Magical Realm Cyoa/Megalodonia

Build

Complications: [175]Nightmare!/Amnesia!/Benevolent!

Demiplane: [164]Area Increase 6(11)

Planar Features: [153]Insertion/Portals/Protection 2(11)

Population: [139]Population Increase 7(14)

Inhabitants: [125]Attitude Adjustment/Culture & Customs/Pretty/Demographics/Longevity/Metahuman(14)

Technology: [120]Technology Upgrade 5(5)

Magic: [110]Magical Upgrade 5(10)

Society: [084]Aesthetics/Public Education/University/Diplomatic/Wealthy/Industrial/Mystical/Technomagic/Infrastructure/Sanitation/Secure/Healthy(26)

Culture: [076]Intellectual/Sports/Warefare/Religious/Occult/Nature/Alcohol/Food(8)

Environment: [062]Landscape Adjustments/Fertile/Rich/Exceptional Materials/Fauna & Flora 3(14)

Adventure: [050]Dungeons 3/Spirits/Malice/Theme(12)

Capital: [045]Lifestyle Upgrade 1/Influence 1/Artifact(5)

Personal: [027]Immortality/Shape Shift 1/Tongues/Memory/Awareness/Inspiration/Peak Condition/Superhuman Body/Blessing(18)

Powers: [013]Alchemy/Healing/Enchanting/Conjuration/Elementalism 3/Nullification(14)

Companions: [010]Familiar(3)

Ascendance: [000]Guidance 2(10)

Brief History and General Overview

Futuristic Modern era civilization filled with magic and magitech. The people live in scattered city states on a great Pangaea. Early in this land's civilization about 2500 years ago, its people were brought to the brink of extinction and collapse, a cosmic horror from beyond space and time descended upon the world and corrupted the land and nature itself. The magical flora and fauna grew, mutated and evolved rapidly and became deadly and toxic to eat. Diseases and infertility plagues culled and sterilized two thirds of the population. But the people persevered, survivors and mountain hermits developed a way of life that incorporated fitness, health, mental discipline and fortitude as well as magic into a martial life philosophy known as The Path of the Enduring Mountain, or simply shortened to The Path, and developed methods to cleanse diseases, fight off the monsters, cancerous vegetation and horrible aberrations at their doorsteps, purify the water, flora and fauna of the cosmic horror's taint so it is made safe for consumption and even find way to partially remedy infertility. The first muscle wizard masters after centuries of struggle eventually subdued the cosmic horror and imprisoned it underneath an enormous mystical mountain; Mount Megalodon. Yet its madness continues seeps into the land and its wild and savage malice still threatens to consume civilization. Megalodonia's distant past is mired in myth and fables, most modern Megalodonians understand their past through allegories of muscle magic philosophy, parables and epics that have been passed down in oral tradition, with each retelling adding on more and more cryptic layers of fiction and half-truths. Actual historical records that stretch to the days of the cosmic horror is fragmented and undecipherable, and most exist in barely recognizable ancient ruins littered around Mount Megalodon’s base. Many whisper more complete records and secrets of Megalodonia's past sit idly in the ever shifting and transforming labyrinths and catacombs nestled in the dark shadowy quarantined zones contaminated heavily with the cosmic horror's lingering malice, where living tendrils of pitch blackness, static gray nightmares and other horrendous evil spirits roam there confines. Few dare to venture into those dark depths and even lesser return alive or with their sanity unscathed.

Fast forward to the present day, over two millennia of forced natural selection, adaptation and immunization to the horrors of this deadly land, as well as staunch adherence to the guiding teachings of the Path, has made the people super-humanly strong and large of stature. The average female stands 7-9 feet tall, whilst the average males stand head and shoulders even above their fairer gender counterparts at around 9-12 feet tall. Unfortunately, the lingering effects of male infertility persist to this day and modern Megalodonian societies are cursed with highly skewed 90% female demographics. All adult males are accomplished muscle wizards that guide, teach and govern the people living in scattered city states too numerous to count, separated by vast death jungles and civilization devouring wilderness. Each city state has its own flare of customs and traditions, but overall universally themed around a meritocratic warrior-scholar culture and system of governance, adhering to the principles of muscle magic and the Path of the Enduring Mountain, where strength, skill and courage is acknowledged beyond all else, and chivalry and honor is upheld by every citizen, lest society breaks down and the ravenous and malicious nature reclaims back the land.

Daily life in Megalodonia is thrilling and work is abundant, there is much to do, from fighting back the violent nature that encroaches upon the cities, to ferrying and transporting enormous armored cargo and trade caravans through the horrendously dangerous badlands, to setting out on great expeditions to uncover the secrets of this wild land or to establish new city states. Many still spend their lifetimes honing the ancient martial spell casting art of muscle wizardry to the level of a grand master and beyond or becoming mountain guardians ensuring the cosmic horror never escapes its prison. Regardless of profession, social status or wealth, pulp fiction adventures and Jolly Corporation awaits for each Megalodonian.

Landscape and Biomes

Megalodonia is a Pangaea of epic proportions that stretches the width and breadth of a Jupiter sized planet surrounded on all sides by four vast oceans. It mirrors Earth in many ways, there is one sun, one moon, four seasons and there is 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. A massive mountain range spans across the entire Pangaea like an arching spine, crowning the 50 km tall Mount Megalodon at its centre. The gravity on Meglodonia is 2.5 times greater than that of Earth.

The northern fringe of the Pangaea is covered in mercilessly harsh tundra broken by vast liquid nitrogen lakes and snaking river veins, temperatures here can plummet close to -150 degrees Celsius. Many different species of eldritch liquid nitrogen life forms live in this biome able to flash freeze its victims in burning dry ice to desiccant brittle corpses instantly. Enormous cracks scar the tundra landscape leaking inky black morass fog. At the deepest point of these crevices it is said that temperatures drop to absolute zero, and at this depth terrible entropy eating shadow creatures roam; these are all but dark rumors. Historically, the lowest point reached by any Megalodonian had temperatures register at -250 degrees Celsius, the Muscle Wizard grand master and company who attempted this expedition dropped dead from severe frost bite and hypothermia at the doorstep of his home city just as he returned from his journey. He had tied his entire expedition team on tandem sleds and dragged their corpses through many kilometers of horrendous wilderness so his body and the bodies of his dear comrades can receive proper burials at the footsteps of Mount Megalodon. What little we know of the expedition was etched into the Muscle Wizard's own flesh.

Further south of the tundra, we begin to approach boreal forests teeming with carnivorous conifers and fresh water lakes connected by subterranean rivers. Woolly Shoggoths stalk these forests; their pseudopod appendages snatched and gobbled up morsel by bloody morsel in the thousand jawed branches and razor sharp pines of lumbering carnivorous trees in their mindless pursuit of smaller prey. Fresh water world gorging kraken reside in the lakes, their poisonously barbed tentacles stretch many miles through the networks of subterranean rivers, snatching any fish or beast that try to quench their thirst in one of their unsuspecting waterholes. Howling banshee wolves prowl these lands in large packs numbering in the hundreds, their collective power of their howls can level city blocks flat and violently reverberate any poor soul into flesh paste at point blank range. Swift Pyro Antler Caribou roam the boreal forests in protective herds always alert and on the move, aggressively ramming their thermite tipped antlers into anything they perceive to be threats, this allow a few of the adult, lame or old members of the herd to sacrifice their lives in a porphyric blaze of glory, allowing the rest of the herd to breakthrough encroachments made by carnivorous conifer trees seeking an easy meal, all-consuming woolly shoggoths or survive Howling banshee wolf ambushes.

As we approach south of the Boreal forest, we reach temperate coniferous forest, wild savannas and shrub land. These lands are the most peaceful and most inhabited by Megalodonians. A wide variety of smaller and tamer species of shoggoths roam these lands, many are domesticated as pets and livestock. Rodents thrive in great abundance, monomolecular razor teethed rabbits and beavers live in large warrens and in dammed river ways and prove to be extremely hazardous to major city infrastructure, gnawing through alchemically enchanted reinforced concrete and carbon nanotube meshed rebar in minutes, hive rats scour the sewers and dark places protecting their primal and savage psionic rat king hosts with their own bodies. The diamond barked oaks and strangling tangle cord willow trees, shrapnel wire shrubs, spine grain wheat fields and herds of rampaging tarrasques are all too common sights, as well as the parasitic crab grass and thorn thistles growing everywhere and on everything, sometimes on unsuspecting Megalodonians, their roots drilling so deeply into flesh they choke arteries and rupture organs. Many ruins and labyrinths of Megalodonia's forgotten past dot the temperate landscape as well as dark malicious hot zones; dangerous regions where the malicious influence of the cosmic horror taints deeper than all the rest, where living nightmares and horrors still lurk and tread in those shadowy confines.

As we venture even more south of the temperate biome, we arrive in the tropical phoenix forests and snaking napalm badlands that exist in scattered microcosms across all of Megalodonia. This is where biodiversity is the highest, explosive thermite flora and metastablized hydrogen metal coated prey and predators thrive in the greatest abundance, and every so often flash fires known as great bombardments scorch the entire biome as the thermite seeds of dynamite trees ignite, and the coats of the many beasts combust with great thunderous fury, signaling destruction and the beginning of new life. New dynamite saplings sprout from the ashes and charred remains of victims with no flame retardant protection or were too slow to escape or hide from the raging explosions. Fertile mothers shed and combust their hydrogen metal hides, furs and scales to signal the start of mating season and to burrow and bare many children. This is also the biome of disease, terrible insect carriers and plagues. The carriers and causers of the contagions mutate and evolve every couple of months to deadlier strains. Station posts of medical expedition detachments can be found nestled in the canopies, skilled doctors and their nurses and apprentices busy themselves analyzing and studying the myriad number of diseases that continue to kill Megalodonians in the most excruciating painful of ways elucidating cures and ailments whenever possible.

At the southernmost point of the Pangaea lies the endless alabaster desert, caked in white salt and burning limestone sands of azure flame from burning oil wells and seeping deposits of asphalt and natural gasses. Temperatures reach 100 degree Celsius on the surface, boiling away any moisture to vapor. What life that remains, reside here living deep underground in networks of convoluted subterranean tunnels carved out by the acid of massive bulimic sand wurms seeking the juicy meat of plasma bombardier beetles, bioluminescent cave shoggoths, plasma pot ants suckling on the oil wells, gasses and tar pits and also on phosphorous alkaloid tuber roots. Great glass and molten slag cathedral mounds of white phosphorous welder termites also dot the landscape, gathering the white salts and sands and melting them to slag to create their colonies. These termites collect the pollen and floating seeds of drifting methane gas palm trees, the webbed and methane filled ballooning leaves allow these trees to glide and float on the rising hot air and wind currents, their spindly porous trunks hungrily absorb the condensing water vapor and the dangling umbrella like root systems extends hundreds of feet down to the sand and salt anchored by termite cathedral mounds. The welder termites cultivate and grow methane palm saplings to feed their Brain infesting fungal groves to feed their colonies as well as to act as a defense mechanism against intruders. Vicious flesh eating and necrotic bacteria exist in these lands, decomposing dead sand wurms, insects, flora and shoggoths to oil, tar, and natural gasses as soon as they die; continuing the circle of life.

Finally, the coasts and shores of the Pangaea are covered in jagged rocks and steep spiraling cliffs, blistering brine and carbon filament coral. Many great flying horrors can be found along the shoreline. The dagger headed and blade winged sea striders and gaping maw dragons fly in large flocks, more teeth and maws then body or head, they swoop down skimming the waters and dark abyss with their maws wide open, pulling up to gorge on their catch. Inferno mantis shrimp and blade spine hydro ramjet nautili can be found lazily floating along the shallow ocean floor, when disturbed the inferno mantis spays its vicinity with a magnesium ink and instantaneously swing their claws with such force and acceleration, the waters ignite in fiery infernos of burning magnesium and cavitation that burn as hot as a star's core. The ramjet nautili ram themselves at their prey or would-be predators at excess of Mach 5 riding in supercavitating bubbles cutting their prey and predators sometimes in half on their carbon filament razor edged shells. Certain species of the ramjet nautili can take up sand and small stones in its hyponome ramjet organs and can expel streams of high pressure water that can cut through the strongest of steel and hardest of armor a kilometer away. Extremely monstrous creatures can be found in the deeper parts of the four oceans of Megalodonia, from the leviathan vacuum whales, massive kilometer sized beasts that sit at the lowest point of the ocean creating gigantic whirlpools and underwater vacuums trapping and devouring any creature caught in its rippling siphon to sate its insatiable hunger. To the seawater world gorging krakens that can grow many magnitudes larger than their fresh water cousins, not to mention the swarms of ravenous turbine sharks with mouths full of jagged dagger-like teeth that spin and grind like a underwater jet engine and seawater bone splitter piranhas that can chew and digest through any material, leaving a not trace of their victims.

Mount Megalodon

Mount Megalodon is a massive 50 km tall artificially created obsidian black mountain, it goes by many names throughout the eons; Crown of kings, Fang of Ouroboros, The Black summit, The Bleeding Edge, The Onyx Infinity and etc. The mountain itself is surrounded by thousands of smaller mountain ranges and ridges that snake and stretch to every corner of Megalodonia. Three gigantic cloud halos each one larger than the last, ring around its immense peak in ascending order as it points upward to celestial sky, while its base extends deep into the deepest abyss, imprisoning the Cosmic Horror in its non-Euclidean pocket dimension.

To serve its purpose as an Eldritch Prison, hundreds of thousands of ancient runes and scriptures are carved into the mountain’s base, by hand, fist and fingertip. Blood stains, cracked bones and viscera degraded and dissolved off long ago, coat these wards as dust and ashen residues, evoking desperation, cries for help and frantic prayers for salvation as the entire world sought to devour the ancient Megalodonian civilization and people whole.

Billions of hands etched away into the cruel rock and cliff face so hundreds of thousands more can be saved, surviving to build a brighter future. The magical aura and fields generated by these runes are incredibly powerful and their magical properties work reliably without fail, powered by the pure essence of hope itself and the blood of innocents dying to cruel tragic fates. Tainted water and poisoned food is purified as it touches its base, common magic and advance technology ceases to function as they come in contact with the mystical aura that enshrouds its imposing presence, only muscle magic can be channeled near the mountain’s proximity.

Passing Muscle Wizard disciples, patrolling mountain guardians and excavating archeologists alike swear they can hear feint murmurs of sobbing children and monotone prayers carried to their ears by winds brushing against the worn chiselled intricate grooves of these mystical symbols.

According to old Megalodonian lore, Megalodon is steeped with so much mystical energy, the peak acts as a conduit igniting the muscle magic spark in whoever is worthy of climbing to its highest reach. When the latent muscle magic potential is awakened in an aspiring muscle wizard, he or she gains true enlightenment from the sacred trinity of mind, body and spirit. For a brief moment, the disciple takes a glimpse into muscle nirvana; the liberation of worldly frailties and achieving clarity and understanding in all the virtues of the mountain as muscle magic is breathed in and weaved out of his or her body. When the disciple climbs down, he is wiser, nobler with a renewed sense of resolve for chivalry, righteousness and honor bound purpose.

Since the days of triumph when the cosmic horror has been subdued under the mountain, the greatest muscle wizard grand masters of every successor generation has been buried in the vast underground caverns of this great mountain, their muscle magic essence leaving behind their now dusting corpses, sieving upward to its peak through ore veins and grooved water channels, accumulating into a massive matrix of muscle magic reservoir.

Muscle Wizard disciples and civilians who received some training in the muscle magic art , generally have their cremated remains scattered around the mountain base or etched into runic symbols to further empower the wards, enchantments and auras that continue to keep the Cosmic Horror at bay.