HAUNTS OF LOARNE FOR NEW READERS
Welcome to the world of Loarne!
Houses and Organizations Thus Far
Jack Alice and Lady Yvanna both belong to House Diamond. The jack is comparable to the position some might call the “advisor”. Lady Yvanna is Head of House Diamond’s Guard.
Lady Ophelia is Head of House Morgan’s Guard. House Morgan was founded by a winged vampire noble. This House has the reputation of being charitable and rebellious.
House Emblem both rules a city-state and acts as an overarching Guard for their surrounding city-states. Their role is to protect people from bad circumstances and disasters.
No Solution is an organization seeking to break the curses of magical folk (they don’t do it for mortals because their curses often result in death), and it is somewhat of a conspiracy movement, looking to expose the fact that the world everyone lives in is not “real” in some way. They’re not as successful with the second goal.
They’re an organization that’s very looked-down-upon, for several reasons, notwithstanding that they have stooped to taking magical items from religious grounds (according to rumors). So people typically only join if they’re down-on-their-luck mortals, or cursed magical folk. Typically only magical folk who’ve had curses removed can move up the ranks very easily.
“Fates” and the Role They Play
As Christoff and Lady Yvanna explained, your Fate is not something that you’re just obligated to fulfill: you must fulfill whatever it is that your task is, almost like a “curse” of it’s own. It’s sort of a life’s calling and is mostly what’s used to determine your career. For instance, Aldebaranne’s Fate is to travel endlessly, Yvanna’s Fate is to act as “Deus Ex Machina”, and Chris’s Fate is to devote himself to studies.
Fates are discovered through dream, but some struggle with this. If you don’t figure out your Fate it will still affect you and you will end up with a bad lot in life if your Fate and career/lifestyle don’t match up correctly. In order to circumvent bad effects, a lot of people will choose to take potentially dangerous magic drugs to force the dream to come.
Geography and Economy
Loarne Supercontinent is dry in many places the further away from the oceans you go, aside from a few well-watered copses scattered throughout. There’s forested tundras at the poles, and near the coasts are the forests and swampland; often the habitats mix into each other. There’s no clear cut boundaries for these biomes.
The supercontinent is broken up into countries, but country lines mean almost nothing: people are mostly ruled by the Houses of the city-states they dwell in. There’s no rules for starting a House except that you must have royal blood to do it, or else your House will not be recognized by other ruling Houses.
The people of this world are much more cooperative with each other and there is not as much economic disparity. The people who dwell in deserts are obviously much less off than the people who dwell near the coast lines, but almost nobody is starving here. Water is very precious to desert dwellers and so they mostly contract out airship captains to fetch water for them. There is some water piping but it often does not go far into the desert. Luckily, all of the water in the seas and oceans is freshwater, though teeming with magical creatures and peoples more deadly than those on land.