Kzente's Cultural Background

[gal_lantry]

Overview

Kzente comes from a world called Levanter. Specifically, her story focuses on two countries - she was born in Tchallak, near the border with the neighboring Oulio. This primer goes into way too much depth, because I fucking love worldbuilding, but here's the basic shit you need to know:

• Stars are living elemental beings in this universe. Levanter's sun is a particularly powerful one, its light imbuing the atmosphere on the planet with a magical energy called zephyr.
• Nearly all humans have the natural ability to draw zephyr into their body by breathing, which they can then use to fuel magic.
• The process of assimilating zephyr is naturally enhanced by estrogen, making cis women innately better at magic than cis men.
• This snowballed over generations into a world where the overwhelming majority of societies privilege women over men.

Zephyr Mechanics

Stars are living elementals, the oldest lifeforms in the universe. They can communicate with each other and even move around, at speeds far beyond the speed of light. We can't talk to the stars - from their frame of reference, we likely wouldn't even parse us as being living things. No, humanity's main interaction with its sun is through the radiation of zephyr. Stronger stars create higher-magic worlds. Levanter's sun is very strong.

Each human is born with a level of zephyr proficiency, which determines the amount of zephyr they can draw in with each breath and the total amount of zephyr they can store in the body. This proficiency is reflected in the eyes - a human with extremely low zephyr proficiency has red eyes, and they shift up the spectrum as their power increases, to a peak at violet. Through training and practice, it's possible to increase your proficiency, cycling upwards through 2-3 colors over the course of a lifetime. The only exception to this is the rare grey eyes condition - people with grey eyes can't use magic at all. Of course, zephyr proficiency isn't everything. There are countless intangibles, such as special breathing techniques, tactical thinking, mental acuity, spell diversity, focus under pressure, pain tolerance, and physical strength, which can let even a "weak" mage defeat a much stronger one.

Zephyr proficiency is affected strongly by estrogen. Children tend to have similar proficiency levels across the sexes, but starting in puberty, girls tend to suddenly pull ahead of their male peers. This can be a frustrating time for boys, who suddenly find themselves falling behind their female friends during a sensitive time in their development. Overall, the average woman is 15% stronger at magic than the average man, but at extremely high levels, the power differential disappears - everyone has the same peak. Still, this advantage was held up in many early cultures as a sign of the innate divine superiority of women over men.

Magic is extremely versatile, but difficult to learn and master. To cast a spell, you draw in zephyr with a breath, then mentally mold the zephyr into a geometric pattern in the air, which determines how the spell functions. Mental sharpness is key, with some mages using recitations or gestures to focus the spell more concretely. Some spells are external, manifesting effects on the world around you, and some are internal, interacting directly with the caster's body.

Because of the complexity of zephyr geometry, casting through items is popular. Enchanted items are object engraved with zephyr circuits - you can then infuse zephyr directly into the item, and it will automatically follow the lines and cast the spell. There are limitations - depending on the quality of the engraving, an item will have an upper limit of how much power can be poured into it without damaging the item. The traditional "wizard's staff" is a staff with multiple spells engraved into its interior structure, letting the wielder cast multiple spells quickly and efficiently. However, there is a world of difference between using a staff you made yourself and the fools who think they can buy a staff and use that as a substitute for actually learning magic.

The most valorized type of magic is direct, powerful elemental evocation - your classic lightning bolts and fireballs. Zephyr proficiency is seen as a sign of overall competence, so large-scale flashy spells are the sign of heroes and champions. The most reviled type of magic is mental control - anything that influences a person's thoughts is considered an unforgivable evil. A standard villainous trope is the evil sorceress who uses dominating magic to enslave innocent men.

Monsters and Dungeons

There is a phenomenon on Levanter called the chromatic clouds. Sometimes, a cloud will glow with multi-colored light - this is a prelude to a monster attack. Rainbow threads descend from the sky and weave together to form the magical, hostile beings called monsters.

Monsters are known to be attracted to metal, especially refined metal. This means that they often attack humans, because humans use a lot of metal. Being partial energy beings, they're resistant to physical attacks, so they're difficult to fight without using magic. Monsters will hunt until the cloud that summoned them, after which they are pulled back to whatever foreign realm they came from. Items devoured by monsters can sometimes be found incorporated into the bodies of future monsters, sometimes across hundreds of years. A lucky adventurer might find powerful ancient magical artifacts hidden within the monsters they hunt.

Beyond regular monsters, a greater danger exists, in the form of tyrant beasts. Only appearing from very large or powerful chromatic clouds, tyrant beasts are massive creatures, identified by the presence of a massive circular halo of light that hovers above their body. The color of the halo can be used to determine the power of the tyrant beast, in the same manner as human eyes - a red halo indicates a weaker one, and a violet halo indicates a world-threatening calamity. The greatest danger of tyrant beasts is that they act as beacons, not only drawing other monsters to their location but also tethering them to this realm. Even if the clouds disperse, monsters bound to a tyrant beast can remain in this realm until their new master is destroyed.

Another rare, dangerous occurrance is the manifestation of a dungeon. These are echoes of a dead civilization, created by the chromatic clouds and filled with deadly monsters. The core in the depths of a dungeon acts as a persistent chromatic cloud, letting new monsters constantly breach into the physical world. Until the dungeon core is destroyed, the surrounding region will be in constant danger.

Regional History

Centuries ago, modern Tchallak and Oulio were both part of a powerful empire, known as Zeth. The secret to Zeth's military triumph was a new kind of magic that allowed them to bind and control monsters, using them as an army, with tools made of a special material called cloudmetal. With the great power of cloudmetal tools and weapons, Zeth was unstoppable.

Unfortuately for Zeth, there is an absolute rule of magic in this world: If you try to reach too deeply into the realm of monsters, it reaches back into you. People who use magic to control monsters become a little monstrous themselves, their humanity slipping away as they become more power-hungry and cruel. Zeth's last queen used a particularly profane spell to fuse her body with a tyrant beast in a mad grasp at immortality. This is believed to be what caused the Day of Cloudless Sky.

On the Day of Cloudless Sky, all the clouds descended from the sky onto the land, engulfing it in chromatic fog. Monsters appeared in unprecedented numbers, immune to the influence of cloudmetal and Zethian magic, and slaughtered millions, causing destruction on an unimaginable scale. The empire of Zeth fell overnight, and its queen was drawn into the clouds, disappearing along with the monsters she adored.

The years following the Day of Cloudless Sky were tumultuous. On the eastern coast, some settlements survived the calamity, but in their greatly weakened state, many fell prey to invasion from foreign powers across the sea. Over time, the Zethian survivors and the eastern invaders blurred together into a new nation, called Tchallak. At the same time, travelers from the west moved in to claim the land left abandoned in Zeth's wake, and became what is now known as Oulio.

Early relations between Oulio and Tchallak were contentious. Tchallak still claimed continuity with Zeth, and therefore saw Oulio as stealing territory that was theirs by right. A number of wars sparked from this initial point, but over time, they settled down as uneasy allies, or at least not overt enemies. Because they were once separated by the bulk of an empire that disappeared overnight, Tchallak and Oulio are known for having an unusually stark cultural divide for two nations that are neighbors in the modern day.

It is now Solar Year 1107. The idea that Tchallak is the same nation as Zeth is now the purview of Tchallaki reactionaries, and is dismissed by the public. Tchallak has become a potent mercantile power in the region, with its biggest neighbor and trade partner being the Zephyrist theocracy of Oulio. Across history, the queen of Zeth has sometimes appeared amidst particularly dangerous monster incursions, and had to be vanquished to send her back to the realm of the One Beyond the Clouds.

Sexism

The original basis of Levanter's sexual politics is the fact that estrogen enhances zephyr efficiency. This isn't a huge concrete advantage; there are powerful men and weak women, with the benefits only becoming clear as an average across the species. However, in many early cultures, this power gap was used by women to seize power and brand men as their social inferiors.

In both Tchallak and Oulio, high zephyr proficiency is at least correlated with personal worth and the right to rule. Nearly all major leaders and public figures are women, and most of them are blue eyes or stronger. Girls are trained to be assertive, confident, and direct, resolving conflicts aggressively and decsively. Boys are trained to defer to girls, keep their heads down, and show loyalty and compassion. Physical strength is valued in men, not as a demonstration of might or worthiness of respect but as something that makes them desirable to women. Because they serve as a visual focus of male strength and desirability, it is considered inappropriate for men to expose their legs in public.

The realities of nature have tasked women with the trials of pregnancy and childbirth. Because of this, men are tasked with the lion's share of childcare after the child is born. A woman's job is to create life, then lead by example and embody virtue with their actions. A man's job is to support his wife in all things, taking care of the children's day to day needs and nurturing them to become healthy and strong.

Oulio is a more socially conservative country than its neighbor. The church is the state, and only women can become priests in most circumstances. Men are broadly forbidden to own land or learn combat magic, and there are strict rules about how they can dress and speak. Sex work is illegal, and certain kinds of art and writing seen as obscene or subversive are banned.

Tchallak is more liberal, at least on the surface, but men face just as many challenges there due to its capitalist society. On paper, the country is ruled by its queen, but the royal family's power has been gradually waning with the rise of the mercantile class. While this means that men can theoretically hold nearly any position, the reality is different - men are often passed up for high-ranking jobs or promotions, and are unlikely to garner many votes for elected positions. The rules restricting them are lighter, but the social pressure keeping men at home to support their wives is heavier.

While things are still difficult for men, they aren't as bad as they once were. Men's rights have progressed over the years, but the social background radiation of matriarchal society is difficult to pierce. Even by those women who don't look down on men, they're often seen instead as fragile and weak, with women having a duty to protect them.

Religion

The state religion of Oulio is Zephyrism, the world's most popular religion. Tchallak has no state religion, but in practice, Zephyrism is extremely popular there as well.

Zephyrism is defined by the worship of a sun goddess, known as Teo in Oulio and Tethe in Tchallak. The sun is the mother of life and creation, and zephyr is her blessing upon her children. Priests of Teo glorify her by performing rituals in sunlight, with Zephyrist churches typically having an open or glass ceiling above the main sermon halls. Priests are to stick to a strict vegetarian diet, with the leaves of plants that flourish in the sun believed to be the most direct manifestation of Teo's favor.

The moon is revered as a god of death, named Arlia in Oulio and Krall in Tchallak. On the night of the new moon, Arlia dies, and is reborn in the next lunar cycle. The night of the full moon is considered inauspicious, as it is when death's influence is at its apex. While Teo and Arlia are both divine, Teo is considered the greater divinity, with the mortal, cyclical moon living in submission to the immortal sun. Different branches of Zephyrism have different interpretations of the moon's relationship to the sun; in Oulian Zephyrism, they are wife and husband, with human souls being created by Teo at birth and handed off for Arlia to care for after death. Elsewhere, Arlia is seen as an enemy of Teo that seeks to extinguish all life, banished to the night sky by his superior foe.

Despite having a rigidly-defined state religion, Oulio is host to a number of cults. The most prevalent type of cults are those that consider Arlia to be Teo's equal or superior. While Arlia is revered, he must be held second to Teo. The other stars, occasionally seen moving in the sky, are believed to be other minor gods, but their worship is not expected, as they have nothing to do with those in Teo's embrace. Star worship is also something seen in Oulian cults.

The distant second most popular religion in the region is Elementalism. This faith is practiced more in Tchallak than in Oulio, but is far more popular overseas. Elementalism teaches that every object and every idea contains its own elemental spirit, and we are surrounded by infinite divinity.

Adventurers

With monsters on the prowl, a system needed to arise by which to deal with them. This need gave rise to the practice of the adventurer.

Adventurers are people trained in combat magic and organized into small, close-knit groups of peers, whose main job is to hunt monsters. What differentiates adventurers from other wandering vagabonds is that they are registered with various adventurer guilds, who impose rules of conduct and distribute tasks and rewards. Those drawn to the adventuring lifestyle are usually eccentrics who don't fit into mainstream society. Guilds will monitor the deeds of their adventurers, spread information on confirmed tyrant beasts or dungeons, and assign bounties to encourage their quick dispatch.

In Oulio, the adventurer's guild is run by the state. This creates a simpler system with less overhead, but it does mean that Oulian adventurers are more likely to get mired in national politics. Tchallak has a whole ecosystem of smaller competing guilds, which creates a lot of frustration and confusion about what areas you are or aren't allowed to do, based on the licenses you hold and which guilds recognize you as a member.

Adventurers do occasionally take on jobs unrelated to monster hunting. These are generally smallr tasks that need manpower, with local guilds putting up task requests to bring in quick help to get the job done. One hard rule, accepted by both Tchallak and Oulio, is that adventurers cannot be hired to participate in military operations. This creates a cultural clash between adventurers and mercenaries, who live similar kinds of lives, but with very different codes of conduct.

Most adventurer parties are majority female. Male adventurers do exist, but they find it more difficult to get positions in parties led by women, and when they do, they're pigeonholed into physical combat roles. This leads to most parties with men either having exactly one, or being comprised entirely of men. At higher levels of skill and competence, the gender balance skews more towards equality - in order to become truly legendary, one must throw away their preconceptions.

In order to reward strong and competent adventurers with glory and wealth, combat magic tournaments for adventurers are a common event on both sides of the border. Adventurers flock to these to show off feats of magical prowess and to win prizes, civilians flock to them for spectacle, and merchants flock to them to make an absolute killing. Some adventurers even turn down work in order to become career tournament champions - this goes against the whole spirit of the adventurer system, but it's extremely profitable, so it happens anyway.

Art & Culture

The arts are varied and complex on Levanter as they are on Earth. The camera hasn't been invented, but enchanted slates can be used as artistic mediums, meaning that animation as an art form has risen before live action movies - these slates are expensive, so personal use animation slates are only for the rich, with everyone else having to crowd in to public theaters to see them. Aside from that, the other most popular forms of commercial entertainment are live theater, books, and comics.

As one might expect, the superiority of women influences the portrayal of characters in artistic works as well. Most stories follow cool and competent heroines, with male characters relegated to sidekicks, villains, or love interests for the protagonists. Men's stories are usually aimed specifically at men, and feature themes of friendship and kindness rather than valor and heroism.

The LGBT community does exist in this world, as it is likely to anywhere, but due to the strict gender roles of Oulian and Tchallaki society, they face various challenges. Romantic or sexual relationships between women are not strongly stigmatized, but male gay couples face resistance if they want to adopt children - how could you raise a child without a mother to act as her guiding star? Sex or romance between men is permissible, but male bisexuality is stigmatized as someone with loose sexual morals, or using other men in order to appeal to women. Trans men are perceived as eccentric, but the practice doesn't face strong resistance. Being a trans woman is a particularly difficult path here, often interpreted as an attempt by a 'man' to gain power in society above 'his' station.

As always, hope for progress comes from the new generations. There is an underground artistic movement known as ocean, originating in Tchallak. Ocean works depict the full complex scope and depth of human identity and sexuality, sharing stories about those who don't fit in the boxes society places upon them - stories highlighting the difficulties men face and shining a light on their internality and agency are also common in the genre. Ocean works are also ooften sexually explicit in nature, which conservatives use as an excuse to try and ban them; distribution of ocean is ostensibly illegal in Oulio, but it persists mainly due to the lack of a solid definition of what is or isn't part of the movement. Of course, nobody gets into more arguments about what is or isn't ocean than creators and fans of ocean.

Sex

(NSFW - click to expand)

In the broadest terms, sex is what men have and women want. Girls are expected to be more sexually charged and aggressive, pursuing men as sexual partners for their own pleasure. Boys are expected to be more discerning, choosing their partners carefully to preserve their dignity. Virginity is not as coveted here as it is on Earth, but a man who has too many partners is considered uncouth and immoral. On the other hand, a man who has too few partners is considered cold and aloof, so it's a difficult needle to thread. Unwanted attention from girls is sometimes dismissed as something the boy should be thankful for, as a sign that she likes him.

Sex is almost universally framed as something women do to men. The most traditional position is cowgirl, seen as her 'taking' him. Sex workers are overwhelmingly male, with the few female sex workers often serving female clients more than male clients.

Linguistics

Tchallaki and Oulian are both complex languages that take a lot of work to learn. Due to the strange history that brought Tchallak and Oulio together, there's a sharp divide between their languages despite being neighbors. However, with the countries being such close trade partners, communication between the two is necessary, so many face the trials of learning both languages, especially along the border.

Oulian is a relatively easy language to learn at a crude but functional level. Most of its complexity lies in a dense system of conjugation - verbs shift based on tense, subject, object, and formality. Oulians are expected to use the appropriate forms based on the cultural context of the conversation, and doing otherwise in either direction is rude - of course, when speaking to foreigners, more leeway is granted, because they often don't understand the nuance required to navigate the language properly. In particular, men are expected to always speak deferentially when talking to women.

Tchallaki is ultimately considered the easier language to master, but the novice faces two immediate walls of difficulty. First is pronunciation; Tchallaki uses a lot of dense, complex clusters of consonants, and people who didn't grow up with it often find it frustratingly hard to learn how to pronounce words without being immediately identified as a foreigner, or even outright not understood. The second challenge is the case system - nouns take different forms based on their position within the sentence and grammatical context, many of them doing so in irregular ways. In theory, it's not that complex of a system, but few local languages have anything like it.

When working between countries, knowing at least a little of each language is essential. Unofficially, Oulian has become the language of trade, because it's easier to learn a little Oulian than a little Tchallaki. The version of Oulian spoken between merchants borders on being its own pidgin dialect.

Assorted Notes

• Men in Oulio are technically allowed to own land, but only under specific circumstances. It can only be inherited from a female relative, and only if there were no other women in the family who could inherit it.
• Men are also technically allowed to be priests, but only in the smaller and less influential temples of Arlia. They must still obey orders from priestesses, and their social power is generally much lower than that of their female counterparts.
• Stars are amorphous entities, periodically giving birth to and absorbing smaller fragments of themselves called star sprites. These sprites retain only some of the knowledge of the mother star, and are warpes across lightyears to convey them to other stars by fusing with them. This is how stars communicate.
• In cases of heterochromia, one eye reflects your zephyr proficiency and the other is some other color, often brown. In cases of albinism, the eyes don't reflect zephyr proficiency at all, instead showing a shade of red or violet. Such people are often mistrusted due to their 'deceptive' eyes.
• Any fashion that obscures the eyes is considered suspect. A person with dark glasses or a mask is likely hiding their true nature. Similarly, contact lenses that change your eye color are considered in extremely poor taste in Tchallak, and are outright banned in Oulio.
• The forge is considered to be part of the male sphere of influence. Smithing is usually done by men, but is seen as a nurturing, compassionate act of support for those who will use the things you create. Forges run by female smiths may be less trusted than their male counterparts.
• Curry is wildly popular in both Tchallak and Oulio. Citizens of both countries, at least stereotypically, have strong opinions about how to make curry correctly, and often consider the other country's version to not be something you can properly even call curry.
• While computers don't exist, video games do, sort of. There's a popular game called Golem Command, where people create tiny golems and then control them in 1-on-1 battles. It's basically Angelic Layer.
• The leader of Oulio is called the Solar. This isn't just a title; she ritually offers up her name to Teo, and takes on the name of Solar as a replacement.
• While it's not seen anywhere in reality, there's a type of eyes beyond violet for those beyond comprehension in power. Outside of a couple myths and legends, only the sun goddess is portrayed as having white eyes.