Skein of World:People

Skein of Worlds « Cosmology and Setting « People

In an infinite universe, you'd expect life to appear on infinitely many planets, and you'd be right. What might be surprising is just how often life appears though. Very nearly every planet without a severe elemental imbalance is covered in living creatures. Even more surprising to some is that nearly all of these are also home to at least some form of intelligent life.

Origins of Life

Once you realize that most deities have had countless years to spread life, and belief, to other planets, it's not really so surprising. In fact, this is probably how most planets were first colonized. This isn't the whole story though.

Wild Planets

Some planets that shelter life are not inhabited by any intelligent races. Since most deities are only interested in gaining more believers, such planets are unlikely to have been populated by a deity. Why such planets exist remains a mystery, though there are theories.

One possibility is that life can arise spontaneously under the light of a sun. Given that the suns are direct links to the positive energy plane, the source of all life, this doesn't seem too unlikely. Still, questions remain. What would such life look like? Note: Evolution may exist, but no one understands it as such. Need to add more questions as to why this wouldn't work under those assumptions. Although, the speaker might actually know the answers to these questions...

Another possibility is that these planets were once home to some intelligent race, but they either left or were destroyed. This sounds reasonable, but at least a few planets have life, but no signs that an intelligent race every lived there. It's possible that they weren't builders though, so this can't be ruled out.

Origins and Deities

Oddly, since deities are created, originally, by intelligent beings, this means that intelligent life must be older than deities. How exactly things began is still a mystery. The universe seems to be timeless, so maybe there was no beginning. Maybe there was always some deity and someone to worship them. From there, life spread, new deities were born and the cycle repeated. Ultimately, such a question may be impossible to answer with certainty.

Races

While, on average, any one race only exists on about one or two planets, there are a few races that exist on many hundreds or even thousands of planets. First among these are the humans. One of the great mysteries though is exactly why humans are so numerous.

Humans

Humans are by far the most numerous of the intelligent races. They exist across many thousands of worlds, or maybe farther. This is somewhat confusing though, since they seem to have absolutely nothing to do with other humans on different planets. They have no means of communicating. They do not share a belief in any one deity. If you were to ask them about humans on other planets, they'd probably think you were crazy. What, then, is the cause of their spread? One guess is that humans are, in fact, the oldest living race. They've simply spread though random chance over a vast number of years. It's the most convincing guess anyone's come up with, but it isn't very satisfying. If they've had all that time, why haven't they developed more as a civilization?

Elves

Elves are the second most numerous, but in this case it's easy to see why. The deity Corellon Larethian has, over a great number of years, visited many planets. On each one, he created a race of intelligent beings very much like himself, and thus very much like each other. Each race was modified to better survive the new planet though. On a planet of mostly water, he created aquatic elves. On a planet of dense forests and jungles, he created wood elves. All elves, save a few, worship him. Thanks to the success of the elves, Corellon is one of the most powerful deities. Still, he spends most of his time carefully searching out new planets to colonize.

Orcs

The orcs are another relatively common race, but for a very different reason. The deity Gruumsh created the orcs to be a race of warriors, and he succeeded beyond his expectations. The orcs overran their hostile environment and all their enemies. From there, they developed magics and magical vessels capable of transporting great numbers of orcs across the vast distances to new systems. There, they conquered the natives, before building new vessels. Thus, the mighty orc civilization has spread. Unlike the humans and the elves though, the orcs are located in a few, relatively confined regions of the universe, though this is probably a good thing for most other races.

Dragons

Dragons are one of the few races capable of moving and living naturally in the Void. Their naturally strong magic allows them to cover the distances involved well within their lifetime. No one really knows what they do out there, and in fact many planets don't even know they exist. They do descend to the surface of planets sometimes though. Usually this is to gather food or other materials. Sometimes though it's to lay eggs. These eggs take a very long time to hatch and the parents usually don't wait around. Instead they carefully hide the egg, trusting its hard shell to take care of it. Even though it takes so long to hatch and the parents have likely strayed very far away, they always return just as the egg hatches.

Other Races

Besides the races that have managed to spread across multiple systems, there are infinitely many races that never left their home system, or even their home planet. The reasons for this are as numerous as the races themselves, from youth to a lack of resources to a lack of desire.

Organizations

Outside of the lines of race or civilization, there are a few groups of beings working towards their own goals. Such organizations must be vast and powerful merely to exist across the vast distances between different systems of spheres. Because of this, and because their goals are rarely compatible, few of these organizations are on good terms with any of the others. This is one, of many, reasons they tend to be secretive about their existence.

Society of Doors

The Society of Doors is probably the single biggest organization in the universe. Their primary goal seems to be to locate and exploit portals. A portal between two, otherwise unreachable cities can be worth a lot of money in the trade of rare goods. Therefore, the key to such a portal, or even just the knowledge that such a portal exists, is also worth a lot of money.

Those mysterious shops that sell goods no one else does and then vanish the next day tend to be run by members of the Society.

Attitude Towards Others

The Society cares little for race or religion. Anyone that can keep a secret could potentially be a member. Fortunately for the rest of the universe, their main goal seems to be profit, and probably nothing more sinister. This doesn't mean they are nice people though. Should someone come between them and their business, that person is likely to wake up on an unfamiliar, and decidedly hostile, world.

The Society does not go out of its way to recruit new members. Instead, it's likely to offer membership to people whose existing talents and resources would further the cause of the Society as a whole. Merchants that have hidden means of off-world travel, adventurers that explore the other sides of mysterious portals and any number of other characters that have something to offer are all potential new recruits. The normal routine is to offer the recruit a mission of sorts without revealing anything about the Society. If they complete the mission to the recruiter's satisfaction, they are usually offered full membership. Of course, things may get tricky if the recruit rejects the offer.

Whisperers to the Darkness

Though not the name they'd give themselves, if they game themselves and name at all, the Whisperers to the Darkness are a vast cult, spanning many planets. Despite being the most secretive of organizations, they also have a tendency to lose many members to madness (among other things). In fact, most of what little is know of them comes from piecing together the accounts of madmen. To most people, this would already put the notion that they exist into question. They do exist though.

The Whisperers to the Darkness believe that there are beings older that the infinite universe, living outside of space and time. Imprisoned beyond any reachable plane of existence. Those few who have made studies of such things agree that there must be some truth to these notions since threads of belief traceable to their activities fade away into the deep mists of the Astral plane. Belief can't simply vanish to nowhere. Other cult beliefs will eventually generate a deity to fill that void, but that hasn't happened here. Something must already exist at the other end of those threads.

Unfortunately, those researchers are few and far between, and for good reason. Anyone that gets too close to the truth, or even to a reasonable facsimile, has disappeared. No magic yet tried has managed to locate either their bodies or their souls. Together with their secrecy, this suggests that there goals are less than benign... much less.

Attitude Towards Others

How the Whisperers choose or recruit their members remains unknown. Who the current members are or even how many there are is also unknown. In fact, one of the few things that anyone has pieced together in this regard is that the membership consists of a disproportionately high percentage of humans. This too is horribly suggestive when you consider the lost history and unknown origin of the human race.

That is not to say that they are actively hostile to other races. Humans only seem to make up a significant plurality of the membership. Again though, too much is pure speculation to say anything with certainty. To non-members, though, they can be extremely dangerous. While there are many deities throughout the universe that seek to gain a greater number of souls by sacrifice, few go to such gruesome extremes as the sacrifices attributed to the Whisperers. Additionally, the souls of those sacrificed to known deities are easy enough to locate, if not recover. The souls of those sacrificed by the Whisperers seem to be, simply, gone.