All The Super Cool Places

Nerd meta cringe stuff you can skip if you just wanna read about the places:

I don't write things if I don't find them interesting. If I come up with something and it's boring, I alter it to be interesting or I don't include it in anything. So while this article is probably gonna be stupidly fucking long, it's gonna be stupidly fucking long while consisting of interesting stuff.

The Afterworld

This is the setting itself, and this section talks about setting-wide things. Skip if you just wanna learn about the cool places, or already know this stuff from elsewhere.

Otherworlders

When a person or animal dies on Earth, they appear in the Afterworld. Specifically, anything with a brain that dies appears here, so some animals actually aren't included in that. "Otherworlder" = "Thing that appeared in the Afterworld after dying on Earth."

They can die again, and get sick or injured. They still need food, water, sleep, etc. They still age. Reproduction is the same as normal, in fact more than 99% of things living in the Afterworld were born there, being descended from Otherworlders rather than being Otherworlders themselves.

Evolution still exists. Most things are also members of species that exist only in the Afterworld, although you can sometimes kinda tell what something's descended from... for example banshees and hoga are obviously descended from either humans or apes. A lot of this wildlife seems like the result of a mad scientist making an army of monsters and feeding them nothing but steroids and nightmare fuel.

If something dies on Earth's North Pole, it appears in the Afterworld's North Pole. The coordinates of where you die on Earth are the coordinates of where you appear in the Afterworld.

You appear as deep underground as possible without fusing with rock or being somewhere that you can't breathe.

Understomachs

Are massive, often continent-sized creatures that have evolved to take advantage of the rules on where Otherworlders appear in the Afterworld. They exist underground, and grow out their stomachs to ridiculous sizes (almost all the space an Understomach takes up is its stomach), and have these stomachs full of breathable air due to plants living inside them and massive holes leading up to the surface.

Otherworlders appear right above their stomach acids, fall in, die horribly, and are melted and digested. An Otherworlder who somehow survives this, such as Sarah who appeared above an elephant and so was able to avoid falling into the acid, also has to survive the Understomach's symbiotes, which hunt down and kill any Otherworlders that survive the acid to prevent them from potentially harming the Understomach from within.

Around 97% of Otherworlder humans appear inside Understomachs, dying more or less all the time if that happens. The survival rates of the remaining 3% are really low due to the harsh environments and nasty wildlife, but some pull it off due to their luck and/or skills.

The (nice and simple) Magic System

My usual mental response to hearing that a world has a magic system is "oh fuck more shit to remember", unless it's very simple. First paragraph is what magic does, next is who gets to have magic abilities, first spoiler is an example of people with magic abilities, second spoiler is cool stuff magic does in nature. Calling the magic magic at all might actually be very stupid of me, since this lacks a lot of things that people think of when they hear magic like spells.

Magic can turn into energy. Energy can be turned into magic. Magic can merge into matter and alter that matter's properties, and be pulled from matter it's merged into. Magic reacts to energy, matter, forces like magnetism and other magic to do this, not a person or creature just willing it to, so having a magic ability requires having a special organ or cells that throw those things together to get the desired results. Magic also only does stuff where it is, so rather than having an organ that lets you summon fireballs above your hand you get an organ in your hand that spews fire from itself. Flamethrower hands.

Unsurprisingly, a person with normal parents isn't likely to be born with flamethrower hands. The majority of people are not magic, and magic abilities are usually inherited through genetics. Trying to make hybrids by putting people with different abilities together usually goes badly, since the internal systems that create the abilities are likely to interfere with each other. Usually, most or all organs and cells in a magic person are different from those of a normal person, which can influence other things like Krysa needing sugary food. Giving non-magic humans magic abilities by altering their bodies is possible, with there even being natural diseases that do this.

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Brijilds are people with a special organ where the spleen normally is. This organ produces fuel, which has magic woven into it to keep it from exploding at inopportune times by repelling magic that isn't part of the fuel, and makes it burn with more heat and/or explosiveness (depends on which the Brijild wants) by turning into heat or kinetic energy.

This fuel goes into the Brijild's blood and is carried to their freckles. Their freckles are basically flamethrowers/rocket thrusters, depending on which the Brijild is in the mood for.

Brijilds without freckles need regular medical treatment to avoid dying, as without a way out fuel will build up in and poison a Brijild. This is probably why Brijilds naturally find people with freckles more attractive, to have freckled Brijild children. Removal of fuel from non-freckled Brijilds consists of draining their blood, separating the fuel out of their blood and putting the fuel-free blood back into them. Regular bleeding without putting blood back in doesn't work because their bodies produce fuel faster than blood.

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Cool stuff magic makes happen:

- Magic gathered underground merges with certain kinds of rock, making them softer or harder. If they're made softer, rock above squishes into them, which presses the magic together and can cause that magic to explode as kinetic energy. The explosion squishes softened magic rock elsewhere, making that explode too. This adds up to an earthquake.

- Because magic creates electric currents and magnetic fields as it moves through the air, thunderstorms are often much more intense in the lightning department. A normal person would probably think they were witnessing a natural disaster or in an apocalypse if they stayed outside during an above average thunderstorm.

- In the magma beneath the Afterworld's crust, you get lots of hot melted stuff with magic merged into it. Atoms down here can fuse into each other. In cases where this would require absorbing lots of energy, magic around the atoms is converted into that energy. I think this technically means the Afterworld counts as a star.

- Thanks to the above, the Afterworld has a lot of heavy metals, including radioactive nuclear kaboom ones. Sometimes a volcanic eruption will tightly press a lot of these metals together, causing a nuclear explosion, which is very bad news for anyone nearby. This is rare because heavy metals are literally heavy, and usually sink to the bottom of the magma below the Afterworld's crust.

- Magic can strengthen materials or be converted into kinetic energy, all while itself not weighing anything, letting things be bigger and heavier without being crushed under their own weight. Godzilla-sized creatures walk the Afterworld, and there are mountains taller than the lengths of whole countries.

- Magic makes magnetic fields as it moves through the air, and these fields constantly flip back and forth. It's also drawn towards unchanging magnetic fields, like those made by wires in electrical devices. An active electric device will draw magic towards it, which will mean stronger magnetic fields around it, which will increasingly mess with the device as long as it's turned on, or break it. This normally takes 5 seconds at most.

- On the above, the brains and nervous systems of people and animals are affected, but not as badly. They're not able to build up drawn-in magic (other than some things specifically evolving to), and the brain and nerves adapt to it over time. Short term Otherworlder humans often experience things like nausea, dizziness, pain, clumsiness, involuntary spasms, constant nightmares, hallucinations and are more emotional and impulsive. In the long term neurodivergence and mental illnesses are more common, people are more prone to addiction and thrill-seeking, and often more eccentric as already-present personality traits are intensified.

- Magic in the air makes fuels, like oil or gunpowder, ignite on contact. Only biological fuels from living things, like wood or Brijild blood, are exempt as they've the things they're from, like trees and Brijilds, have evolved special ways of merging magic into them that prevents this. This is why metal is a luxury even in societies that know how to smelt it; plenty of metal ores, but a nightmare to get smelted without coal or oil, since either will explode shortly after being found.

Anomalies

These are just things that shouldn't be possible, even given the existence of magic and Otherworlders appearing, and there's no attempt to explain how they are possible.

The most large-scale anomaly is the existence of a lot of places with spatial oddities, such as being bigger on the inside than the outside. Given how ridiculously common this is, there likely is an explanation, but it's unknown. There are also places where gravity is stronger or weaker, and nobody knows why that is either. Anomalies like this, functionally just common features of the Afterworld, are called global anomalies.

Unique anomalies sometimes have things in common, but are never identical to each other in what things are anomalous about them (unlike the spatial oddities and gravity stuff). These are often items, like a pen that never runs out of ink, but may also be features of places, materials or even creatures.

Confirmed Realities

These are alternate realities of Earth confirmed to exist. You can skip this part if you only care about the Afterworld itself.

There are definitely more realities than this based on how many animals are constantly appearing inside Understomachs. Where you appear in the Afterworld is determined by where you were on Earth. If Reality A is one where lots of people live on Shit Island, but in reality B almost nobody lives there, then most human Otherworlders in the matching part of the Afterworld will be from Reality A.

Sarah's Reality

Our world but with the names of certain brands and people altered, totally not for legal reasons. Also a lot of conspiracy theories are either factual, or Sarah thinks they are... it's worth noting that Sarah is an extremely paranoid person, such as digging an escape tunnel out of her room on the Blessings Farm, which is how she avoids the Blessings Farm Massacre. Some of these conspiracies may or may not be references to the animated comedy series Inside Job, rest in peace you wonderful show.

London is where Sarah dies, London being a place where a decent number of people live. Referring to the Shit Island example, this is why Otherworlders in the part of the Afterworld where the story takes place are likely to be from our reality, as well as suffer from the disease called "being British."

Eugenics World / Gunter's Reality

This reality's explanation is probably the most lengthy. It's not a copy of our reality, and a fair bit about it is revealed through Gunter and Beryl, who are from warring countries in this reality.

The quick version is that a fascist state that likes eugenics is at war with a monarchist-democracy that does not like eugenics. The monarchist-democracy also has Victorian-England style fashion and social values. The war has lasted at least 7 years, possibly longer, and this is not the first time the two countries have been at war.

Technology includes in-vitro fertilization, utilized by the fascist state so that "genetically superior" women can have more genetic offspring, which other women carry in pregnancy and give birth to. It also includes anti-aircraft computer systems. Pilots take a drug that lets them withstand greater forces, and planes are designed to be more agile and bumpy to be inside of to match. This drug works better on women, so most fighter pilots are women, whereas other combat roles are usually done mostly or entirely by men.

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Caposteta is the country Gunter is from. Hapisteta is the country that Beryl is from. They share a border in Southern England, with Caposteta in the South also controlling most of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of Germany and Spain, while Hapisteta in the North controls the majority of England in addition to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Southern Greenland and some or all of Scandinavia.

Also; England isn't called England in this reality, same for everything else. This is a world with its own history and with that its own names for places, borders, etc. Names of places are just kept the same for simplicity.

The War

Caposteta and Hapisteta had been at war for at least 6 years by the time Gunter and Beryl died. Neither actually knows what caused the war, but claims the other's country was the aggressor while theirs is simply defending itself.

It's also considered an ideological war. Caposteta is a fascist state that intervenes heavily in its people's lives with eugenics, and believes in people having predetermined worth from their genetics. Hapisteta is apparently the most democratic country in Europe, despite its limitations on who can vote or run for office, and both its government and culture hate eugenics.

Both countries are very isolationist, culturally conservative and monarchies.

Fighter pilots from both countries are either all or mostly women. Pilots in this reality take a drug to increase the G-forces they can withstand, which is more effective when used by women. Early computer systems were used from the start of the war for shooting down the planes these pilots control, since you can get away with making a plane capable of much more sudden starts, stops, turns etc when you don't need to worry as much about the pilot inside.

Hapistata's military has greater numbers, whereas Caposteta's military has better equipment. Hapisteta has a smaller population, but for decades before the war it required every able-bodied citizen to undergo 2 years of military training, and people are generally much more willing to enlist.

Caposteta

Caposteta is a militaristic fascist state. It engages in eugenics. Caposteta has its own culture and religion, which its nationalism ties into.

An example of a Capostetan eugenics program was the one that made Gunter, who has 3 mothers.

His genetic mother, from whom an ovum was extracted after she and her husband were branded "genetic advancers" and offered money and the chance to appear on TV if they agreed to take part in the program. This ovum was fertilized with her husband's sperm, making an embryo. In total, about 200 embryos were made from the two of them, of which 73 became healthy children.

His birth mother, into whom the embryo was implanted. She'd been branded as a "genetic polluter" and so was expected to get sterilized for the long-term "glory" of Caposteta, but refused and so was seen as a traitor, making it hard for her to get a well-paying job. Businesses that hired non-sterilized "genetic polluters" risked being boycotted, and (unofficially) having a harder time getting government subsidies. She was offered money equal to what a normal person made every 2 years to be pregnant with and give birth to Gunter, plus no longer being viewed as a traitor as she'd helped with making more "genetic advancers", making it possible for her to get a decent job.

And finally his adoptive mother and father. She had also been classed as a "genetic polluter", but unlike Gunter's birth mother chose to be sterilized. She was given a lot of money to raise Gunter and another child from a different eugenics program (there were a lot of them happening simultaneously),

Hapisteta

Most of what we know of Hapisteta comes from Beryl. Beryl probably died aged 16 or so, and wasn't in the military, her dad apparently trying to use bribery to keep her from being conscripted, mostly because he didn't want her to die but also partially because he considered it wrong for women to be soldiers, since he didn't do the same for any of his sons.

Hapisteta has sort-of democracy and monarchy at the same time. Only those with royal blood are allowed to run for office. Only those with "gentle status" can vote, gentle status being obtained at birth if either parent has it. It can also be obtained with things like military service, saving people's lives, making large donations to charity, and lost to things like being convicted of a crime. Around 90% of the people have "gentle status", with most who don't being criminals, immigrants or the children of either.

There apparently also existed "noble status", but it's unclear what that actually consisted of.

There was mandatory military training for both men and women, lasting 2 years and usually starting at 16 years of age, but reduced to 14 because of the war. Minimum age to serve in the army was 16, though most were 18 or older as that was when training finished.

Their society has a heavy belief in chivalry. They consider themselves morally superior to the Capostetans, which to be fair by our standards they 100% are as Hapistetans are far less into eugenics, war crimes, violations of autonomy, etc.

Luza's Reality / Cyberpunkn't

Basically Cyberpunk but with more emphasis on the pollution and government corruption. The most significant character from here has health and psychological problems upon appearing in the Afterworld due to no longer having any implants or bionic body parts.

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Extreme pollution makes it unsafe to be outside for long stretches of time without certain equipment or augmentations.

Most people have augmentations of some kind, though most don't have very many. These can serve purposes from making work easier to pleasure-focused to, in the military and criminal worlds, combat.

Unlike your average Cybperpunk, the government is powerful in this county. It owns multiple major businesses and deliberately passes laws benefiting them.

Luza was a delivery girl who died in an explosion, unaware that she'd been delivering a bomb to someone's house and that said bomb's timer had been set incorrectly.

Pollution and environmental damage are really bad in this reality. Going outside is unsafe because the air is poisonous. Most people have bionic body augmentations, which can serve purposes from recreation/pleasure to work to health.

Unlike in a typical cyberpunk setting where the government is the puppet of the mega-corporations, the government is very powerful and even domineering in Luza's country. Many industries are state-owned, but these are all run to provide profit to the government rather than serve common wellbeing, and the government passes laws that benefit the state-owned businesses, often at the expense of private businesses and people's wellbeing in general.

Luza suffers from a lot of bodily problems upon appearing in the Afterworld, because her bionic parts have disappeared and been replaced with normal flesh and blood. Her brain is adapted to the presence of those bionic parts. She's extremely clumsy and needs conscious effort to walk normally because she's used to having bionic arms and legs. She often suffers shortness of breath because her brain is used to super-powerful bionic lungs, in fact this has almost killed her. She's also almost died of choking twice because she had a filter built into her throat that would prevent choking. She sometimes looks at people and is surprised when they notice, because her bionic eyes had cameras in the irises that let her look at things without moving her eyes.

Luza is an extreme case because she had more bionics than normal, and from a younger age, but lots of Otherworlders from her reality and ones like it have similar problems due to being used to having such and such bionic enhancement and that enhancement just not being there anymore.

Ambiguous Realities

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These are potentially cases of less significant Otherworlder characters coming from the same realities as the more significant ones, but it's also possible that each one came from a reality of their own.

There's a reality where companies sponsored cult leaders in poor countries in return for getting to use their followers as free labour. Sarah's immediate thought in response to hearing this is wondering if the elderly person she's talking to is from her world.

There's at least one reality where there's been a nuclear war, but some of the description sounds like Gunter's world and it's from an Otherworlder whose death on Earth was later than Gunter's, suggesting the war in Gunter's world... escalated. The Otherworlder who mentioned this was sick and so couldn't say much else.

There's a reality where dogs are extinct, or almost almost, because of pollution damaging their fertility. Other animals, people included, are also affected. Pollution sounds a whole lot like Luza's world. More damning is that Luza doesn't know what a dog is until she's captured and enslaved by the Agorke Clan, who have a lot of dogs. Luza's also mentions that she's never interacted with a child before when Muga gives her her (Muga's) baby and tells her to wait where she is while Muga commits arson.

The Otherworlder that revealed this was a former bio-chemical engineer, and working for the War-Duchess Krysmicka, who knew of gunpowder from Earth and wanted to create an equivalent for the Afterworld, as well as Krysmicka's teacher/doctor the Physician, who was more interested in altering people's bodies.

The Known World

The Known World is what of the Afterworld is confirmed to exist within the story and lore. It makes up less than a percent of the Afterworld at large, although some things about the Afterworld at large can be assumed based on the things happening in the Known World. Like Understomach fuckery. Or most places being so harsh that there either are no people living in them, or the people have had to evolve special traits to survive.

Across most of the Known World, nature is very inhospitable to human life. Lamara is an exception to this.

Lamara

Between 1 and 2 times the size of Europe. Abnormal within the Known World in that nature is really chill, in fact the wildlife in particular is often extremely helpful to humans, and almost always harmless.

Home to Dancing Grasslands, Shroomland, Ambrosian Mountains and more.

The whole thing is ruled by a single empire, the Krysa Empire, which has been trying to rename itself the Lamaran Unity since it finished conquering Lamara 73 years ago. It runs on feudalism, as in "I pay taxes to me lord who pays taxes to the count who pays taxes to [3 hours later] and finally the Lesser Monarch pays taxes to the Monarch, oh and on every step of that is a person running their territory how they want and has their own army, which they could use against the person they pay taxes to if they were pissed at them." There's also the Temple, an organisation similar to the Medieval Church, but with a very different religion and far more powerful, possibly able to defeat the Monarch and their allies in a war if it came down to it.

Faerie Forests

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Named for being where faeries thrive in the greatest numbers, although there's more to them than the faeries. These forests are also home to glowing fruit and sap in trees, due to a substance produced by bacteria in the ground that glows when warm. The substance produced by the bacteria is edible, and sometimes used in Lamaran cooking. Lots of the wildlife glows due to this bacteria, making every night a light show. Most epileptic people don't like hanging out in any of them for some extremely mysterious reason.

Fat faerie info dump:

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Faeries are hand-sized, humanoid creatures. Each one has four wings, which are bat-like in that they're essentially long-fingered hands with membranes between the fingers, but colourful fur on the wings and them overlapping makes them look like if butterfly wings had claws. Their upper pair of wings comes from their shoulder blades, while their lower pair comes from their lower back, which joints in their pelvis. Their feet are hand-like, like those of chimpanzees. Their teeth are very sharp, and so are their wing claws. They only need one wing on each side of their body to be functional for them to fly, although flying with only one pair operational is bad for speed and agility.

They glow in the dark, colours matching their fur as it acts like a light filter, but only if their diet includes glowing foods from the faerie forests.

Faeries don't possess human intellect, but are pretty clever. About equal in intellect to orangutans. They even have internal cultures, and primitive forms of language and superstition.

Faeries live in hives with 200 to 3000 members depending on how much food is in their territory, and they're born differently depending on the health and diets of their mothers between conception and birth, essentially determining their role and rank within the hive, and different hives operate differently according to how many of the different variations of faerie are present, their population and the personalities of the faeries within them.

If an area can support more than 3000 faeries, then infighting becomes common and members are likely to go forth and form their own hives at the edge of the hive's territory, yoinking the areas around wherever they set up for themselves - assuming they're not slaughtered by members of their original or another hive.

Faerie hives are fiercely territorial, both against other faerie and anything damaging their territory. They often use the corpses of things they've killed, including other faeries, to mark their territory, and will even cover these corpses in a kind of bile that's super unsafe for anything to consume (after being vomited onto anything, it quickly becomes a hotbed for bacteria) and smells like unwashed ass to make sure nothing eats them.

Inbreeding prevention consists of a mixture of sending raiding parties to kidnap faeries from the territories of other hives and occasionally kidnapping trespassers instead of killing them. They can also smell how related they are to one another, letting them get a general sense of who they can screw without risk of making deformed offspring, and in turn how often they should be kidnapping instead of killing.

People setting up in their forests can avoid being subject to faerie terrorism by leaving food out for the faeries, or giving the faeries free access to any agricultural schmuckery they're engaging in. As an alternative to either, faerie nests are sometimes destroyed with fire and smoke. Nests do keep eyes on one another, and will be reluctant to take up the territory and wish being cooked up too.

Faeries are also sometimes captured by humans, primarily due to either fascination with or superstitions about them, but also because they're surprisingly easy to make into pets, and useful for pest removal and cleaning as they seek to make your house - that they now see as their nest - into a safe and clean place, although their idea of clean considers their piss - which to be fair does have antibacterial properties - to be the ultimate soap, despite it smelling utterly horrid to humans.

Faeries are probably evolved from ancient humans, or evolved from cheeky science doohickeying they got up to. Many humans with an awareness of faeries and evolution think it was humans that came from faeries, rather than the other way around, and multiple Lamaran religions have claimed links between humans and faeries, like "totally not the result of some Otherworlders tryna spread Christianity" Tormism claiming they're humans but without original sin, and that Adam and Eve were faeries made human by the eating of the apple.

Dancing Plains

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Dancing Grass has plant-muscle fibers that let the blades move at will. The first use of this is temperature regulation, creating wind to cool themselves down in the hot summers, and balling together in Winter for insulation. It's also used to make wind that carries seeds up into the Emmy Wind, which then can carry them far and wide.

Finally, it serves homicidal purposes... not strong enough to kill people but perfectly capable of traumatising them. And making them very gross to eat for anything without a good means to quickly tearing them into tiny pieces, as they'll actively try to get into airways and suffocate whatever dares to consume them. It is, however, strong enough to grab and rip apart insects, and sabotage the growth of any nearby plants they dislike (they're surprisingly chill with this one, though, only using it defensively. They can detect if anything poisonous for them is being put into the soil and the general direction that said poison is coming from, and so attack any plants within reach in that direction).

They never attack anything during the dance-grass eating season. Animals feast on the plants, have a tendency to poop wherever they happen to be eating, and then dancing grass seeds brought in by the Emmy Wind have clear space and fertile soil to grow in.

Also dancing grass wipes animal asses. This isn't a joke an animal with a shit-covered ass can go into some dancing grass and the dancing grass will scrape/wipe the poop off, then wipe it onto the ground around itself and the other dancing grass plants.

Also home to dancing grass ants, which have weak but decent-sized wings they use to take advantage of the air currents made by the dancing grass, letting them travel large distances when foraging. The large territorial range a nest can maintain thanks to this enables the creation of mega-nests, home to tens of billions of ants.

People who live in these grasslands often use ant wind traps. Since ants are following wind made by the dancing grass, knowing the patterns of that wind makes it extremely easy to make traps that catch massive amounts of ants in traps containing a sticky material made by grinding up dancing grass roots. The material is edible for humans but poisonous for the ants, a natural pesticide. The ants and sticky material together are used as a cooking ingredient, and the main source of protein for dancing grassland inhabitants.

Speaking of edibility: all parts of dancing grass are edible for humans. Grinding them up or cutting them into small pieces is preferred, though, because otherwise it feels super gross or can even cause death by choking to eat parts of the plants that are still able to move.

Mulching cattle are livestock raised in the grasslands. They have spiky tongues that they use to shred apart the dancing grass as they eat it, preventing the choking risk.

Dancing grass DNA has been used for the creation of a lot of favourites in the Jarlen* arsenal, making plants capable of movement.

*Context on what Jarlens are:

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Jarlens can genetically modify plants. Process is eating some raw plants then cutting themselves so that blood gets onto the plant they want to alter (they also need to eat raw pieces of this individual, specific plant), but with some things preventing this from making them capable of solving every problem ever. They can't control what DNA goes in, which means 99% of the time the results suck and aren't at all what the Jarlen wanted. Regardless of if the Jarlen likes the plant it will be infertile, so making more of it is difficult. A Jarlen has to eat raw pieces of all plants needed for the creation of the plant of their dreams, and Jarlens don't have any special immunity to the side effects that eating an inedible plant might have, which can include death.

Also some plants just can't be modified. The way the Jarlen's blood transfers the DNA is by forming a virus that's meant to carry and replicate it across the plant's body, which is why part of the plant being altered must be eaten so that its DNA can be looked over and the virus tailored to it, as well as yoinking some of its genes to be part of the virus. If parts of a plant's immune system meant to deal with viruses is really good at its job, a Jarlen's attempt at altering it won't work.

No, I didn't accidentally give this family the most powerful ability in the setting and then attach a load of things making it harder to get anything out of so that it would make sense for Jarlens not to be considered the rulers of everything and able to solve every problems by just making the right plants for them. Shut up.

Less relevant but still cool: when not packing with DNA from plants the Jarlen ate within the past half-hour or so, Jarlen blood makes plants that absorb it grow really fast, as once in a plant it basically turns into a cocktail of all the lovely things a plant needs to grow and, more importantly, growth hormones to make the plant put that into growth.

Shroomland Forests

Namaksfara, or "Mushroom Woodlands" is a Wales-sized chunk of Lamara dominated by a mushroom forest - that's to say there are tree-sized mushrooms, not trees covered in mushrooms. The shafts of these treeshrooms have extremely strong cores but soft outsides, making them quite nice to lean against. It's also home to other mushroom species, two of which are extremely valuable exports that have each massively impacted Lamaran history, both through social/economic stuff and, bloodlusty lovers of war in their stories rejoice, war... especially war.

The Mushroom Crab

Nomakscooba are a little bigger than our world's coconut crabs, and actually descended from spiders - but still developed crab-like arms for breaking open nuts and bones. They have fungi growing on their back that quickly expands on contact with saliva and blood, so if something tries biting one it gets a mouth (and possibly lungs/stomach, which can kill) full of the fungi, and spend lots of time in sunlight so their fungi can photosynthesize. Despite spider ancestry, they can't make webs, and they don't hunt, being omnivores that only eat meat when scavenging or if prey is totally helpless.

The fungi they grow on their backs is valuable. The fungi is used in some foods, in small amounts in delicacies meant to expand in the eater's mouth, and in last resort "death rations" that make a person feel full but don't give any nutritional value.

Bloodplug is much more revolutionary. It's made from a mixture of the fungi from these crabs, cloth and anti-septic made from a type of tree bark. It expands massively on contact with blood, but not spit. Aside from the obvious use in tampons and first aid for bleeding injuries, Lamarans have found a lot of crazy uses for this, both nice and mean.

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Armour with bloodplug underneath. If you're stabbed, your blood makes bloodplug over the wound expand, pressing against it and reducing or fully stopping the bleeding and preventing infection. This is a pretty big deal, to say the least; in our world's times and places of bows and spears, more soldiers died to their injuries getting infected after battles and/or their immune systems being weakened by bleeding than during the battles themselves; get some bloodplug

Bloodplug arrows have bloodplug on their tips, preventing bleeding in the target. Deliberately also don't hit deep, and usually also have sedatives on them. Made for taking live captives, but not good against armoured enemies. Popular for kidnapping, law enforcement and sports.

Blood mechanisms are ones that operate using the expanding of bloodplug inside of them. This is mostly used for safety mechanisms in machines (Lamarans don't have electricity or fossil fuels but have still made some cool stuff), such as in some factories... something about local rulers threatening and/or paying factory owners to get safety mechanisms built in because "stop making my people's fingers disappear - they need them to wield weapons properly when I conscript them!"

This is where namakpisch, "mushroom preservative", is cultivated, being a parasitic type of fungi that grows from the tree-sized mushrooms. It is dried, ground up into dust and dissolved in water. Food soaked in that water will never rot, although vermin like rats or insects will probably still try to eat it as it is still edible for them, though they strongly prefer to eat just about anything else. Once food soaked in the water has dried, it's also more flammable. That said, the food will also taste like shit and a single meal of food that's been preserved with namakpisch contributes the same amount to your odds of getting cancer as smoking two cigarettes... not that ciggies are much of a thing in the Afterworld.

Namakspisch-soaked food is stockpiled by Lamara's many sub-rulers in their fortresses. Food never having to be thrown out means these stockpiles can get ridiculously large. These reserves are usually tapped into for wars and natural disasters. It wouldn't be possible for most of these stockpiles to exist without nobles willfully allowing or causing starvation among those they rule over, due to food going into the stockpiles instead of people's mouths.

It can be eaten like bread if just dried rather than put through the extra steps, and is the main food source of the people living here, which has caused them to have a near-total immunity to cancer. Local sub-rulers try to have an iron grip on the sale of both, forcing cultivators to sell only to them (and at low prices) and then selling to merchants (at high prices), which used to cause prices for both to be really high across the country. They'd often meet up and agree on prices. They also used to have a special deal with the Crown, which got free fungus on top of not wanting its vassals getting their hands on lots of either fungus anyway, but went back on it and tried to charge the Crown instead because they could make twice as much money doing that, as half their produce was being taken by the Crown.

An aggressive cult, with weapons and armour from right out of the Crown's armouries, has seized control of some of Namaksfara, and they're friends with smuggling groups across the rest of Namaksfara, letting them get their hands on fungi from the rest of Namaksfara. This cult and the local rulers, which hate each other for ideological reasons, have on-and-off wars, and are price competitors, which has caused namakspich and namakscooba fungi to become very cheap, to the point of being popular among regular people. This has been the case for about 17 years.

Ambrosian Mountains

The soil of these mountains contains a nasty poison that prevents the growth of any plants not native to the area, however the native plants are immune to this poison as they've developed a way to chemically alter it, which creates ambrosia. Ambrosia can be extracted from these plants, or you can just eat those of the plants that are edible.

Both ambrosia and the poison that the plants make into it have a yellowy, goldish colour, which carries over to the soil and plants alike, so some people also call these mountains golden or copper mountains (much to the dismay of miners, there's rarely any gold or copper to be found here).

In the short term, ambrosia's a drug with such fascinating effects as "getting one high as balls." When taken with other drugs, it intensifies the effects of those drugs... alcohol included here. It enables the reaching of highs that wouldn't otherwise be possible without overdosing. Most commonly used by priests pairing it with intense drugs, and then trying to approximate whatever they experience or do during the high into things like predictions of the future, the things the gods* want sacrificed to them, etc.

*Regarding "gods" in the setting:

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No actual gods, but there are people and creatures worshipped as gods, as well as people and creatures that died long ago but are remembered as gods.

An example of a living person who's worshipped as a goddess by many is Kanincha "All-Mother" Begyar. She's believed to be the goddess of lies, firstly because she's known for being an impulsive liar and secondly because it's convenient for explaining why she insists that she isn't a goddess.

Begyars are normally able to live up to 250 or 300 years, but she's more than 700 years old and looks like she's in her early thirties. They also normally have greatly reduced fertility compared to normal humans, but it's rare for her to go more than a year between one birth and the next, and often has twins, which combined with her age has amounted to a lot of children.

Her children always have strong resemblances to her, and there are no known cases of her having a stillbirth, miscarrying or giving birth to a deformed child. Despite insisting that she is a Begyar, none of her children are Begyars, so they all have normal lifespans. She also constantly adopts children and is protective of them in general, even in situations where it really doesn't help her such as if a child is a runaway slave.

She's a member of the nobility, with it actually being unknown how she came to rule over her lands. She's turned down a lot of offers to have more over the centuries, even having a scar on her neck from when someone took the refusal as an insult and tried to cut her head off. She doesn't like paperwork or any of the more boring parts of being a noble, but enjoys giving alms and capturing criminals, especially those that hurt children.

It also intensifies other forms of pleasure such as in nice-tasting food, being among loved ones or the forbidden and pregnancy-causing act known as hand-holding.

In the long term, it's good at fixing and expanding neural pathways and receptors. It can prevent or in some cases cure dementia and memory loss. The main character, Sarah, is forced to take some in attempt to cure amnesia she doesn't have*. It can also aid in curing addictions to things other than itself... but itself can become addictive with extended use.

*Clarification on Sarah's "amnesia":

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She hits her own head with a rock, steals a uniform off a dead slave-soldier (she figured low-ranking = less likely to be noticed, and wasn't aware of the slavery) and sneaks into a wagon of wounded soldiers. Everyone assumes her inability to speak the language, understand local customs etc is because of the head injury, which leaves a scar.

This is somewhat good for keeping her alive, but does come with mistreatment as Kryslunder society, Kryslund being the area of Lamara she's initially in, is not kind to the disabled or enslaved.

The Black Forest

Quick version: big forest with big trees with black leaves. North of Lamara, on the other side of the Wooden Strait, which has whales that like eating wood. Trees aren't singular organisms but many parts of them are actually symbiotes, such as their leaves, with some symbiote species being hostile to eachother if they serve the same purpose (competition). Most of it has extremely fertile soil that would make it great for farming if it weren't home to the Known World's most aggressive and dangerous wildlife. From the outside it's about 3 times the size of Spain, but from the inside it's anywhere from 6 times the size of Russia to infinite in size.

Also the trees are all interconnected and can share information and resources.

Many places in the Black Forest are very grey, especially if the trees have grey bark, and in turn many creatures have developed grey fur or skin that lets them blend in. This has even happened to humans, with all native Black Forest groups like the Hami and Tobni having grey skin.

Hairy Forest

Bark on trees here has a grey fur that's often multiple meters thick, insulating the trees against extremely cold winters and chilly summers. This land has some coastal areas, and is in the Black Forest's far West, putting it in contact with the Derrippi Mountains, where the cold air comes from.

Hami here use treefur for clothing, and develop strong backs and legs from how heavy this clothing often has to be to keep them warm in winter, during which they have to move between homes to avoid the Kaspiko, which migrate in a circular pattern around the Hairy Forest and seem to have an innate hatred for humans (Hami are human, by the way. They look weird, but that doesn't remove their humanity).

Some Urshans also live here, mostly slaves or descended from slaves bought by local Hami.

Melting Forest

The trees of this forest are the only living things known to be able to survive blackfire rain. A blackfire gas reserve is present under this area of the forest, and unclosed fissures let the gas stream out, where it immediately burns due to the oxygen and magic in the air, releasing blackfire gas into the sky where it comes down in blackfire rain.

Blackfire rain melts organic material (plants, flesh, etc) on contact, and can be carried far from the fissure that causes it, and makes soil completely unusable for thousands of years while bacteria slowly break it down, making the opening of a blackfire fissure about equivalent to a nuclear accident... although nuclear explosions do happen in the setting, courtesy of magic uranium volcanoes.

The trees just keep rapidly regrowing, pulling nutrients from elsewhere to fuel this constant growth. This seems to counteract the blackfire rain and stop it from flowing in water elsewhere, as throwing enough biological material at a bit of blackfire rain can nullify its melty effects.

Located inland from the Hami Holy Land.

Black Forest Plains

A massive region where the trees are about triple the usual size, but hundreds to thousands of meters apart. The land between them is filled with a type of grass that connects into their roots below. Grass is long and thick, often more than 7 feet tall, and is dark grey.

Inhabited by Hami and Lungefolk. Lungefolk have little stamina but can burn a lot of energy very quickly with rapid reflexes and fast sprinting, and have incredible hearing that lets them detect things from afar in the grass. Hami meanwhile just look over the grass atop their Hamikos, but are still more vulnerable to being snuck up on as even from atop their Hamikos they're not that much higher than the grass, and even a bird's eye view wouldn't do much when the wildlife likes being blended into the grass. Located just East of the Hairy Forest.

Eating Forest

Almost no animals here, but lots of carnivorous plants, including ones that can move in short but very quick bursts or have operational limbs and sensory organs. Located inland from the Melting Forest. Parts of these plants are often valued for unusual properties, for example Lamarans have been trying for ages to get Brijbane to grow in Lamara, many never shutting up about how once it's achieved the Brijilds - humans with the hereditary ability to shoot fire out of their freckles - won't be necessary and the Crown will "finally be able to do the right thing and genocide the filthy things."

Hidden within it is the Wendigo Mountains.

Wendigo Mountains

A chill mountainous area where the Wendigo Queen has set up her queendom, completely surrounded by the Eating Forest, where the Wendigo Queen uses her half-Wendigo offspring as enforcers to oppress a human majority, who are treated simultaneously as slaves and cattle, the Wendigo Queen exclusively eating human meat and her children sometimes being rewarded with it while their diet consists mostly of meat from animals. A rice-like crop is farmed around rivers that originate from geysers, and grows plentifully due to the warmth of the water and minerals it carries.

Trees here are much smaller than normal, and spaced out, because of the rocky terrain. If trees get too big or grow their roots too deep in places like this they can cause landslides that get them killed, although the trees still have interconnecting roots that can function as emergency ropes for trees that fall, letting them be let down slowly or pulled up to somewhere they can re-root.

Mobile plants from the Eating Forest sometimes come up to snack on humans, half-Wendigo and livestock.

Hami Holy Land

Where the Hami are most established, with tunnels between their settlements allowing for safe travel since traveling above ground is still very much a great way to get yourself eaten. Home to more than half the Hami population, and considered the vanilla/default place of the Black Forest. Most Hami believe this to be their place of origin.

Rivers are rare because the soil is really deep and good at soaking up water, with some rivers not reaching the sea or other rivers as they get smaller as they go along due to the soil they go over sucking them dry. This water is mostly gobbled up by the Black Forest Understomach, which uses the water to keep cool before releasing it as steam that comes back to the area in rainclouds, it raining very often here.

Soil being so deep is what enables easy digging of those tunnels, but also makes it harder to make stone tools as it requires digging really deep (soil is literally more than a hundred meters thick in most places). Roots go really deep as well. Most gear made here is made from wood, bone and animal skins, while stone items are made very carefully and lovingly, with supporting bone and wood, so that they last as long as possible. They get a lot of their stone and, very rarely, metal stuff from trade.

Fighting Forest

Trees here use two different symbiote species for their branches, both having plant-muscle systems that let them move like limbs, and grow specialised parts from themselves... like claws and clubs. Two different species in the same niche? Of course they try to kill each other. They'll even attack trees they're not attached to if there are too many other-species branches on them, just as a "fuck you" to the alternative species.

To an average viewer, it looks like lots of trees are either engaging in self harm or beating the shit out of each other.

Shadow Forest

In theory would be further inland than all the other listed forests, and may not exist. Apparently home to entirely pitch-black creatures that leave no shadows, and are highly aggressive. The upper foliage here is especially thick, making the forest below darker and it easier for these "shadow monsters" to blend in.

Ironwood Forest

Wood here is hardened by iron collected from the ground. It's still flammable, though, and the wood burns in forges, leaving iron dust mixed into the ashes. Forges are unpopular in this world due to magic's effect on a lot of potential fuel sources.

Ironwood is sometimes used for equipment, but it's often not worth it for military gear as it's only really tough when hit from its sides, which creates an easily exploitable weakness for breaking an opponent's weapon or armour if they're using ironwood equipment.