Cherno Caster [Noir Biopunk/Cyberpunk LitRPG]

ZASTREON, THE PLANET

Significantly larger than Earth. More landmass, but distributed across smaller continental masses.

THE BANISHMENT WHEEL

A megastructure spanning the entirety of the planet, with an internal support structure which is integrated with the planet itself while the wheel proper extends hundreds of kilometers into space. Seven spokes reach down from the wheel, through the support structure, and into the planet’s core, where the mechanism’s actual core is located. The spokes also go through an inner ring at surface level which prevents seawater or surface detritus from falling into the mechanism.

It spins constantly, producing a barrier around the planet to bolster its waning geomagnetic field, stabilizing its orbit, and most importantly preventing the Outer Gods from entering our world directly. Despite splitting the world down the middle, the wheel itself is built such that passage between its spokes remains possible, and for the purposes of long-range shipping, the Wheel is often the safest part of the journey.

It was built before recorded history began by Igaria the Wheelmaker in a grand act of rebellion, usurping control of the world for mankind. It is the central object of worship for the Seven Spokes.

A recurring inscription is found all over the wheel:

True souls they will not break

They never fade away into the past

False gods we will outlast forevermore

IMMEDIATELY RELEVANT CONTINENTS

Ashametan

The central continent on which Cherno Caster takes place. A temperate continent with three inland seas and several major mountain ranges. Its climate transitions into extremophilic, nearly alien ecologies in the south - the Beyond Frontier.

A notable portion of Ashametan to the far west is separated by untamed land, which is crossed by the Dregstone Road. The Road is threaded between sheer seaside cliffs and the northmost portions of the Beyond Frontier.

Most inhabitants of Ashametan just refer to it as "the continent".

Agertian Peninsula

A large peninsula connected to the the western coast of Ashametan. It is rich in nearly all known natural resources excepting Dregstone and a section of its coastline is protected by a mountain range, from which many rivers flow.

It contains several minor statehoods alongside extensive Calbian ruins.

The land-bridge which connects Agertia to the rest of Ashametan is run-through by the Banishment Wheel, blocking it off from access for short periods of time throughout the year.

Tiengenzen

A remote region to the far west, including a single central continent surrounded by many islands. The sea around it is so extremely turbulent that only specialized methods of transport can escape or enter the Tiengenzen Region, and it is believed that this is caused by some type of isolation megastructure built not long after the Banishment Wheel. What limited contact has been had with Tiengenzen has shown that the Seven Spokes System rarely manifests in people from the region and that alternative methods of harnessing the Soul Furnace are predominant. The region's equivalent to agencies reign with the power to overrule any normal government, and often war with one another for resources.

Xaugeth

An island whose size places it in the awkward space between a huge island and something that could be considered a new continent. It is due west of the Beyond Frontier on the northmost part of the aforementioned region. Xaugeth exhibits similarly alien ecology to the Beyond Frontier, but the life found on and around it is different enough from even the Beyond Frontier that it is believed Xaugeth may have formed atop some supermassive extraplanetary object from millions of years ago. Some theorize that Xaugeth was a possibly still active attempt by a civilization from another world to alter Zastreon's ecology to their own preference. Xaugeth's alien biosphere has not been recorded as spreading for as long as history has been recorded, however.

It is a civilized place with its own geopolitics, though its kingdoms are largely insular and out of touch with Ashametan. Several species of non-Evoy insectoid are known to inhabit the pseudo-continent.

RELEVANT STATES

Jas'raba, the City of the Gods

A vast, sprawling city built inside an open-pit mine, with a giant pile of mummified bodies in the center. It is infested with Tur'ith Ur-Baneworms and blasted by Anathemic radiation at semi-random intervals, the only safe places being eldritch cathedrals scarred around.

It was plundered for centuries and is still believed to hold hidden treasures and secrets to this day. However, only those desperate enough to brave its dangers now dare to enter it, as the potential reward is unfavorable compared to alternatives. As such, expeditions into Jas'raba tend to involve low mid-ranker contractors at best.

The Jas’raba Civilization

Jas’raban technology is eldritch and horrific in appearance as well as function to the modern humanoid. Their machines, many of which were tools for en-mass fleshgrafting of a sort, seem designed without regard for comfort, brutalizing and mutilating in the course of carrying out their functions. It seems as though they were designed to be purposely cruel, but in reality, this is just our modern perspective warping reality.

The truth is, Jas’rabans had no reason to account for pain or minimize tissue damage, because meat was nothing more than material to them. Gruesome body modification was akin to cutting one's hair, or even more accurately altering one's clothes. Jas’raba was a civilization made up entirely of Baneworms, who could easily impel their meat-shells into impossibly rapid healing, and for whom pain was meaningless.

They were the precursors of modern Baneworms; while the devolved, pitiful things we know as Primordial Baneworms mostly remained in Jas’raba, their more fortunate cousins eventually recovered and escaped, not remembering their own past glory, or the fact they had once been free from the position of parasites.

This theory even explains why the vaunted Baneworm removal machines are found in areas of the great city that resemble prisons. They’re execution devices.

As for why they met such a fate, it is believed that the Ascension Machine devolved most of the population, while the mutations which allowed the survivors to retain their faculties also rendered them hyper-sensitive to Anathema. That is not to say that Primordial Baneworms are particularly Anathema-resistant.

Afshani Sultanate

A populous and prosperous country to the north-west of Audunpoint. They hold a notable portion of the continent under their rule, and operate under a monarchistic system. Their core ruling dynasty has ruled well for the last millennium, and succession conflicts have a curious habit of leading to small-scale civil wars with relatively few casualties given the sultanate's size, in the low tens of thousands. It is believed the agencies and merchant clans of the Sultanate have a vested interest in its continued stability.

The Afshani royal family hold themselves as self-proclaimed successors of the Jas’raba Civilization. They do not actually hold the territory which contains Jas’raba and are not considered to be any sort of authority on the Jas’raba Civilization. Their royal family vehemently disagrees with the theory that the Jas’rabans were precursors to modern baneworms, instead subscribing to the theory’s predecessor, that of an ultra-stratified civilization which treated its underclasses as cattle and contended with persistent baneworm infestations.

In this aspect, the sultanate holds itself as civilized and advanced to their supposed predecessors, despite practicing forms of slavery to this day, primarily in the form of using prisoners as cheap labor paid in scrip equating to a fraction of what they would be paid for the same work normally. It's not uncommon to see individuals sell themselves into indentured servitude for fixed periods of time, but this system is, strangely enough, functional, and is often used as a social safety net by the destitute.

The Sultanate adheres closely to the Zaveshian faith, specifically a branch of it which leans away from grafting and towards the perfection of one's own natural body. Grafting is nonetheless very common, and Afshani grafters' guilds are considered to produce good work.

Calbium

The builders of the Banishment Wheel. Founded and ruled over for millennia by Zavesh and Igaria. No longer exists.

Calbian Restoration Confederacy

A wannabe successor state to Calbium, headed by a Fullgraft made by a rogue Zaveshian Graft-Saint using relic body parts from direct descendants of Zavesh and Igaria - fittingly named Zagarius. The state is highly favorable towards both of the Twin Churches despite the contentious circumstances of its founding, and enjoys perhaps the greatest degree of prosperity and highest quality of life in the known world.

The CRC holds a coastal territory to the south-east of Afshani borders, extending along the coast towards the Agertian Peninsula, where their territory clumps up to cover the whole of the land-bridge, using the area to access the Banishment Wheel's interior. They also hold several sizable near-coast islands. Their territory expands continually into Agertia and the sea itself, as they use their advanced land reclamation techniques to enjoy continuous expansion with no need for military conflict.

The CRC practices absolute extermination directives against Evoy and Baneworms and is rather isolationist, making it a mythical paradise of sorts for many. CRC exports are highly desirable, as is their currency, as they overcharge to the extreme if someone tries to pay for CRC goods using anything but CRC rings.

The CRC operates as an absolute dictatorship, wherein Zagarius holds the position of Director. As the Director is an ageless, nearly unkillable being, the possibility of succession is an uncomfortable one, requiring a crisis of unprecedented proportion. Zagarius has sired over twenty children in his long life, a staggering number for a Fullgraft. None of them can inherit the position of Director, as it is intended solely for a Fullgraft.

The Khovian Khaganate and the Grand Duchy of Gormanshe

A confederation of roughly two-dozen tribes to the direct west of the Sultanate's borders. Constantly at war with one another and with their neighbors, the Grand Duchy of Gormanshe. To an outsider's perspective Gormanshe is structured similarly to Khovia, but insinuating such a thing is extremely offensive to both sides. Most of their warring is spurned on by their fervent disagreement over seemingly small matters. Most of these wars are also minor conflicts between individual member tribes/duchies, leaving the greater whole mostly unharmed.

Wandering Islands

Island-sized mobile megastructures built, maintained, and ruled by the Inax, also known as Synthoids. Inax are named after the wizard Inax, who roughly three millennia before the story takes place created them and the Wandering Islands based on knowledge he gleaned from the Banishment Wheel and Banishers. The inherent properties of the Wandering Islands and the Inax' reproductive cycle were intentionally designed to facilitate an ethnostate.

Carcosa and Alar, Cities on Lake Hali

Twin cities at either ends of an inland sea, once brought to ruin, now resurrected. Trade, fishing, and tourism abounds. Lake Hali is the last known natural habitat of fishmen, believed to be distant relatives of saurians who were taken under wing by an entity dwelling at the bottom of Lake Hali. This caused them to split off from their terrestrial cousins; fishmen, thus, developed sapience and created a subaquatic civilization whilst saurians were still tribalistic animals.

Located near the north-eastmost corner of Ashametan.

Carcosa and Alar predate the Banishment Wheel, and were recorded as ancient even in the few surviving records from old Calbium.

Giants' Clash

A city built on the site of several historic battles which took place within the time period 1127-1131 AB. In 1127, two alien giants crashed on Zastreon, one a humanoid encased in a skintight suit of armor, and the other a terrible monstrosity resembling the True Dragons of legend. They did battle for what is recorded as “a hundred days and nights”, with the Shining Giant prevailing over the monstrosity and itself dying soon after. While the Shining Giant’s body vanished, the Dragon’s skeleton remains. Giants’ Clash is built within the skeleton, a part of its industry is mining the beast’s ever-regenerating bones.

Audunpoint, Carcosa, Alar, Giants' Clash, and some others are considered as Free Cities, and the greater powers of Ashametan have treaties to maintain their independence. Some of these are as new as a few hundred years, but the tradition of Free Cities is as old as the Banishment Wheel itself, and the Twin Churches go to great lengths to encourage Ashametan's various states to continue that tradition. The Free Cities also happen to hold disproportionately strong Twin Churches presences given their size.

RACES

Humans

They're just humans. Fundamental properties of life differ, but they're still humans. Ethnicities don't translate, this being a different world, and the specific traits of humans also differ. You may find humans with horns, humans with pointed ears, or humans with extreme environmental adaptations, but they are still humans.

Banishers

Humanoid flesh-golems created by the Banishment Wheel to maintain its depths and fend off/exterminate intrusions in the short-term. If a Banisher is forcibly removed from within the Wheel’s vicinity, its eyes will turn from blue to green and it will make a concerted effort to return to the wheel; if a Banisher fails to return to one of the Wheel’s maintenance stations within around a month, it will rapidly self-mummify. A mummified Banisher will be restored and reactivated if it is brought to the Wheel.

The flesh of dead Banishers does not naturally decay, instead mummifying, and can be rehydrated by simply soaking it in water; Banishers can function at such levels of dehydration that they can at times resemble moving mummies. Their flesh can be used for grafting and will interface with the human body without issue regardless of how it was harvested and without Anointment, which is why poaching of these creatures is a problem. Zaveshite churches pay handsomely for the return of stray banishers.

They have hairless, featureless humanoid bodies with skin in dark, desaturated shades of bluish-gray and occasionally purple. The skin is attached to the body in sections for ease of maintenance, creating visible seams. Their entire bodies are modular in design, even on the inside. Their faces have no features except a single vertical slit eye with a perfectly round eyeball protruding in the center when open, leaving triangular spaces of bare flesh above and below it. A second, identical eyeball is situated on a Banisher’s upper back, between the shoulderblades. Strangely, this extraneous eyeball’s function does not appear to be impeded unless it is covered by Thauma-resistant material.

Banishers are known to be able to see through solid matter to a limited degree, though doing so appears to be strenuous. The personal auras of other living beings as well as magical emanations show up as empty spots in their vision, so it can be somewhat equated to a spiritual X-Ray.

The Wheel typically modifies them to suit any given task, grafting on armor, tools, additional limbs, etc. However, their form never becomes non-humanoid, rarely having four arms and extremely rarely six arms.

Curiously, rather than use its Banishers to purge rare infestations from its depths or mount longer-term defenses against invaders, the Wheel sends Pilgrim Banishers into the wider world to request outside aid, and rewards services rendered with Calbian artifacts, which are typically of an extraordinarily high grade.

Banishers are created with the knowledge necessary to perform their tasks, including the ability to speak modern languages and rapidly learn new ones; this is thanks to the Seven Spokes’ efforts to maintain the structure, including the supply of academic material to the Banishers. In fact, the procurement of new knowledge is the third most common reason for the Wheel to send out Pilgrims.

Pilgrim Banishers

Envoys of the Banishment Wheel in the wider world. They have three front-facing eyes, with two horizontal ones and a vertical third, as well as the usual backward-facing eye. Their horizontal eyes remain closed and they act in a singleminded pursuit of a a pre-determined task until said task is completed, at which point their horizontal eyes will open and they will, as detailed in Seven Spokes scripture, “Awaken to Free Will”.

Awakened Pilgrims remember everything they did and experienced before awakening, though the memories are compartmentalized.

Awakened Pilgrims tend to have names by the time they awaken due to a church practice of naming them, but they determine their own surnames.

Though a fact few are aware of, the Wheel creates Pilgrim Banishers by capturing errant souls of the dead using the same barrier which keeps the Outer Gods from interfering. It then incarnates these souls into Pilgrim Banishers; this is a method by which the Wheel makes up for the reduction in natural reincarnations that its operation causes. This is also why Pilgrim Banishers tend to have strange ideas, as some degree of memory retention is near universal among their kind, but such retained memory is also universally fragmented and partial such that they can’t correlate all their discordant memories into an image of their past life.

Saurians/Drasaurians

Numerous subspecies with huge variations to morphology. They can change their own morphology during their lives.

They became civilized immediately after the Banishing, as their creator god was also the reason they were perpetually stuck in a tribal hunter-gatherer state.

Their skin varies from smooth with minimal scales, to feathered and even heavily armored like lesser dragonkin. Some of them have dragonkin blood, which is considered a form of nobility, though Drasaurians do not enjoy the same benefits as nobleborn humans might. Instead, they are expected to perform to a degree greater than their lowborn counterparts with the same resources. Drasaurians can be created through actual interbreeding, though this is usually impractical or outright impossible, so most of them came about through Saurians ritualistically using the blood and souldregs of dragonkin to bless already-fertilized eggs.

The Saurian God had nothing to do with dragonkin, and in fact went out of its way to modify its creations to more closely resemble dragons and to be capable of taking genetic material from them.

Saurians are unfortunately the subjects of illegal flesh-harvesting, as well as popular victims of Baneworms, due to their naturally elevated capabilities compared to baseline humans.

They speak using a syrinx, like birds.

Some Saurians have wings and even the organs necessary to produce breath weapons. All in all, saurians are arguably the most varied race on the face of Zastreon.

Gor’un/Gor’ah/Mig’jun/Tur’ith Baneworms

Bodysnatching parasites.

Gor'un

Baneworms who can control sapient species and are able to make full use of the host’s cognitive faculties. They can degenerate to Gor’ah for a variety of reasons and to Gor’ith if they take over an animal for an extended period of time.

The Gor’un take grave personal offense to the idea of hijacking a living host body without destroying the original consciousness, as even they understand it to be beyond cruel.

When a Baneworm takes over a host body, they inject a venom into the brain which wipes it clean, killing the host consciousness while causing minimal damage to the flesh. This evolved as a method of avoiding the possibility of a strong-willed host resisting. Only then will the Baneworm fully seat itself in its new vessel. The process causes the Immaterial Soul to pass on and damages the Material Soul, but baneworms will often feed upon the souldregs left behind by the departed host over long periods of time, gaining some of their skills and Boons. This is mainly how they develop, their independent leveling being badly stunted.

Baneworms on their own don’t have the mental hardware for empathy as Humans understand it. Many of them are simply not intelligent enough to carry out the mental simulation, being functionally sub-90 IQ sapients. Those of them with sufficient cognitive processing power (such as those in Human bodies) often don’t bother with simulating the perspectives of others. The process of being grafted into a Zaveshian-made artificial body is permanent in part because the body has a secondary empathy brain that the baneworm is grafted to.

Absence of empathy is an evolutionary necessity of their existence as parasites.

They are, however, not inherently any more prone to violence or otherwise antagonistic actions than any other living thing, and their unique mental layout makes them, curiously enough, far less prone to grudge-holding and tribalism.

Juveniles will degenerate into Gor'ah if they go without a shell body for too long. While they can effectively control animals, Gor'un will degenerate into Gor'ah if they control an animal body for any length of time. They consider it a demeaning and horrific experience, a true last resort.

Gor'ah

Baneworms who either are naturally feral or have degenerated to this state. They can take over human hosts but are only capable of fragmented speech at best and mostly animalistic.

Mig’jun

Baneworms who are animals and nothing more, and can only control nonsapient animals with any effectiveness. They can take hold of human bodies but it’s really obvious.

A separate subspecies altogether.

Tur’ith

A regressive form of Baneworm which requires a large mammal host to reach its adult stage, the form of which will influence its adult shape; a Tur’ith’s first host will simply be eaten from the inside within a few hours. An adult primordial baneworm can latch onto humans from the back and prioritizes them as prey, but it cannot control a human host, instead rapidly growing through their body until the host is completely enveloped in root-like tendrils. Once the process completes, it will merge with its host and mutate the both of them into a living, still-conscious hive from which new primordial baneworms will emerge.

Reviled by all, especially their non-devolved relatives. The Gor’un take grave personal offense to the idea of hijacking a living host body without destroying the original consciousness, as even they understand it to be beyond cruel.

Inax/Synthoids

Humans with monochromatic skin, hair, etc.

Created three thousand years ago by a powerful wizard in an attempt to create his own ideal society. They were partially based on research into the Banishment Wheel’s internal organics and the creation process of Banishers.

They have a very strong natural resistance to Anathema, but their unique anatomy which actively expels Anathema renders them fundamentally incapable of facilitating Thaumic Fusion. The moment a Monochrome tries to perform it, they instantly enter Meltdown. They are frequent users of Mamon Couplers.

Some have a second pair of small eyes on their foreheads. These “Trueborn” always breed true, but after 2 generations of interbreeding with non-Monochromes the next generation loses their second pair of eyes and becomes infertile. They are a second class in the Monochrome culture and thus typically revile their own homeland. For this reason Monochromes are exceptionally xenophobic. If two non-trueborn Monochromes breed there is a 1/10 chance of a Trueborn being produced. A Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and his descendants will always breed true no matter what.

They have second motoric brains and particularly thick skulls.

Evoy Insectoids

Fly-men.

I will not reveal more for the time being.

Xaugeth Herculeans

Beetle-men. Their beetle-like forms are more specifically referred to as "Shieldbacks" for distinction from Eternity Larvae (detailed later).

They metamorphose many times throughout their lives, growing stronger, tougher, and smarter, whilst also developing increasingly more specialized forms. It seems that each subsequent metamorphosis is more difficult, with a limited lifespan between each metamorphosis.

Their juveniles are nonverbal, but possess near-human intelligence from their first metamorphosis. Beetlemen reproduce by implanting immobile larvae into cocoons, though these are not hive-dependent. Humanlike intellect develops in the larva a short time before its first metamorphosis.

Strangely, it seems that their larvae are biologically immortal and can be made to metamorphose into a long-term larval form, or can even choose to do so. These Eternity Larvae become mobile and independent, but remain physically feeble and reliant on other Herculeans. This offshoot of their society is believed to be the scholarly and governmental branch.

Eternity Larvae continue to metamorphose in cycles just like normal Herculeans, but they do not grow in physical capability and their metamorphoses grow more difficult very gradually. An Eternity Larva can metamorphose into a Shieldback, skipping past a number of stages vaguely correlated to how many metamorphosis cycles it has already gone through. This is a much slower form of growth, but is also safer.

The current ruler of the Herculean civilization is the Thousand-year Sapphire Monarch, so named for the fact he remained an Eternity Larva for over a millennium before metamorphosing into a monstrously powerful Shieldback. At that time, he was red, and was so named the Thousand-year Ruby Monarch. He proceeded to unify the disparate Herculean kingdoms in a single campaign, after which he immediately metamorphosed into his current form, proving that he was capable of overcoming the difficulty of normal metamorphosis.

Herculeans cannot use thaumaturgy, as they lack Soul Furnaces. They are nonetheless powerful, even a First Metamorphosis Herculean being dangerous. They are able to harness Thauma using other elements of their anatomy.

Items made using their advanced, yet alien craftsmanship are highly valued, being made of chitin of various types and often possessing material characteristics of the highest grade. Herculean blades are especially valuable, being among the lightest, strongest, sharpest, and most magically conductive.

Xaugeth Mothmen

Little is known of these enigmatic beings, as most of the contact that has been had with them was occasional trade with individual merchants. Their juvenile, "humanoid grub" forms speak and conduct trade, while their metamorphosed mothlike forms are nonverbal and seem to play the role of a military and scholar caste. They are proficient in most continental languages and seem to have a tenuous, vaguely hostile relationship with the Herculeans.

Their life cycles are believed to be vaguely similar to those of Herculeans.