Eiavere

On a distant plane, magic is a bizarre and mighty force that is bestowed only unto a select few. Once a year, a single individual is born as a mage, granting them the ability to surpass the natural laws of the world. Beyond their marvelous capabilities, the only trait that sets these mages apart from ordinary people is their shadow. Instead of a plain, black umbra, the shadow of a mage behaves like a window into a perpetual night sky, depicting beautiful, roiling nebulas and thousands of tiny points of starlight.   Mages are unanimously acknowledged as the most powerful beings in the world. Many regard them as deities, treating them with reverence and respect. Others, typically those whose lives are abruptly brought under magical rule, see them as grotesque, unnatural beings that do not belong in the world.   So great is the power of mages over the rest of the world that decades ago the mightiest among them banded together to form the “pinnacle of society,” known as the Thaumacracy. This pinnacle is equal parts government and nation, and both aspects are referred to by the same name. The government of the Thaumacracy, a council of the wisest and most powerful spellcasters, rule from the gleaming spire at the center of the Thaumacracy’s city-state.   From their exalted city, the mages set out to bring the mundane world into their divine dominion, marking their territory with arcane implements known as “magelight” and planting themselves into other civilizations as commanders and rulers. This process is met with varying amounts of resistance, but most understand that it is better to be begrudgingly occupied than marked as an enemy of the Thaumacracy.