throw yourself into the depths to escape the misery beneath your feet and chase the bliss that lies below.

Description: The Voice of the Painter has prophesied that a city will be given unto the people of the Composer, and that it will be taken away again, ruined by war, gods, and anarchy. This prophesy was fulfilled by Jvan in exchange for Chiral Phi's abstinence from her affairs. Self-constructed by the rain of warped space upon the ash cloud of Mount Bormahven, harvesting the volcanic energy of that cataclysm, it is a gigantic, mobile construct capable of feeding and sheltering the Meteran people until their prophesied end. Phi's signals control its many active processes.

Appearance: The city of Sky appears to float upon the coastal waters. In fact it is walking on three colossal tentacles. Made of the same deep grey basalts as the rest of the city, they are segmented and, though slow-moving, tremendously strong. Each is over a kilometre long, but typically coiled over itself, and by steady rotational movement the whole city can travel with barely a tremor felt by the people above. All three tentacles are hollow. Two are filled with water, one siphoning up and the other spilling down. The third is empty, and when the city walks on land, it transports men and goods and beasts.

Upon the tentacles sits a vast and shallow bowl. Like the lower twelfth of a sphere perfectly severed, it is filled with water and the boats and gondolas of Metera, as well as their euryhaline aquaculture. Waterfalls spill down into the bowl from the city, and water also flows up from the bowl into the myriad channels and aqueducts that turn its mills and transport its goods (and wastes). Channels are everywhere in Sky City, and most of the city's water is flowing to or from the bowl. The rest is still- reservoirs of caught rainwater.

It may not look it, but this bowl is actually a sphere- it is the petrified lower tip of an atmospheric bubble maintaining a relatively constant gradient of temperature and pressure. The city's inhabitants could theoretically survive should the city be ejected into outer space, as there is a lower limit of air conditions that the sphere will permit. On Galbar, the bubble is barely noticeable and about as permeable as any other air.

The city itself is vast and grand. It is larger than any city of its age ever needs to be, and much of its interior is abandoned or even derelict, though Sky is quite resistant to erosion and as such will not be a ruin any time soon. Somewhat similar in design to naturally occurring clusters of basalt pillars, the Sky City is divided into many many rooms and halls and towers, temples and shrines and baths and channels. Despite its size it is surprisingly airy. Gaps between the towers permit light, and even parts of its interior are kept lit through other means.

The distortion did not end when Sky City was finished, and it remains a site of tremendous warp. Gravity pulls every way imaginable, such that one thoroughfare may be on the floor and another floating in a canal on the ceiling. Other puddles of gravity have formed permanent singularities, and, fed by streams of water, illuminate large rooms with halos of sunlight.

Non-gravitational anomalies are less common and substantially less dangerous than those in the Submaterium, but may still catch a foreigner unawares. Most are three-dimensional translations of shapes that can only be possible in two-dimensional space, such as Escher stairs. The city's shadow tunnels open mostly into Penrose triangles.

Life: Metera is a garden city. Many of its roofs and walls are suitable for agriculture and utilised as such. Trees grow gladly in niches all over the city, as do weeds and flowers. While the food output is not great, it is helpful for sustaining the population.

Even more lively are the waters of the bowl. Aquatic produce of every kind is grown here. Shoals of fish flourish in the shallow water, as do molluscs and crustaceans. Beds of seagrass abound, and edible seaweeds are a staple.

Yaks, horses and llamas are common livestock in the city, all used to carry goods, though grazing is obviously impossible and as such fodder must be imported constantly. Chickens and pigeons are somewhat easier to keep, although the mobile nature of the city makes pigeon post impossible, and stray cats tend to do well for themselves (as always). As Metera's influence grows, new animals will make their appearance.

A handful of djinni live in the city, and are given their own temples. Chief among them is Mysa, a firedjinn who is kept fed with coal at all times, who warms much of the inside of the city and knows many recipes. Others include Syokoy, the water guardian, who may be seen anywhere in the city's million water-channels and always where he is least expected (mostly to tease women), and Lumikki, the forgetful and melancholic bringer of snow. Several sons of Phlegethon live here also.

Other spirits, smaller ones, tend to pop up and attempt to instate themselves. These poltergeists, as they have come to be known, must be dealt with respectfully but prudently if the peace is to be preserved.

Three Bludgeons, the survivors of the quartet lost by Tauga at the battle of Xerxes, have been caught in Chiral Phi's song. They shine high above the city and protect it. Meterans venerate the ophan colony as a noble spirit.

Description: The Januaract, or Grand Vacuole, is a system developed by Jvan to replenish her resources and safeguard her assets. It consists of a potentially infinite expanse of nothingness hewn by Jvan into her own fractal cavities, extending into extradimensional space. Predominantly empty and deliberately so, her control over the domain of Negatives allows her to expunge and expand the internal 'space' as needed, transporting drifting Heartlands to where they are most needed. Although its 'edges' cannot be mapped and the Januaract is effectively sizeless, various 'borders' are sometimes found, leading to Jvan via Heartland or directly, or even to the prime material plane.

Appearance: An abstract conceptual vacuum. The nature of infinity in Jvan's vacuole is such that lost entities drift somewhere between non-existence (as an infinitesimal blip in extreme nothingness) and singularity (as the only existent thing in all eternity, and thus a universe unto themselves). Where exactly they fall depends on factors only Jvan and Isonymph seem able to easily navigate, and by and large, once an entity's perception of Vacuole has settled on a particular iteration of the demiplane, it tends to stay there.

Conscious beings that somehow access the Januaract tend to manifest 'near' 'landmarks', as they are usually destroyed by the process of trying to conceptualise true void (although this may take a long time). With no clear boundary between self and other, their unique perception often externalises and is absorbed into the surrounding void, 'colouring' it with reality-like properties. A wanderer may perceive the Januaract as black or white, solid or liquid, opaque or transparent; it may extend endlessly in all directions but still have a 'floor' to walk on, or even bear a grid on which the nothingness is suspended.

The universal characteristic to all these perceptions is that the Januaract is blank, one way or another. Anything that exists in the Januaract is a mark upon a background, a blemish, a deviation from null. It has been wiped clean by Jvan; it exists outside of all creation, to anticipate and define its own un-birth.

Abstractions aside, the Januaract is vast. Sufficient travel may discover the wall or Heartland near which one has manifested, but traversing from one to another via the Januaract is impossible for those without the ability to cancel out infinity. Travel along walls of Jvan is more possible, and may yield more landmarks or a way out (and into her), but the fact that even these relatively mundane manifestations appear infinite from inside the Vacuole they contain is a telling sign of both its grandeur and hers.

Function:

Life: The Jvanic Heartlands are many and varied, and exist as 'open bubbles' anchored (or imperceptibly drifting, there's no actual difference) in the vacuum. Though largely self-contained, there is no consistent barrier between Heartland and Heartland or Heartland and Vacuole, and one is often easily reached via the other, although Heartlands are (usually) less abstract than the Januaract and as such may have physical limits consistent with their own internal laws.