The Nations of Radix: Aracanoc

Now, maybe this is just the super-geek in me, since I love magic and all that stuff, but I loved creating Aracanoc and all its weird inhabitants.  To be honest, I got so excited when I was working on it, I suffered from two huge issues: too many ideas to use for one nation, and not nearly enough ability to focus on full development.  So, in the end, it took me the most time, and although I think it may be a bit unbalanced as far as "what's available to be done" there, I was still happy with the results.

Now, when I first created the three countries, I wanted to get a certain feeling of precarious balance.  One nation had the water, one nation had the food, and one nation had the magic to keep them all connected.  Without the others, any individual country wouldn't work on its own.  Seems to make sense, right?

Until you really break it down.  Food and water really don't balance versus magic.  Seriously, what's stopping the magic users from just taking over the other three countries?  I didn't really have to worry about the others; they couldn't really do anything to the other without the aid of Aracanoc, and they didn't really have the power to honestly take the magic country, but it didn't make a lot of sense in the other direction.

So I had to add in a conflict that would help the balance make more sense.  Of course, it wasn't that hard to come up with something.

The idea was that each root provided a sort of "power source" as it interacts with the country it pierces.  Aracanoc was unique, in that instead of just one root, it actually was the result of a landmass formed between two.  This particular fact was what caused magic to naturally occur in the country, making it far easier for its residents to learn Elemental Magic and bending it to their own will.

The key point, though, is that magic naturally occurs.  So it's not too far to believe that it shows up in natural form, or warps the forms of those nearby.  There was my answer: Outside of a few monstrous humanoid races that had similar origins to the rest of the humanoids, Aracanoc was the "birthplace" of monsters.  Sure, a few of them accidently found their way to other countries through the Nebula, whether through experimentation or force from their fellows, but for the most part they took up residence here.

Still, that wasn't everything.  Should a bunch of wizards decide they actually need to live in a country naturally inhabited with an innumerable amount of monsters, it wouldn't make sense that they'd just constantly battle these creatures the whole time.  Constant battle isn't exactly conducive to studying magic. What are a bunch of super-powered beings to do?

Create a big floating city, of course.

I wanted to make sure the city mirrored the magic it was intended to represent, so I had it supported by six pillars, each to represent a root or element of magic.  Each pillar, which in truth was a wizard's tower used to support the city, was created as the "pinnacle" of the elemental mastery and was controlled by a singular wizard who claimed the most mastery over that particular element.  Besides support the grand super-structure above, where people could study to their hearts content without fear of interruption from monsters, they all served an additional purpose: each, in their own way, kept the monsters from climbing to the city, but only through the active use of the "supervisor's" magic.

Since the most powerful wizards in the world were occupied constantly with defending their fair city at all times, they were unable to seriously mount any sort of offensive on the other countries.  Of course, creating a huge disc blocking out the sun for all the creatures underneath caused them to mutate and become more problematic than they ever were, but that... Well, that's a story for another time.

1 comment:

  1. You're getting me questioning what's to happen next! Your though process is unreal...

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