Doe-de-doe.
((Some things are invisible, and not shown on the spinning planet view.))
{1} - While Yon tries to calm The Caged One down and coax it from hatred, it becomes enraged and unleashes a blast of the Power It stole from her, scarring the third continent.
{5} - One of the minor gods create many veins of Telekill Alloy underneath the planet's surface. This is a Good Idea.
{1} - Auphanim creates the Deep Spawn to watch over The Caged One. He first designs the Spawn, and leaves masses of Cores in place during his design of the Administrators. While nobody is watching, The Caged One somehow compromises most of the caverns by awakening a few, who then begin awakening others. It is in telepathic contact with them.
{1} - Ar'kahal accidentally coats the ground in toxic slime.
{3} - Neyravah mutates cycliers into an aquatic varient, but doesn't manage to get them capable of reproduction.
{3} - The Caged One now considers its telepathy to be complete.
{3} - The Thoquas Hive decides that Love is probably generally better than Hate.
The planet is primarily made of pure rock.
The planet has a molten core.
The Planet has three continents.
The atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen at 22% oxygen.
The planet has The Caged One.
The planet has sparse veins of gemstones.
The planet has many veins of Telekill Alloy, which is decidedly harmful to nearby sapients.
The planet has veins of mana crystals.
The planet has magical leylines. There are three branches, leading from The Caged One, each supplies a different continent. There are 2-3 major concentrations per continent, discounting the massive concentration in Auphanim's mountain. Small leylines are scattered throughout each continent.
The second continent has a giant mountain, dedicated to Auphanim's greatness. The mountain is surrounded by a 'bottomless pit' that leads into space, and has air filters that prevent atmosphere leakage.
The third continent is covered in fertile soil.
The planet orbits a star, otherwise alone in a void.
Maka Trees - These somewhat twisting trees have shaggy, hanging leaves. They can hibernate and survive indefinitely in a vacuum while continually under cosmic bombardment. They have adapted to prefer a chlorine rich environment, wherein they thrive. They convert chlorine gas to oxygen, at a rate that would purify the atmosphere by 40% per turn if they completely covered all landmass.
Landmass 1: None.
Landmass 2: Seeded.
Landmass 3: Half covered.
Leypull trees - Each has a large taproot that goes deep underground, and draws up mana from the leylines where they near the surface. New growths are rare, as they spread through seeds released through the leylines, and degrade very rapidly if they don't catch on the ground. It takes decades for the new sprouts to dig through the rock to reach the surface. The trees produce soft nuts that lightly concentrate mana. They do not need soil.
Landmass 1: Few, sparse, near the coasts.
Landmass 2: Few, sparse, near the coasts.
Landmass 3: None.
Thoquas - Small worms that live deep underground, capable of living solely off of extreme heat. They can burrow through rock. They can mutate with the aid of mana crystals or leylines, often fatally for the latter. The Thoquas have evolved into a telepathic hivemind, with no sense of the individual. They are psionically linked to The Caged One.
Gribbers, large (3-4 inches long at birth, eventually growing to become cattle-sized), omnivorous, millipede-like creatures that feed on nearly anything organic. Their coloration is usually a purple or blue so dark it's easily mistaken for black. They tend travel in groups. They are very difficult to kill.
Landmass 1: Sparse small groups.
Landmass 2: Sparse small groups.
Landmass 3: Sparse small groups.
Cyclers - A species of land-bound insects. They consume dead organic matter, and process it into a nutriet rich fertilizer. They can survive in a chlorine-rich environment, and breathe oxygen
Landmass 1: Abundant.
Landmass 2: None.
Landmass 3: Abundant.
Trilobcyclers - Aquatic arthropods, with flattened, ovoid bodies. The tagmata are not very distinct, but they are present--head, thorax, abdomen. Each segment in the thoracic and abdominal tagmata has a pair of fin-like limbs (somewhat similar to the uropods of Terran crustaceans). The dorsal surface of the segments are covered in thick chitin, which is in turn covered with a type of symbiotic algae. Adult trilobcyclers float on or near the surface in the day, and burrow partway into the sea floor (no more than 70-100 feet deep) at night.
Trilobcyclers reproduce with eggs. Their larvae are flat, ovoid, and green. Larval trilobcyclers swim under the surface, and feed off of detritus and yolk until their algae are well-established.
Trilobcyclers have two sources of nutrition: The photosynthesized glucose from the algae on their backs, and the nutrients in the sea floor. They have their names in part because of their three-part bodies and in part because of how they cycle nutrients from the sea floor to the surface.
Incomplete - Incapable of reproduction.
Souls - Partially completed. Fragments of The Caged One. They grow with their experiences in life, and eventually reform with it after death. They currently do not mix.
Mana fuel sources
In ascending order of Potency:
Word: Word is the known tonal combinations that can cause minor magics to occur, such as sparking a fire, snuffing a candle or moving a couple pounds of material about. Most anyone can attempt to learn these, and learning these spells are the firsts steps any would-be mage takes in most cases. Word is the result of magic empowered by the Belief that magic works through speech.
World: World draws power from the world around the caster, be it from a forest, an ancient mountain, a desert oasis or one of the planet's leylines; there are few accomplished mages that practice World alone, as there are many dead zones around the world where there are no ready sources. Knowledge of World magic usually indicates a laymen learner of magic has started to gain some decent knowledge of the mechanics of magic itself, and may be hired as an adviser or their word given more weight than a simple amateur.
Will: The will of the soul, Will is the act of forcing magic to occur through the strength of one's thoughts. Will mages tire much more quickly than any other mage, and are more prone to burn out than most thanks to how easy it is for them to exceed their safe limits. Mages that become adept at Will magic can expect to be held in high demand and esteem for their prowess.
Blood: Blood is less potent than Soul, but still a far cry above what one can usually expect out of Will. Blood requires a much larger amount of fuel for the same purpose as Soul does, and as such there are no blood mages who use their own blood exclusively (or at least they have very brief careers).
Something that would count as blood flowing (Ex: A silicon beings Magma Veins) generates Blood Magic. Blood magic can reach, or at least approach, Soul levels of power if the blood used is exclusively comprised to White Blood Cells. White Blood is more responsive to magic and has a greater sense of ownership than the other parts of the blood. This has to do with White Blood being something like the soul of blood, born from the proto-souls, the Possibility Cells, contained in the marrow of the bone.
White Blood is primarily concerned with defending the body, tied to the concepts of SENSING and REJECTION, and has intrinsic Order magic piercing abilities and detection capabilities, with potential immunal rebellion as a recoil from usage. The more harm (from toxins and disease usually but also magic when White Blood is activated) that is done to the body, the more blood is saturated with White Blood, and the easier the body can fight off the same harm. Imparted qualities from use vary.
Possibility Cells are Chaos to White Blood's Order, useful in returning the body to a past state. As always with Chaos, control is easily lost, resulting in magically empowered tumors that turn all surrounding flesh into a mess of tumors and puss unless one can exert enough control over the intruding flesh to suppress and reverse the damage. Highly useful in creating new additions to the body.
Soul: Burning the very essence of self, Souls, be it the caster's own or those of the dead, are the most powerful magic fuel type.
The magic types (Word/World/Will/Blood/Soul) are just fuel sources for the most part, like different octane gasoline for a car. The only thing making this analogy not fit perfectly is that some fuel types are more suited to certain pursuits than others (World magic is best for detecting/manipulating leylines, Blood magic blood, etc.)
And unrelated to the power scale used above:
Belief: Belief draws power from the belief of souls, which creates a pool of slowly refilling multi-dimensional metamagic that the subject of the belief can tap into for their own benefit; only the belief of millions over a significant period of time generates an appreciable amount of magic for the subject to use. The subject of the belief does not need to be sapient, or even sentient, to be empowered by belief (e.g. precious metals, gems, a sword). As the amount of magic varies proportionally with the amount of Belief accrued, Unlike the other sources, Belief is an external source.
Order: The null, unchanging, anti-existence, and spans all possibilities, existing as a pure void between realities. Perfect order is nothing, a void where not even time is needed, perfect stasis. Order contains within its themes: rejection, the exclusion of everything not the self, prevention of change of self. Extremely rare.
Chaos: Creation, change, the new, action quantified, existence, and exclusive to single possibilities. Perfect chaos is anything, constant creation, boundless energy leading to nuke-like cancer. Extremely rare.
Soul Magic has, as part of its domain of superiority over other sources, the balance of Order and Chaos of a soul. Saturation of just one type in a soul increases yield, though each individual has their own ideal balance, which changes over time (unless a soul is dead or is pure Order; in those cases, the ideal state is locked down).
As polar opposites, significant interactions between Order and Chaos results in a massive all-annihilating explosion.
Auphanim: 1/turn
Ar'kahal: 1/turn
Yon: 0.3 stored, 1.10/turn
Neyravah: 1/turn
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Ar'kahal spreads his senses out, and gives a loud yelp of sheer terror as he finds a
!!MASSIVE GAPING WOUND IN SPACE-TIME!!He then chastises himself. The hole is the same as its always been. Now, the advanced form of a caged one emerging from it and heading straight for the planet is new. Very Bad, that, not at all part of his Plan. He briefly considers the merits and demerits of trying to hurl Yon at it.