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bloodbornblue · 5 years

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Field Guide: Marimo

Description: Marimo is a widespread variety of aquatic, freshwater, luminescent moss, which ebbs and flows with the currents of the water it resides within, rolling into a ball as it forms. Traditionally, the Marimo can be found in hues of green and blue. However, rarely, at a rate of roughly one in every one-thousand, red-orange balls of Marimo can be found.

Locale: As a freshwater moss, Marimo is prolific throughout Aldernard and Othard, primarily in cave systems and deep, freestanding bodies of water.

Availability: As the above suggests, Marimo of the blue-green variety (refered to by a variety of terms including Lamp, Gem, and Lantern), as smallfolk tend to avoid gathering it due to perceptions of it being a form of the Ashkin known as the Will’o’wisp. The red-orange variety is, as implied by its scarcity, far less common, and typically found more commonly in Othard than Aldernard. Maiden’s Heart, as the red-orange variety of Marimo is colloquially known, is given the same distrust by Othardians, and it is speculated to occur when a maiden is rejected by a higher-class lover, and casts herself into the waters in shame.

Uses: Marimo is highly luminescent, to the point where it can be used as a lamp (see above for my personal Marimo lamp) or torch, making it an excellent heatless source of illumination in survival situations.

Marimo is also used by the Ishgardian Observatorium as a ritual reagent to, and I quote, “ground and furbish their phrenic lens.” Though I am not privy to Ishgardian rituals, it appears that they use Marimo moss as some form of incense to assist in their divinations of the heavens, and aid their focus and breathing.

In addition, Marimo is an excellent base for many curative remedies. It can be mixed with clove honey and Ahriman eyes to produce a cure for the gout, Mistletoe, Cone flowers, and Cow Bitters for a curative tincture, or one can replace the Cone flowers and Cow Bitters with Oregano and Dandelion for a tincture to replenish ones aether.

Rumours also exist of a Marimo and Phurble-blood based tonic which can assist in hair growth, though, I can find little evidence of other ingredients in said potion.

Author’s Note: While previously stated that smallfolk are incorrect in their assumptions that the Marimo is a variety of soulkin, there is one variety that may put them ill at ease, or vindicate their beliefs, depending upon their disposition. This is known as Charon’s Cradle. Charon’s Cradle is produced when a creature capable of devouring “souls” or aether consumes, and then passes, the Marimo, infusing the moss with no small degree of the aether said creature has devoured.

Therefore, I am proposing further research should be conducted into the Marimo moss, including its rare cousin known as “Mogpom”, for potential reclassificaiton. I will begin attempting to commune with my lamp promptly, and see if I can illicit a response.

#Mildred Black's Field Guide to Eorzea #ffxiv rp #ff14 rp

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aworldbuildingportfolio · 5 years

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Excerpts from Star Culture Notes

A star alter is called a katherzua, or “the burning place”.

Kathurza’s are carved out of one solid stone piece and consist of several square stairs and one birdbath like structure on top. The stone is blessed before carving and must be done perfectly. If any mistake is made, the whole thing must be pulverized and the dust is collected for other things as it is still considered sacred.

Katherzuas are at the center of all Star temples, present in all star houses, and are considered the most sacred of objects in star culture.

These alters are always made of either obsidian or quartz-like stone, with an opalite stone on top that hovers above a bit filled with water.

The stone for Katherzuas used to be transported by a meteorite, and the ground it struck altered to be the temple sight, considered chosen- and sacred space is scared space is sacred space regardless. Until that is, too large of a Katherzua stone was sent to earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Then alternate methods needed to be chosen for transport.

It is a strongly held belief that all Katherzuas are connected.

Lovers in star stories never come to happy ends.

At best they die.

At worst… well… you don’t really want to know worst.

Let’s just say that no one dreams of growing up and falling madly in love with anything- not even something as insignificant as a brownie.

The Council of the Stillness is a pseudo-monastic order made up mostly of starkin, though it is open to beings of all species. These individuals are said to be both blind and deaf, communicating with the outside through oracles, and some variations of a braille and BSL type system. Their goal is mediation in order to “feel the turning of the universe” with themselves as both edge and center, inside and everywhere at once. Only those without the use of all their senses are said to be able to purify their minds enough to reach this state.

Theoretically, they seek the best in themselves and in each being- and focus on ways to call forward that version of ourselves and our world.

However, no one has heard from or seen the Council of the Stillness or any of its members in millennia so they are now largely regarded as a myth.

Court Color Code:

Stars wear white

Elders wear cream or gold

Nobility wear blue

Polaris wears black

Weavers wear grey or silver

Terrestrials wear variations of brown or reddish-brown

Blinded stars wear purple

Old stars are considered honorarily wise and wear gold sashes with green broaches

Mother and Father stars wear gold sashes with blue broaches

Members of the mysterious Council of the Stillness wear red… but no one has actually seen one of them. So they are probably just a myth.

Celibate stars also wear red broaches

Regarding weather in the Sphere:

“It depends on where you are.”

“If you’re in the court proper, or one of the populated areas, they’re quite warm. not all of them are hot exactly, but the kind of warm that makes you feel comfortable with the idea of slipping into warm water, or out of whatever you’re wearing with the assurance that you won’t be cold. This is carefully balanced, most of the time. Some stars, of course, choose to bring parts of their auras with them so that they can be exceptionally warm if they desire, and so the areas around them are usually warmer, but you might not notice unless you have contact directly with their skin.”

“In the outer regions, the spaces between constellations, districts, houses- these places are very cold. On the outer edge, its like autumn but as the glow of the court fades you walk straight into winter, where the warmth is provided only by warm furs and sudden cracks of life energy in the cosmos. There is almost no rain, and no snow, no precipitation of any kind, but there is wind. Wind storms and soft breezes all around the sphere. And a certain dull roar that is its own weather. Like the scraping of a glacier, or the roar of a waterfall of large even the moon would look small in comparison. I do not know what makes the sound, but you feel it. Everyone does.”

There are lots of kinds of beings in Salma’s world. These generally fit into a number of certain categories- categories which introducing one at a time is no longer working for me. So, as best I can list them, here they are.

starkin (stars, weavers, etc.) shadowkin (this includes most traditional monsters- demons, ghosts, vampires) humans earthkin (these include furies, dryads, fauns, earthgods, shifters, elves…) waterkin (mermaids, nyaids…) other (magical peoples) deathkin (reapers, soulcatchers- this type is also called soulkin) beings of the ultimate (this is pretty much angles- anything that serves the ultimate deity)

There was once a civilization devoted to the stars in what is northern Africa.

They had high rates of interaction with the race, and developed the summoning rituals- but at a cost.

A summoning was done incorrectly and a blinded star was summoned stella en aura (that is, in aura- the aura being the fire part) and the whole of the civilization was burned away in an instant, leaving only hundreds of miles of desert that remain today.

Citizens who were traveling recorded the event and the rituals but these were lost to time.

The reason that love and death share a word in Salma’s language is that in the ancient understanding, true love was an act of death. That is, to love was to die.

Not in a physical sense, but rather in the sense that to truly love someone required the death of one’s ego in the putting of that other first in all things, or death of one’s own selfish desires or choices. This caused love to be defined as a “self-death”, which was later then shortened and lost in understanding over the years so that love and death were simply the same word.

By the time of Polaris’ take over, and with the wealth of knowledge she destroyed in order to hold power, this was all that remind. In order to keep her tight grip on a people who were very difficult to control (especially when they were bonded to each other) it was in her best interests to spread the alternate understanding that love, in fact, was an act of death itself and to be feared and avoided at all costs.

If combined with the right herbs and incantation, the blood of starkin can treat and relieve even the most severe of sunburns. Including those of vampires.

This however is mostly lost knowledge, and most vampires aren’t keen to try anyway.

Star children typically grow up in the nursery, where they are overseen by the Virgo stars. These women are then also their first teachers in most cases until the children go to court and then their constellations.

However, since the Virgo stars are strictly maidens and can not nurse, they employ a group of weaver wet nurses.

It is a fact not talked about in a polite society that these women are considered the lowest in the star system, slaves who never leave the nursery building and often have very short lifespans.

Blobfish are the result of a failed attempt to breed mermaid by some very, very drunk stars.

They woke up the next morning, screamed, and threw them in the earth oceans so no one would know.

But everyone already knew.

The Thousand Mirrors Ball used to be held yearly in a rotating star house. Every year between the high holidays of the Equinox and the First of April (Before you ask- no, I don’t know what it is, they haven’t told me.) it was done to allow the free mingling of starkin and humans. Usually invited were everyone’s favorite humans, world leaders, artists, academics, explorers… the best in every field and culture were brought together for a night. When the first world war broke out through a series of stupid decisions the court put a hold on this as a public sign of disapproval. When it went on to kill almost an entire generation they ended it in a sign of disgust. Secretly though, it continued in smaller scales and secret for a few more decades until there were not enough weavers to organize it efficiently.

Starkin often use “the dreamer” as an oath the way humans do wherever we would use a name or approximation of one.

There is no banishing spell for starkin.

There are a few summoning spells (though these are ill-advised and have burned at least one great civilization off the face of the earth) but those same priests or magicians who managed to learn or write those spells never quite figured out how to send the being back home except to have it go on its own terms.

There is an opposite spell to one such summoning, however, it is not a banishing spell so much as a rite of abandonment. Its sister spell was concocted to create binding relationships between specific beings and groups of people. The rite of abandonment is meant to break these bonds, but the result is much like a messy divorce. Best possible scenario the being leaves and the group loses all rights and protections provided by them. Less positive outcomes include an untethered being wandering around causing trouble, or the overpowered version of a temper tantrum.

It’s much safer to just hope they forget about you.

To starkin, nothing quite inspires terror like the threat and wonder of antimatter.

The History of Antimatter:

Once this was a form of dark power that was available to any who had the discipline to harness it. The star mothers were careful to keep an eye on those who were practitioners and had an appetite for destruction.

Since the first and second antimatter wars though, and the following rebellion, the use of antimatter had become only more and more restricted and difficult to learn. In this age, it is only the stars of the Virgo constellation that are trained in the use of this.

The Uses of Antimatter:

There are two main uses for antimatter magic- that to create antimatter from matter, and that to channel antimatter. Both of these today have only dark uses, while they may have once had positive applications these have been lost to history (see the Age of Excess in star history).

The act of antimatter creation from matter requires an intense amount of energy and is the ultimate execution as it is a sort of unbeing that removes a star from the nebular cycle and misplaces the soul (if a soul is to be had). Antimatter is believed to keep some form of feeling and while it has no control of itself as an entity seems to have some sense of itself. New antimatter has been known to sometimes act like an animal in pain before it collapses into itself. Fear of becoming antimatter is enough to enforce much of the law of Polaris’ reign.

The second use of antimatter magic is that of channeling antimatter. This is how a practitioner forces antimatter to interact with the material world. This molds matter to your will through a burning process and can be done artificially through the use of channeling gloves enchanted by an ancient starkin whose name has been lost to history. Only a few such pairs of these gloves exist, and all known pairs are in the possession of Polaris’ inquisitors or the Virgo stars. More than anything in this age, this form of antimatter magic is used as a form of torture (to varied ends). This again inspires great fear in most of the starkin population. It has been noted that this form of torture does not always or even often leave scarring. The lack of scarring only makes it easier to deny it’s existence in the court when convenient or to be sure who is a victim or if or rather of some other horror.

Antimatter and Celibacy:

It has been widely noted that the use of magic in any universe requires both sacrifice and discipline. This, of course, takes different shapes in different worlds and in regards to different magics. While it may be possible to harness the power of antimatter through blood sacrifice or some other form of magic, it was a matter of practicality and elegance that led to celibacy becoming the mode of sacrifice in the early days as it could be practiced alone, required no approval or scrutiny from overseeing powers, and was found to be just as powerful as other solutions. This was taught to youth seeking to learn the art (though this may once have been in regards to temporary celibacy, the histories are largely missing) and as generations passed on the favored method of harnessing the inner power then became the only method. (This is probably better though as in the antimatter wars if it had been known blood magics might have sufficed the death tolls might have been alarmingly higher while they were already far too many to be properly accounted for or justified.)

#Star Culture

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