Magical Realm Cyoa/Diaspora/Secrets
The Secrets of the Realms:
The realms have many secrets and mysteries hidden within. Perhaps most startling to the inhabitants is that their population is far more extensive than they suspect - and that the afterlife of peace and tranquility they believe in is entirely false. If they knew the truth, and became aware that he was responsible for it, they would hate Xanatos even more. The reality of the Realms is that there is no fixed afterlife - nothing special exists beyond death - death is merely a doorway into a different realm, and a new life. Anyone who dies within Diaspora is immediately reborn, in a different pocket realm of Diaspora, far from any portal, and in a new body. Their memories of their previous lives are locked away in their deep subconscious mind, giving them gentle guidance so that they may learn more quickly those skills they were once good at, but only really accessible to the most powerful of mind-mages, and then only if they go looking.
Those people who are reborn often take on a shape acclimatized to their new native realm - those realms which are mostly water will tend to result in aquatic inhabitants, while mountainous realms will result in cloven hooves and fur. The people birthed this way are called 'demihumans' by the inhabitants of the Seven Cities, and generally are considered sentient monsters - sometimes reasonable, sometimes not, depending on species and culture. They are treated as second-class citizens in the cases where they are accepted at all. Common demihuman races are discussed below under The People.
The majority of the people in the Seven Cities are first generation - those who are born naturally into the worlds, most often from other first generation people. Because life is least harsh among the Seven Cities, and the inhabitants are relatively long-lived, the birth rate for these people is fairly low. Those few who are not are those who were reborn in the smaller realms and grew powerful enough to challenge the portal guardians who crop up nigh-constantly. And of course, the portal guardians themselves are the reborn souls of those who have grown incredibly strong - those who have some inkling of the truth, and seek to control the portals of the smaller realms, to guard the Seven Cities from the horrifying truth.
The portals themselves are clearly magitech - great free-standing rings covered in glowing runes, with a control panel built into the lowest part of the inner edge. The panel consists of a standard set of twenty characters, along with a red and green button. Enter a set of seven characters and press the green button, and if the combination you have chosen matches the runes carved at the top of another portal, a tone will sound and after ten seconds a shimmering rainbow-hued field of light will fill the center of the gate for a further twenty seconds. It is a bad idea to be within the portal's frame when the gateway forms or closes - the shimmering rainbow light will sever literally anything (this is used in some places for manufacturing purposes). After forming a gateway, the portal cannot be activated again for one kilosecond (a little over sixteen minutes), from either direction (so another gate dialling a currently or recently activated gateway will fail to activate). Pressing the red button or entering more than seven characters on the portal's controls will reset the control panel.
Technically, every realm is survivable - but not every realm is survivable by a normal human. Some realms are so flooded that they may as well be full of water, others are colder than the polar ice caps and yet others are in near-vacuum. Yet each of these realms is teeming with life, if one knows where to look. And nearly every one of the portals aside from those most strongly guarded by the realm's inhabitants (not just the Seven Cities, but many of the most hospitable realms have cities on top of their portals) have portal guardians - great, powerful, intelligent beasts with enormous magical and physical strength, who only seem interested in denying access to the portals to anyone else. In truth, this isn't really so - while the Portal Guardians aren't especially interested in allowing others access to their claimed portals, those who show intelligence and open-mindedness may convince them, or bribe them, into letting them pass without a fight. The Portal Guardians are also incessant gossips, and have all discovered a second, hidden feature of the portals, which allows voice communication between control panels (pressing and holding the green and red buttons at the same time after entering the seven digit code will transmit sound between the panels as long as the buttons are held down).
The last secret, one which the inhabitants of the realm would not be capable of comprehending even if they were aware of it, is the nature of this reality. Those inhabitants who study the natural laws of the realms are well aware of the fundamental truths of its physical and metaphysical laws, but they are entirely unaware of the meanings behind these truths - they know that a very simple divination spell will result in simple numeric data describing an individual, that the emotions a person is feeling can be read as a list, that spells are grouped by tier of difficulty and that living a full and vigorous life will increase a persons capabilities, even if the skills gained are unrelated to the tasks accomplished. What they cannot understand is that this is not how most other realities work - that their world is themed, and its deepest nature is that of a specific, otherworldly genre of game. And this one is perhaps the most insidious, because the game-nature of the world will apply to any who visit, and may continue to apply even after they leave...
The People
The People of Diaspora can be thought of as two, or possibly three, interrelated groups. The first and most cohesive group are the First Generation Diasporans, or in their dialect, The Ancestral People or simply The People. These are the ones who are descended from the ancient, original inhabitants of the realm, before it was broken up, those who have never been reborn. Currently, there are some 300 million of them, living mostly within the Seven Cities or in other near-portal settlements in the smaller realms.
The People have been building, adapting, and growing in the way of any culture for several millenia, placed under constant strain and in the face of ever-present danger. While none of them are ever fully safe, for the most part they have learned to manage the continual monster attacks and natural hazards of their world, and so they can expect to live as long as first world people of the modern world - and while their technology might be somewhat behind the curve in comparison to the modern world, they more than make up for it in magic and magitech.
Indeed, as far as the Diasporans are concerned, the rules of Sorcery are simply more natural laws to be learned, understood, and exploited for the betterment of all Diasporans. But this is not a fast process, or a simple one, since the laws of magic seem to be nearly as complex and numerous as the realms. It is said that there is a school of magic native to each of the realms, and that only by exploring and understanding all of the realms fully can one comprehend the full extent of magic within the realms. Whether true or not, such exploration is likely to be far simpler than the extensive study needed.
After the First Generation, those who have died within Diaspora are reborn. For the most part, it matters little how many times a Diasporan soul has died and been reborn - additional rebirths only offer a wider variety of subconscious experiences and knowledges to draw on. The mechanics of Rebirth are quite mysterious - no one has ever witnessed it occurring, and the Reborn themselves remember nothing of the event. They merely appear in some abandoned place in the wilderness, roughly 400 megaseconds old and just at the beginning of puberty. The Reborn who are birthed in this manner have high levels of instinctive access to survival skills and also have some natural affinity with one type of magic or another, giving them sufficient power and ability to survive until they can find others. Those who are not aware of the rebirth cycle generally assume that the Reborn are simply orphans from a lost tribe wiped out by the natural dangers of their world, and the fact that such individuals are common beyond all statistical likelihood has led to extensive myths about the monsters of the forest being kind to children - something which is not entirely untrue, since many of those 'monsters' can dimly recall being children themselves, once.
Those who have been Reborn are also no longer capable of giving birth to First Generation souls. Any progeny where one of the parents is one of the Reborn will result in the child also being one of the Reborn. Such children are known to grow from infants to young adults at a greatly accelerated rate - generally taking a mere 100 megaseconds to grow as much as other children do in five times that time, with this accelerated growth ending just after puberty. It is fortunate for such children that their minds are capable of keeping up with such rapid growth. However, for such a birth to be possible, conception of the child must come at the same moment as the death of an individual in another realm, to within a tenth of a second. This means that the Reborn have a significantly harder time reproducing than the First Generation. It is possible that this could be fixed with appropriate applications of Necromancy or other soul-based magics, but so far no one has made the connection.
First Generation Diasporans are not completely unaware of this phenomena, and they call those Reborn humans they find or who are birthed by other reborn 'Noven'. It is generally hard to tell one of the People from a Noven physically, but mentally there is not a great deal of comparison. A Noven would be considered a natural genius on earth, and many of the greatest geniuses born as First Generation Diasporans have been mistaken as Noven. While there is some small prejudice for the Noven as a whole among The People, on an individual level they are generally welcomed and well liked, since they tend to be the most skilled individuals in any society. Still, Noven are considered a rarity, simply because so few of the Reborn are both born completely human and close enough to one of The People's settlements to make it there.
Most of the Reborn are birthed as either Demihumans or Monsters. Demihumans are those beings capable of passing for a normal human in poor light - those who have scales for skin, who can wear pants to hide their digigrade legs and hats to disguise their horns. Perhaps the Demihuman is a bit too large or small to easily pass for being a man, but not outside the realms of reason. Extreme dwarfism or giantism in a First Generation Diasporan will often lead to them being accused of being a Demihuman. These children are somewhat less able to access the skills and recollections of their past lives due to the more significant physical differences in their new forms, although if a soul is reborn as the same type of Demihuman or Monster, they will have many of the same benefits as a Noven child.
Demihumans are divided into seven major races, and innumerable minor ones which are considered variations. The major races and their most distinctive features are as follows:
Merfolk - Those Demihumans who are adapted to live in water, including any amphibians. Whether they are merely humans with gills or half-fish people, any Demihuman who can comfortably live in Lake or Ocean is a Merfolk.
Halflings - Any Demihuman who is naturally shorter than four and a half feet tall, but larger than two feet tall. Alternately, any Demihuman who weighs less then fifty pounds when full-grown, including the willowy Reedmen who stand seven foot tall but are so thin they weigh only forty five pounds on average.
Beastfolk - These are the man-sized Demihumans who have mild animalistic features. Fangs, slightly distorted sensory organs (large ears, pigs noses, slit pupils), fur and strange coloration are all considered normal for Beastfolk. Anything more than that gets someone qualified as a Troll.
Trolls - Those Demihumans who are at least man-sized and have some kind of obvious animalistic feature. Whether it is goats-horns, digigrade legs, extra arms or wings, anything that is beyond what a normal human could account for with a lot of makeup qualifies a Demihuman as a Troll.
Ogres - Any Demihuman who is extremely large or heavy but still in the basic shape of a man. This is a somewhat arguable category, and many debate the difference between Ogres, who are considered Demihumans, and Giants, who are considered Monsters. The common rule of thumb is that if it can fit through a doorway made for a troll, it's an Ogre, and if it can't you should run away screaming.
Fey - Despite their names Fey are merely the smaller-than-human equivalent of the Troll. Any Demihuman who is both very small and purely human in shape is considered one of the Fey.
Demons - The catch-all classification for a Demihuman who is too strange to qualify even as a Fey or Troll, but is still reasonable enough that the First Generation Diasporans do not immediately flee from them or try to kill them. Demons are heavily discriminated against in the Seven Cities because they are considered little better than Monsters.
Monsters are those Reborn who are birthed as intelligent beasts of the wilds, sufficiently inhuman in shape and mind that their spiritual ancestors are unable to recognise or accept them as 'people'. While some Demihuman races have an easier time getting along with some Monsters, on the whole Monsters do not associate with beings outside their own or similar forms. For example, a Manticore tribe might be willing to negotiate and trade with a group of Griffons or even some Demons, but they would be far more likely to tear apart a group of Demihumans or Beholders who ventured into their territory. Similarly the Giants of the Realms tend to be on good terms with Ogres and some kinds of Trolls, but they feel they are inherently superior to most other kinds of people and as such tend to be vicious and cruel to mere 'human' scale people.
Of course, not all Monsters are intelligent - most of the beasts of the wild, such as Drakes and Dire Wolves, are just animals with extreme biologies and some innate magical ability. Such beasts have spirits similar to the souls of the intelligent, and as such have a similar birth and rebirth cycle, but the mechanics of their reincarnation are not as well governed by the natural rules of the realms. This results in some monsters being incredibly powerful, having been reborn with full access to all their original memories and powers. Such monsters tend to be just below the cusp of true sentience, exceptionally clever and capable, and far more dangerous because of this.
This leads to the last category of intelligent life in the Realms - the Portal Guardians. While technically just Monsters in the eyes of the Diasporan people, the Portal Guardians are the beings most aware and knowledgeable about the reincarnation cycle. To an individual, they are unwilling to share this revelation with others, seeing it as robbing their spiritual descendants of their innocence. Those others are considered 'spiritual descendants' because every one of the portal guardians holds the soul of one of the original inhabitants of the realm, before it was torn into pieces. They are the souls who have gained so much power over the ages of reincarnation that they awaken to each new life with full memory of their past lives and complete control over the potent powers they are born with. Portal Guardians are always birthed in the wilds of a realm, fully mature, and generally begin travelling back to their chosen portal shortly after - perhaps taking a few months 'vacation' to get used to their new bodies first.
The reason that they guard their portals is not entirely clear - perhaps they think that limiting travel between the realms will make it more difficult to piece together the many puzzles of the reincarnation cycle. Regardless of their reasons, the Guardians enjoy keeping in touch with each other, and are not shy about killing those who attempt to force access to the portals they guard - such people may be their spiritual descendants, but they'll be reborn, so no real harm in killing them a bit.
Whether souls created after the splitting of the realms are capable of becoming as powerful as the Portal Guardians or if they are in some way inherently weaker is a mystery that not even the Portal Guardians are privy to, despite hundreds of years of experimentation by some of the more curious among them.
Xanatos
Little is known about the cause of the Great Breaking, but everyone knows the name Xanatos. Considered by the population of the realm to be the religious equivalent of Lucifer after his fall and Loki after the start of Ragnarok, he is referred to as 'The Breaker', 'The Deceiver' and 'Father of Monsters' based on various legends about his most famous words and deeds.
The extent of Xanatos' abilities are shrouded in mystery, but it is known that he can change shape, fly without wings, and that he does not die when he is killed. Considering magic has progressed in the world to the point where the Polymorph spell, Fly spell and the Lich's phylactery are reasonably well known to all magical scholars, it is commonly accepted that Xanatos is far more powerful than his legends would depict, but that he is supernaturally adept at hiding the full extent of his power.
The most difficult thing is identifying Xanatos - the legends depict Xanatos as being crafty enough to assume the shape of a woman's lover to take her to bed, only for the real man to show up in the middle of the night. It is through such antics that Xanatos gained the title of 'The Deceiver'. Another legend has Xanatos claiming that it was his desire that Monsters be loosed on the world after the Great Breaking, which gave him is other title.
While none know or understand Xanatos' true motivations, the priesthood of the old faith hunt for signs of his presence endlessly and are convinced that the being is a trickster-god whose sole purpose is to sow chaos and discontent among the people.
Even the Portal Guardians are mystified by this being, and hold him in the highest form of contempt. But they have learned not to try to stop a lone man, dressed all in black, with dark skin and darker hair and claiming to be the despised figure. For the last hundred years, any Portal Guardian who so much as slows the man down has died - instantly and without apparent cause that they can discern from their last moments of life - regardless of the defences or countermeasures they might raise against him.