Nothing is here 7

This page is a discussion of the history and geography of the fictional world Tehom, which is part of the setting The Judges of Tehom.

Historical Overview

The Tehomin are descendants of planetary colonists from The Garden, an interstellar empire that came to Tehom to terraform it. The Garden failed in its efforts: The climate of the planet destabilized, undetected alien life awoke, and disease engulfed the human population. The Garden quarantined the entire star system, abandoning the colony to its fate. Death and ruin were commonplace. Then a miracle happened. There is no record of superhuman traits within the Garden, but soon after Tehom was abandoned a small segment of the population began to exhibit abilities and powers beyond what humanity was capable of. These powers were highly variable in their form and seeming origin, and these superhumans became known as The Few. The greatest of them created the Stormward Council. A handful of colony centers survived thanks to luminaries such William Goodguide, Sunbringer, and Dimday Dragoon. Over the next several generations, human society stabilized, exalting their heroic saviors, the Few.

Recently, humanity has faced new challenges. Lord General Risha Thaime is building a military that rivals that of Molyvdos. The oceans is spawning alien monsters bent on attacking anything related to humanity. And most disturbingly, a new revolutionary government called the Dundainian Anarchy has emerged that denounced the rule of the superhuman Few over the Many.

Planet & System: A Naturalist Summary

Tehom is the second planet in orbiting Nivdal, a yellow dwarf star similar to our own, though its accompanying system is much smaller. Nivdal I (Diflas) is a small world similar to our mercury, Nivdal III (Caligo) is a gas giant, and Nivdal IV, Kengadol, volcanically dead dwarf planet. Tehom is a volcanically active planet roughly the size of Mars, though its gravity is slightly greater. Unlike Earth, Tehom has a ring of ice and tiny moons known as the Stanuht. Despite its extreme cold and vast glaciers, Tehom was the best planetary candidate for terraforming in the Nivdal system.

Currently, Tehom is a planet hospitable to human life with an average temperature slightly colder than Earth and it is dominated by oceans (roughly 87% of the surface is covered by water). The majority of dry land can be found in a large equatorial archipelago called the ‘‘Set Islands’‘. Within the Set, one finds more or less earth-like conditions. However, the farther one goes from the Set, the more strange and alien the flora and fauna of the planet become. ‘‘The Course’‘ is the name of the most populated, and prosperous region of the Set.

I: The Garden Grows

Little is known on Tehom about what the Garden is or was. Historical data files were not the highest priority when the colony was abandoned. According to the best available information, the Garden was an interstellar human society, spreading itself across the galaxy. They also know Tehom was not the first world the Garden had decided to colonize, as it supposedly had elaborate and codified procedures for doing so. And so a scout from the Garden came to the Nivdal System to find worlds for the Garden, and it found the second planet of the system to have potential as a human habitat. While its atmosphere was acceptable, rich mineral deposits were found. At the same time, it was seemingly devoid of indigenous life, and it was a frozen world covered in an almost completely frozen surface. The Garden began a process of terraforming and warming Tehom while establishing initial mining installations. Colonists seeking a new life came to the world, and for a time, there was a great deal of optimism regarding this new home for humanity.

II: Nightmare in the Garden

The Terraforming of Nivdal II did not go according to plan. As the planet warmed, its weather patterns became erratic and surprisingly difficult to manage. Severe storms became common, as did wild temperature fluctuations outside the expected parameters of the Garden’s Terraforming procedures. There was also a noticeable increase in seismic and volcanic activity. More troubling, however, was that the initial scouting teams were wrong about the lack of life on Nivdal II. In the deepest realms of the ocean and in the hearts of the glaciers, life remained in a dormant state. As the world thawed, old life awoke and returned. Mostly microbial in nature, they also caused problems. First, several proved to be parasitic or symbiotic with the Terran flora and fauna in ways that complicated colonization. For example, something interacted with apples trees, causing them to grow razor sharp spines on apples, sometimes even embedded in the flesh of the apple itself. These problems were frustrating to the Garden terraformers, but they would not have been enough, by themselves, to end the colony.

Then came the gray plague. Something in the water infected people at Camp Leopard, creating a degenerative nervous disease ending in death. Before death, however, fits of rage or hallucinations were common. The most disturbing part of the plague was that infected members were susceptible to a kind of mass hysteria where they would all begin to see the same hallucinations or experience an attack of extremely violent behavior at the same time, toward the same target. These groups became known as plague mobs.

The gray plague spread very quickly, and the Garden’s initial attempts at quarantine were compromised. After a plague mob destroyed the largest orbital space station by crashing it through the atmosphere, the System Colonization Authority reached a state of panic. Consequently, it all planet-side ships destroyed, and the remaining Garden ships to leave the system. The Nivdal system was now under permanent quarantine. The Garden has never returned.

III: The Gale Era

Though a cure was not found, the pandemic ended. Unfortunately, without the Gardeners, the terraforming equipment on the planet eventually spun out of control, making the weather even more harsh than it had been before. It is during this time that the colloquial name of the planet as “Tehom” became common, rather than the more sterile Garden name of Nivdal II. The primary communications post of the colony, eventually taking the name Beacon, became one of the more durable communities on Tehom, thanks to a small manufacturing facility as a relatively large number of people with the necessary technical skills to maintain it.

The Gale Age was a time when a great deal of the knowledge, technology, and heritage from the Garden was lost. Even in the Beacon, there was a gradual slide into lower forms of technology. Sometimes the knowledge was lost, but just as often the resources were simply not available. And beyond the loss of technology, societal upheaval guaranteed death from many causes (starvation, disease, conflicts between communities, etc.).

IV: Attention is Given

Decades after the Garden abandoned them, humanity continued to survive on Tehom. The original settlers were now mostly dead, though some elders remained to tell the young what the Garden was like.

One of those young was Sunbringer, the first superhuman of Tehom. His given name lost to all but the most historically minded, Sunbringer he had the power to control weather. This power lifted him from his humble beginnings as a fisherman to the Directorship of Beacon, where he used his powers to help his new realm thrive.

Sunbringer was soon joined by other superhumans: The powerful psychic William Goodguide helped stabilize what would one day become Pinnacle, and the seemingly invulnerable Dimday Dragoon founded Highspire. Over the course of a decade, a dozen or so of these Few with powers emerged from the ranks of humanity, usually becoming the leaders of desperate communities (the famous exception of course being Thomas the Sage, who guided the development of Calmport hidden from view). Sunbringer’s greatest accomplishment was the creation of the Stormward Council, an annual meeting of the Few where disputes could be resolved and plans for surviving and growth could be coordinated.

V: The Conciliar Era: Attention is Fixed

Over Sunbringer’s life, humanity turned a corner and began to stabilize and grow (if not necessarily thrive). The number of the Few born steadily increased, often with radically different powers from the others. Toward the end of Sunbringer’s life, the Few began to pass the blessing of power to their offspring, creating the first legacies, bloodlines of power. William Goodguide used his powers to find those destined to found powerful legacies, and invited them to Pinnacle.

The variations of the Few gradually began to grow. In addition to founders (spontaneous manifestations of power) and legacies (members of a superhuman bloodline), the Few were joined by Keepers (wielders of powerful objects, be they technological in nature or otherwise), and the Imparted (people who gained powers through an accident or a procedure of some sort).

While it would be an overstatement to call humanity under the Stormward Council a golden age, it was the first time humanity had an expectation of stability and a degree of optimism since the Abandonment.

VI: The Shattered Era: Broken to Distraction

The Conciliar Age officially ended with the dissolution of the Stormward Council, though this event was practically inevitable when Sunbringer died after a century of ruling humanity from Beacon. Within a few years, the Council became an ineffective body used to put a veneer of legitimacy on political machinations. Eleven years after Sunbringer’s death, Pinnacle broke from the council and closed its borders to most of the other settlements. This drastic action was done because of two reasons. First, Pinnacle’s leaders saw the civil war was becoming inevitable and wished to withdraw from the conflict as a neutral entity. Second, it was one of the most self-sufficient human settlements at the time and was capable of surviving on its own.

Pinnacle’s exit only accelerated things. Srimec city had emerged as the undisputed leader of sacritech, and had been pushing to gain more influence on the council. High spire and its allies, meanwhile, opposed. A handful of other settlements, such Novum Volsci and Beacon, attempted to manipulate the conflict between the two to create an opportunity for their own political interests. Within four years, the Council was officially disbanded. War was officially declared between Highspire and Srimec, and most of the other settlements prepared for an uncertain but violent future.

The Few were instrumental during the Shattered War, as they were often as available if not more so than a well-trained and equipped military of the Many. While handful of large scale battles did occur, though it was more common for the Few to launch raids and strikes, while the Many remained on defense. Compared to the mass conflicts of the 20th and 21st Centuries, this time looked less like a world war and more a period of destabilization, an increase in failed states, and seemingly constant small conflicts. During this chaotic period, Warmaster Molyvdos of Hazor and his legions rose from relative obscurity to being a new and ambitious power on Tehom.

Historians generally describe the Shattering War as ending when Pinnacle entered into a network of alliances to contain the Warmaster Molyvdos, though they actively debate how much Pinnacle’s involvement was necessary. Beaten and severely injured, Molyvdos managed to personally negotiate a contract before succumbing to his wounds. Before he died, the Biotheurge II created an elaborate suspended animation device. Hazor has since been renamed patience, as they maintain this device with religious fervor, waiting for their leader to return.

VII: Post-Shattering: Tired Time to the Path

Stability gradually returned to Tehom after the Shattering, though the political and social landscape had dramatically changed. The Shattering, with its fluid alliances, constant preparation forced the human settlements into more sustained contact than there was before. This resulted in a more homogenized Tehomin culture that was deeply indebted to the settlements that had the greatest impact on the Shattering (Pinnacle, Highspire, Srimec, and Hazor). It also resulted in a net loss of power for Beacon, the traditional center of humanity on Tehom.

Pinnacle’s legacy-based polity was generalized and became the blueprint of “kleocracy”, a neo-feudal arrangement where the Few stood at the center of all sphered of life: political, economic, and cultural. This also created (often through blood) a network of alliances that brought some of the less developed settlements closer to the standard of living found in the more prosperous settlements. Engineers from Srimec disseminated technology throughout the Set. Novum Volsci developed an international banking system, quickly becoming one of the most prosperous cosmopoli in the Set. Highspire’s style of urban planning, with a large urban core surrounding a great plaza, became the norm. Hazor’s primary contribution was adjusting Molyvdos’ rules for combat to create the first code of archonic war, the idea that the fate of a cosmopolis should in some situations be decided through personal combat by Archons, the Few champions of the cities. The Tenax Primacy developed a space program and created a space station in orbit around Tehom. Srimec was instrumental in creating a mass communication and information network connecting the Set even more to one another.

Slowly, the “tired time” after the Shattering have way to The Path, a common phrase at the time referring to the steady progress humanity seemed to be making. The struggling human settlements finally came into their own, becoming the glorious cosmopoli rising from Tehom’s tides. Kleocracy created a way for the Few to create elite ties that connected the settlements together, and archonic war ensured that the infrastructure of cosmopoli were rarely damaged in a substantive way, even if it was a guideline rather than a solid rule all obeyed.

Within the last two generations, the optimism of humanity on Tehom has become strained, and there is a fear a new dark time is coming.

VIII: Off the Path: The Hadalians & Novum Volsci

The first new problem was with the native ocean life of Tehom. The reports of dangerous sea life and its attacks on human vessels began to increase steadily. More disturbingly, some technocrats began to argue they saw patterns and strategy in the attacks, rather than the more arbitrary or immediate savagery one would expect from non-sentient life. The attacks have continued, especially on the outskirts of the Set, with no explanation. The diverse set of alien creatures and monsters that come from the depts. To harass humanity have come to be called “Hadalians,” though that’s a collective term that tells one little about what the life form is actually like.

This new stress created economic problems for several cosmopoli, first some of the peripheral ones, but the problems eventually reached some of cores of the Set. The first to fall was Novum Vosci, whose economy collapsed in a financial crisis. This lead to a bitter civil war among its Archons. The rebels eventually lost, despite broad supported among the Many of the cosmopolis. Since the revolt, the regime has allocated resources within the cosmopolis on military spending (to maintain order) and public works (to make the agora attractive to visitors and dignitaries) at the expense of all but the Few and the rich. In a few years, Novum Volsci went from being known as one of the wealthiest cosmopoli of Tehom to a place with shocking poverty. This created a boom of refugees fleeing the cosmopolis, leaving Novum Volsci as a large city of slums and vacant ruins. It also lead to the creation ghettos called “Novel towns” (a deformation of “NoVol” for Novum Volsci) in many other cosmopoli.

IX: Thaime Rises

Deltaport was a cosmopolis of medium size and less than average influence. It had no particularly major raw materials or exports, and it was not in a strategically important location. It was simply a quiet city-state out of the way. That all changed with Risha Thaime.

One day, a hulking figure walked out of the ocean and onto an agricultural area to the south of Deltaport. He announced his name was Lord General Risha Thaime, and he preached a gospel of conquest and domination to the Many who worked on the farm. Those who attempted to flee or argue with him were summarily killed. Those who agreed with him were transformed into “metamen”, shock troops that were fanatically loyal to Thaime and enhanced well beyond the capabilities of normal humans. The first squad of Archons to attack Thaime were quickly killed, as was the second. Thaime and his metamen then began a direct march into Deltaport, and within a day they had taken over the city and killed the hereditary Legacy ruler of the cosmopolis. The Few who wished to flee were allowed to, though some pledged allegiance to the new ruler with promises of glory and conquest. The Many, however, were not allowed to leave, and any who attempted to flee Deltaport after Thaime took power were summarily killed.

Since then, Deltaport was renamed Thaimbase, and it is less a neo-feudal city-state and more a military dictatorship. Risha Thaime, who is both a fearful combatant and a master of biotechnology, has been turning Thaimbase into a military machine. He rents out his small but growing military as a mercenary group to the highest bidder, and carefully manages his political alliances to ensure it is never in the interests of any of the major cosmopoli to deal with him directly. Recently, however, he has begun direct attacks on Pinnacle, sending his metamen and archons to attack strategic resources under Pinnacle’s control. Many worry war with Thaime is inevitable, and many more worry that his true power is not known.

X: Off the Path: The Wasting War and the Anarchy

Novum Volsci’s fall from grace increased the general amount of fear and instability within the Set. With the fall of Novum Volsci, international trade was disrupted temporarily, leading for an increased desire for cosmopoli to exploit their own natural resources. This trend was felt in particular by Highspire, Stoutfort, and the Tenax Primacy; as the three city-states all shared the same landmass, called Dundain. The increased concern with territoriality inflamed pre-existing feuds among the Archons of the three cities, eventually creating a conflict. The war between them became increasingly bitter, until it moved beyond archonic war into a full military conflict. In the chaotic war, Tenax was eventually hit with a massive barrage of biochemical weapons, destroying a large portion of both the Many and the Few. In retaliation, a group of Tenacian Archons lead by Seraphim Scythe into the heart of Highspire to kill and destroy as much as possible. None of the so-called Tenacian Reckoners are known to have survived, though they succeeded in effectively destroying Highspire.

The third cosmopolis, Stoutfort, had also been severely damaged in the Wasting War, and it had a temporary ceasefire in place with Highspire when Tenax was attacked with biochemical weapons (it is still unclear whether Stoutfort or Highspire ordered the attack). When news came of what the Tenacian Reckoners were doing to Highspire, an unthinkable thing happened: the Many rebelled, killing or driving off all of Stoutfort’s Archons, and it eventually turned on the remaining Few within Stoutfort’s territory. To the disbelief and horror of the rest of The Set, the revolt achieved its objective of overthrowing the kleocracy. This horror only increased when emissaries of Ox (the new name of Stoutfort, highlight the Many’s role as beasts of burden for the Few) invited the Many of Highspire and Tenax to join them in purging the Few from the entire island. This new nation called itself the Dundainian Collective, though it is more commonly known as the Dundainian Anarchy.

When the dust settled, the world was stunned: two of the great city-states of Tehom lay in ruins, massive numbers of the Few and the Many had been reduced to a refugee status, and an Anarch-free state controlled a large (if devastated) landmass. Its mere existence terrifies the rest of Tehom, as it should not be possible. Humanity’s hope lied in the Few, and yet this new power explicitly rejects and denies them. To call it blasphemous would not be entirely inaccurate in the eyes of many. Despite its inward focus on self-sufficiency to-date, many fear it will attempt to export revolution to other cosmopoli. Indeed, it has in the past few years begun a sophisticated propaganda campaign, leading the Archons of some city states to impose new censorship laws to prevent the spread of Dundainian ideology.

XI: Searching for the Path: the Kairos Initiative

In the face of the Anarchy and Thaimbase, many of the powers of the Set are increasingly nervous, both for their personal security as well as the future of humanity. The cultural memory of an abandoned colony that almost died off is still a powerful for many on Tehom. In the current threats (the Hadalians, Thaime, and the Anarchy), many see storms that may sink humanity.

Out of fear came action. Diplomats from Pinnacle and Srimec City created a treaty called the Kairos Covenant. Since those three created the Covenant, another dozen smaller cosmopoli have joined. While this agreement is a non-aggression pact, it goes much further in attempting to create a set of institutions outside the individual cosmopoli committed to the future of humanity. It has a standing diplomatic corps, as well as a security and intelligence force called the Dynaton Initiative. Additionally, it has a group of the Few committed to defending all member states called the Agonist Arbiters. The Agonists are also charged with the sacred duty of ensuring the rules of honorable archonic war are followed by member city-states, especially if there is an archonic conflict between two members of the Covenant.

The Covenant central base is Eiren Bay, a then small-sized cosmopolis at the time known for its open door policy toward refugees and its unusually democratic governmental structure that gave a voice to the Many. Since the establishment of the Covenant, its size and influence has increased, and it has gained the reputation of being one of the most cosmopolitan places in the Set.

Not everyone is optimistic about the Covenant, as it often devolves into a political conflict between Srimec and Pinnacle.

In response to this, Thaimbase signed the non-aggression agreement The Pact of the Cliff with Patience, the powerful city-state waiting for its violent messiah to emerge from his suspended animation. Calmport has since been sucked into their sphere of influence, though it has been more or less left alone to date.

Finally, Beacon and Saltmerche made a separate agreement, the Zedek Accord, where they present themselves as impartial arbiters between any and all cosmopoli. If their services are not required, they leave the other cosmopoli alone.