Dystopia

[SA]

Secrets of Myr

[spoiler=Destiny]̢,"There are no regrets.

Yes, we have done terrible things.  We have spawned monstrosities of annihilative fury, birthed and ended worlds of unquantifiable essence on a whim, wrought fathomless intellects whose wills shape the very substance of Creation, and set in motion events that will doubtless prove the unmaking of our own existence.

And yet, for all the travesties we have rendered in the name of necessity â,¬' of greed, of science â,¬' we remain undaunted and unashamed.

For we are changed.

We have been called fodder, fools, gods, even madmen.  We have run the gamut from pariah to Regal, and transcended even that.  We wandered in the soundless chill of Void, made parlance with beings of sordid treachery and untruthâ,¬Â¦ we did many things.

But such are trivialities, exploits of the arrogant and the naïve.  For the sake of these fanciful ideals we broke ourselves upon the jagged shores of Anathemaâ,¬Â¦ and it was in the aftermath of our own destruction that we awoke to our folly.â,¬Â

Something stirred in the earth beneath, and the walls shivered.  My shackles giggled and gibbered quietly, tightening under some animal impetus and slicing through my raw and beaten flesh.

â,¬Å"This place seethes with a terrible and beautiful potentiality the likes of which you will never know, and for a moment, torn and twisted on the very boundary of Reason, we glimpsed that simple truth.â,¬Â

Blood ran free through the contours and grooves of the altar, pattering softly on the floor.

â,¬Å"So we do not seek to justify ourselves, nor do we strive to condemn.  We do not call ourselves saviors, or deceivers.â,¬Â

My torturer looked down upon me with a look of almost maternal affection, and with the gentlest of motions caressed my quivering cheek.

â,¬Å"We can call ourselves nothing more than privileged.â,¬Â

_____

When it is finished with me, and the pale skittering creatures that swarm mindlessly about the floor have wormed their way into my bloodied lacerations to seal them shut (madness beyond even the horrors of the torture itself), it turns to me with that same sardonic grin, marred this time by the contortions wrought upon it by its passage through the Ã' ther, and by the sickening spatters of my own coagulating blood.

It tells me its name, though the pronunciation is beyond me.

I ask it why I must know these things.  I ask it what it wants from me.  Why did it not simply kill me like it did my comrades, twisting them, transforming them, unmaking them?  Why am I still alive?

And it speaks againâ,¬Â¦

â,¬Å"I am not telling you this because you are somehow significant.  I do not think this knowledge will serve you, for in your exposition you would be labeled a fool and a heretic.â,¬Â

I watch the rhythmic pulse of the living, scurrying floor as my hands wander numbly across my freshly sealed wounds.  They have scarred white, and I can almost feel the hideous insects that have made my flesh their home moving beneath my skin.  I do not look at them.

â,¬Å"No, I am telling you precisely because you can do nothing.  You are impotent, one meaningless man among many, and the knowledge I shall impart to you is beyond what they can comprehend.

â,¬Å"It is something they will not accept.â,¬Â

And so it begins[/i]

[spoiler]Amissa,
I hope this letter finds you in good stead.  I have left Orioclinth and gone somewhere the Inquisitors will not hope to find me.  Do not bother to search for me; there is a price on my head too dear to risk a rendezvous.  It is odd, now that I am a wanted man.  It seems that my â,¬Å"heresyâ,¬Â has earned me a great deal of notoriety, the kind I could not have hoped for as a scholar.
With this letter I have, signed and sealed, the entire collection of my works since the Second Rising.  Take the package to Sildur ufâ,¬,,¢Zeannis; he will know what to do.
Forgive me.

Sulqain

[/i]

It is a difficult thing, writing what I have heard.  The knowledge presses at the confines of my mind, stressed near to bursting.  I have forgotten nary a word of what the Ancient One spoke, and I am at a loss to decide what should come first.

It claimed there was no point, that my words would ring upon deaf ears, or that I would become a hunted man.  And I confess that it was right.  But I think I write in defiance, challenging its pretentious exclamations by confronting that very futility.  I believe my brother philosophers must know, even those who have condemned me.  Theirs is a love of knowledge, which I share, and even damned as I am in the eyes of my peers, they must be enlightened.

â,¬ËEnlightenedâ,¬,,¢.  They tell us that knowledge is the path to true enlightenment.  We have burned, raped, slaughteredâ,¬Â¦ all in the pursuit of knowledge.  But I tell you, it is a burden.

There is so much that must be said.
[spoiler]The IoValde
What we know of them is a lie.  They tell us that the spider folk were destroyed, consumed by their own avarice and condemned to a half life in the Twilit Ã' ther.  I tell you this is fallacy.  How can it be that they are gone?  Think for a moment just how far their empire reached.  Admittedly, in their fifty millennia of expansion they never once set across the seas: Orioclinth and Ehrune have no record â,¬' be it in the annals of the people or in the memories of the earth â,¬' that the IoValde ever graced foreign shores, and the very nature of Naovine is incontrovertible protection against the predations of their kind.

But what of the lands beyond Myrshal?  What of the Counterfeit Realities and of the Overreach?  I hardly need mention the copious documentation of the known geodesics, in which many of their Web Cities lie abandoned among the convoluted passages of the Bright Ã' ther.  There are thought-constructs within these cities whose roots plumb the depths of the Ersatz Chain, and this is no small feat, even by their standards!

And this speaks only of the pathways traversed by our own Navigators, based upon the calculations translated from the IoValdeâ,¬,,¢s own texts.  We have barely scratched the surface of what they achieved, and the Ã' ther is thought to be infinite!  There may be thousands, if not millions of such sites reaching far into the wilds of the Counterfeit Realities, and how far could the Cataclysm have reached?

I tell you, they live even to this day.  How I came upon the knowledge I shall now impart to you is not important.  That is my Story, and I will bear it alone.  Know only that this is no foolâ,¬,,¢s tale.

Birth
The IoValde claimed to have had their true birth at the fall of Veighasht.  With the destruction of the dhampir and the exodus of the stonefolk, they were free to exercise their phenomenal minds in ways they had once considered impossible.

Their first city burgeoned on the southeastern coast of Chaultine, and we have concrete evidence of residual psionic resonances dating back circa 50â,¬,,¢000 B.M.E. that support this.  In time, as more of their brethren became attuned to psionics, the city grew in size until a fledgling nation was born.  Their own development stifled the progress of humanity, who regarded these enigmatic beings as something akin to gods and were thus easy to bring to heel.

For centuries we did not know why they never ventured further inland, why no more than fifty miles from the coast there would simply cease to be any evidence of their influence.  But I can tell you now that they were afraid.  Afraid of their mastersâ,¬,,¢ legacy, afraid of the dark things that lurk in the forests of the Aggremoor, afraid of the shadow that leeched forth from the Dark Ã' ther when the dhampir lost their stranglehold on the Crescent Continent.

And so they flourished, never straying too far from coast, but forging an empire that bored deep into the bowels of Creation.

Expansion
It was 500 years after their supposed birth that the IoValde first discovered the geodesics.  They were tentative in their exploration at first, having no understanding of the apparent chaos that seemed to define the Counterfeit Realities.  Hence, their initial forays were through the medium of dreams.

Eventually, though, they began physical exploration, and soon after that, expansion.  The first of their Web Cities within the Bright Ã' ther did not withstand the predation of natives for long, but their second was a triumphant expression of their arcane might.  From that first tentative step their expansion continued ever onward, through the chaos of the Ildebast Complex into the Nameless Territories beyond.

Illumination
Ironically, it was their rapacious expansionism that would prove their weakness, for the IoValde colonies were widespread and disconnected, and information traveled at a capricious pace, taking moments or even years to travel depending on the temperament of the Ã' thereal medium.

I do not know why the Fell struck first or if that was indeed the case, as they are known to respond to the merest slight with a brutality more shocking even than the Hellkind or the Vicca.  But they did attack, and the outlying colonies were devastated.  The IoValde thought themselves prepared for any eventuality, but the Fell proved an indomitable force even in the face of the space-altering magics they wielded.

But the cessation of their assault came just as abruptly.  The Fell relented and sent â,¬Ëambassadorsâ,¬,,¢ to negotiate with the IoValde, and for reasons inscrutable to all but themselves, they told them all the secrets of the Ersatz Chain.

This would prove pivotal in the IoValde understanding of reality and its conceptual underpinnings: it was with this vile knowledge that they forged the Plasmoclast Engine.[/spoiler][/spoiler]
It moves like nothing I have ever seen.  Duikor twists and pivots, his ancient chassis grinding frustratedly as he turns here and there to get a bearing on this dancing, cackling fiend.  But it is gone as swiftly as it comes, stepping in and out of space in impossible ways, and one by one our men fall.

Oliadra screams her frenzied scream and swings blindly at our attacker, but it has already moved.  It dissipates like smoke on a high wind, and her sword meets solid emptiness and shatters.  But the shards do not fall as they should: instead they swarm, descending upon her like ravenous locusts, piercing, slicing and tearing.

In seconds she is stripped to her bloodied bones.

It appears again, now behind Bevdrict, and its taloned fingers cleave his waist like the very air itself.  He falls in halves, and his entrailsâ,¬Â¦

Oh gods.

It is at one moment here and suddenly there, and the haggard resistance of the guardsmen is pointless.  If shapes fire from a manâ,¬,,¢s very flesh, and casts the screaming inferno amongst his comrades.  The flames spread like a contagion, leaping from man to man and consuming them all.  Duikor is among them, and he offers one last ululation to his gods before the conflagration takes him.

And then it is upon meâ,¬Â¦

[spoiler]Consider for a moment what I have just told you.  We believed the IoValde to be geniuses â,¬' and that is true to a great extent â,¬' but we were wrong in our belief that they designed and constructed the Plasmoclast Engine under their own power.  What does it mean, that the Fell had a hand in its creation?  What was their intent?

And why in all the Ã' ther would the IoValde accept?

For all my delvings into this maddening mystery I cannot so much as hazard a guess.  I have infiltrated an Amber Citadel, scoured the blasphemous ruins of numerous Web Cities, and even parleyed with-

No matter.  Suffice it to say that this transcends anything we could have expected.

I have included among my notes the coordinates of the Web Cities my party discovered in their forays through the Bright as well as a few of the more perplexing algorithms we extracted from the Thought Constructs.  I do not know what you can or should do with them, but I advise you to proceed with utmost caution; there are things among those ruins that must not be woken.

_____

If what I have been told is true â,¬' and somehow I know it in my heart to be so â,¬' then we have been deceived.  Our cosmologies, our mathematics, even our faith in Icarum the All-knowing are all misguided.  We know something, to be sure, but our knowledge is as inconsequential as the Veiled One claimed it to be.
[spoiler]The Great Circles
As you well know, the Metaphysical Planes or Great Circles are oriented in a cycle of sorts, the unstoppable progression of all substance, from its birth through to its inevitable destruction and subsequent rebirth.  Sitting at both the beginning and end of this cycle is Void, the source of all things, paradoxically comprised of both everything and nothing.  Void is succeeded by Genesis, the shaper of things wherein the stuff of Creation is made whole.  Genesis gives way to Growth, wherein things evolve and progress.

The next step is debatable, and I neednâ,¬,,¢t give my opinion of the matter as you know it full well, but at some point we enter the Great Circle of Entropy, and the degradation of substance begins.

But it is Destruction, the supposed Final Circle, wherein we have been deceived.  We call this progression the Prime Circle in the belief that things will continue in such a fashion indefinitely, birth, growth, decay, death and rebirth.  Why we never questioned thisâ,¬Â¦ assurance, complacency, fear of the alternativeâ,¬Â¦ that does not matter now.  What matters is that it is not a circle.

It is a spiral.

I would not tell you this if I had not seen it with my own eyes.  The words of a Veiled One are honeyed, twisted with half-truths and impossibilities, so I would not have written this lest I found the evidence for myself.  I went into the heart of Ehrune, past the Whispersong Forests and deep into the plains of Chiaroscuro.  Only one man would accompany me, for these are dark places in every sense and only the bravest â,¬' nay, maddest of souls would dare hazard the task.

I went in search of Penumbra, Sildur.  The City of Disbelief.  I wanted to see the world as it was when the veil of mundanity has been stripped away, when the lies have been shattered and cast into the winds and only the unforgiving reality remains.

And I found it.

The truth was far from what I had hoped.[/spoiler][/spoiler]
If light can be called a presence, and darkness an absence, then that substance is to the shadows of the night as the midnight skies are to the stars that lie suspended therein.  It is not some kind of antidarkness, rather, it is as though the darkness itself has been condensed and strengthened, given a form all its own.  But it is not form in the sense that we understand it.  For all that it moves and stalks and whispers, it is still nothing more than an absence.

And that is the stuff from which the city is made.  Winding streets and foreboding towers wrought from the very essence of Pointlessness, lamps that flicker with a light born of Ignorance, and phantasms â,¬' parodies of true citizenry â,¬' suffused with the hollow substance of Despair.

And yet somehow the stars still shine, and the people still laugh.  The clamour of a ceaseless urban sprawl rises above the soaring rooftops, and for an infinitesimal moment it is a city like any other, alive and thriving.

An illusion.  Hollow and meaningless.  This is city born of shadow in a place far-flung and terrible.  There can be nothing as base, as dark, as vile as is Penumbra and my very soul rails against the travesty of its existence.

[spoiler]We are being driven.  Like a coachman might drive a carriage through a battlefield, we are propelled by powers far beyond our ken through places perverse and impossible, where we should never be made to tread.  They have deceived us, whispering to us secrets that serve only to plunge us further towards our inevitable extermination.

I speak of course of the IoValde, the forerunners.  They have brought us to this place on the maniacal impetus born of the blackest nihilism and we have a long way yet to go.
[spoiler]The Plasmoclast Engine
To fully appreciate the gravity of the Plasmoclast Cataclysm, one must first understand the technology that instigated it.  We know that it is transmutative, capable of manipulating the fundamental structure of its target, but we were wrong to assume that plasmoclast technology could only implement physical changes.

In fact, the power of the weapon is far more profound that.  The IoValde had managed to design a device capable of transforming even the abstract nature of an object.  For instance, say it was aimed at a chair.  Not only could it transform the chair into another solid object, but it could also transform it into the sound of a chair.  And by this I do not mean the sound a chair makes when it bumps against something, or the sound it makes (or rather, does not make) when it is motionless, but the very sound of a chair that has been turned into pure sound.

Conversely, they might target heat and transform it into a solid expression of heat, or target motion and transform it into the liquid expression of motion.  This is not the limit of its scope â,¬' the possibilities are near endless.

But what is most frightening about this technology is that in its manipulation of abstracts it could even target thought.  It could target things with no physical representation, like fear or the concept of winter (as opposed to winter itself), and change them into something else altogether.  I have seen a manâ,¬,,¢s hatred blossom into a living, howling thing and burst free of his skull to raze a city to the ground.  Words cannot adequately capture the madness â,¬' the sheer destructive power of this device.

And the IoValde loved it.  With it they were gods, the basest elements of reality subject to their whim.  But they were no fools.  They understood full well that such power was beyond their control, and it was rare indeed when they dared wield it.

The Hell-Rise
The Divine Edicts speak of daemons of numerous occasions, and we know that there were many whose power was comparable to â,¬' if not greater than â,¬' that of the gods.  I tell you now to forget what the teachings speak of them, for everything you have heard is a gross understatement at best.  They are evil incarnate, spawned from a realm in the foulest corner of the Ã' ther.  I will waste no words trying to quantify their malice as it transcends calculation; know only that they live for suffering of all things, even their own kindâ,¬Â¦ even themselves.

The Fell, by contrast, are forever beyond terms of good and evil.  When the IoValde learned from them the secrets of Plasmoclast, the Fell returned whence they came, and in their absence the daemonkind were allowed to rise.

There is nothing as terrible as the predations of a daemon.  They never tire, they never falter, and they know full well the concept of mercy and delight in denying their victims its sanctuary.  Hell is viral, corrupting and consuming all the worlds it touches, and the IoValde could not hope to repel its hordes.  So they did the one thing they could.  The used the one power that would ensure their success against the Hellkind, and in its execution the very multiverse was sundered.

The Plasmoclast Cataclysm
The outlying worlds were struck first, and the IoValde were unprepared for such a frenzied assault.  It did not take long for them to realize the gravity of the situation, and they retaliated by altering the plagued worlds until they were no longer recognizable.  But though countless daemons were consumed or warped by the attack, they did not halt.  They struck ever onward, driving deeper into the heart of IoValde territory, and the IoValde began to retreat, destroying, abandoning or transforming their own cities in their wake.

For the first time in millennia the IoValde returned to Mýrshal, barricading it against the daemonic onslaught by warping the surrounding worlds into monstrous weapons and existential deathtraps.  But it was not enough.  The daemons threw themselves at the barricade in an incessant assault, until reality itself cried out in agony.

Soon a rift was opened on the eastern coast of Chaultine, and through it poured a seething torrent of pain and destructive lust.  The IoValde bombarded the site with Plasmoclast energies, but still the Hellkind came.

They had but one option left.  They altered themselves.  They altered Mýr, stripping it of its corporeality and broadcasting it into the realm of thought and dream.  The power consumed in the final process was phenomenal, and the backlash catapulted them to a place far beyond Hell and the Overreach, to the very boundary of Creation.

Transcendence
It was there that they came to understand.  Standing at the edge of Creation they saw the truth of the Great Circle and the inevitability of its demise when all reality would eventually tumble into the annihilating nothingness of Oblivion.  And they saw the city, lurking on the precipice, a place formed from nothingness that would be the final apotheosis of mortalkind.

You see, Penumbra is the End.  It is frozen in the final moment of the multiverseâ,¬,,¢s existence, when all else has decayed and disappeared.  It is a world consumed by the hubris of mortals, even to its fiery core; a city of boundless proportions suffused with shadow and devoid of meaning.  This is the final destination, the final incarnation of Myr.

Our world will be the last, and it will endure.  The IoValde saw that, and they understood their task.  They would guide us, the mortals of Myr, so that we might forever defy the predations of Oblivion.  But in order to do that there must be nothing in us to destroy.  We must be meaningless, empty.

And so they seek to destroy all that defines us, all that quantifies us, and by that destructive gesture render us immortal.

We will become Penumbra.[/spoiler][/spoiler][/spoiler]

[SA]

Religion

Metaphysics

In the beginning there was nothingâ,¬Â¦

Bah!

To say that would be utterly ludicrous.  To suggest that at some far-flung instant in the history of Eternity, there existed a point wherein time and substance were yet unformed, would not only be trite and hopelessly cliché, but also totally paradoxical.  How then, if one were to entertain such a concept of a spontaneous parthenogenic origin, would such an event come to pass?  After all, by what inscrutable force can something be said to rise from nothing?

Nay, quash such notions of instance born of absence.  For in the beginning there was substance.

Yes, it is as frightfully simple as that.  In that unfathomable instant beyond time, when dark was but part of light and the shape and form of existence was without definition, there was naught but a sliver of quintessence: protean, inestimable and unchecked.

Now, it would not be wholly accurate to call it Chaos, for true Chaos is in itself an oxymoron, but like Chaos, that substance seethed with a maelstrom of unbridled possibility, and untold and forgotten wonders were born within its primeval essence.

Such were the first dreams â,¬' not the pained and wanting reverie of mortal men, but the pure dreams of unshaped design, potential and serendipitous creation, sired from a consciousness utterly beyond our ken.

This is but one such dream.

â,¬' Ludriger Fharkas, a drunkard and philosopher

[/i]
The science of psionics (though its status as a science is hotly debated; many scholars relegate it to the ranks of the preternatural and pseudoscientific) has its foundations in the structure of the reality, and to truly understand its machinations (if such understanding is indeed possible) requires a sound comprehension of the Geodesics, the â,¬Å"Great Spheresâ,¬Â of reality.

The Perceptual Dimensions, by Tarrynad ufâ,¬,,¢Sullein
On the cosmic scale reality can be divided into two primary levels, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. Macrocosm is the world at large, reality on a massive level, and can be considered the â,¬Å"planeâ,¬Â of mortal experience.

The multitudinous microcosms, subunits of the Macrocosm, are harder to define, as they reflect the mindset of those who occupy them and have no clear dimensions. They can be anywhere, and, given sufficiently divergent minds to generate them, consist of anything. Take, for example, the inhabitants of a valley who espouse an animistic culture. They would see spirits that occupy the valley, and perhaps even coax them into performing actions or even waging war. Were a stranger to enter that valley, it would on a fundamental level be a different valley, for not only would he fail to perceive the spirits, they, at least on a perceptual level relative to the newcomer, would not in fact exist.

But microcosms are not purely the province of physical existence, for they are also mental entities. A creatureâ,¬,,¢s mind, for example, is a microcosm, a sub-reality influenced by the macrocosmic whole within which that creature resides. It can therefore be said to exist on two planes at once: the â,¬Å"globalâ,¬Â reality and the internal reality of its own devising.

Interestingly, there seems to be no limit to the subdivisions potential in a microcosm. For instance, a woman might develop a complex wherein she inhabits an entirely different world. Within that world she might encounter constructs of her own psyche, entities who themselves possess unique personalities. They would in and of themselves be microcosms within a microcosm, and the sequence continues indefinitely.

The strength of a microcosm is determined by the force of will possessed by those who inhabit it, or those who created it. For example, in the instance of the stranger to the valley, over time the nativesâ,¬,,¢ perception would be impressed upon the newcomer (their collective willpower being greater than that of the newcomer), so that he would eventually share the same reality and both observe and be affected by the animistic spirits.  Similarly, the womanâ,¬,,¢s â,¬Å"alter egosâ,¬Â might obtain enough reality that they manifest outside of her mind, perhaps as flickering illusions or phantasms; not being quite whole but existing in a more concrete form nonetheless.

A prime example of this is the â,¬Å"astral constructâ,¬Â, a phantom drawn directly from a psionâ,¬,,¢s mind and manifested as a corporeal entity, albeit one formed of volatile and unstable ectoplasm.  And such are the foundations of psionics, or â,¬Å"mentalismâ,¬Â; as my colleague Eyorduric ufâ,¬,,¢Kiuttaum describes it in his book, The Fifth Eye: â,¬Å"Psionics, then, is the application of oneâ,¬,,¢s will to manifest microsomic experience in the external macrocosm.â,¬Â

However, it must be stressed that psionic manifestation â,¬' that is, concrete, tangible psionic force â,¬' is a rare thing, despite the constant flux and interplay of the microcosms and the macrocosmic whole.  While an entire cityâ,¬,,¢s populace might all believe in the presence of some unseen, otherworldly presence, that belief itself is not enough to conjure a true physical presence.  An exceptional mind is required, either one possessed of extraordinary discipline, or one innately attuned to the conceptual vagaries of existence.  Such individuals are typically called psions or mentalists.

[SA]

The Conflagrate
Artifice Worlds

[SA]

The Counterfeit Realities

In some ways more inaccessible to mortals than the Ã' thereal realm itself, the Artifice Worlds comprise the bulk of the strange, quasi-dimensional Counterfeit Realities, places in many ways reminiscent of the material world but at times dreamlike and at others outright nightmarish.  The exact form and function of these â,¬Å"pocketsâ,¬Â of reality is impossible for any but their denizens to discern, but for the most part they are high inhospitable to conventional organisms, with geographies prone to spontaneous mutability and perversely sentient malignance.  The inhabitants themselves are an altogether different horrorâ,¬Â¦

The Great Ã' ther

[SA]

Bestiary

[SA]

Technologies of Mýr

Baennet Zzar
[note: The Resurrection]Since 2236, the Daedathed have employed the Weistarii to plunder the ruins of Dautat, and by rescuing the fallen nationâ,¬,,¢s technologies they seek to restore its former glory.  Indeed, Dautat serves as a powerful symbol for the Daedathed: a testament to the potential of mortal endeavours as well as a reminder of the price of arrogance.[/note]With the ruins of Dautat teeming with inestimable stores of arcane knowledge, Baennet Zzarâ,¬,,¢s own technological advancements come frequently and reliably.  The Weistarii ensure an annual supply of knowledge gleaned from the deathly halls of the Ghost Nation, and the Daedathed constantly works to decipher the complex and often contradictory data contained therein, as well as continuing its own scientific efforts independent of the Resurrection.

Foreigners observing the technology of Baennet Zzar often remark on its apparent outlandishness: structures the size of palaces suspended in midair without apparent support, architecture whose interior seems to subtly contradict its exterior, objects and constructs that operate independently as though possessed of some vestigial sentience, among many other such wonders.  The uneducated call it magic, but in truth the forces that dictate such phenomena are clearly understood by Zzari scientists.  Currently, the Daedathed is concerned with three general sciences: bio-manipulation, impetus technology and ioun power.  Steam power is also commonly utilised, but most scientists do not see any potential for its development.
[spoiler]NOTE:
The terms â,¬Å"technologyâ,¬Â and â,¬Å"scienceâ,¬Â may promote some confusion, as they are often used somewhat interchangeably when referring to psionics.  In general, â,¬Å"scienceâ,¬Â refers to the principles of a psionic school of thought or the theory, while â,¬Å"technologyâ,¬Â refers to its practical application.  A technology may be expressed in the form of an engine or apparatus (such as with ioun technology), or simply in its manifestation by a psion (such as bio-manipulation).

Bio-Manipulation
[note: Mockeries Walking among Us!]In a controversial move by the Daedathed, scientists have created the first â,¬Å"wholly artificialâ,¬Â organisms using bio-manipulative technology.  Dubbed â,¬Å"mockeriesâ,¬Â by the public, these organic constructs have raised questions concerning scientific ethics and what has up to this point been called the Daedathedâ,¬,,¢s â,¬Å"free reignâ,¬Â of experimentation.

Mockeries are not known to be sentient, as they depend almost entirely on the commands of their creators for their motive ability.  However, their appearance is an almost perfect semblance of the ulvenii form, and with adequate manipulation they can successfully imitate intelligent behaviour.  In this parody of life have the Daedathed gone too far?[/note]This science was obtained from the cephalopods in 2105, and its advent has resulted in a phenomenal increase in the general quality of life for the average Zzari.  It requires manipulating an organism on a cellular level, interrupting the natural processes of a cell and forcing it to perform a certain task.  As such, it is an extremely complex science; each cell must be addressed individually, meaning that a novice user may take hours to heal even a superficial wound.

There are numerous applications of bio-manipulation; it may be used as a form of regeneration, accelerating the replication of cells at the temporary expense of the subjectâ,¬,,¢s general metabolism, or it may initiate apoptotic commands, forcing a cell to destroy itself.  It may also be used to hybridise an organism, merging its cells with that of another organism so that they coexist in a form of symbiosis.  However, as the merging is on a cellular level and not a genetic one, the two creatures remain distinctly separate.  This process, called â,¬Å"meldingâ,¬Â, is sometimes used as a means of limb replacement that is swifter and more reliable (albeit less refined) than regenerating the original limb, or more frequently as a way of making new additions to a creatureâ,¬,,¢s anatomy.

The principles of bio-manipulation lie in the understanding that all complex organisms are in fact symbiotic communities of many single-celled organisms, and that each of those minute organisms may be communicated with and possibly controlled.  It is an extension of animist biology, which claims that all creatures have a spirit of sorts, and that communication with these spirits transcending both the language barrier and differing cognitive capacities is possible.

Impetus Technology
[note: The Golem Kingdom]Interestingly, the kingdom of Chaonduur in the Sundered Isles seems to have had an understanding of impetus technology long before Zzari scientists discovered it.  The High Court of Aurtoum has guardian golems that have reputedly been in the Kingâ,¬,,¢s service since pre-Medriatic times.[/note]Yet another scientific school founded in animistic principles (specifically universal animism), impetus technology revolves around the theory that matter is dependent on a series of general commands, such as Move, Destroy, Assimilate, Create, Avoid, and so on.  The impetus theory falls apart upon close scrutiny, but as one of the General Subjective Theories (and therefore subject to the law of inevitable contradiction) it works despite being mathematically illogical.

The primary use of impetus technology is in automatons, where combinations of commands are ingrained in the object and serve as its â,¬Å"spiritâ,¬Â or â,¬Å"mindâ,¬Â.  It is also used to provide Abjurative Fields, also known as force armour or aegis power.  Because of its similar application, impetus technology is sometimes confused with ioun power (see below), even though the two are in fact vastly different.

Ioun Power
[note: Conceptual Exclusivity and Possession]Because of the contrary natures of impetus and ioun technology, the presence of impetus runes on a ioun-powered device can produce unpleasant results.  The ioun matrix attempts to interpret the thaumatic energies of the impetus runes, and being unable to do so, begins to manifest "haphazard feedback" in the meme crystal.  A meme crystal thus energised will then produce "mimetic intellect", a kind of rudimentary sentience that allows it to consciously interact with its environment.  This is called possession, though no foreign intellect actually inhabits it, and can be extraordinarily dangerous in an object capable of motion.  Thankfully, this can be avoided, as long as the ioun matrix is especially designed to incorporate the impetus runes in its functions.[/note]One can safely assume that the IoValde had knowledge of this technology long before the rise of the lesser races, but the earliest "contemporary" example of its employment is in the ruins of Dautat, which is where modern Baennet scholars discovered it.  The term "ioun", a condensation of iounennion, means convoluted, and describes the intricate patterns required in the device's components.

An ioun engine is an astonishingly elaborate configuration of thousands of metal rods and wires that mirrors the formula of ambient thaumatic frequencies.  A thaumatic current is introduced to this matrix through a charged meme crystal, which causes it to generate an intense energy field that powers the device.  By altering the configuration different commands may be given.

[note: Meme Crystals]Central to the power of the ioun engine is the meme crystal, a cloudy, translucent stone, typically green or blue in hue, which may be of any size.  The name â,¬Å"crystalâ,¬Â is deceptive, as it does not actually have the properties of true crystal.  It is best described as â,¬Å"local ectoplasmâ,¬Â, a form of high density theoretical energy that is generated over time when the worldâ,¬,,¢s collective memories become to numerous for its â,¬Å"animus corpusâ,¬Â (its spirit form) to contain.  The energy is therefore condensed into a physical structure, which has the macroscopic appearance of crystal but is in fact not true matter at all.

Meme crystal is localised to East and West Corlainth, occurring in only rare quantities elsewhere.  It is generally found in sections of particularly hard earth, which makes mining for it a difficult task, but the Clerics have made its acquisition a continuing top priority.  There are eight primary crystalmines in Baennet Zzar, as well as many dozens of smaller ones, and with the tendency of meme crystal to reaccumulate over years of mining it is unlikely that the supply will run low within the next millennium.

It is important to note that the purpose of meme crystal is similar to that of the psion; both crystal and psion contain the same â,¬Å"resonant potentialâ,¬Â energies dormant within them, and indeed the ioun engine itself is often called a â,¬Å"mechanical psionâ,¬Â.  Thus, when a crystal cannot be acquired, a psion may be utilised to provide the power source for a ioun engine in its stead.[/note]Despite their complexity, ioun engines can be contained in small units, and are therefore used in numerous applications, industrial, commercial, domestic and militant.  The locomotive is dependent on the engineâ,¬,,¢s power, and with it the Clerics have successfully implemented a national railroad service that connects all of the major cities and many of the minor settlements.  For those who can afford it, it also serves as a great alternative to the traditional coal furnaces, and it is relied on for the illumination of the city streets.  Factories have relied upon it for centuries, and as it requires no fuel source it does not create any unhealthy emissions.

Most recently, ioun power has been utilised in the field communications, where it permits the transmission of audio frequencies via devices called rhiddmach.  The Sylvanst has also developed a prototype â,¬Å"resonant crystalâ,¬Â display, which can receive and relay simple pixellated images.

The two most infamous instances of ioun power are perhaps the Syadravyste and the Beoh Drehuvahd, the former being a horrendously destructive weapon that has been used only twice (with which Baennet Zzar won the Great War) and the latter being Dautat's cross-time divination device.

Theoretically, a complex enough ioun matrix would be capable of any task achievable through arcane or mundane means, but the power required for such tasks would be astronomical and the consequences unfavourable.  The largest known ioun engines are the Thought Constructs in the IoValde web cities of the Bright Ã' ther.

Steam Power
This innovation has been present in Das Dramurr for centuries and was recently introduced to Baennet Zzar by the Dramurrad Praetors in order to strengthen diplomatic ties.  Baennet Zzar is quickly striving to incorporate it into its agriculture and manufacturing industries.  It is terribly crude when compared to the ioun engine, but it is far easier to mass-produce whereas the complexity and energy requirements of ioun power makes it a precious and exclusive technology.

Devices utilising steam power are large, noisy and cumbersome, precluding them from use in most domestic devices.  Tractors, steamships and carapace walkers (huge transport vehicles which also require impetus commands) are the only large mobile instruments in which the steam engine is readily applied.  Otherwise, it is used in rural areas when ioun power cannot be afforded.  Small steam constructs do exist, but they are dangerous unless manufactured by a true craftsman and therefore best avoided in favour of ioun or impetus power.[/spoiler]

[SA]

Warfare

[SA]

Miscellaneous

[Velox]

I've taken your advice, and only digested a portion of your world (up to the bit about the nature of magic; no mages, only psionics). I really enjoyed the fiction you wrote; it had character, it was entertaining, and it made me interested in the setting. The actual meat-and-potatoes stuff I got to wasn't terrible... but it was a little confusing. It left me with many questions... meaning you have alot to answer for! But I beleive if I keep reading I will get those answers. Keep up the good work, this is looking rather good.

I especially like the elements of the game where concepts like oppression of the lower class and unchecked industrialism are included. Those are two of my turn-ons.

Hopefully I'll come to understand some of the finer points and main ideas, and I ask questions about them later.

[SA]

Good to hear, and if those are two of your turn-ons, nastynate's setting Sulos might be to your liking.  If you haven't already checked it out, I recommend you do so.

[Kindling]

This is not only the most creative campaign setting I've seen, it's also one of the most detailed (at least on the things you've covered so far)

Please do more! Please?

[SA]

Rest assured, more coming soon.  But I'm currently balancing my attentions between this setting and two collaborative efforts, so things are moving rather slow.

[SA]

Technology in Baennet Zzar is now complete!  All that's left is cuisine, the arts, architecture, transport and warfare...

Das Dramurr is in the works.

[Xathan]

Wow. The technology section is the distilled essance of awesome. It is liquid amazing. It is elemental excellence.

Seriously, my mind is offically blown. I'd give a more detailed feedback, but I'm having multiple awesomegasms and humblegasms.

Wow.

[SA]

Well, when you've cleaned yourself up, I'd appreciate any feedback you can offer.

And I'm glad you find it so... stimulating.

EDIT:
The solitary Technology section near the middle of the thread has been edited out.  The technology bit in Baennet Zzar is the juicy bit.