Dadauar
Dadauar (pronounced /ˈdædəwɑːr/) is a world of Qabede where tyrannical dictators tap into dreams for puissant magic they use to rule over the very people whose dreams they get their power from. These dream rulers, called onirarchs, generally keep themselves apart from the people, existing on another level that rarely interacts with the lower classes.
Geography
Dadauar is a disk 22,244 kilometers in diameter. About three fifths of the world is covered with water; the dry land is mostly found in five continents scattered along the disk's surface. As in many other rews, Dadauar is rimmed with ocean that plummets off the edge in an enormous waterfall, to eventually hit other worlds far below. At two points along the edge of the disk, a curtain of water rises up, the result of a skyfall on the opposite side of the disk. This skyrise is known as the Starwater. One feature that Dadauar has that most similar worlds don't have is a smaller satellite disk floating some distance away. Called Chethe, this disk is seldom visited by the inhabitants of Dadauar proper. It is the presence of Chethe that gives Dadauar its name; the name "Dadauar" comes from the Lilmi word yatyatyawarr ([jæˈd̜æd̜awar]) meaning "having a child".
In the central position of Dadauar's five continents is Burcady, which is also the largest of the continents. Only slightly smaller is Avelax, connected to Burcady by the broad Isthmus of Calacca—and in fact were the border between the two continents to be drawn slightly to the east, Avelax would be larger than Burcady. (This isn't to say that the border is entirely arbitrary; it passes through the highest altitudes of the Macarta Mountains.) Burcady is also joined on the east by the narrower Isthmus of Carqan to the roughly semi-elliptical continent of Jahanna, which in turn is joined on the north by the Green Isthmus to Eordi, the smallest of the five continents. Only slightly larger is Matuni, the northernmost continent and the only one to have no land connections to any other continent.
The great body of water that circumscribes the continents is conventionally divided into five oceans, though the borders between the oceans are in some cases ill defined. The largest ocean, west of Matuni and northwest of Avelax and Burcady, is the Camilout. Proceeding counter-clockwise, south of Avelax and Jahanna is the Duhhian Ocean, east of Jahanna and Eordi is the Veiled Ocean, north of Eordi and east of Matuni is the Nubilous Ocean, and north of Matuni is the Northern Sea—the only part of the surrounding ocean to be called a sea rather than an ocean because of its smaller size. Dadauar also has a number of significant internal seas: the White Main lies south of Matuni and north of Burcady and Eordi; the Restless Sea is between Burcady and Eordi; and the Serpentine Sea is located between Burcady and Jahanna. Between Avelax and Burcady are the Akararal Sea to the north and the Sea of Firiti to the south. Finally, the Golden Sea, on the western coast of Avelax, is the largest body of water, aside from the Northern Sea, to border only a single continent.
Five skyfalls impinge on Dadauar from above. The two longest, the Wough and the Longwater, each run roughly northwest to southeast and fall over two continents—the former over Burcady and Jahanna, the latter over Matuni and Eordi. The Malwater spans the distance between the Wough and the Longwater a bit northeast of the center of the rewel, while the Ganacar extends south of the Longwater along the eastern edges of Eordi and Jahanna. Finally, the Great Sischon—despite its grandisonous name the peneminimal of the five skyfalls, second only to the Malwater—plunges into the Duhhian Ocean, the only one of the five to not fall on any of the continents, or to not touch any of the other skyfalls.
The climate of Dadauar's surface is governed by the dreammists above, which tend to be coldest in a line running roughly north-by-northeast to south-by-southwest down the center of the worlddisk. Conversely, the west-by-southwest and east-by-northeast edges of the disk have the hottest temperatures. The temperatures do vary over time, but in such a way that as the temperature of the center gets colder, the temperature of the edges gets warmer, and vice versa; there are two isothermal lines where the temperature remains roughly constant.
The obverse of Dadauar's rew is a world called Eldi.
Astronomy
Dadauar has a single sun, three moons, and six knysts. The sun has no common name, though astronomers call it Wunar when it's necessary to distinguish it from the suns of other worlds. It travels east to west above the world—by definition, in fact, since it is the path of the sun that is the basis for the definition of east and west and by extension of the other compass directions. While the sun's path is undeviating, its orientation does slowly vary. It oscillates about the east-west axis with a period of about 162 days, during half of which the northern semidisk receives more light, and during the other half the southern. Its oscillation about the north-south axis is much faster, with a period of about 0.997 days.
All three of Dadauar's moons follow very similar orbits, roughly southwest to northeast, passing over the Golden Sea near one end of their orbit, and the Jahannan nation of Giaden at the other. (Coincidentally, this path takes the moons directly over two of Dadauar's most powerful onirarchies, the Free Republic of Avelax and Drithidiach, as well as over the Neutral Zone, the meeting-place of the World Alliance.) Two of the moons remain very close together, and for that reason are often referred to as the twin moons, though they do have individual names—the moon in the front is Kali, that in back Nali. The third moon, Gadanna, lags the twin moons by about two sevenths of an orbit. Also called the "lone moon", Gadana is unusual in that it does not appear perfectly circular; there is an indentation on one side turning it into a lune. In many cultures, the twin moons are considered heralds of good luck and the lone moon of bad—a superstition that long predates the onirarchies but retains some currency even in developed nations. All three moons have both an orbital period and a luminary period of about 24 days.
Unlike Dadauar's moons, the knysts all pursue different orbits, and none of them passes over the center of the rew. The largest knyst, Burdimey, comes the closest, passing within about a thousand kilometers of the center. Farthest is Uulubul, which does not stray farther than six thousand kilometers from the rew's edge. In between are the remaining knysts: Deldela, Gurrubil, and Uurul. Some of the onirarchs are aware of the nature of the knysts and know that they are portals to other worlds, but only the governments of Ikiki, Noric, and (especially) Tanahire have so far shown any serious interest in exploring beyond those portals and colonizing those worlds.
The stars of Dadauar are isochronic, which means that they form preterient constellations. Among the best known such constellations are Mongundur, Wurala, Minjarb, and the Pentagon. Another noteworthy astronomical phenomenon is the Sysigia, the conjunction over Niruna of three of the four brightest stars in the sky. The stars of Dadauar have a period of about 6.34 days.
Social structure
The dominant nations on Dadauar are those ruled by the onirarchs, mighty mages who draw their power from the dreams of their populace. The nations ruled by onirarchs can be called onirarchies, but on Dadauar are more often referred to as "developed nations". Not all nations on Dadauar are onirarchies; there are many (the so-called "undeveloped nations") that retain other government forms. The onirarchies, however, are the most visible nations, and certainly the strongest, magically, economically, and politically. With such vast magical powers at their disposal, the onirarchs can create all sorts of magical devices and undertake ambitious building projects, covering their lands in huge tracts of tall and densely populated cities, filled with magical marvels and various methods of rapid transportation.
While resentments and rivalry do exist between the onirarchies, at the moment all the onirarchies are at peace—at least in the sense that there's no open warfare, though there's plenty of espionage and other covert acts of hostility, and the occasional minor skirmish officially denounced by the onirarchs (who however may have unofficially incited them). This has not always been the case; there have been wars between the onirarchies before. As recently as six decades ago a border dispute between Bhelan and Mamlaas grew into the Green War, and three decades prior Muligatin defeated and absorbed the smaller onirarchy of Qun.
Although the onirarchs are quite effective in keeping their people compliant, there are those who refuse to go along. Resistance cells are a constant thorn in the onirarchs' sides, and one they put a great deal of effort into suppressing. Some onirarchies have more trouble with rebels than others: it's difficult for the resistance to gain a foothold in Plakhán, Risinien, and Xolia for different reasons, and Drithidiach, Ivinii, and Trimian are less bothered by rebels than many developed nations simply because they're somewhat less oppressive than other onirarchies so there's less to rebel against. Still, no onirarchy is entirely free of the resistance element. Most of the rebels form small independent cells, but some organize across nations into larger groups—though even these have little hope of approaching the magical puissance of the onirarchs.
As for the undeveloped nations, they vary widely in their culture and form of government, but even they cannot escape the shadow of the onirarchs. Some of the undeveloped nations are only nominally independent, their leaders actually puppets of an onirarchy. But even those undeveloped nations that are truly independent must deal with trepidation as to how long they will remain so before some onirarch covets their territory. Furthermore, most of the undeveloped nations do rely on nearby onirarchies as trading partners—supplying the less powerful nation with magic and manufactured goods in return for food and raw materials not as easily or cheaply available within the onirarchy itself.
Time
The Dadauaran year is commonly defined by the temperature cycle, which lasts about 334.3 days. The most widely used calendar is the Drithidian calendar, named after Dadauar's oldest surviving onirarchy. In this calendar, the year is divided into thirteen months, which vary widely in length for historical reasons. A leap month is added at irregular intervals whenever the consensus among the leaders of the most powerful nations decides that the discrepancy between the calendar year and the thermal year has grown too large, which has occurred on average about every sixty years; this happened most recently twenty-six years ago, so another leap month isn't likely to occur soon.
The table below shows the months of the Drithidian calendar.
| No. | Name | Length in days |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Xehn | 17 |
| 2 | Lurach | 24 |
| 3 | Iaset | 30 |
| 4 | Tchet | 23 |
| 5 | Balass | 32 |
| 6 | Oxo | 27 |
| 7 | Deder | 8 |
| 8 | Iun | 28 |
| 9 | Sachal | 33 |
| 10 | Aghi | 24 |
| 11 | Herret | 32 |
| 12 | Kiukadi | 35 |
| 13 | Whar | 21 |
Days in the Drithidian calendar are referred to by cardinal numbers, counting backwards with day one at the end of the month. The first day of the year, for instance, is the Seventeen of Xehn. Years are numbered from the foundation of the first modern onirarchy of Hsün; the current year in the Drithidian Calendar is 2845. (A year prior to the year zero is followed by a "V" for "vor" (the Drithidian word for "before"); years without a V are assumed to be after Hsün's founding.)
While widespread, the use of the Drithidian calendar is not universal, especially in the undeveloped nations. Some cultures, in fact, use calendars based on entirely different definitions of the year. There are calendars in use that use not the thermal year of the temperature cycle, but the solar year encompassing one full north-south oscillation of the sun—about 340 days. There are also lunar calendars where the days are counted by the cycles of the moons, and which either define the year by a certain number of lunar cycles (most often twelve) or dispense altogether with anything analogous to the year of other calendars.
Creatures of Dadauar
Most of the panasteric flora and fauna common elsewhere in Qabede are also found on Dadauar, but the world also has many unique life of its own. Among the best known are the jungle-dwelling gacuan; the galabus, a dangerous pageric predator; the surprisingly intelligent mountain-dwelling zjalak; and the ubiquitous skittleworm. Dadauar is also home to an unusual class of terrestrial ctenophores, including the photosynthetic icestar, an important base of the food web in Dadauar's frigid regions. Some of Dadauar's endemic animals have been domesticated: the curious cerkinule and the winged zarm are kept as pets; the spiny kranyak and the amorphous sorn are raised for their meat and the jinaleer for its meat and eggs; the slangrel celotrane is frequently trained as a tracker.
Ellogous life
The most widespread and common folk on Dadauar is the human, but not the only one. Gragers of various sorts make their homes there, though on Dadauar they are more commonly called "gnulus". Several prominent kinds of gnulu have mustelid julay: the half-skunk taan and the half-weasel hhuzen. Others are part gastropod: the half-slug b'rac and the half-snail ctsorven. Falling into neither category are the half-mouse wech and the half-raccoon masker. Aside from humans and gragers, other ellogous folks of Dadauar include the reclusive niqqu and the hulking palargan.
There are many artificial creatures on Dadauar, as well, created through the onirarchs' power. The onirarchs create whole entities out of a magical material called dreamstuff, fashioning servants called batirines to do their bidding. Batirines are created in a variety of forms to serve different purposes, from the tiny eye batirines that serve as unobtrusive scouts and spies to the enormous tower batirines that loom above the cityscapes. The onirarchs also infuse humans and other creatures with dreamstuff, warping their forms or giving them strange new abilities and creating modified creatures called dreambuilt.
Marine life
The oceans of Dadauar have unique life of their own, such as the great ganulias that glide along the surface and the chirochan that haunts the depths. One notable feature of Dadauar's oceans is the pelagic reefs, reefs that are not rooted on the ocean floor but float within the water column, home to many benthic organisms that would be found on the seafloor in other worlds. These pelagic reefs are made up primarily of bryozoans with adaptations that allow them to vary their weights to keep to a consistent depth, though other reef-forming organisms like corals, sponges, and algae grow atop the bryozoan substrate.
The seas are not without ellogous species, though little is known about them to the surface dweller. In addition to seadwelling gnulus like the zoho and the bulurang, the seas have other folks like the dantili and the esoma. Nor are they free from the onirarchs' creations; while the onirarchs have not colonized the seas as extensively as they have the land, they do have servitors there. Sea batirines, xastrine batirines, and aquanaut dreambuilt do the onirarchs' bidding in the watery deeps.
There is good reason why the benthos of Dadauar inhabits the pelagic reefs rather than the seafloor—and why the onirarchs cannot easily conquer the oceans. The depths are the domain of an entity called the Bathybius, or Deepmind, easily the largest single life form of the rew, and perhaps the only one to rival or surpass the onirarchs in power. A massive collection of ellogous slime that lies at the bottom of the world's oceans, the Deepmind is known to absorb other creatures into itself, increasing both its mass and its mental power, as well as occasionally sending off bits of its own substance called deeplings to work its purposes on land—though exactly what the Deepmind's purposes are is not entirely clear.
History
Human civilization on Dadauar is thought to date back about fifty seven thousand years. By far the most useful source of information on its earliest history is a document called the History of the Disk, by the Milthadian historian Zilian the Fat. It is almost entirely through Zilian's work that modern Dadauarans know anything of early empire and events such as the Empire of Keddek, the Talvane Empire, and the Crimson Wars. While Zilian's objectivity and accuracy have been called into question, modern historians still rely heavily on their accounts for lack of any better sources. (Magical divination could perhaps answer some of the outstanding questions, but is rendered difficult by the fact that the onirarchs hold a monopoly on powerful magic, and seem uninterested in using it to investigate Dadauar's history—or perhaps they already have used it for that purpose, and have simply refused to share their findings.)
About a thousand years after Zilian wrote, the population of Dadauar was drastically amoindered by a deadly pandemic now called the Great Plague, which killed off more than 99% of the rew's human inhabitants, and left the outdurers weakened and disfigured. As humanity gradually recovered, the descendants of the survivors blamed the gnulus for the disaster (even though the gnulus had not themselves been unaffected by the plague), and for about eight centuries the gnulus would endure severe prejudice and persecution. This animosity would eventually subside, only to resurge almost three millennia later and persist for another eight centuries.
As Dadauar recovered from the Great Plague, many empires rose and fell. For a thousand years the rew was divided between the Tidicary Empire and the Empire of Kasar; these fell and were replaced by the Myquitar, the Hemesei, and the Galgudi Empires in the Age of Three. About six thousand years ago, a group of wizards called the Congregate developed a means of augmenting their power by draining dream energy from others. They used this power to take over the nation of Aqqal on the Ibadi Peninsula (the site of present-day Ovla Ba), and the regime they established is now widely considered to have been the first onirarchy.
The reign of the Congregate was short-lived, however; despite their power, they fell to infighting and fedifraction. The next onirarchy would not arise for another three millennia, in central Jahanna. While this onirarchy, Hsün, would not last, some of the imitators that sprung up in its wake were more successful. Gradually, the onirarchies multiplied and spread their influence over the rew, a process that is still continuing today—unless the resistance can put a stop to it.
Magic
The onirarchs are set apart by the fact that they harvest the energy of many dreamthralls to fuel their magic, but they are not the only ones to employ this arcanum. The use of magic of any sort without a permit is illegal in most of the onirarchies—and those permits are very seldom granted to anyone but the onirarchs and their most trusted servants—, but the practice of dream magic is widespread in the undeveloped nations. And, of course, there are those within the onirarchies who use magic illegally. The resistance, especially, sees no reason to abide by the onirarchs' restrictions, and rebel wizards use their forbidden magic to fight the onirarchs who forbid it. Some of the resistance even hope to turn magic itself against the onirarchs, basing this plan on theories that magic itself is a living thing. However, so far little progress has been made along these lines; it's not even clear how the rebels could communicate with magic to convince it of the justice of their cause.
There is a great diversity of spells workable through dream magic, which can be categorized through a system of carminical taxonomy. Many dream mages focus on particular paths of spell (the highest-level taxon), or even particular circles. However, there is more to dream magic than spells; onirarchs and other mages also make use of many paracarminical magics. Geasa, obligations taken on in exchange for magical powers, are popular among the resistance. Many onirarchs, on the other hand, make heavy use of shards and tokens. A shard is a talisman that contains a part of a wizard's soul, allowing the mage to sense its surroundings and cast spells through it. Some of the onirarchs employ living shards, implanting fragments of their own soul in unfortunate subjects whose minds and personalities are gradually overtaken by the wizard's own. Wizards can cast spells through tokens as well, but more importantly tokens gather ambient magic to further bolster their masters' power. On most worlds, dream mages keep their tokens secret for fear they might be turned against them, but some onirarchs in Dadauar are confident enough in their defenses to erect ostentatious "megatokens". These include the Gray Obelisk in the city of Par and the Lord's Statues in Seseal.
Though dream magic is the most common arcanum of Dadauar, it is not the only one. Some of the most powerful onirarchs have developed their own arcanum called yanyiry, though they keep the details a secret. Some rumors have it that the onirarch of Drithidiach, or one of their predecessors, has developed yet another arcanum; other rumors say that the people of the cold country of Cayaati may have their own system (or systems) of magic as well. Other minor arcana depend on local phenomena, such as muralism that draws on the enchantment of the City Proscribed in Avelax, and daiabadi that taps the power of the Everstorm in the eastern Camilout.
Religion
As the power of the onirarchs ascended, that of the gods declined. This was, of course, especially true within the onirarchies, where most of the people have their material needs provided for and look forward mainly to their dreams—and in their dreams they do not worship gods, or if they do it is gods of Magogenia and not of Ses. But even outside the onirarchies, the influence of the gods is decrescent. The onirarchies sometimes like to claim that their success is setting an example for the undeveloped nations and helping them see that they don't need the gods to get through their lives, but of course there's more to it than that. The onirarchs have, in fact, been actively working to discourage religion, both by propaganda and by direct sabotage of temples and other religious structures and institutions and undermining or assassinaton of priests and other important figures.
This is not a matter of the onirarchs having a philosophical objection to worship of gods. Rather, the onirarchs know that they and the gods are naturally in conflict, and their attacks on religion are just their way of reducing the competition. After all, the onirarchies are always seeking to expand their territory, so even if it was only within the onirarchies themselves that religion was suppressed, the growth of the onirarchies necessarily means the imminution of religion. It's predictable that the gods would object to that.
And they have; the antagonism between the onirarchs and the gods has not been unidirectional. Most notably, in the year 1860 the god Nuropus personally destroyed the president of Alfenane. In retaliation—and no doubt to discourage other gods from similar tactics—, several other onirarchs joined forces and succeeded in destroying Nuropus. Since then, there have been no further deicides or similarly spectacular sallies, but the battle between the gods and the onirarchs is still very much ongoing, albeit more subtly. Those who know of this colluctation refer to it as the Soul War.
Nevertheless, despite the onirarchs' best efforts, religion has not yet been entirely eradicated. Not only are the gods still worshipped in most undeveloped nations, though to a lesser extent than they have been in the past, but many resistance fighters have devoted themselves to the gods precisely because the onirarchs forfend it. Thus even within the onirarchies, secret shrines exist tended by religious revolutionaries—or by faithful priests who still respect the gods even if they otherwise have little sympathy for the resistance.