Meliauth

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Meliauth is an alternate Earth in which a loose alliance of magical beings from other worlds and planes have infiltrated human society and perform rituals to tap into some innate numen in the world of which its natives are unaware. These invaders come in many varieties, but most have in common the ability to take a semblance of human form—although their human disguises are imperfect, and can sometimes be penetrated by those who know what to look for. Few humans on Earth, however, have any awareness of the alien creatures' presence—of those who do, some agree to serve them in return for rewards financial or magical, while others fight against them, or try to turn the tables and gain power from them.

As with most alternate Earths, "Meliauth" is not a name actually used by inhabitants of the world, who for the most part simply call their home Earth—either being unaware of other alternates or considering their own world the baseline. There is no standard, universal name for this particular alternate world, and the term "Meliauth" is merely used in the Wongery as a convenience.

The Coalition

Collectively called the Coalition, the various entities that have gathered on Meliauth have come from many different worlds, and represent numerous unrelated species. They overall have little or nothing in common except their decision to tap the Earth for its resources. Nevertheless, while their kinds are many, they are not infinite. The vast majority of the invaders pertain to one of about a dozen folks, while there are many more that have a much smaller presence.

The most prevalent of the visitors to Meliauth are the following:

(The names given here are those most commonly used to refer to these creatures by those few humans who know of them. They may, however, be called by different names in different areas, and these folks' names for themselves are mostly unknown or unpronounceable.)

While nominally allied and having to some extent coöperated in their invasion of Earth, the folks of the Coalition by no means act in lockstep. While there are a few places where members of multiple species cohabit congenially, more commonly the Coalition members live among and interact mostly with those of their own kind, and the relations between the different folks are not always friendly. Even within a given folk, of course not all the individuals get along or share exactly the same goals; there are different factions within the Coalition, and its members are by no means free of backstabbing and plotting against each other. While to a human who first discovers the Coalition it may seem at first like a unified front of alien invaders, in truth it is a hotbed of scheming, politics, and shifting allegiances.

Endumates

While many of the Coalition members retain their innate forms and stay concealed from the world's native inhabitants, there are others who magically take on a human appearance and live among the locals. This may be simply because they find it easier than hiding away or because they find it useful to maintain relationships with humans to use them as tools or information sources; a rare few actually enjoy the humans' company and social structures. These human-appearing but inwardly alien beings have become known to those few who are aware of them as "endumates".

The human form of the endumates is not a mere illusion; they do physically transfigure themselves into an approximation of human shape. It is only an approximation, however, and not a perfect semblance. Although endumates appear human to casual inspection—this is, after all, the whole point of the transformation—most or all endumates do have some traits mirroring their alien origin, physical or magical. These stigmata are easily missed by those who have reason to suspect the endumates' inhuman nature, but can be telltale signs to those who know what to look for.

For the most part, endumates do not seek out money and influence in the human world. They have little need for it; anything money could buy they could obtain through magical means. Preferring not to attract attention to themselves, endumates generally take on inconspicous middle-class identities, with enough status and resources to live comfortably and pass freely where they need to, but not enough to become too well known and give people reason to examine their circumstances too closely. There are exceptions, but they are rare; even on Meliauth most politicians, bankers, and celebrities are ordinary humans unaware of and unconnected to the otherworldly incursion.

While they may not exactly duplicate human anatomy, the endumates' human forms are often close enough to enable them to procreate—either with other endumates, or sometimes with normal humans. The children of such a union are called rebetzim. A rebetz is not human, but not fully like its endumate parent, either. Effectively, it seems to match its parent's part-human disguise, except that for the rebetz it is not a disguise; while the endumate may have some inhuman features because it is wholly inhuman and those are just a shadow of its true nature, for a rebetz their mostly human form is their true nature, but they are still not entirely human, and bear some marker of that fact. There are exceptions, however, and some rebetzim, called prodigies, have monstrous forms with some features of but by no means identical to their endumate parents.

Tapping

The ultimate purpose of the Coalition's presence on the Earth is to tap the Earth or its biosphere for some sort of numen they can use to increase their own power. Exactly how this works, however, is not even known to most of the Coalition members. There are only a relative handful of highly knowledgeable or well-connected individuals that understand the tapping process and know exactly how to carry it out. These are not necessarily the official leaders of the Coalition, but their indispensability to the operation certainly gives them considerable influence. The rest of the Coalition members follow the instructions handed down by the few in the know to keep the tapping process ongoing, without knowing exactly how their actions fit in or why they're important—or, indeed, even if they're important; it could be that some of the assigned tasks are merely distractions to divert attention from the activities that are really crucial to the cause.

Regardless of the exact methods, the ultimate effect of the tapping on the Coalition members is to give them additional numen they can use for powerful magical effects, or store in spurgels for later employment—including numen of exotic types unavailable on their homeworlds, that they can use to produce results otherwise difficult or impossible. The ultimate effect of the tapping on the Earth and its inhabitants is less certain, but there is reason to believe that it is harmful. As the Coalition members draw numen from whatever hidden sources they find it in, some numen, mostly of varieties in which the Coalition is uninterested, inevitably escapes and builds up in surrounding objects and creatures, not excluding humans. This is of course unnoticeable to those without magical abilities or the facility to sense the presence of numen, and so far, it usually has no immediate effect. Occasionally, however, enough of this "waste numen" will build up in a given location or receptacle to produce a sudden enchantment or transformation—perhaps translocating an object or casting it to another plane, perhaps transmuting it into a different material or transfiguring its shape, perhaps inflicting an unfortunate with some burdensome curse—or granting a magical power. This is an infrequent enough occurrence that the Coalition has so far always been able to cover up these incidents, restoring or more likely concealing or destroying the affected objects or creatures. However, it seems inevitable that as the Coalition's tapping continues, such events will be more and more likely. Some extrapolations suggest, in fact, that if the numen buildup grows beyond a certain level, it may reach a tipping point where rather than affecting individual objects, creatures, and limited locales, it may cause the entire Earth to be transformed or enchanted, changing the whole world in radical and unpredictable ways—with likely catastrophic results for its inhabitants. Some Coalition members are chary of this possibility, and work to try to find more sustainable methods of tapping. Most, however, seem unconcerned, either choosing not to worry about contingencies so far in the future or reasoning perhaps that they will squeeze all the numen they can out of the Earth, and if they end up bringing about some sort of magical apocalypse while doing so, well, if they can still extract numen from the altered Earth, they will do so, and if they can't, they will move on and find another world to tap.

Even if the long-term effects turn out not to be completely calamitous, some of the actions the Coalition takes as part of its tapping operation certainly bring harm to some of the Earth's inhabitants. The Coalition's perpetrations may require them to destroy a building—or a city—or to gather a resource most easily obtainable by taking it from humans who have it. If it suits the Coalition's purposes to redirect a river to a different course, they may not particularly care that it robs a community of its water supply—or that it inundates another. Or, even if destruction or despoilment is not a necessary part of their process, it may be a possibility they take no pains to avoid; if they find it useful to install some great machine in an abandoned building, then they may not care if some urban explorers end up killed or injured by it.

Other creatures

The league of invaders intent on exploiting the Earth's numinous resources are not the only creatures from elsewhere now found on Meliauth. They have brought some helpers with them, both ellogous and otherwise. These include zobels, malformed and mismatched minions that serve the Coalition as aides and foot soldiers; dovones, sharp-toothed quadrupeds used as guardians; and draylings, small servitors created from creatures of worlds the Coalition has visited and bound to their bidding. For the most part, these creatures are not disguised like endumates, and therefore are found only in the presence of those Coalition members who have likewise kept their natural form—or perhaps in hidden parts of the endumates' private lairs—but sometimes they do accompany endumates disguised as pets or as children or humans in otherwise subservient positions.

Too, a handful of individuals of other folks have followed the Coalition to Earth, perhaps through discovering their portals or other means of travel there, or perhaps from hearing about the new frontiers the Coalition is harvesting and finding their own way there. Some of these interlopers try to glean the Coalition's leavings; some are there out of curiosity and a sense of exploration; and some just take the opportunity to wreak random mischief. When they interfere with the Coalition's plans or threaten to expose their presence, the Coalition will take steps to remove them, but otherwise the Coalition is generally content to leave them to their own devices.

Human reaction

Even now, most humans of Meliauth are unaware of the alien presences in their midst—and the invaders, of course, wish very much to keep it that way. They take pains to perform the parts of their operations that would strike the Earth's inhabitants as odd out of human sight and scrutiny; they are quick to cover up any signs of their activities that do crop up elsewhere, and if some human does see them or seem close to learning too much, they will either alter that human's memories, percipiate or encratize them, abduct them and caculate them or set them to work in their hidden lairs, or, if it seems the most expedient course of action, simply kill them (and do so in such a way as to avoid inviting suspicion from other humans).

Nevertheless, as thorough as the Coalition is, it is not infallible. Some humans do discover the Coalition and manage to escape them or evade its immediate notice. The reactions of these humans vary. Those who keep their knowledge to themselves and try to ignore or forget what they've found out or are simply too scared to act on it may pass beneath the Coalition's notice, but are no threat to it. Those who try to tell everyone about what they witnessed pose little more problem; they are likely as not to be thought madmen or fabulists by those who hear their tales, and they will attract the Coalition's attention and be swiftly dealt with. The most dangerous to the Coalition are those who keep their discovery close to their chest but plot against the invaders in secret, the more so if they somehow find others also in the know and pool their knowledge and resources. There are, in fact, a number of covert groups of knowledgeable humans that have formed to fight against the Coalition—sometimes joined or aided by rebetzim or even disaffected members of the Coalition folks who are sympathetic to their cause. Members of such groups who are aware of the larger movement have come to refer to their groups as "lodges". A lodge is a local group the members of whom all meet or communicate at least semiregularly and know each other; they may share some plans and information with other lodges, and even work together with them on occasion. Some lodges are independent and not part of any larger organization, but some other lodges have joined into societies, or grand lodges, that to a certain extent share common methodologies and philosophies. Some of the largest grand lodges include the Sorcerers, who focus on learning magic to use the Coalition's own tools against them; the Defenders of Earth, who actively try to kill the invaders and destroy their installations; and the Army of Whispers, who try to spread knowledge of the invasion despite the Coalition's efforts to suppress it.

On the other hand, there are some humans who learn by whatever means about the Coalition and instead of fighting against it seek to throw their lots in with it. Some hoping to be granted power or favors in exchange for their collaboration, some enchanted by the idea of being around and working with real magical beings, and some simply seeing the Coalition as unstoppable and wanting to be on the winning side, some humans willingly offer their services to the Coalition. Depending on their skills, their social placement, and to some degree their own preferences, some of these humans are taken back to the Coalition's secret strongholds to work for them there, but others are left to outwardly continue their lives and careers just as they had been, while secretly performing certain tasks that fulfill the Coalition's needs, or bringing to the Coalition useful information.

History

For the most part, the history of Meliauth broadly matches that of baseline Earth. The same nations and empires rose and fell; the same famous figures lived and died; the same technologies were developed; the same wars broke out. If the invaders exerted any effect on Earth's history, they did so in subtle ways. Because most of the same major events happened on Meliauth as on baseline Earth, it does not follow that the invaders bear no responsibility for them; it is possible that they brought about the same events on Meliauth that happened on other alternate Earths without their interference due to some ontological resonance.

How long the endumates have had a presence on Earth is unknown, though certainly some of the invading folks have been here longer than others. There is evidence of coovas, laxrans, nabars, and tsylalls having been interacting with select groups of humans for hundreds of years at least, and they may have been around much longer—and other folks may have been on Earth similarly long times as well. On the other hand, the artiost, the orifex, and the slugmoss seem to be fairly recent arrivals, though they may have had prior contact with other Coalition folks on other worlds.

Connections to other worlds

When the Coalition infiltrated Meliauth they had no intention of making their travel to Earth a one-way trip. While some Coalition members live full-time on (or within) Earth, or in small pocket planes reachable from it, some pass regularly between Earth and their homeworlds, and the Coalition has created portals for that purpose. Most of these portals are located where humans would have a very difficult time finding them, deep within the Coalition's lairs. However, there are some, perhaps used by endumates, that are closer to human habitations. Even these are well guarded and are not generally where anyone is likely to stumble into them, but they are at least not so inaccessible as those within the Coalition's hidden territories. The Coalition's homeworlds are not the only places they have portals to; some Coalition members have business on other worlds as well, and maintain portals to those worlds too—though those portals are no more easy to come by than the others.

Not all planar connections on Meliauth, however, are in the Coalition's control. Some of the other alien beings that have come to Earth maintain portals of their own—and the fallout from the numen leakage includes the formation of portals and crepatures connecting to other planes as well. There are three planes in particular crepatures to which seem particularly abundant, which have come to be called the Labyrinth, the Red Waste, and Rumbelow. Like the other spontaneous effects of the accumulation of waste numen, the Coalition attempts to destroy or contain these connections when they can, but they are becoming increasingly common, albeit still not yet so much so as to seriously imperil the Coalition's secrecy.

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