Ravenai

It is night for much of the civilized world. In the northern continent of Ayla, the stars are bright against a technicolor background, the swirling clouds of a nebula that is a stone’s throw away, in the cosmic sense. One moon rises in the north while in the southwest another has begun its descent below the horizon. The Patron of Sacrifice makes way for the Patron of Protection, as he has done for millennia. His kneeling form, silhouetted against the many craters of the rocky satellite, is half hidden in shadow. His daughter’s bow is nocked with an arrow, but the tip is also shaded; she is waxing as he wanes. While their names and the specifics of their story have changed across cultures and time, the idea remains the same: a fierce warrior stood between the enemy and his only child, giving her the precious seconds she needed to draw her bow and end the invasion. While largely regarded as a myth, few know that the story is, indeed, true, and that the young woman’s descendants around the world carry her blood in their veins.   In the high secluded mountains of Churanu, people observe the spectacle from their homes hewn directly into the rock, shielded by the savage winds. The nomads of the grasslands and vast deserts sit in their circles, the elders in the center, and listen as their histories are retold, read from the stars. And while the ceiling of massive branches blocks the sky, the people of the ancient forests know the heavens well.   The story is the same in the southern continent of Dosayla, though Sacrifice is higher in the sky and Protection has not yet risen. The hot, muggy, cloudy forests are abuzz with life, the sounds louder and more persistent than they are in the daytime. Campfire smoke rises above the rocky plateau cities along the Great Rift, and sailors moored in the harbors of the Northern Coast lie in their bunks and count the twinkling lights above, dreaming of loved ones and of home.   And through all of their hearts winds the streams of magic, conceived in the planet’s core, delivered to the surface by precious Wellsprings, and borne through ground and air and stream by the currents made by the rhythmic breathing of the world, the moons, and the newborn stars above.   This is Ravenai, a world of legend, mystery, magic, and circumstance. It is the story of people – of their rise and fall, love and hate, peace and war, heroism and cowardice, invention and destruction. It is the story of nature – of plants and animals and people and rock and wind and tides. It is ever-changing, evolving, and dynamic. This is the world of stories.