The Kingdom: Cuculidae

- starts off as a generic D&D pseudo-Medieval kingdom
- over 400 years develops into a modern-like society, though still a monarchy
- modern-ish in look and feel but with magic instead of technology. some key technologies missing and replicated with magic. not quite up to 21st century Earth.
- The Falcon Guard is an elite 5-person task force led by the Peregrine. The Guards have titles that are passed down from person to person (NOT reincarnated. only the Peregrine is reincarnated. though this is not public knowledge.). Their only job is to track and capture the Cuckoo, though they sometimes take on other duties as the royal family requires. Sort of a royal black ops, their personal bevy of assassins.
- there's no overarching religion but they have a sort of pantheon of folk heroes, important historical figures who are like old-school saints, one step in the human and the spirit worlds. each one has an epithet that is the name of a bird -- the Cuckoo, the Peregrine, the Sparrow... and each one has a bevy of associated legends and folk tales. Most start off based on real people but of course the story becomes distorted over time, heroes get folded into each other, old ones are lost, etc.

The Birds: Legends

- The Cuckoo: Cularus! In legends he is painted as a traitorous backstabber from the start, who took advantage of the Queen's kindness to enact a terrible vengeance on behalf of his dark progenitor. Then he vanished to continue wreaking havoc on the world. He is a terrible trickster whose only desire is to consume and destroy. His favorite tactic is to pretend to be a kind and loving person in order to ingratiate himself with a kind and good person, only to take and/or destroy everything they hold dear before moving on. Even when he does this to cruel people he's the villain somehow.
- The Peregrine: The Prince. Legends have painted him as a noble knight who tenderly loved and was cruelly used by the Cuckoo. He is a romantic and heroic figure with all sorts of exploits attributed to him, as much about his warrior prowess as the purity of the love in his heart (so, very Arthurian). The leader of the Falcon Guard is named the Peregrine in honor of him. They say he still hunts his beloved to this day, to finish what he could not on that fateful day when the Cuckoo revealed his true colors.
- The Dove: The Queen. A gentle and romantic figure, gently, beautiful, and wise, who was cruelly betrayed by the child she took in out of compassion for its innocence.
- The Rook: The lovable rogue who made good. Han Solo. Lots of fun adventures attributed to him. The good trickster. Also has a lot of scholarly stories attributed to him for some reason?
- The Sparrow: Rossolina, a famous thief who used a pair of bracers possessed by two helper spirits. They say that if you can find the bracers you will be able to find her stash of treasure and become rich beyond your wildest dreams. Lots of stories about her giving evil rich people their comeuppance, also about her stealing impossible things (i.e. the color of a sunset).

The Lifeblood: Spirits

- elemental spirits! yay! they are everywhere and are of every possible aspect of nature. always more of them being generated.
- in their weakest form they are automata, no consciousness. however as they grow in power they gain sentience and intelligence. they grow in power by devouring other spirits, with the most potent growth coming from devouring those of their own type.
- when spirits "die" they degrade and are cleaned of individuality before being recycled into new spirits. So the Lifestream basically.
- human souls are a special kind of spirit in that they are relatively weak, cannot devour each other, and appear with intelligence from the get-go. when they die they are cleaned of individuality and recycled.
- reincarnation is the rare phenomenon when a spirit is recycled with all or a significant part of the previous incarnation's personality/individuality still attached. very rare, only happens through luck, with strong personalities, and with people who are remembered in their lifetime -- the fame and legends help bring them back, it's said. the replication is never perfect.
- can be forced if the spirit is nabbed not too long after death, especially if the other factors are in play. the spirit is redirected to take over the body of a blood relative, usually a child as their souls have less attached to them. the closer the blood tie the better the possession takes. however this is deeply unnatural and very traumatizing to the spirit in question, usually resulting in some kind of psychological issues.
- there are no gods, but there ARE very old and powerful spirits who occupy a god-like space. intelligence begets ego, after all, so they develop worship-like arrangements with nearby people in exchange for not fucking their shit up. they tend to be very regional, often tied to a specific place or area.
- Very powerful spirits can manifest in physical forms; the quieter the form the more powerful, following Snow Crash's principle that it's harder to make an avatar that looks like yourself in a sweet leather yukata than it is to make yourself look like a 10-foot dick that breathes fire. Spirits that can manifest without overt disruption to the area around them are the most powerful.
- The Maw is the nothing-element that exists beyond creation; it's the antithesis of all the other spirits because its element is void and non-existence.
- The "spirit-touched" are people who have a bit of elemental spirit mixed into them in the Lifestream-equivalent due to everything kinda mixing up together in varying stages of cleansing. Being spirit-touched usually means getting an element-related skill of varying power/usefulness. Anything from control over water to dowsing to being able to create a single cupful of water every three and a half days. Sometimes this means physical traits too; bark-like skin, water for blood, that kind of thing.
- Conceptual spirits like the Maw are rarer but tend to start off more powerful and intelligent since you need a certain amount of intelligence to manifest as something like "fear" or "mercy". Dangerous because they can consume spirits not of their element more easily than the nature element spirits.

The Maw

- super duper powerful since it's pure hunger and all the mini-hungers ate each other and now there's just this one immense spirit outside creation that desperately wants to eat it all om nom nom
- during its last incursion it was defeated by the Queen but, before retreating back to beyond creation, it incarnated a teensy bit of itself as a baby, with the Maw lying dormant within. This was Cularus.
- with powers awakened, the Maw is slowly devouring Cularus's spirit in order to take it over completely. once that bit of it is fully incarnated in the world, it can then transfer the rest of itself in by using Cularus' body as a portal.
- Cularus has access to a variety of Maw-derived powers in addition to the mental effects of the Maw trying to erode his ability to resist its devouring
- these powers are:
--- void-form; he becomes a shade or shadow that cannot be hurt but cannot affect the world. becomes so hungry but can't eat; usually ravenous for everything after wards.
--- partial void-form; YAY TENTACLES
--- devouring; he can consume things like Tiir without physical eating them, though his version applies to anything, not just people. does this with his dark tentacle aura.
--- immortality; he can't be hurt since he's kind of an immensely powerful eldritch spirit thing. everything just heals up with wisps of black spiritstuff.

The Face

- never outgrew the gangly and awkward phase though he's like...20-ish. or at least stuck there.
- very skinny. he didn't used to be, he had some muscle, but the Maw... :')
- average height for Medieval times??? 5' 9" or whatever. https://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm
- very pale, black hair, pale yellow eyes. he used to have different coloring but the Maw has tweaked it a bit... used to be relatively tan, with more brown-black shades in his hair, and normal amber eyes. generally looks a bit off from human though usually not too noticeable
- depending on how much Maw power he's drawing on his appearance changes... usually becomes shadowy/shaded, surrounded by a dark tentacle-y aura, and looks more gaunt and hungry, like he might rip out your throat with his teeth to drink your blood. tries not to do this since it makes the Maw's influence on him temporarily stronger.

The Magic: Technology

- All magic falls into two categories: weird one-off abilities that are the result of being "spirit-touched" OR by spirit manipulation
- manipulation takes the form of either binding the weakest form of spirit into performing a particular service/function, usually facilitated by some mechanical device, OR binding a more intelligent spirit and letting it function as a semi-independent servant
--- air spirits transmit messages instantaneously, mimicking texting or a primitive form of internet. information retrieval from a central archive.
--- fire + water spirits provide steam power which takes the place of combustion? magic!
--- royal family inherits command of a certain number of powerful spirits? part of how devastating Cularus' meltdown was was that he freed some of those spirits from bondage so they're now wandering around, the most familiar with human politics and able to easily pass as human, with a grudge against Cuculidae. the loss of those spirits + chaos of the events surrounding their freeing resulting in a great loss of power for the royal family (magna carta-like. still monarchic, but various lords and such were able to grab power/autonomy).

World Stuff (WIP forever)