Haruka Stone『Paranormal Investigator』 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bearshercross) wrote2013-09-22 04:32 am
bearshercross) wrote2013-09-22 04:32 am
Entry tags:
Worldbuilding
The first thing you need to know is the main setting of Haruka’s story is earth. More specifically, a fictional city named Clearview, Massachusetts, but that’s not actually as important. It’s an earth with paranormal creatures. But there’s a lot more detail than that! And it’s Haruka’s job to know a lot of it, so sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the incoming TLDR about the mechanics of Haruka’s world.
Planes:
There are three known planes of existence. They are Heaven, Hell and Earth. They overlap enough that you can travel between them easily, it’s just most humans don’t know how and it’s far easier when you’re dead. Heaven and Hell are at two ends overlapping Earth in the middle. The diagram below should provide a nice visual, with Earth in green, Hell in yellow, and Heaven in blue.
Each plane has its own native equivalent to humans. Earth is, obviously, humans, but it has the Fae as well. Heaven has the angels, and Hell has demons. The chief difference between them all is that humans have significantly shorter lifespans. Also, angels all have wings and demons all have horns. More on those traits later. The planes have their own governments, hierarchies, etc. Heaven is an aristocracy, and Hell is a monarchy. And that’s about all you need to know about the planes.
Energies:
There are three basic energies in the world of Haruka Stone. Divine, Infernal and Terrestrial. They make up everything in the universe, in varying quantities. Angels are a race that is mostly Divine energies, demons are Infernal and the Fae are Terrestrial. Humans are an oddity in that they have a natural balance of all three energies. And the way the energies work is basically, well, rock-paper-scissors.
Divine beats out Infernal, Infernal beats out Terrestrial and Terrestrial beats out Divine. However, they can balance and remain in harmony. Again, humans are an exception. They are made of a large mix of energies, and any alteration can lead to an alteration of them. For example, weres are humans with a high concentration of Terrestrial energy, vampires are a high concentration of Infernal, and Blessed (psychics) have a high concentration of Divine. As a note, each of these states is almost like an infection—you typically aren’t born with it unless you’re a were, and, occasionally, a Blessed. Vampires are never born due to the freeze in aging that occurs.
The three energies behave certain ways. Infernal infects, Divine purges and Terrestrial connects. To go more into detail, Infernal energy fills in the cracks in one’s psyche and soul and everywhere. This means it can very quickly become an infection. See: vampires, who were born when a demon gave a friend a blood transfusion a few centuries back. The infection of Infernal energy freezes their aging process. Divine purges impurities from the system, acting a lot like magical white blood cells. This can easily go too far and leave a system so pure as to act almost as a magical auto-immune disease. Many Blessed end up going insane, as an example, because the energy manages to purge most everything else and seriously unbalance them. Terrestrial, meanwhile, builds invisible webs off of the connections between people. This can easily go wrong in that too many connections can cause a spiritual tangle and thinning of identity due to being lost in those connections, or even eventual loss of it and severe confusion.
Races:
There are many races in the Haruka Stone universe! Many appear humanoid at first glance, or because they use disguising magic. All demons, for example, have horns—the smaller the horns, the more powerful the demon, though they often use magic to hide their horns when living on earth. They, just like, say, an immigrant from another country, often come to Earth to find a better life than what Hell offers. Same can go for angels, with them hiding their wings! As well, there are the weres—not just limited to wolves, thank you, there have been spiders and cats and other animals, too—and the vampires. They tend not to bother humans too much, given how their societies work alongside human society.
Ghosts, ghouls, goblins, fairies—you name it from mythology, it exists somewhere.
Fae:
What about Fae, you ask? I did mention them, after all. Well, I gave Fae their own section because they’re complicated. Fae are creatures of Terrestrial energy, and thus they rely completely on their connections. The fewer connections they have, the shorter their life is. So they tend to go about making various kinds of connections and their culture tends to be pretty open-minded.
Another thing: they can look like anything. Fae have various patterns, and those patterns are appearances they can take on. They usually only have one humanoid form, and otherwise have forms based on other things—some Fae, for instance, will have an animal or plant form, while others may have a form based on another creature. All in all, they generally only have a few patterns and no more—not from self limiting, but because that’s all they can have.
Magic:
Let’s get a term out of the way now that’s very important: witch. A witch is simply someone who uses magic not inherently their own. That is, if you’re a Blessed and use the power you get from that, you aren’t a witch. But if you use, say, a fire spell when your power is to levitate things, then you’re a witch. Most humans who use magic are witches, and other species can be witches, too. This doesn’t happen too often with vampires as they work with blood magic, and that’s why they drink blood, so all their magic is inherent to them so long as they watch when they last fed.
All magic follows the same system as the energies, and it will always fall into one of three major categories based on what kind of energy it uses. To this end, there is the ability for creatures to have mixed energies—Tainted Divine, Purified Terrestrial, and Natural Infernal. This happens when, for instance, an angel is a witch that uses Infernal-based spells. They house enough Infernal energy in their body on purpose to facilitate this instead of allowing their bodies to purge it. (In some cases, a Tainted Divine/etc. will happen naturally from being exposed to the main energies of another realm for a long time since a young age. For example, a demon brought to Earth when an infant will be Natural Infernal, whereas an angel living in Hell since childhood would likely grow to be Tainted Divine.)
Symbols:
Symbols holds power in this universe. And they hold that power through belief. The fact a number of people believe the cross has certain power is what grants it its anti-evil powers. That’s just how the universe works—belief is powerful and nothing else can top it. It is, in fact, the most powerful thing. If you get a large enough group to believe in a symbol, then you can grant that symbol untold power.
Supernatural creatures tend to dislike new religions because of this. It just means one more symbol to look out for, because for some reason, humans are obsessed with dispelling them—even though about eighty percent of the supernatural population is actually pretty harmless.
Planes:
There are three known planes of existence. They are Heaven, Hell and Earth. They overlap enough that you can travel between them easily, it’s just most humans don’t know how and it’s far easier when you’re dead. Heaven and Hell are at two ends overlapping Earth in the middle. The diagram below should provide a nice visual, with Earth in green, Hell in yellow, and Heaven in blue.
Each plane has its own native equivalent to humans. Earth is, obviously, humans, but it has the Fae as well. Heaven has the angels, and Hell has demons. The chief difference between them all is that humans have significantly shorter lifespans. Also, angels all have wings and demons all have horns. More on those traits later. The planes have their own governments, hierarchies, etc. Heaven is an aristocracy, and Hell is a monarchy. And that’s about all you need to know about the planes.
Energies:
There are three basic energies in the world of Haruka Stone. Divine, Infernal and Terrestrial. They make up everything in the universe, in varying quantities. Angels are a race that is mostly Divine energies, demons are Infernal and the Fae are Terrestrial. Humans are an oddity in that they have a natural balance of all three energies. And the way the energies work is basically, well, rock-paper-scissors.
Divine beats out Infernal, Infernal beats out Terrestrial and Terrestrial beats out Divine. However, they can balance and remain in harmony. Again, humans are an exception. They are made of a large mix of energies, and any alteration can lead to an alteration of them. For example, weres are humans with a high concentration of Terrestrial energy, vampires are a high concentration of Infernal, and Blessed (psychics) have a high concentration of Divine. As a note, each of these states is almost like an infection—you typically aren’t born with it unless you’re a were, and, occasionally, a Blessed. Vampires are never born due to the freeze in aging that occurs.
The three energies behave certain ways. Infernal infects, Divine purges and Terrestrial connects. To go more into detail, Infernal energy fills in the cracks in one’s psyche and soul and everywhere. This means it can very quickly become an infection. See: vampires, who were born when a demon gave a friend a blood transfusion a few centuries back. The infection of Infernal energy freezes their aging process. Divine purges impurities from the system, acting a lot like magical white blood cells. This can easily go too far and leave a system so pure as to act almost as a magical auto-immune disease. Many Blessed end up going insane, as an example, because the energy manages to purge most everything else and seriously unbalance them. Terrestrial, meanwhile, builds invisible webs off of the connections between people. This can easily go wrong in that too many connections can cause a spiritual tangle and thinning of identity due to being lost in those connections, or even eventual loss of it and severe confusion.
Races:
There are many races in the Haruka Stone universe! Many appear humanoid at first glance, or because they use disguising magic. All demons, for example, have horns—the smaller the horns, the more powerful the demon, though they often use magic to hide their horns when living on earth. They, just like, say, an immigrant from another country, often come to Earth to find a better life than what Hell offers. Same can go for angels, with them hiding their wings! As well, there are the weres—not just limited to wolves, thank you, there have been spiders and cats and other animals, too—and the vampires. They tend not to bother humans too much, given how their societies work alongside human society.
Ghosts, ghouls, goblins, fairies—you name it from mythology, it exists somewhere.
Fae:
What about Fae, you ask? I did mention them, after all. Well, I gave Fae their own section because they’re complicated. Fae are creatures of Terrestrial energy, and thus they rely completely on their connections. The fewer connections they have, the shorter their life is. So they tend to go about making various kinds of connections and their culture tends to be pretty open-minded.
Another thing: they can look like anything. Fae have various patterns, and those patterns are appearances they can take on. They usually only have one humanoid form, and otherwise have forms based on other things—some Fae, for instance, will have an animal or plant form, while others may have a form based on another creature. All in all, they generally only have a few patterns and no more—not from self limiting, but because that’s all they can have.
Magic:
Let’s get a term out of the way now that’s very important: witch. A witch is simply someone who uses magic not inherently their own. That is, if you’re a Blessed and use the power you get from that, you aren’t a witch. But if you use, say, a fire spell when your power is to levitate things, then you’re a witch. Most humans who use magic are witches, and other species can be witches, too. This doesn’t happen too often with vampires as they work with blood magic, and that’s why they drink blood, so all their magic is inherent to them so long as they watch when they last fed.
All magic follows the same system as the energies, and it will always fall into one of three major categories based on what kind of energy it uses. To this end, there is the ability for creatures to have mixed energies—Tainted Divine, Purified Terrestrial, and Natural Infernal. This happens when, for instance, an angel is a witch that uses Infernal-based spells. They house enough Infernal energy in their body on purpose to facilitate this instead of allowing their bodies to purge it. (In some cases, a Tainted Divine/etc. will happen naturally from being exposed to the main energies of another realm for a long time since a young age. For example, a demon brought to Earth when an infant will be Natural Infernal, whereas an angel living in Hell since childhood would likely grow to be Tainted Divine.)
Symbols:
Symbols holds power in this universe. And they hold that power through belief. The fact a number of people believe the cross has certain power is what grants it its anti-evil powers. That’s just how the universe works—belief is powerful and nothing else can top it. It is, in fact, the most powerful thing. If you get a large enough group to believe in a symbol, then you can grant that symbol untold power.
Supernatural creatures tend to dislike new religions because of this. It just means one more symbol to look out for, because for some reason, humans are obsessed with dispelling them—even though about eighty percent of the supernatural population is actually pretty harmless.