Jamphel Yeshe

Entry 1 - Yanwhe, 4th Bachtag 1471 GE

The Silk Sahira has left the port at Saresham this morning, and the clear blue sky and sapphire-like lagoons of the Nyingma1
Home to the Monastery of Five Paths, one of the seven Magus Academies of Aqualon.
Islands seem to greet me well on my journey to the dark heart of the world. Captain Lakshmana tells me I am a madman for attempting a pilgrimage to Jamphel Yeshe, but to progress as a master of the Monastery of Five Paths, I know in my heart that I have to seek out the sages in whose name our great school was once founded. Lakshmana won't take me all the way to the island of course - he has silk deliveries to make on the Hooper Chain - but I should be able to find a skipper that'll take me to the island of Ainan3
Home to Ka Hale Akamai, one of the seven Magus Academies of Aqualon.
from there...
— Shariputra, First Dan Magus of the Monastery of Five Paths
Chakravarti, Versha, Ronilda, Drahoslav, Almelon. Many have heard these five names and today few worship them still, save for the monks of the Monastery of Five Paths. These are the names of the Five Grand Sages, students of the previous Clockwork Avatar, Jamphel Yeshe, fathers and mothers of the unholy land of the same name.   They lived before the First Age, born in a time before the Reshaping of the World. Children of Asgard they were, and like the Old Gods, they drank of the Well of Wyrd, attaining great power and immortal bodies, just as the gods had. But they were not with the Aesir thereafter, for they saw no wisdom, no kindness in subjugating the other eight realms or calling themselves gods. The five claimed that in drinking of the well, they had been touched by the true divine, and they set out to travel the lands and spread the word.   For a thousand years or more it is said, they went from realm to realm, building a great following of acolytes, teaching them the ways of the Great Clockwork, claiming that the Great Wheel, as was its name back then, spoke to them directly inside their souls when they went into their inner worlds and called itself Jamphel Yeshe.  
Their teachings involved kindness and charity and the fostering of a burning desire for power; not to subjugate, not to wield, but just to be free of all bonds, to move anywhere without obstruction. And in their many centuries of training and prayer, they began to invent powerful magic: a gift, so they claimed, from the Great Wheel.

When the Reshaping of the World happened, they took refuge in the Great Clockwork and returned to the new world that had been molded out of the Nine Realms. Here they walked the Great Land as they had walked the realms before, teaching their word. When the Ocean Belt to the south was discovered by the Yamato tribes during the second half of the First Age, they sensed a calling from that direction and crossed the Iron Belt with many acolytes, and they told them to follow without fear as they walked across the ocean as if it was solid land.

In time they arrived at a great island that Yamato surveyors had dubbed "Kujira-tô", the whale island. The sages stepped ashore, followed by their acolytes, and they kissed the ground, proclaiming with great joy:
From this day forward, this land shall be known as Jamphel Yeshe, the promised land; the holy land! We will build a great monastery in this place, and all who seek wisdom, all who seek guidance, all who seek their place in the world will be welcome in our arms!
Entry 2 - Fernsty, 2nd Keepersdey 1471 GE

Even on board the swift Silk Sahira, the journey from Saresham to Graanshoof at the tip of the Hooper Chain has taken well over half a month. We did stop by Rastrowel4
The large lakes Tarrenvel and Ostrund on the island of Rastrowel are home to an unusual species of jellyfish: the globumeduzoa, also known as pearlhoods in the common vernacular. The pearlhoods spread rapidly when food is available and quickly form strands of tiny nacre granules, which are harvested by the people of Rastrowel as nacre gravel, a prized substance for goldsmiths and alchemists. Rastrowel is also the founding place of the Church of Pure Souls.
to sell some silk and buy nacre gravel to resell later. Now that we are at Graanshoof, I am parting with Captain Lakshmana and his esteemed crew; a young Hank and Jordan's employee with his ship has taken me on as a passenger and on-board magus, hoping I will ease the journey, which I will. The destination: a little town on the other side of Ainan (the other side from Ka Hale Akamai, where I hope to find a colleague that can get me to the Pirate Coves of Porasta).

Shariputra, First Dan Magus of the Monastery of Five Paths

The Silk Sahira
  And so it was that the sages and their acolytes erected a great monastery on the island, and over the course of the first half of the Age of the Iron Divide, many sought them out and many stayed then, and a little city was built near the monastery, and fields of grain were planted and tilled, and the monastery became a nation: a nation united under the spiritual guidance of the five immortal sages.   But this splendor was not forever. In the 510s AID, a radical notion overcame the sages, who believed that true enlightenment and true self were, in the end, illusions as long as the Great Clockwork had a claim on people's souls; as long as they could not truly die.   In one final act, they went to five corners of the island of Jamphel Yeshe and sat down in prayer. They pleaded with the Great Clockwork to leave the island, and it is said that it cursed them then, turning them to stone. And indeed no more did the Clockwork touch Jamphel Yeshe after this. All souls on the island were now lost, for as long as people lived on it, these peoples were cut off from the Great Clockwork and thus the cycle of rebirth.
Log Entry 3
Entry 3 - Wexling, 4th Erdtag 1471 GE

Two months and change on the sea, with only sparse shore leave! We were caught in three storms and almost sank all three times. Only some exhausting water and wind magic on my part, depending on which ur-soul I had been attuned to at the time, saved us all from drowning and that by the skin of our teeth.

We have reached Ainan, finally, and I have spoken with Wavemaster Lorian at Ka Hale Akamai. He, too, doubts the wisdom of my journey to Jamphel Yeshe, telling me that whatever I seek I will not find it there, but I am adamant. I have come this far, and I will see the journey through!

After a few days of staying at the academy, enjoying their marvelous hospitality and learning about their views on magic and enlightenment, Lorian grants me the escort of two of his most senior students and a special ship that the mages of Ka Hale Akamai steer and propel entirely with wind and water magic, each one of the two crewmen utilizing one of the elements. We set sail tomorrow on the 4th Briestag of Wexling and are expected to reach the Pirate Coves of Porasta in a mere two days. There I will hire myself out to a pirate ship on its way to Jamphel Yeshe. Only under the aegis of a ruthless pirate with a name to himself would I ever dare set foot on the land of poppy and coca, where men and women are sold as cattle and drugs flow out like excrement that poisons the world.

Shariputra, First Dan Magus of the Monastery of Five Paths

The beaches of Ainan... a difficult place to leave.
Never again was there magic on Jamphel Yeshe. Magic was dead. Never again was there a soul saved on Jamphel Yeshe. Souls were dead. No Hope. No Great Clockwork on Jamphel Yeshe.   And as the acolytes, overcome with strange melancholy, unable to turn their minds towards optimistic nihilism, the only path to enlightenment left to them, chose to die, one after another, and the evil and downtrodden, smelling a safe hiding hole where no judgement could touch them and no magics could hurt them, went to Jamphel Yeshe, and golden fields of grain turned into green fields of coca and red fields of poppy, and drugs poured out of the island that became a haven for the Baba Yaga, the pirate kings.   To this day pilgrims still seek Jamphel Yeshe from time to time, but few survive the pilgrimage. And those that do regret their journey, for there is no deeper meaning at the accursed shores, and the statures of the five sages sit perfectly still, forever keeping their secrets to themselves.
Log Entry 4
Entry 4 - Petal, Mûning 1471 GE

The Pirate Coves of Porasta haven't been quite what I expected... though I suppose I did not really know what I expected. It was a rough, dirty place, people gambling, drinking, and killing left and right. And they even killed each other... over me.
The Pirate Coves of Porasta.
There were two captains that wanted my services for the journey to Jamphel Yeshe. A magus with my credentials is a powerful asset to have for a ship, especially one that might have to tussle with others. In the end, the crew of Captain Costaverde Salamanca the First won out, and I am on their ship now. The Santa Sarrana is a swift and sturdy ship, though it could use a good scrubbing. Seeing as I am not too keen on doing the job myself, I am, however, reluctant to bring it up. A strange man travels with them. He has the white hair of a blighter, and they ask him to sing shanties. When he does, they are strange somehow. Beautiful to the ear but as if he was singing with many voices and an ancient power in his melodies. I speak with him from time to time, and he tells me strange tales of the world. The strangest seems to relate to the Birth of Balsibart, the tale of a little girl on Jamphel Yeshe, told as if he had heard the story from her directly or even as if he had been that girl, as strange as this may sound.
His story sticks with me, and I lay awake at night often. Jamphel Yeshe scares me now, and I am beginning to grow wary of my journey. And yet, we are moving closer to the island every day now...

Shariputra, First Dan Magus of the Monastery of Five Paths

The Santa Sarrana.
 
Log Entry 5
Entry 5 - Petal, 1st Prickeltag 1471 GE

I jumped overboard. During my final talk with the white-haired man I learned the truth: it was him. The real Balsibart, on his way for a little home visit. And yes, the story he had told me was from his... childhood... I cannot fathom how, cannot fathom what he is. But the moment I discovered it, I jumped and swam and never looked back. A couple of fishers picked me up a day later. Only magic allowed me to survive this long. I am writing from their little boat as we head back Ainan-way. They live on a small island of the group called Gêsi. I have turned my back on Jamphel Yeshe, just like the rest of the world. I will never set foot on that accursed island. The story Balsibart told me will haunt me for the rest of my life, for the vivid narration of the accursed spielmann brought the images and feelings of despair all too close to my inner eye...
Shariputra, First Dan Magus of the Monastery of Five Paths

The Cobalt Loon, the small fishing vessel that picked Shariputra up.

The Birth of Balsibart

Many decades ago, in the city of Kagharpyur on Jamphel Yeshe
Jamphel Yeshe. Jamphel Yeshe. Dīghā jāgarato ratti dīghaṃ santassa yojanaṃ dīgho bālānaṃ saṃsāro saddhammaṃ avijānataṃ.1
Long is the night for a wakeful; long is a yojana for a tired.
Long is the Samsara for the fools who do not know the true Dharma.
And yet they linger in Jamphel Yeshe: the wakeful, the weary, the ever born. Long is their short life to them, for the night is dark to them, the road is steep, the light is far from their sight, and their eyes are ever drawn to the ground as they bow before misery, their master.
Today the girl will die.
No?
Maybe today…
No?
But today…
no… life moves along; ever so slowly, rotting, like the thirsty in the desert sun. The waves quake endlessly against the bay of the island, here where the harbor of the city lies, and the city behind it, past the old monastery.
Ships come and go. Only the people who live here, they stay. The girl knows no law, no government, no parents, no siblings. The world is a frightful place with many arms to beat her down, growing out of every nook and cranny. She wants to curl up and die, every day, but she can’t, her instinct is all she has, all she ever knew, and it tells her to survive. She tells it that she does not want to, that she wants to sleep and never wake up, but it makes her stand up and walk anyways. She steals the rotten food that is laid out in the corner streets, but often she is caught and beaten.
Even though it is never too cold, the caustic winds chill her to the bone in the night. She does not cry, she does not know how to, does not know what sadness is, does not know what pain is anymore, she just lives, hollow; just an automaton, kept alive by its prime directive: to keep itself alive. She wants to die, but she is too frightened of the nothingness. In her heart she knows that no god waits for her. There is no god on Jamphel Yeshe. The Clockwork ticks not past its shores.
She has nothing but her life, how can she give up the only thing that is hers? Others have taken anything she ever possessed, and one day they will take this from her too. She longs for this day every day. This is Jamphel Yeshe, where the living are dead and the dead are living, where the soiled are clean and the clean are soiled, where the winds blow warm and the cold is all around.
And all the civilized, the technocrats, the mages, the Yamato folk, the neighboring island nations: they know the light of day; they are the chosen, who have bonded together to form a mighty whole, safe and sound under their Great Clockwork. And all who did not fit, they drifted off across the Corsic Ocean, where they were swallowed whole at Aashanahin Bay, and here they struggled against each other until the walls were red, until the streets were red.
Wide fields of crimson poppy, of green coca, and of nightshade, flowering all over the island. During harvest they would come and pick the lost off the streets and force the milk into them until they wanted nothing but it; then they made them pick the leaves and the seeds, and gave them only if they worked hard. Once the season passed, they were thrown back on the street, craving the milk, but there was none left for them, and they would writhe in horrible poverty. The girl had lain behind shabby houses and brushes herself, shaking and vomiting, freezing and burning. She had to hide herself as much as she could, for the men were terrible beasts that would touch her in frightening ways and beat her if she made noises, and the women were broken and never lived long, even if they were picked up and sold; perhaps especially then.
The girl knows so little of the world, and her ears are deaf to the wind and the waves and the chatter of the birds, and her eyes are blind to the plants and the animals and the rocky cliffs and the wide blue ocean. Only the sky holds her fancy from time to time. She will stare up at the impenetrable blue ceiling that veils it during day and at the towering clouds that seem so far removed from the filth: they are white and pure like nothing she has ever seen on the ground, and birds will fly high amongst them. If only the girl had wings, she could fly with them and escape Jamphel Yeshe, but people have no wings nor can they grow them, for if they could, all the beaten and broken would fly off this island and be forever gone.
No, there is only the ground and the strange invisible force that pulls her firmly towards it, even when she jumps as hard as she can. In the night, the ceiling goes away and a black emptiness opens up above her, filled with so many flickers of light, like lanterns in the distance. Is there a great city in the sky, just like there is on the ground? Perhaps, if she could make the sky and the ground switch places somehow, she could live up there with the lights, and Jamphel Yeshe would be the sky, horrible to look at, but so far away, so distant and insignificant…
Perhaps today, perhaps she will die today…
no… there is a next day, always, always a next day. Year in, year out, the days pass, eternally slowly.
But in the distance something is coming now. It is far, far away. But day after day it comes closer to the girl. It is something she has long forgotten, something she wants to remember. Something like her name. Did she ever have such a thing? Was she even a person? She had nothing and would never have anything, entitled to nothing, free of ambition, of hope, of all the things she imagined must exist somewhere in the world. But she only ponders from time to time because the days are long and so are the nights, and there is nothing to do but survive, nothing but survive. It comes closer, every day. Perhaps it is her death, the thing she is sensing? She thinks she can almost hear it, a distant sound, coming from the bowels of the outside, the other, the places that were not here, that were beyond the island, beyond the jaws of the bay.
But the days pass, and nothing happens; the girl survives. Again, again, day, night, day, night, weeks pass by and months, and always she can feel it coming closer; until one day, one final day, the last day of them all, the day. On this day there is a strange ship floating into the harbor. The sun has already sunk, and the last red gleam slowly vanishes as the sky grows dark. In the harbor the ship lies calmly, it is much larger than all the others, and it is not made of wooden planks but of cold, blank metal, metal like knifes, cutting into the water, yet never sinking.
The girl watches it with dull curiosity. The sensation is so unused that she has almost forgotten it; after all nothing ever changes in Jamphel Yeshe, what could there be to be curious about. Nothing; nothing, except for this strange ship – so she watches. The strange sensation has vanished, and in its place there is tension, so strong she can almost taste it. The tension that comes when one is surrounded by absolute silence, for what had rung in her ears for so long was now quiet. But just for a moment, just a tiny fragment of time, the blink of an eye, the flash of lightning; and it lasts forever.
Then the world is no longer what it has been before. The hinted sensation becomes reality, and it washes over her in endless waves as a booming sound erupts from the metal ship and sweeps over the island, waking every man, woman, and animal. The sound is like nothing the girl has ever perceived in nature, and it vibrates, changes, again and again, forming melody, harmony; a wailing sets in that makes her hair stand on end. Her fragile little mind stands on edge as this new sensation washes over her, again and again, and the wailing diverges into voices that seem not human at all and yet sing words she can hear more clearly than any words ever spoken to here:
Streetlamps shining into our rooms,
Glow and flicker,
And they trigger,
A response from our artificial moon.

Blue and black is the sky,
And black is the sky.
And our city
Is electricity,
Is electricity,
Blue in our veins.
And it is only the beginning. As the music overshadows her entire world in an ethereal blur of emotion and cyclopean imagery, the voices sing of a strange city and things that are far outside her realm of comprehension. But at the same time she can understand their wailing better than anything she has ever heard, for it is her own wailing; it is her voice, mirrored back at her! The voices sing of her suffering, there can be no question, and as she hears them sing, she throws her head back and screams at the black sky above her for the first time in ages. She screams and screams, until the voices slowly fade and the music as well, and she weeps bitter tears at her loss, the first tears she has ever wept. And when she looks back to the ship, it is gone, and so is the city and the sky.
— Memories of a Spielmann.
With steep coastal cliffs and numerous towers and forts as well as its absolute anti-magic properties, Jamphel Yeshe is severely fortified against any and all attacks.

Maps

  • Jamphel Yeshe
    The Yamato tribes were the first to realize that there was a vast ocean beyond the Iron Belt. When they mapped the island of Jamphel Yeshe in 143 AID by circumnavigating it, they called it Kujirajima, 'Whale Island', due to its likeness to a whale's head. People still sometimes use that name to illustrate it as a place that swallows people whole and then slowly and painfully digests them.
     
    The Five Sages traveled the Great Land for many centuries until valiant explorers crossed the Iron Belt and found there a great ocean to the south. They left their peoples and joined in silent meditation on the First Island, and they built a monastery where they taught those who came to hear their wisdom, calling it Jamphel Yeshe.
Population
Roughly 9500 souls
  Demographics
ca. 0.1% Drug Lords
ca. 4% Hired Muscle
ca. 10% Cartel Members
ca. 10% Farm Overseers
ca. 17% Farmers and Fishermen
ca. 19% Artisans
ca. 39,9% Homeless, Ragamuffins, Drug Slaves, Lowlifes

  Exports
  • Cocaine
  • Opium
  • Relics
  • Trinkets
  • Copper
  Imports
  • Fish
  • Gold
  • Luxury Goods
  • Feed
  • Weapons
  Related Reading
Magus Academies
Magic
Spellblight
About the Great Clockwork
Electricity
  Locations of Note
Pillars of Creation; prayer stones before the Monastery of the Grand Sages.
 
monastery of the grand sages.jpg
The Monastery of the Grand Sages.
 
The Mourning Sages. These stone statues were carved by the last acolytes of the Five Sages on Jamphel Yeshe. After the Sages had made their questionable sacrifice, their acolytes became sad and their various stages of enlightenment sour. In their own mourning, they carved statues of their former masters, hoping to reclaim a shred of that former light. All in vain.
 
Poppy fields of Jamphel Yeshe.
 
After the poppy harvest.
 
Harvested coca leaves.
 
Terrace farming for food.
 
Many in Jamphel Yeshe must sleep on a hard bed and wake to a harder reality
- if at all.
 
Even today, there are still monks living on Jamphel Yeshe. They stay secluded in the mountains to the south where they practice asceticism. Despite the depravity of the island, despite its terrible history, there are still those who believe in the teachings the Five Sages left behind, and there are still those who turn their backs to the clockwork. They come here to pray, up in the mountains with the Mourning Sages' statues, watching the wicked world below their feet dispassionately.

Age of the Iron Divide

5000 ARe 5700 ARe

At the end of the First Age, the Seventeen Yonder Islands had been settled and the Iron Belt put a firm geographical divide between them and the Great Land. The pursuers of magic and science were still on good terms, both referring to themselves and each other as scholars, and the Manifesto of Technocracy had not been written yet. The Men of Midgard had settled what would become the Middle Lands, the Saltplains, and the Yamato Kingdom, and some of them set out to settle the Wilderplains, founding the city of Estwerde. The Nordmen were regularly rallied by the Old Gods to raid the Great Land. It was towards the end of this age and the beginning of the next that the mages began to accrue considerable power, leading to ever greater wars, further instigated by the Old Gods that were always hungry for conflict.

Age of Awakening

5700 ARe 5900 ARe

During this age, the mages began to realize the scope of their power, and they helped the populus of the Middle Lands to construct fortified positions that would slowly grow into the five cities of Aquaris, Lumina Aka, Fulgrath, Arda, and Aerialis. They did so to resist the regular raids of the Nordmen and to create a bulwark between the North and the Saltplains, which had always been extremely fertile and were largely responsible for the wealth in the center of the Great Land. The Yamato Kingdom also attempted to create a more militarized force of mages, even though their location atop the Yamato Mountain Range was significantly safer from the Nordmen than the Middle Lands; still, they feared the rising power of the Middle Lands as well. During these attempts they employed the mad magus Hestia (at the time still a respected master of fire magic) to train and lead their forces. She held this position until the anexxing of Estverde, which was planned by the Yamato Kingdom but went horribly wrong, and the lands of Aqualon held their breath in terror for a year or two after the city had gone up in flames. In that time, the technocrats arrived from the Seventeen Yonder Islands, having completed their manifesto, trying to spread the benefits of science, and having scholars in positions of power rather than nobles or city councils. They found a land still in shock and turned to accuse the mages of reckless abuse of power, and for a time, political power shifted away from the mages of the Middle Lands and towards the technocrats, who founded the great city of Altonar in the west. While the people of the Great Land had believed that the Nordmen had stayed off their relentless raids for the same reason the mages had stopped hostilities, this proved to be wrong, for the Old Gods had made plans to take over the Great Land, arming the Nordmen with powerful magic weapons, forged by their most beloved servants, the Angel Saxons. This invasion, accompanied by the rise of the Brotherhood of the Null, which had quietly arrisen out of the figurative ashes of Estverde, ultimately lead to what is now called the Age of Heroes.

  • 2nd century AA
    The Great Pirate Houses have Faded, but the Depravity of Jamphel Yeshe Continues
    Political event

    The Baba Yagas have long perished and their title has become one that is passed along every two years to the winner of the biennial great pirate race of the Corsic Ocean. But the pirate houses are scattered and weakened due to the ruthless campaigns of the Maritime Stratocracy of Guantil-ya, and the title means little at this time. Still, the drug trade flourishes and new drug lords have arisen on Jamphel Yeshe, the island growing ever more prosperous, though the wealth remains in few, precious hands while most of the people living there are addict scum and drug-slaves. This continues undisturbed for many, many centuries, and even occasional attacks by powerful sovereign nations fail as the island has been heavily fortified and is completely immune to magic.

    Location
    Jamphel Yeshe
    More reading
    Jamphel Yeshe
    Additional timelines

Age of Gears and Elements

6220 ARe and beyond

After the Age of Heroes the factions began to drift apart. The mages strengthened their position in the Middle Lands, more and more confident that none could stand against the five great Mage Academies and the Tower of Five, while the Old Gods retreated to their home Asgard, leaving the Nordmen to themselves. They did however send out their representatives, the Valkyries, chosen Angel Saxons implanted with Fragments of Wyrd, in order to seek out the next great war so that the Old Gods may join it in force. The Brotherhood of the Null would retreat to their sanctums at the Eastern Walls of Weltenend and the Western Walls of Weltenend, and would not leave those sacred places for over seventeen centuries, never having felt that the Null Concordant was violated to an extent that required their intervention. The technocrats had retreated to the southernmost tip of the world beyond the Spiral Sea, founding the great university city of Borealis. The moving city, Miyako Fluxum split off from Borealis when the final decision was made by the Council of Faculties that Technamagix be forever outlawed as a research subject. No great war ever seemed more than the thinnest of lines on the horizon since the world was, for the most part, big enough to house the great forces within it. This of course changed with the appearance of the Yellow Glimmer, which would eventually lead to this age's end.

  • 1620 GE


    The Birth of Balsibart
    Extinction

    The event known as "The Birth of Balsibart" occurs, and every living person on Jamphel Yeshe vanishes from the face of Aqualon forever; no one knows where. Because of the appearance of Balsibart the Bard soon thereafter, it is believed that he made his first move on Jamphel Yeshe, then going on to absorb other nations in whatever still unexplained manner he did that.

    Location
    Jamphel Yeshe
    More reading
    Jamphel Yeshe
    Additional timelines
  • 1676 GE


    Jamphel Yeshe's Depravity Survives its own Extinction
    Population Migration / Travel

    In less than six decades, the island of Jamphel Yeshe is back to its usual in-human business. The wealth and drug farms lying around for the taking led to a bloody race and war to lay claim on the fallow bounty. In 1456 GE, the population has roughly reached its pre-Balsibart density with lowlifes flowing in or being sold or tossed at Jamphel Yeshe's shores constantly.

    Location
    Jamphel Yeshe
    More reading
    Jamphel Yeshe
    Additional timelines

Comments

Please Login in order to comment!
May 13, 2018 18:47

I liked this article. I found the sidebar with the pictures very immersive, same thing for all the quotes. About the quotes, I must say that I found them overwhelming, probably because of the way they are organised in the text. I don't have a solution, but the "problem" I had is having a quote next to the main text, or a quote between two paragraphs of the same section. But maybe that's just me. Just saying, you might want to think about it :)   And about the history overview, I would consider converting it into a timeline. I think it would look pretty neat, given that there are a lot of events there.   My favourite part is the last section, with the extract from the memories of a spielmann. What's a spielmann, by the way? It sounds English, but I can't identify the word. It's well written (although my criticism on written English is not that valuable... I'm not a native) and I really would like to know more about this girl. For some reason, it reminded me of Game of thrones and the many-faced god, I'm not sure why.   As for the presentation, I like how the images are edited with this effect (I don't know its name), it gives them consistency.   Great job overall!   (Also, how did you make this pop-ups?)

[they/them] Creator of Black Light, a science-fantasy universe.
May 13, 2018 20:41 by Koray Birenheide

First of all, thank you so much for the like and this extensive comment. It is really wonderful when someone takes the time to give some real feedback on one of my articles ^-^   I'll have to think on the quote problem, but there may be a magic CSS solution. CSS magic is also what I used to create the footnote popups. I explain how on the Aqualon discord server where I also publish daily facts about this world ^-^ There is a channel where I post CSS tricks for World Anvil.   The last section is actually from a chapter of my novel, "Aqualon, Rise of the Broken" and is about a character reminiscing his past. "Spielmann" is German for "minstrel" or "bard". It is a derogatory term used for this particular person, Balsibart the Bard. And in fact, there are some parallels between him and the many faced gods. Not many, but I would say there is a general connection between the feel of the two stories ^-^   I'll look into making the history into a time-line. I was considering this before, but since someone brought it up, I am renewed in my conviction to do it :3   Again, thanks for taking the time!

May 18, 2018 15:07 by BlueWildfire

Nice imagery, and I loved the usage of spoilers as log entries! The timeline is also a nice detail.

May 18, 2018 15:21 by Koray Birenheide

Thank you! And thanks for taking the time to write a comment ^-^

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