tape-hiss

[tape-hiss]

I love the comic and the worldbuilding blog, I think you're doing amazing work! My question: are "monsters" a coherent biological category (species/genus/etc) who share some common ancestor, or is it more of a grab-bag category that someone imposed on a bunch of unrelated species (and who created that category)? Are reifa considered monsters? What worlds/places have monsters native to them? I think we've seen mixed species people who are human/spirit and human/monster--what about spirit/monster?

It’s a grab-bag category with no bearing on biology whatsoever! The actual definition changes depending on who’s using it, but in general, in the comic and with the characters we see most often, it’s used to refer to anyone who isn’t a spirit or a human.

The term is used because, in the most generalized way possible, monsters are sort of separated from humans and spirits through circumstance--like spirits have their own society and problems and etc, and so do humans, and then you have these myriad other species that, while they certainly have their own communities and frictions between them, also bleed together quite a lot. It’s a collective term.

Technically reifa would be considered monsters just by definition alone, but they did also have their own society and issues that didn’t overlap with other species so very much--so like, back when they were their own entity around the time of the war, you probably wouldn’t refer to them with the collective term ‘monster’ but now that they (if they’re still around at all) wouldn’t be any more than a few individuals that would exist in communities that would have to overlap with many other species, maybe you would? It’s less a question of biology and more a sociological thing.

By this definition, Aetheri’s the only world we see in the comic that doesn’t have monsters native to it. Unless you count the thyft, which technically you could, but you probably wouldn’t.

We haven’t seen too many mixed species spirits yet because they don’t seem to reproduce outside of their species very easily, for whatever reason. Also, in Aetheri, it’s hard enough to be mixed species in general--being part spirit is especially hard, because of all that friction between species going on.

[tape-hiss]

How are regular guns viewed on the three places currently? Compared to magic or creatures, are they very effective or useful? Are they as equal as magic, or are they at a disadvantage now?

The Symphony Archipelago, excluding Enodia, is currently arguing quite a lot over gun control. Guns can be quite effective against non-humans, they’re just not a guarantee. One almost killed Teige, after all--but on the other hand, casting shields against bullets is a pretty basic skill if you’ve got the right sort of magic for that. The big argument in the Archipelago right now is fear-mongering ‘we need guns to protect ourselves from monsters!’ vs the rebuttal that 1) monsters aren’t attacking people and 2) how you gonna keep the monsters from getting guns, anyway.

Enodia has very strict gun control. They can’t be sold and they aren’t allowed within city limits. Enodia also has a lot of strict controls on public display of powers as well, because when you live in a city full of magical creatures, there’s got to be something in place to protect the general health of the population.

Aetheri hasn’t...really addressed this yet? They’re not allowed to be imported, but there’s no real rules against having them yet...then again, there’s no like, industry in place to make them in the country itself, and they’re a bit more mechanical than Aetherians tend to like. They already have lethal weapons in the form of crossbow-like things, but those require more skill and magical power to use, so your average schmuck isn’t going to pick one up and kill a bunch of people with it probably. And that whole barrier-casting thing is a skill a lot of spirits can pick up rather easily. So guns probably wouldn’t find much of a place in Aetheri anyway.

[tape-hiss]

If most Aetherian citizens are not liking non-spirits and don't really like strangers, why would they support RIT? That's in some way inviting people to your place as volunteers and refugees. Why not combat only the local slave trade or tell the slavers they won't interfere as long as Aetheri isn't bothered?

Just combating the trade locally has been the strategy for a few centuries now, and it’s the strategy that more isolationist spirits insist ought to be good enough, but it just doesn’t work. The spirit population of Aetheri has been steadily declining anyway, due almost entirely to the trade picking people off. This strategy also does absolutely nothing for the people who *do* get taken--there’s no one looking for them, no help repatriating them if they manage to escape. Most sensible Aetherians will admit that without trying to combat the trade both externally and internally, people will just keep disappearing and not being found.

One thing about Aetheri is that the xenophobia, for most people, is not nearly as strong as the desire to combat the trade. There’s a very vocal minority of xenophobes who would rather keep trying to use ineffective techniques to combat the trade than support RIT, but most people aren’t like that. There’s an ever-growing ‘middle’ ground of the population that, while they may not like offworlders and don’t want to see them assimilated into Aetherian culture, they’d much rather have that happen if it will protect them and their loved ones from the trade by having RIT created.

Xenophobia in Aetheri is, while still very much a huge issue, on the decline generally--it’ll probably get uglier and uglier before it gets better as the really diehard isolationist groups dig in their heels, but total isolationism seems to have lost the fight with the general populace, who’ve been living with offworlders and non-spirits for decades now.

[tape-hiss]

Was Hawk born with his wings or did they grow after a certain point? Was any wing related thing painful? Was he ever called an Angel or actually liked by a stranger? Does he preen and have waterproofing oils (some birds don't)?

He was born with wings! They were very small little naked chicken wings that were so tightly wedged against his back that they didn’t realize what they were immediately.

Nothing was particularly painful, but the first feathers growing in were very itchy. He used to rub his wings against fences and trees to scratch them when he thought no one was looking. It’s like, when you shave and your hair starts growing back in, but times a million.

The ‘Angel’ question tackles a thing I have been overthinking for years, actually, which is: what does the Symphony Archipelago think angels look like? Presumably they have an analog of Christianity given how many times Liya and Hawk say ‘oh my god’ and such, but the depiction of angels as winged humanoids doesn’t have to be the norm there as it is on Earth really...long story short, no. He’s entertained a lot of small children who thought he looked very cool, though. Little kids generally like the giant man with wings, he’s sort of aw-inspiring when you only come up to his knees.

He does preen, for the same reasons we comb our hair--to neaten everything and pull out loose hairs/feathers in Hawk’s case. He doesn’t have waterproofing oils, it seems like, though. No waterfowl in this one, I guess.

[tape-hiss]

How long does Liya need to train to be a healer for, and is there a "test", written otherwise? And does that grant her a "work Visa" or citizenship? How long until she's in no danger of being deported? (Assuming they don't find her unworthy or whatever).

Well it sort of depends. She can technically practice in Aetheri without a license, she just won’t get paid by the state for anything she does. (Yes, this is a terrible systemic flaw.) Her citizenship doesn’t depend on that at all, though. I talk about this some in my post on immigration, but her big issue now is time. She was 15 when she entered Aetheri, which means she will not be eligible for full citizenship for another 7.5 years, if she stays out of fucking trouble all that time. She can work in Aetheri during that time, sure--it just means if she gets in any trouble at all she’s probably gonna get booted out.

If she wants a license, she’s got to go through school at the University. For right now, apprenticing with Helly is a good start.

[tape-hiss]

Do some sorts of Earth/Ardh goblins have a handle on magic the way spirits do? As in, the raw handling and shaping of magic? Or is it always "your species can do X/Y/Z specific things" like shapeshifting and whatnot?

Yes and no! Some of both. Different species have different incidences of types of magic that manifest within them, if that makes sense? A good two to compare as an example are spirits and humans, actually. There are plenty members of both species that can shapeshift (neither absolutely cannot) but there are many more humans that can learn to shapeshift than spirits. It’s a species thing but also a mental thing--spirits are just less changeable inherently than humans, it seems like, maybe something to do with the long lives. But then there are plenty of spirits with a mindset for shapeshifting as well, it’s by no means all or nothing.

You see this to different extremes in other species as well--the potential for many different kinds of magic, but most exhibiting something specific in particular, or at least variations on a theme.

[tape-hiss]

liya claimed that when she was almost kidnapped, she just did what she does with healing, but in reverse. so, how does healing and anti healing work exactly?

I talk about this some in my post on medicine and magic! Liya’s specific kind of healing takes control of the actual movement of cells (rather than speed up the cells��� natural inclination to mend themselves, as the more passive type of healing magic does.) So where ‘passive’ healers merely direct cells to do what they’d normally do to fix things but faster and more efficient, Liya has the ability to make them do...the opposite of that.

In the case of the slaver, she found the ‘scar’ in the bone where the old break was, and sort of reverse-engineered it. She can tell which part healed last, so that’s the part she breaks first--she literally just goes backwards.

[tape-hiss]

how did liya end up living with emry and hawk?

Liya started manifesting her powers pretty early on--by age 3 she was starting to heal little bruises and such. Svetlana (mom) had a powerful aversion to anything remotely supernatural that had gotten worse and worse because Hawk was a Ghost-Seeing Child and Liya’s clear magical gift aggravated that. 

One day she got fed up and literally just called Emry--spoke to him for the first time in a couple years to tell him he ought to come get his sister, or ‘who knows what would happen to her.’ (Really meaning she’d give Liya up for adoption, which would be extra hard on a little magical girl with a chip on her shoulder in this particular time and place. Who knows indeed.) This was the first(!) Emry was hearing that he even HAD a sister, but he couldn’t in good conscience abandon her. So he blew his savings at that moment on a plane ticket and went to pick her up.

This is probably the sort of thing that should’ve raised a lot of red flags in whatever child protective services that the Archipelago has, but someone looked at the file and saw that each kid involved (Hawk and Liya) were either non-human or had magic, and shrugged their shoulders and went to go do something else apparently.

[tape-hiss]

Since Liya has healing magic, is that enough to activate magic things in Aetheri, is that a different kind of magic? Can you steal the magic spells off a building, and if you did, would anyone else notice?

The utility spells in Aetheri can be used by literally anyone who’s got magic in any capacity--they’re the magical equivalent of light switches or doorbells, mechanisms that perform a more complicated task with a very simple user interface, except in this case they use energy from the user themselves rather than being wired or somesuch.

You can steal spells, sometimes--I mean, it depends how they exist, really. You probably couldn’t steal a fireproofing spell that’s laid into the very bricks that make up a wall, because you’d have to take the bricks themselves. But if someone put up a cardboard sign at their door with a doorbell-analog spell on it, you could just take the sign.

[tape-hiss]

Do Truth seers lie to themselves? Or are they "real" with themselves? How often will they uncover important lies in government or elsewhere? Can you be a Truth Seer and not know it?

Hmmmm. I suppose a truth seer can lie to themselves like anyone can, but I don’t know if they can do it to the point where they believe it themselves. Maybe it’d depend on how the lie manifests to them--if it’s something they can ignore or not.

Well because truth seers are so relatively common, Aetheri’s got a sort of different culture around lying in general. People will still be dishonest, of course, but you’ll almost never catch an Aetherian telling a flat-out lie. It’s far more common to sort of talk circles around the truth, or phrase things in a misleading way, or tell enough of the truth to satisfy a truth seer without quite being out with all of it. There is very little lying going on in Aetherian government--instead, there is a lot of silence, inaccessibility, and deflection. I mention in my post on the government that the Assembly meetings aren’t open to the public--that’s why, really. Easier to avoid answering to people if they just can’t reach you.

As for the last bit--sort of! There are people with such a mild gift for truth seeing that it’s sort of hard even for them to tell that what they’re doing is magic, exactly. Sometimes to these people, lies just sound kind of...wrong, even though they may not be able to articulate why.

[tape-hiss]

How would slavers face justice? Is it street justice and they'd be gunned down, or an actual legal system of Aetheri? If Aries was caught alive, could be be executed? Is his dog thing complicit or just an animal?

Well, it depends on where they’re caught, exactly. The slavers that the Order catches, if they are not killed in the capture attempt (which happens very often, honestly) are sent through Enodia’s justice system, which is rather different and usually ends with the slaver being deported back to wherever they’re from with the idea that they face justice there. If they’re caught in Aetheri by the army or somesuch, they go through the Aetherian justice system instead. There’s been some mixed results with this, as the Aetherian justice system is kind of successful due to the way their society is structured, and slavers often come from outside of that.

Aries is a special case. :3 But disregarding the Special Case part of it, he’d probably ultimately be thrown in one of the isolated countryside prisons in Aetheri, after going through some legal shenanigans depending on who caught him.

His dog thing is just an animal.

[tape-hiss]

What kind of crime and punishments does Aetheri have? For the worst offenders, can their magic be taken or permanently sealed? Is capital punishment a thing? Is jail/prison humane or deplorable? Is there any sort of big escape in history? Are prisoners allowed out to work? Are they tagged or such to notify others after they've been released?

I answered some of this in a previous post, but for the rest: 

Theoretically, you could permanently seal someone’s magic, but to do so is considered cruel and unusual--mostly because of the way it would need to be done, through either tattooing or (more reliably) implanting a dampening spell in some way (inlaying metal beneath the skin somewhere?) Bodily sovereignty is considered really important to Aetherians, so forcibly modifying someone’s body in this way is considered a big No.

In the post I linked I mentioned how ‘prison’ is rehabilitative up until an arbitrary point where it’s decided you can’t be rehabilitated. Until that point, the places you’re kept are reasonably nice--they’re various campuses, more or less, staffed well enough, state-run and therefore free, safe and secure, where you stay while doing whatever counseling or whatnot was assigned to you. For people in this level of the system, yeah, they can essentially go on with their lives otherwise.

Past that point, prison is not super great. There aren’t many criminals that get to this point, honestly, so prisons--located in isolated countryside--are mostly empty. They get to move about large parts of the campus freely, but often cannot interact with other prisoners and only see guards for mealtimes. These places are very old and heavily spelled against escape, and they’re silent and dark. The isolation can get to a person. But other abuses are largely absent--prisoners are fed and clothed and kept dry and given the minimum care they need. Every once in a while someone will bust out of these places, but then they have hundreds of miles of open fields to cross without being caught.

There’s some debate about marking offenders once they’re introduced back into society. The Aetherian prison system actually works pretty well, since it’s almost entirely focused on reducing recidivism, and they can straight up tell if you’re planning to reoffend or know you’re likely to. But there’s always the people who are released because they honestly don’t ever plan to reoffend, and then do, for whatever reason. Marking everyone as a previous offender in some way would do some real harm to the people who really truly are able to integrate back into society successfully, in order to control for a small minority of people who will go on to reoffend. But those reoffenders could obviously do some real harm to people around them. So there’s been no real good answer for this yet.

[tape-hiss]

May I ask what kind of goods Atheri imports/exsports from earth and the arcapeligo? Is there a limit to what you can/cannot bring in and out of the country?

Good question! This isn’t an exhaustive list, but...

Imports: Wood, textiles (cotton and synthetic fabrics), dyes, spices, honey, cane sugar

Exports: Quarried stone, precious stones and metals, spellwork, textiles (embroidered/dyed), alcohol, glasswork, metalwork

The du Russi family oversees quite a lot of this trade, and there are quite a lot of common-sense regulations on imports/exports. For example, Aetheri is very careful about introducing invasive species, so you can’t import live plants or animals that are able to reproduce.

There’s also a very strict control on who can do the exporting--essentially, a group from another world cannot set up business in Aetheri to harvest/create and export goods to their or any other world. The reason why is pretty solid, even though it’s rooted in the du Russi family’s Opinions about the off-worlders they were dealing with: the way they see it, the greed of these off-worlders knows no bounds, and will lead to destruction if not tightly guarded against. So this rule is in place to prevent something like, oh idk, a company coming in, setting up a load of shit to mine for gold (and failing to leave no other impact on the environment the way Aetherian mining is tailored to do), and then undercutting Aetherian prices on gold through maximizing profits by exploiting their workers etc. So this simple rule does a lot to protect the Aetherian economy, environment, and labor force, and makes it so the du Russi can keep prices reliable and sustainable.

[tape-hiss]

Does you being a Floridian have any reason why Tiege calls Hawk "Sunshine"?

Ahaha! No, not really. Teige calls Hawk “Sunshine” because Hawk frowns a lot and is (for the first part of their relationship anyway) a big grumpy stormcloud of a person, and not at all like a ray of sunshine.

[tape-hiss]

If you are a Truth Seer, do you always have that ability "On" , or do they have to want to use it? If someone saw a clock and it said 9:04 and they said it was 9:00, would that set off the "Lie detector". Will Truth seers lose their abilities of they don't use it?

It’s on all the time for most people, although some can just kind of...dissociate until they don’t notice it. It depends how it manifests for each person. For most people, detecting a lie is just like--you hear a lie, and you know it’s a lie as if you already knew what the actual truth was, even if you really didn’t. It’s not a particularly invasive ability, for most people, so turning it off isn’t really an issue.

Truth seers won’t lose their ability, but it takes practice to sort out the nuance of lies vs truth. Is this person telling an outright lie, or is it just partially a lie? Which part is the lie? Is this actually the truth, or are they just telling me what they think is the truth? Is this self-doubt I’m sensing in what they’re saying, or is it evasiveness? Stuff like that.

[tape-hiss]

Do you have this all/ mostly plotted out, or are you just making it up as you go along?

All the important stuff is plotted out. I work out the details per chapter about a year ahead of time. There’s some stuff at the very end I’m not sure will stay how I plan it to now, but that’s literally years away, so who knows.

[tape-hiss]

The Cynn is like a king, right? Why don't they dethrone him if he's doing things like making RIT when they don't want him to? What's to stop a coup or "outvoting" or vetoing his policies/procedures?

The Cynn is kind of its own thing. He doesn’t have absolute power, but neither does the Assembly he confronts in chapter 6, so they can deadlock each other, which is what they’re doing over RIT now.

What the Cynn does have more or less autonomy over is international relations, which is just vague enough a concept that it’s been expanded to have to do with immigration and homeland security (which really just means ‘dealing with the slave trade’ right now.) Rhys used this to create the Royal Order, which he could just Do, because it’s just Aetherian resources used for it. RIT requires getting into a UN-like situation with other nations, which the Assembly can and have been refusing to approve. Numair’s now trying to force their hand by creating everything else to do with RIT short of that--eventually he’ll have everything in place but this agreement from the Assembly, at which point it becomes pretty clear to the public at large who is keeping RIT from happening.

Ostensibly there’s nothing preventing a coup. The right to depose is literally enshrined in Aetheri’s modern constitution. But the fact is right now, there are way more people either on board with Numair’s policies, or at least not so upset with them that they’d actually do anything about it. He’s trying to build an organization to dismantle the trafficking industry that’s been terrorizing people for centuries--most people want that! The very vocal dissenters who are such isolationists that they’ll take trafficking over cooperating with other nations are in the minority, they just happen to also have control of the Assembly and a lot of local government. They know they’re in the minority, so a coup is probably a losing gambit, even if they take Numair out. Right now they just complain and stonewall, but that could change...