The world was complete, but the rest was not.

Beyond the stretches of the atmosphere, that boundary line between life and death, rests not the vastness of space, not the allure of the celestial objects, not the fiery wrath of the Sun nor the brilliant nobility of the stars, but rather a mass of chaotic abstractions and half-formed entities. T’was the detritus of creation, left behind by the all-powerful existence that willed the world to being, and t’was the grail of forbidden knowledge that drove astronomers and philosophers to delirium and madness:

Formula, the divine calculus of the Creator, from which the world was given shape.

And through the sweat and blood of trial and error, through the inspiration and dedication of the prodigies and the passionate, the academics of the European nation-states solved the secrets of the stars and encroached upon hallowed domain. The Scientific Revolution set the Occident ablaze as Formulization was turned from a miracle to a study, countless inventions made at a blinding rate. Stones more buoyant than helium. Engines that ran without need for fuel. Towers that bottled lightning and dispersed it through the skies. And as cities changed overnight, as the lives of all within the continent improved by leaps and bounds, so too did the ambition of the powerful.

Wielding technologies that existed outside the bounds of natural laws, holding the power to distort the very fabrics of reality, the Europeans boarded their flying dreadnoughts, resolved to bring Enlightenment to the savage lands around them, and sparked off the Age of Exploration…

…but were met by civilizations who matched them in might.

In the Orient, warrior-philosophers had turned the divine science of creation inwards and casted aside pre-conceptions of humanity to actualize their martial ideals. Wielding starsteel stolen from the abstract firmament, they cleaved through false laws and mortal flesh alike, unrivalled and without peer beneath Heaven’s gaze.

In the New World, the Edenic Beasts have granted their gifts unto the indigenous empires that revered and devoured them, favouring mortal shamans and champions with eyes to perceive the Formula of the intangible. With the power to grasp the substance of storm and stream, they delivered supernatural destruction upon the invaders, becoming avatars of dynamism and disaster.

In the Dark Continent, the manifold tribes stalemated Western encroachment with their own reality-defining scripts, having teased out the truth of the incomplete universe from the inconsistencies of sunlight and moonlight. Armed with textile tools invariably more flexible in usage than the strictly-designed technologies of the Occident, they stalemated their northern neighbours across the harsh deserts and unforgiving shores.

The Age of Exploration ended within a month, every national power confident in the capabilities of their own Formulizations, and the Futile War began, a five year long conflict that maintained a bloody stalemate on all fronts and ended in a miserable ceasefire with countless lives lost and nothing truly accomplished. Whether innovative design, blasphemous alchemy, superhuman might, or skyshaping skill, none alone was enough to ensure global hegemony.

What was needed was synthesis. What was needed was the knowledge of the enemy.

On the semicentennial celebration of world peace, the Academic City of Bermuda, an artificial island off the coast of Abya Yala, was revealed to the general public. A cloistered society for the world’s best and brightest youths to convene and mingle, it was ostensibly established to form greater bonds between the next generation of Polymaths, promoting peace and progress for the betterment of the concrete planet. And though such a lie was sweet enough to be believed by the proles and the politicians, the subjects and the monarchs, clandestine government agencies and surreptitious secret societies knew better.

Bermuda was but the next stage in a war that has never ended.

Formula, the divine calculus of the Creator, from which the world was given shape.

Though to the layman, Formulization is simply an incomprehensible magic, to Polymaths, those trained in the craft of manipulating reality, it is a science that draws from all fields of human knowledge, from mathematics and physics to philosophy and astrology. A closer and yet paradoxically broader understanding of the world is what allows Polymaths to perceive the Formula that the world is composed of and thus be able to influence it. As Formulization is a craft that largely relies upon manipulating what already exists, there are still inviolable rules and limitations that must be followed, regardless of how fantastical the craft is, or how powerful the Polymaths are.

After the Futile War, all forms of Formulization were standardized into four Majors, each with various Specializations within. Though traditionalists are stubborn in the purity of their specific Major, the modern-day Polymath have at least a basic understanding of the principles and theories behind other Majors.

In 100 AD, Ptolemy began recording the shapes of starlight, which he believed to be glimpses of the Creator’s Formula.

In 1512 AD, Michelangelo painted The Creation of Adam, commemorating both the Sistine Chapel as well as his first successful attempt at perceiving and altering Formulae.

In 1537 AD, Paracelsus completed his standardization and systematization of Technologism, becoming the father of the craft and paving the road for an academic route towards becoming a Polymath.

In 1541 AD, Paracelsus, in his hubris, crafted a Formulae script that altered the world irrevocably. The days in a year was reduced to 360. Everything within a 150 kilometer radius of Salzburg was lost in Abstraction. Paracelsus was posthumously stripped of all titles.

In 32 EE, the Age of Exploration started, ended, and gave way to the Futile War.

In 87 EE, the Academic City of Bermuda finished construction, welcoming the first generation of students.