Timshel

On a harsh world called TImshel on the mega continent known by many names in the middle of the unexplorable great sea in the white wastelands in the south life is precious. Though that fluctuates with local economies thus completely quantifiable. The potential years times 5.5 silvers to get the current market cost as long as you have those years ready for sale in a transferable light stone or a lesser light pebble. A light stone with 10 years forged into it would fetch a decent amount but only enough to live off of well for a month or two at a midborne level establishment. The 10 years lost hopefully was siphoned over time rather than all at once cause the loss of that many years could put someone in a coma or worse kill them. That much energy needs to be properly channeled and/or siphoned. If properly channeled the holder may even use it to increase their life span but most can't afford such an extravagant ritual. Though common for the insanely wealthy there is an upper limit on how much life you want to live, not a physical limit as your body ages at a slower rate with the greater time one possesses. The limit is mental as once you go into the hundreds your mind can no longer be reset with sleep and eventually you lose the mental strength to retain a personality or consciousness and become mindless and violent. Being mindless and violent is all well and good the common angry drunk is both but not a real problem. However, if one holding great excess of life force is of the power internally they could be incredibly dangerous to people around them if they are of the power externally they are incredibly dangerous to the surrounding area as a whole. Possibly just a few miles but if your unlucky and the one that goes mad is talented and well resourced the destruction could be on the scale of a small city.   The ones who hold the most light at the moment are the church, they hold a supply on hand in case a god needed to be bartered with to keep a natural apocalypse from befalling the churches homeland. The gods are reasonable enough apparently and they hold unimaginable amounts of light after the early days of humanity where humans would offer light with no negotiations or ceremony. We have truly come a long way.   The wastes of the south's Southlands are split into territories ruled by factions of noble families some monopolized some split into counsels. These families report to the central council that works together with the current Eternal Queen, a woman who is born from an asexually reproductive line, they hold wisdom from each that came before, this came from a blessing long ago by the God Father, the one who bore the first pantheon. She and her line are the representative of humanity to the pantheon. The one who barters with gods and walks within their domains every night. Only the most pious to their god is ever even allowed to within the gods' domain for their sanity. The Eternal Queen walks each one each night and some believe even domains that hold no gods, chaos where monsters roam and multiply.   A being more powerful then gods watch a game on a wheel that turns and spins and comes around again. A pantheon of egotistical gods who have fallen into the routine of thousands of years of divine peace, some players see this as an opportunity. There are those who move against the status quo and against those who keep it. Finally, a boy becoming a man finding his place in a world not built to make sense and what he and those who follow him will do and be in the great game they live in, the game of lives, levels, and labyrinths.