Atlas Inversus
The Demiurge, the creator of Everything, left this universe to create a new and better cosmos. The Demiurge bestowed to divine beings the honor and responsibility of ruling the creation: Beast Lords oversaw animals and plants, Elemental Masters shepherded the forces of nature, Dominions of Chaos and Order kept balance, Devils and Angels guided humanity.
A war, the War, started among Devils and Angels to decide the right way to foster the many varieties of Humanity. All the other dive beings took sides and the War swept not only the material world but even the worlds beyond. This was the Collapse: pieces of these extraplanar kingdoms fell on the world, continents were reshaped by the fiery magical forces of the War, animals and plants were twisted by mutagenic energy.
After Saint Eosphorus, general of the Devils’ army, immolated himself in a fiery explosion to wipe out Mahzitho-el and the celestial army, the war of hundreds of years reach an end. A stall without a real victor.
The forces meet on the island of Mizani, a piece of the Primordial Naturality that connected the realms of the Beyond. There, all the surviving divine beings divided the world, each taking a nation for themselves and their followers. This was the Accord, the year zero of history.
After almost a thousand years, the divisions of the Accord are still defining the geopolitical landscape of the world. Even if all the divine beings died after becoming mortal once the Beyond collapsed, their legacy is still strong and present. Most of the nations are ethnoreligious states, in which species, creed, extraplanar shards, and environment are all intertwined
Scions of Angel and Devils
The Holy Internal Empire
A devil-blooded aristocracy rules a rich empire with a strong but fickle hand. Infernal citizens are competitive and see conflict as the means to discover truth and talent. Pursuing personal success is the means to achieve collective prosperity. Arcane Magic is the lens through which look Nature since is the most effective way to change it: magic’s unreliability is just a problem to fix with more experimentation. Justice is paramount and “to each what they deserve” is the (unofficial) Empire motto. The wicked are subject to cruel and creative punishments (like after-life forced labor); the good and the talented must be praised and elevated to high (and fleeting) fame. Prizes and punishment lead naturally to a highly hierarchical society, meritocratic in principle but arbitrary in practice (the fact that nobility based on birth and not on achievement is a paradox cause of much tension)
Form of government: Elective Monarchy (nine princes elect the Emperor)
Religion: Diabolism
For Diabolists, the devils know what is best for humanity: self-realization, knowledge, and justice. When Demiurge will come back to usher in the New World there will be a judgment, so better follows the church dictates. This new promised era is near and the messiah that will bring it is soon to be born, if not already.
Extraplanar Feature: Eternal Iceberg; Tartarus Peninsula; The Flesh Fields and the Bones’ Coast; Ruins of the Nine Circles; Mud Hills; Manna Cloud.
Exports: Wine; Ceramics; Wool; Spices (hellfire peppers); fat candles.
Stereotypes: charlatan lawyer; capricious opera diva; down of his luck countess obsessed with her three-headed dogs; upstart merchant eager to impress; the bitter spinster always present to public executions; wizard filled with hubris.
The Angelic Unison
The pope is the head of the vast clergy that manages the life of its many subjects according to the Scriptures. The territory of the Unison is vast but a dense network of roads and messengers keeps the control tight as to maximize the endeavor towards the “Greater Good”. Citizens are directed to the activity where they can contribute more to the collectivity, even against their wants (they just don’t know what they want yet).
There are cities devoted to a single task, things that make them very efficient but also prone to disastrous shortages and famines if any problem in the Unison network arises.
Those who don’t agree with the papal plans are sent in convents to understand their mistakes. Or they simply disappear.
The highly bureaucratic system is meant to be fair and discourage nepotism but people with the blood of Angels, thanks to their innate magical talents, dominate the church, creating unofficial dynasties of cardinals and bishops.
Form of government: Elective Teocrachy (the conclave of cardinal elect the pope)
Religion: Angelism
Angelist believes that to be on the right side of the Final Judgment, you must follow the dictates of the angels: mercy, wisdom, and unity. They want to save the world and for this reason, they evangelize and conquest. To them, the Messiah that will open the doors of the Promised World is soon to be born, if not already.
Extraplanar Feature: Olympus Crater; Floating Plains; Ethereal Ocean; Menagerie Islands, Symmetry Gardens.
Exports: Linen and cotton textiles; marble; perfumes; jewelry; tea.
Stereotypes: droning bureaucrat; holier-than-thou merchant; paranoid painter in fear of the inquisition; the magnanimous bishop hated by his peers; the battle-harden warrior nun; the starry-eyed farmer.
Scions of the Elemental masters
Elvish Sultanate
The elves were the ones to keep a closer relationship with the Elemental Masters so much so that the Efreets, Lords of Fire, were part of the first royal family. The vast, cold, and inhospitable lands of the Sultanate are put to good use through the extensive exploitation of the extraplanar shards, like the lush oasis in the tundra created by the taming of Elemental Steam’s Geysers.
Elves are sophisticate, cultured, and decadent, sure of being a the top of the world. The humans and half-elves that work for them are treated with the same affectionate condescension reserved to pets.
Their long lives make international politics look like children’s quarrels. Their religion, the Eternal Fire, claims they are the Elected People, destined to outlive all the others.
Form of government: Absolute Monarchy
Religion: The Church of the Eternal Flame.
The Curch share many values with the Diabolist religion, of which they are an offshoot, but with a more ethnic approach: Elves are the Chosen Ones. The New World of the Demiurge is not coming anytime soon, the elves are the ones that have to keep the Fire of Faith burning pure, while the other branches of humanity fight among nonsense.
Extraplanar Feature: Radiant Aurora; Steam Oasis; Gheenna Lagoon; Magma Archipelago.
Exports: dyes (especially the ever-warm porpoise); dried fruits; furs; glowing amber.
Stereotypes: bored book collector, grumpy trader of the snow-caravans; smug wizard that engineers the greenhouses of the oasis; scheming odalisque; the half-elf peasant resigned to her life of hard work; the zealot functionary.
Gnome Sheikdoms
The gnome used their magical talents and the guide of the Storm Djinns to crave some small and prosperous communities. Thirteen Sheik rules small kingdoms on the coast made of walled cities full of gardens and delicate palaces made of glass and metal filigree. Outside the walls, the Elemental Dust of the everchanging deserts covers much of the interior. On the mountain, the fine powder interacts with trees and bushes made of Elemental lightning: that is the source of the magical glass that makes the gnome so well known in the world. Their interest in lenses is a perfect metaphor for the attitude of the gnomes: curious but keeping their distances. They are obsessed with the two moons and their mythical inhabitants, the fairy and the horrors.
Form of government: Alliance between absolute monarchies.
Religion: The Church of the Two Moons.
The Church shares many values with the Angelist religion, of which they are an offshoot, but with more relaxed views on customs and orthodoxy. They believe the demiurge has already done a “blueprint” of the New World on the two moons. The jade moon, the brightest, is the template for paradise and is inhabited by the gnomes’ “brothers and sister”, the fairies. The other moon, the dark and bearly seeable Onyx Moon, is home of horrors, physical manifestations of fear, once banished in the far reaches of the cosmos and now near the mortals. They spent much time looking at the sky for a clue on the promised future, both through the phases of the Jade Moon or through the star eclipsed by the Onyx one.
Extraplanar Feature: Lightning Forests; Dust Deserts. There are some outposts in the Dream Landscapes.
Exports: glass products (mirrors, lenses, alembics, vials); precision instruments (clocks, scales, thermometers, calibers); sugar.
Stereotypes: absent-minded astronomer; noble obsessed with etiquette; devious spy using illusion and enchantments; cheerful and wise desert guide; neurotic clockmaker; young rascal doing pranks with low-level magic.
Dwarven Federation
The Dwarven nation is huge, spanning half of the continent of Uxali, but rocky mountains and an Elemental Salt flat cover most of it. Life in the Salt Falt is limited to small island-like oases, rising above the white surface, that offer wells of clear water and farming land. Most of the communities on these “islands” develop underground, in tunnels that offer shelter from the suns. There is, in fact, a second sun that stays still above the salty desert on the south, near the equator (from the northern mountains looks like a shining star on the horizon). There’s a limit on as near you can get: the second sun is sacred to the Dwarves because they believe is where the New World is being “poured” into this “old” world, and they see themselves as the guardian of this new creation. The long distances between the “islands” and the northern territories are covered by chariots, moved by construct animals or golem engines. They have adapted these “magical technologies” to fare the seas and become a mercantile power.
Form of government: Federation of city-states.
Religion: The Gospel of the Second Sun.
The dwarves have a “unionist” set of beliefs, that mix tenet of both Diabolism and Angelism. Their preoccupation is to preserve what they believe is the new world, “coming out” of the Second Sun. They also have deep respect for their ancestors that live as ghosts in the Nirvana Caves.
Extraplanar Feature: Salt Desert; Smoke Monsoon; The Second Sun and the New Creation.
Exports: musical instruments (clavichords, organ, accordions); spices (elemental salt, smoke honey, black pepper, mustard); beer; silver.
Stereotypes: rowdy and drunk sailor; exiled blind beggar playing hurdy-gurdy; daring pilot of horseless chariots roaming the desert; inflexible matron head of the house; joyfully brutal soldier fighting against the Hyena-folk; a silent monk who stares at the sun.
Orc Kingdoms
The orcs were always on the side of the angles as the strong arm of the papacy. They have a holistic approach to religion and they mix angleist precepts with traditional philosophy and a mystic cult of the void. Their society puts honor, family, and the ancestors’ ways above everything else, making it tight and solid but also stagnant and claustrophobic. As an aftermath of the Third Angelic-Infernal War, a succession civil war erupted in the kingdom, splitting it in two: the northern, ruled by the brother of the late king, is anchored to the old ways; the southern, ruled by the daughter of the king, has a less stringent castes system and push for “modernity”.
Orcs are the most feared warrior in the world, with many exotic and deadly fighting styles that seamlessly fuse martial and magical arts.
Form of government: Absolute monarchies, both declaring to be the only legitimate ones.
Religion: The Ancestors’ wisdom, Void Mysticism
The initial alignment with Angelism become less and less relevant with the emergence of two schools of thought: the Ancestors’ Wisdom is a system of thought and behavior based on honor, family, and continuity with the past; the Void Mysticism is believed to be the way to communicate directly with the Demiurge through meditation and ascetic life.
Extraplanar Feature: Void Pit; the Mineral mountains
Exports: exotic minerals (smokable gypsum, native bronze, unique gems, edible opal); weapons and armors; rice-based liquors, Carpets and tapestry.
Stereotypes: self-exiled mercenary; spiteful witch casting evil-eyes; mystic and lonely swordsman; brutal bandit family; honor obsessed noble; enigmatic void oracle; bull wrangler maiden.
Scions of the beast lords
The Beast’s Nation
The beasts’ nations gather many races of humanoids with animal features, the four main ones are: Ox-folk (minotaurs); cat-folk (felinars); the Snake-folk (nagas); the raven-folk (kenkus). Once allies of the Infernal Empire, they become adversaries one new religion took hold: the Spirits’ Way. In the Spirits’ Way, the magical energies of the mana field are seen as conscious and spells are cast “asking” the field, not shaping it.
The animal-folk have many differences in attitude, physiology, and lifestyles and have grown to cherish and value those differences. Every single nation has a sort of parliament or constitution that binds the monarchs’ power, and nations’ representatives meet for regular councils.
Beast nations are home to the last “true” magical creatures, like chimeras, manticores, or hydras.
Form of government: Alliance of parliamentary/constitutional monarchies.
Religion: The Spirits’ way.
The beast people have repudiated Diabolism in favor of a radically different religion. The followers of the Spirits’ Way believe that the mana field is the embryonal shape of the new extra-worldly planes. The energies or field are becoming (and in part already are) sentient, and what people do shapes this new dimension. “Your actions will decide the shape of heaven and hell.”
Extraplanar Feature: Infinite Forest, Ghost Forest, Hades Badlands.
Exports: high-quality timber; magical animal products (chimera fur, catoblepas ivory, basilisk figurine); silk and silk textiles; ghost petals; laces and crochet works.
Stereotypes: the slimy naga innkeeper; the gossiping cat lady doing crochet with her talons; the stubborn minotaur lumberjack; the jolly kenku friars tending a ghost garden; a member of the resistance against the Imperial occupation; a grizzled trapper hunting manticores.
Emifolk Alliance
The Emifolks are all those races where human and animal traits mix, like centaurs, satyrs, harpies, and marepeople. Contrary to the Beasts’ Nations, the various factions never had a divine leader and never found harmony. The inner conflicts stunted their development and made them easy prey for foreign powers that conquered them many times by many different nations. Things changed in the last 20 years when Gerada, a centaur leader, rallied the various tribes and expelled or foreigners from the peninsula. The new regime is deeply xenophobic, with people barred from entering or exiting the borders. Only a port accepts foreign merchants and they have to endure humiliation rites to enter it (and harpies are the gleeful dispenser of these torments).
Form of government: Alliance of tribal councils and city-states.
Religion: Syncretism.
The various waves of conquest and evangelization have left a chaotic mix of beliefs. The world is full of spirits: every aspect of life and has a patron saint, all of different forms and personalities. Different spirits have different origins: they may come from the world before, or be part of nature, or they can be notable deceased. These spirits are not part of a sophisticated cosmology as in the religion of the Beasts’ nation, they are just a superstitious view of magic, or at least this is what the scholars of the other nations think.
Extraplanar Feature: The Coincidences’ Strait (claimed); possibly others unknown underground.
Exports: Olive oil; psychoactive berries; antiques (through smuggling)
Stereotypes: the cruel harpy custom officer; the cunning satyr smuggler; the prideful centaur nationalist; the mermaid destitute begging to the people on the docks; the band of a young man looking for some foreigners to fight; the diffident shepherds covered in dust.
Untamed Tribes
Some of the Beasts’ Lord, the demi-gods tasked to oversee the animal kingdom, never wanted to join the “civilized” society that emerged after the accord. They founded their nations in the Uxali continent, deliberately far from other humanoids. They only ignore world politics as well as theological disputes: they keep their tribal religion, worshiping their ancestors and the Creation. Some of these tribes, like the turtle-folk, are de facto hermits cut from any contact beside the most daring explorers. Others, like the hyena-folk, make raids and pillaging the core of their lifestyle. The few members of these people that venture outside their world are considered freaks, exotic oddities, or straight-up monsters.
Form of government: Tribalism
Religion: Cult of the Ancestors.
Every tribe has it peculiar view of the world shaped by their mythical ancestor. All these approaches have in common Nature (the creation of the Demiurge) as the thing to rever and worship. How to worship it varies: it can be live a life of contemplation, to embrace the gruesome place at the top of the food chain, to “go and multiply”, to perform human sacrifices to make the sun go around…
Extraplanar Feature: None known.
Exports: Exotic arts and craft (really traded, more probably found or stolen).
Stereotypes: imperturbable turtle monk, deranged alligator blood-cultist, sadistic hyena raider; revolting fly shaman; ethereal bird shaman.
Scion of the balance agents
Chaospelago’s Halfing League
The unpredictable and mutable currents surrounding the Chaospelago, have intermittently isolated the halflings but recently they connected again with the rest of the world. Halflings are weird since the primordial Chaos of the Whirpool shaped their physiology in incredible ways: their bodies defy perspective and common sense like they were living optical illusions. Transparent skin, holes and gaps in the body, fractal pupils are all common features. The Impossible Islands are not rich in resources and life there is even more difficult due to the influences of the primordial Chaos. Some halflings wanted more for them and have taken advantage of the newfound connection with the world becoming pirates, infamous for their eccentric ransom requests and brutally creative violence.
Form of government: Alliance of small communities with different governments (pirate republics, monastic theocracies, elder councils, other).
Religion: Cult of the Whirpool
The Whirpool is the sum of the unpredictable and powerful currents generated by the primordial Chaos. Most of the Halflings follow a philosophy that seeks to control the randomness that sweeps their land through discipline and meditation. Others, mostly the pirates, embrace Chaos and see themselves as its harbinger, spreading confusion and disorder through the world.
Extraplanar Feature: The Whirpool of primordial Chaos
Exports: Nothing, except the occasional valuables generated by the Whirpool and found on the shore (they could be anything, from unseen species of animals to book written in unknown languages)
Stereotypes: the crazy pirate kidnapper asking for improbable ransom, the humble and fatalist fisherman, the stoic and silent monk, the duplicitous servant of a continental noble, the traveling bard using his strange features as a prop.
City-state of Mizani
After the War between Hell, Heaven, and their allies, an Accord was made, to dived the twisted world that emerged after that cosmic conflict. The place where this fundamental peace treaty was signed was an island of primordial Neutrality. The houses and palaces the various divine beings created to host the diplomatic delegation are the foundation of the city of Mizani.
The city of Mizani is made of walled city blocks, each own by a different nation or religion, and from above it looks like a chessboard: a fitting image since Mizani is where many games of world politics are played: espionage, black markets, heretical sects, secret societies, and so on. The referee of these games is Hekima, the last sphinx and the only being with a divine spark still alive.
Form of government: an elected city council presided by Hekima.
Religion: contrary to almost all the other nations of the world, Mizani is not an ethnoreligious state. There is a cosmopolitan population and freedom of worship. The fact that Mizani was the theatre of one of the most pivotal events in history, the Accord, makes it a special place for most religions and cults.
Extraplanar features:
Export: Mizani is a commercial hub and is not famous for any product (except chess sets, playing cards and other games).
It is the financial center of the world, with the richest and furthest-reaching banks.
Stereotypes: The incorruptible masked city guard; the mellifluous yet menacing banker; the exiled infernal noble, living as a chess hustler; the always quarreling group of priests of different creeds; the odd-looking but apparently happy inter-racial couple; the mad preacher claiming is son or daughter is the harbinger of the New World.
True Order of the Constructs.
On the south part of the Uxali continent, nature is being replaced by artifice. The Matras are living and sentient constructs devoted to the primordial Order. Their mission is to replace chaotic biological life with precise and reliable artificial creatures. The jungle around the shard of Order has already become a clockwork ecosystem where every plant or animal is some sort of machine or golem, all of which perform their intricately interconnected function. The Matras have attempted many times to “remodel” all the continent, but they met the fierce resistance of Dwarves and Gnomes, the perils of the strange Dream landscapes and various malfunctions and accidents, more and more common the farthest from the order shards they go.
Now many colonies, the one far from the Jungle of the True Order, mimic the ways of humanoids in a way to cope with the chaoticness of the world and interact with it.
Form of government: Algortmocracy (specifically built individuals coordinate activities, all citizens have an innate sense of the rules of the state and the common goals)
Religion: The True Order
The True Order is the collection of rules (some call it algorithms) that govern all aspects of the Mechanical Jungle. Far from the extreme coordination of their homeland, the True Order resembles an all-encompassing philosophy that, through a long list of precepts, tries to optimize every aspect of life.
Extraplanar features: The mechanical Jungle (a shard of primordial order)
Export: Matras aim at complete autarchy and commerce is seen as an unreliable resource. If needed they will produce on demand of the other party: for example, they export minerals to the gnome in exchange for elemental glass (that they can’t produce).
Stereotypes: the ambassador that tries too hard to be human; the mute gardener tending gently to clockwork flowers; the metal cube that is actually a powerful wizard; the ruthless warriors with swords for hands, the sentient mechanical
Orphan legacy
Black Star Papacy
A long time ago a devout priest found the Black Star, a mysterious shard of extraplanar power. For the priest, the Black Star was the key to ultimate happiness for the world: all people must be united in the bliss of the undeath, becoming a zombie collective consciousness. This is the birth of the Antipope, a powerful lich that has tormented the Angelic Unison and the other nations for centuries with his crusades made of hordes and evangelization mission lead by vampires. Some desperate men and women believe in the promises of the Shadow Gospel and willingly join the endless processions of Beshert, the city of the never-dead.
Religion: The Shadow Gospel
Undeath is bliss and must be bestowed to humanity through mass murder or brainwashing.
Extra planar features: the black star, a shard of an unknown plane of “negative energy”
Export: None.
Stereotype: the seductive vampire cardinal; a desperate peasant who’s trying to reach the city of the never-dead; the ghoul nun commanding a horde.
Ash Khanate
Some elves didn’t like the detached attitude of their brothers and sisters: they didn’t want just to sit back and wait for the return of the Demiurge, they think they had a mission. After the Collapse caused by the War, there was no more after-life, no heaven or hell or anyplace where souls could go. The Ash Elves, led by their Khan, put on themselves the duty to keep safe the souls of the departed. The Ash Elves lead a nomadic life and the path of their migrations is a miles-wide magical sigil, able to cast a multi-generational long spell. If it wasn’t for them, they say, the soul will just dissipate in the Mana Field, but thanks to them they can keep coherence and “live” in their territories. This claim is highly contested but that the Limbo Prairies and the Ash Steppes are full of ghosts and specters.
The Ash Elves don’t have the same kindness with the living: they will raid and pillage if that gives them the resource to go on with their mission.
Government: Absolute monarchy.
Religion: the Eternal Embers.
Since there is no more otherworldy home for the souls of the departed they have to be gathered and protected in their territories until the Demiurge returns.
Extraplanar feature: Ash Steppes, Ghost forest, Limbo Prairies.
Export: Horses.
Stereotypes: the ghost inhabitant of a ghost city; the fierce raider
The Confederacy of Free cities
Not all the unaligned and defiant want to keep the neutral stance of Mizani. The outcasts and the exiled have found a home in the triton archipelago, where they founded communities and cities. The tritons themselves, more interested in the matters under the sea, were happy to find ways to share their over-water territories (for a reasonable tax). Every city or settlement is different: some try to implement egalitarian utopias, others follow bizarre unorthodox religion, others are private propriety of a warlord or a wizard, most of them are hot-spot for piracy. What keeps this colorful coalition together is their love for freedom: they will band together and fight to the death if the liberty of one of their sister city is in peril.
Religion: Astralism; various Unionist sects; heretical cults.
The confederacy hosts many varied religious organizations, from reasonable Unionist churches that seek to reconcile Diabolism and Agelism, to absurd sects founded by deranged demagogues.
Meanwhile, Tritons have developed Astralism, a religion that states that the world is ending right now, slowly merging with the Mana Field.
Extraplanar features: the Mind Reef (a piece of the astral plane); the Fragments Bay (pieces of other material worlds, from an unknown “elsewhere”, maybe another time or dimensions or planet).
Exports: corals, pearls, statue and stone artifacts, liquors
Stereotypes: the flamboyant pirate queen; the drunk but still wise triton holy man; the fanatical cultist of one of the many newly arrived “prophets”; the (apparently) utopian community of farmers; the goat shepherd that collects the impossible statues he finds lying around; the charming triton pearl diver.
