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| [[Main Page]] > Integrum
| | {{Breadcrumb Integrum}} |
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| =Overview=
| | The Integral Origin, also known collectively as The Integrum ([[Enchiridian]]), is the second oldest Origin in the universe, being created by the {{Category Founders}} in the [[First Age]]. It comprises nearly of the natural world. |
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| The Integrum is the central aspect of the setting. It is where most games are played and where most characters are from. It is the closest to the "natural world", in that The Integrum is where natural laws are intuitive and predictable.
| | =Lore= |
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| The Integrum was created by the [[:Category:Creators | Creators]] using [[The Apparatus Realm | The Apparatus]] during [[The First Age]]. As a cosmological force, The Integrum is opposed to [[Fury]], [[Strange]], and [[Void]]. Fury was conquered by the Creators and is used as fuel for The Apparatus. Strange is only possible when The Apparatus malfunctions. Void is opposed to all of forces in the setting. | | Lore about The Integrum is plentiful and accurate, coming mostly from the {{Category Gods}}, {{Category Servitors}}, and [[Heralds]]. |
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| Physically, The Integrum is composed of a planetary sphere contained within a hollow outer sphere. The surface of interior sphere is where the continents that are the [[Mortal Realms | mortal realms]] are located. The inner surface of the outer sphere is where the [[Divine Realms | divine realms]] are located. Between the mortal realms and divine realms is the [[Astral Sky]].
| | =Realms= |
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| =Laws of Nature=
| | * {{Category Shards}}: In The [[Gilded Age]] there was a single [[Mortal Realm]]. However, during [[The Shattering]], the Mortal Realm split into numerous, different copies which had divergent inhabitants and timelines. |
| | ** [[Acrolon]]: Shard home of the {{Category Nor}}. |
| | ** [[Kasyat]]: Shard home of the {{Category Ruk}}. |
| | ** [[Pelithos]]: Shard home of the {{Category Fey}}. |
| | ** [[Tonwei Unchained]]: Shard home of the {{Category Ning}}. |
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| ==Gravity==
| | * {{Category Divine Realms}}: The divine realms refer to the outer shell of the universe, which separates it from [[The Void (Realm)|The Void]]. It is divided into nine regions, one for each of the {{Category Grand Designs}}. |
| | ** [[Aurora]]: Divine realm of [[Day]] |
| | ** [[Everfrost]]: Divine realm of [[Winter]] |
| | ** [[Nebula]]: Divine realm of [[Destiny]] |
| | ** [[Schemata]]: Divine realm of [[Pattern]] |
| | ** [[The Amber Earth]]: Divine realm of [[Autumn]] |
| | ** [[The All Forge]]: Divine realm of [[Form]] |
| | ** [[The Harrows]]: Divine realm of [[Summer]] |
| | ** [[The Sable Fields]]: Divine realm of [[Night]] |
| | ** [[The Teeming]]: Divine realm of [[Spring]] |
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| Gravity in the real world is the attraction of massive bodies in an inverse square relationship. However, in The Integrum, massive bodies are not attracted to other massive bodies. Instead, there is a gravitational plane of attraction that all massive bodies are drawn toward. Bodies are only attracted to the single, nearest gravitational plane. The strength of the attraction is still governed by something akin to the mass of the substance, such that heavy objects (like stones) are more strongly attracted than light objects (like clouds). Magic can alter these properties, to make a stone lighter than a cloud, for example.
| | * Other Realms |
| | | ** [[The Astral Sky]] |
| ==Luminescence==
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| Unlike the real world, where darkness is experienced as the absence of radiated or reflected light, in The Integrum both darkness and light are radiated and reflected. This means that in The Integrum, if there is no darkness and no light, the natural state of luminescence is experienced as a dim twilight where things appear muted, monochrome, and indistinct, but are still visible.
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| ==Temperature==
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| Unlike the real world, where cold is experienced as the absence of kinetically excited particles (heat), in The Integrum both cold and heat are radiated energies. This means that in The Integrum, if there is no cold or heat, the natural state of temperature is experienced as something akin to "room temperature", which is a temperature that is not noticeable to most creatures.
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| ==Life and Death==
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| In the real world, life and death have a somewhat blurry boundary involving the function of the living cells of an organism, and how reversible non-functioning of those cells is. In The Integrum, however, there are no living cells. Instead, there is a force, called life, which binds a spirit to a vessel.
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| ===Spirit and Vessels===
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| The spirit in this context is a combination of mind (instinct, memory, reason, sleep) and energy (light, dark, cold, heat, life, death) which combine to provide a motivating agency. The vessel in this context is a combination of physical substances (marrow, stone, water, wind, wood) that is designed to be motivated by a spirit. This applies to everything in the natural world of The Integrum, including nor humans (largely reason and marrow), animals (largely instinct and marrow), plants (largely memory and wood), and even rocks (largely sleep and stone).
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| Death, in contrast, is the force which pulls spirits away from vessels. This can manifest in a number of ways, and varies from vessel to vessel. In creatures of marrow, it could be disease, old age, or violent trauma. In rocks it could be rust or erosion. The result is the same, when the forces of death overcome the forces of life, the spirit separates from the vessel, and the vessel is broken down according to laws of The Integrum into new shapes. Marrow decays, wood withers, water evaporates, wind stills and condenses, and rock breaks apart. These new shapes get new motivating spirits, and the cycle continues. In very long observations of time, the forces of life and death describe entire ecosystems of substance transformations - wind may condense into rain to become water, water may evaporate to become wind, stone may break down into soil to become wood, wood may be eaten to become flesh, flesh may decay to become stone.
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| Life and death magic, such as that of heralds, can influence this to-and-fro. Life magic can heal wounds, cure disease, and even repair wood, metal, and stone. All of these strengthen the bond between spirit and vessel. Death magic can cause wounds, inflict disease, and even wither wood, rust metal, and erode stone. All of these weaken the bond between spirit and vessel.
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| ===Death and Souls===
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| To understand the true boundary between life and death, however, we must examine when the magics of life and death are effective. When a vessel first dies, if its spirit does not reside within a mortal soul, it is immediately and irreversibly moved to its next stage in the life-death cycle of transformation. Life and death magic cannot affect something that is already dead unless its spirit resides within a mortal soul.
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| If a vessel has a spirit inside of a mortal soul, then when it first dies, the soul is considered to be in a "resting dead" state. Note that these processes only affected Integral mortal souls. Strange and Fury creatures follow other laws when they are destroyed. In this resting dead state, the Integral soul is still present, within or invisible near the vessel. The soul can no longer animate the vessel, but the attachment delays the the decay of the vessel into its death transformation.
| | ={{Category Creatures}}= |
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| Souls remain in a resting dead state for an amount of time dependent on the nature of the soul. Most souls remain resting dead for a day, but this can be longer if the soul was very powerful or has some compelling will to live (like unfinished business). When the resting dead soul leaves its resting dead state, it usually enters the fully dead state. This is when the vessel begins to decay, and the soul is no longer in the vicinity of the vessel (it is either in The Conduit or The Crucible).
| | * {{Category Founders}} |
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| While in the resting dead state, many other outcomes are possible through magic. Life magic can keep the spirit tethered to the vessel, delaying the progression of the resting dead spirit to the fully dead or the restless dead states. Sufficiently powerful life heraldry can even reconnect the resting dead soul to the vessel, returning it to life. Death heraldry can force the soul into The Conduit, forcing it to become fully dead.
| | * {{Category Gods}} |
| | ** {{Category Khodayi}}: Gods of [[Kasyat]] |
| | ** {{Category Imitheoi}}: Gods of [[Pelithos]] |
| | ** {{Category Primarchs}}: Gods of [[Acrolon]] |
| | ** {{Category Omamori}}: Gods of [[Tonwei Unchained]] |
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| While the soul is fully dead, only incredibly powerful life magics can bring it back. The longer it is fully dead, the more powerful life magic is required. Eventually the fully dead soul is simply lost to the reincarnation cycle, and no life magic can restore it.
| | * {{Category Servitors}} |
| | ** {{Category Angels}}: Servitors of [[Day]] |
| | ** {{Category Devils}}: Servitors of [[Night]] |
| | ** {{Category Rimeskin}}: Servitors of [[Winter]] |
| | ** {{Category Godwrought}}: Divine constructs |
| | ** ??: Servitors of [[Destiny]] |
| | ** {{Category Eidolons}}: Servitors of [[Pattern]] |
| | ** ??: Servitors of [[Spring]] |
| | ** ??: Servitors of [[Summer]] |
| | ** ??: Servitors of [[Autumn]] |
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| ===Undeath===
| | * {{Category Mortals}} |
| | ** {{Category Ruk}}: Natives of [[Kasyat]] |
| | ** {{Category Fey}}: Natives of [[Pelithos]] |
| | ** {{Category Nor}}: Natives of [[Acrolon]] |
| | ** {{Category Ning}}: Natives of [[Tonwei Unchained]] |
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| Sometimes when a soul leaves the resting dead state, it does not go to a fully dead state as normal. The longer a soul remains in a resting dead state, the more likely it will enter a restless dead state instead, also called undeath. More powerful souls or souls with a strong will to persist (such as unfinished business) are more likely to become undead, since they stay in the resting dead state longer. Sufficiently powerful death magic can also force a soul into an undead state, though this is generally considered a violation of the grand design by servitors and gods of death.
| | * {{Category Telar}}: Plants and animals of The Integrum |
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| While undead, the soul is able to animate the vessel once again. However the binding properties of life and death are reversed with an undead soul. Death actually binds the undead soul to the vessel and life pulls the soul away from the vessel. This means that for the undead, death magic will heal their wounds and ailments while life magic will cause wounds and ailments.
| | More at {{Category Creatures}} |
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| Usually the vessel begins to decay when the soul becomes undead, though this decay can be delayed or reversed if the undead soul feeds on the life energy of other creatures with souls. If the vessel decays sufficiently, the undead soul becomes detached from it, but still remains an insubstantial entity, like a ghost or phantom. Some such creatures are able to affect the world even while insubstantial, while others are able to possess other dead vessels to interact with the world.
| | =Paths= |
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| Undead vessels can be destroyed in the usual ways, with trauma or with life magic, but the undead soul lives on. Only sufficiently powerful life or death magic is able to permanently send an undead soul to a fully dead state. The more powerful the undead soul, the more powerful the magic is required to send it permanently into death.
| | ==Paragons== |
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| ==Language==
| | The original Founders were perfect in their execution of their role in The Integrum. This perfection represented an absolute harmony between their nature and The Apparatus. Farmers were perfect farmers, soldiers were perfect soldiers. Each practitioner followed their arts to an absolute ideal. While most of this level of mastery was lost in The Shattering, some pieces of it still manifest. Very rarely, enough pieces of a Paragon soul inhabits a mortal of The Integrum, granting supernatural mastery of some discipline. Nearly any skill can be manifest as a Paragon. Diplomacy, engineering, artistry, combat, and strategy are all examples seen through history. For Paragons of adventuring skills, see {{Category Paths}}. |
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| In the real world, languages are learned by way of exposure, both during critical development stages (when language are learned most easily) as well as throughout life (when languages are harder to learn). In The Integrum, however, language is inherent known through the Grand Design of the Codex and the mental aspects of spirit.
| | ==Heralds== |
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| The result of this is that all creatures of The Integrum are born with a basic understanding of a lingua franca, called ''[[tradespeak]]''. Animals and babies are not fluent in the language not because they do not understand it, but because they are not intelligent enough to use it well. There are still individual languages among mortals of The Integrum. These develop culturally among populations of mortals, sometimes diverging from tradespeak and other times created entirely new by its speakers.
| | Primarchs wield both great personal power and great influence over parts of The Integrum. |
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| =History= | | =Notes= |
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| The history of The Integrum begins in the [[First Age]], when the world was chaotic, controlled by will and whim of the [[Fury]] [[:Category:Titans | titans]]. That is when the [[:Category:Creators | Creators]] appeared, protected in their impenetrable fortress that would become known as [[Bastion]].
| | * Day |
| | ** Physical: sun, light |
| | ** Social: Harmony, cooperation |
| | ** Individual: Courage, self-sacrifice |
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| The Creators wished to tame the wild chaos of the titans, and much of the First Age involved the Creators waging the [[War of Dominion]] against the forces of Fury. The Creators had an army of their own, as well as allies. Their armies were the earliest [[Servitors]], powerful creatures of [[truemetal]]. Their allies included the [[:Category:Dragons | dragons]], which were enemies to the titans even though they were also creatures of Fury, as well as some lesser titans that were victims of the tyranny of their more powerful masters.
| | * Night |
| | ** Physical: moon, dark |
| | ** Social: Discord, conflict |
| | ** Individual: Fear, hate |
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| At the end of the war, the Creators were victorious. The rest of the First Age was spent creating The Integrum. All of the unallied Fury titans were imprisoned in crystals which would become the stars of the Integrum. The
| | * Pattern |
| | | ** Concrete: Patterns, templates, natural laws |
| =Realms=
| | ** Social: Language, communication |
| | | ** Individual: Memory, instinct, reason |
| * [[Mortal Realms]] | |
| ** [[Acrolon]]: Homeland of the nor | |
| ** [[Kasyat]]: Homeland of the sahf | |
| ** [[Pelithos]]: Homeland of the fey | |
| ** [[Tonwei Unchained]]: Homeland of the ruk
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| ** [[Anahuac Archipelago]]: Homeland of the dragon scions
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| * [[Divine Realms]]
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| ** [[Aurora]]: Divine realm of day
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| ** [[Everfrost]]: Divine realm of winter
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| ** [[Nebula]]: Divine realm of destiny
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| ** [[Schemata]]: Divine realm of pattern
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| ** [[The Amber Earth]]: Divine realm of autumn
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| ** [[The All Forge]]: Divine realm of form
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| ** [[The Harrows]]: Divine realm of summer
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| ** [[The Sable Fields]]: Divine realm of night
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| ** [[The Teeming]]: Divine realm of spring
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| * Other Realms
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| ** [[The Astral Sky]]
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| =[[:Category:Integral Creatures|Creatures]]=
| | * Form |
| | ** Rigid: Stone, metal, crystal |
| | ** Fluid: Gas, liquid |
| | ** Lignid: Flesh, wood |
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| * [[:Category:Creators|Creators]] | | * Summer |
| | ** Concrete: Heat, fire |
| | ** Social: Passion |
| | ** Individual: Motion |
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| * [[:Category:Gods|Gods]] | | * Winter |
| ** [[:Category:Khodayi|Khodayi]]: Gods of Khasyat
| | ** Concrete: Cold, ice |
| ** [[:Category:Imitheoi|Imitheoi]]: Gods of Pelithos | | ** Social: Depression, dispassion |
| ** [[:Category:Primarchs|Primarchs]]: Gods of Acrolon | | ** Individual: Stillness |
| ** [[:Category:Omamori|Omamori]]: Gods of Tonwei Unchained | |
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| * [[:Category:Servitors|Servitors]] | | * Life |
| ** [[:Category:Aamar|Aamar]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Day|Day]]
| | ** Concrete: Water |
| ** [[:Category:Baatar|Baatar]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Night|Night]]
| | ** Social: Multiplicity, diversity |
| ** [[:Category:Geladar|Geladar]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Winter|Winter]]
| | ** Individual: Growth, health, animating force |
| ** [[:Category:Godwrought|Godwrought]]: Divine constructs
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| ** [[Zemar]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Destiny|Destiny]] | |
| ** [[:Category:Metari|Metari]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Pattern|Pattern]] | |
| ** [[:Category:Naori|Naori]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Spring|Spring]] | |
| ** [[:Category:Shikar|Shikar]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Summer|Summer]]
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| ** [[:Category:Yugori|Yugori]]: Servitors of [[Grand Design of Autumn|Autumn]]
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| * [[:Category:Mortals|Mortals]] | | * Death |
| ** [[:Category:Azj|Azj]]: Natives of Kasyat
| | ** Concrete: Gravity |
| ** [[:Category:Fey|Fey]]: Natives of Pelithos | | ** Social: Unification, isolation |
| ** [[:Category:Nor|Nor]]: Natives of Acrolon | | ** Individual: Death, injury |
| ** [[:Category:Ruk|Ruk]]: Natives of Tonwei Unchained | |
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| * [[:Category:Telar|Telar]]: Plants and animals of The Integrum | | * Destiny |
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| More at [[:Category:Integral Creatures|Creatures]]
| | * Divine realm rotates, and the grand design above the shards influences the shard |
| | ** Strange Moon is the month of Destiny and the "moon" is a blue glowing source of the Orrery (main armature) |
| | ** Long Day is the month of Day and the dark moon doesn't rise |
| | ** Long Night is the month of Night and the sun doesn't rise |
