Fragments

Introduction

In Atharen's earliest days, the living gods experimented with their own divinity to create sentient life. The result of repeatedly experimenting with severed scraps of their divinity was the Noradac, or Spirits in common terms. They were the foundational building blocks that led to the creation of the mortal races. The Noradac are diverse in their physiology and take form in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Despite their differences, one thing unites them: Divinity. They are all made from a portion of their creator's Divinity.

Similar to spirits, Mages are also rich with some form of power. Though they are without Divinity, the latent Ether in their bodies can also be crystalized through different means to the Noradac. Being that mages aren't entirely made of Ether, like Noradac are made of pure Divinity, they cannot produce Fragments of the same purity or purpose.

Some Fragments are made from the crystallized remains of Noradac, and take form in two different origins throughout Atharen. These fragments are often referred to as 'Arcanacrags' because their applications are often viewed as magical. Other Fragments are the result of mortal meddling and are born from the stolen essence of mages. These latter varieties are commonly referred to as 'Sunderscraps' because of their application in Sundering. Both have a broad spectrum of uses that play important roles in day-to-day life on Atharen and have changed the course of history alike.

Arcanacrags

These Fragments have existed on Atharen since the Noradac began to walk the mortal plane. They’re created through a process similar to nuclear fusion between Divinity and the ambient Ether of the mortal plane. A tremendous amount of energy is released on the death of a spirit, such is enough for the severed Divinity to gain mass and harden in the process. Arcanacrags are thus a unique crystalline amalgam, which is fundamentally made of Ether and Divinity, but in its whole, is neither. Because of the intensity of the fusion that occurs on a spirit's death, the Adac have never been able to reclaim their divinity from the Fragments left behind.

In the beginning, Fragments were almost completely destroyed under the force of a Spirit’s death; left brittle and charred, broken by so much as a strong breeze. So too, was the land around them. The shockwave released on a spirit's death felled trees dozens of miles from the site and even blackened the craters they made with the heat that was generated in the blast. The fragments left over intrigued many of the Adac and frightened others. The idea that their divinity could not be reclaimed, even though it regenerated over time, was unsettling. So, a series of tests were run on the primitive Noradac. Many of the first Noradac were killed before their time in observation of these experiments, and the Adac found that they could contain the resulting blast of a Noradac’s death by summoning a shield of inward force around them at the moment they fell, which deprived the reaction of the various elements in the air and saved the environment around them from obliteration.

In addition, the immense pressure and astronomical heat that was applied to the Divinity and Ether in those controlled releases meant that the Fragments produced as a byproduct of the blast were firmer, heavier, and so much richer with Divinity. At last, there was hope to reclaim their wasted Divinity as it took physical form before them, just trapped in chemical bonds with Raw Magic. So the experiments continued. As more Noradac began to die of natural causes, and many of the Adac expressed no desire in chasing down those Noradac nearing the end of their cycle, it was proposed that all Noradac were made with a failsafe that would automatically contain the explosions that came from their deaths. The Adac unanimously agreed for the sake of both preserving their Divinity, and to stop the constant nuking of the pre-mortal plane.

The experiments continued on those Fragments, looking for ways to separate the conjoined energies, to undo the complicated transformation it had undergone in the destructive nucleus of a fallen Noradac, but it became difficult to track them and collect more samples to experiment with. So, for the sake of convenience, it was proposed that the Adac would make it so that their Spirits would converge on a specific location when they were nearing the end of their cycle. Once there, they would wait either to die or to be reclaimed by their creator. Thus, it was easy to retrieve samples for study and experimentation. Again, the Adac unanimously agreed, but after so long with little in the way of results hopes were running low.

Ages passed with the system they had designed, and though the Adac were no shorter of Divinity than they were before the creation of the Noradac, the gathering locales had become expansive graveyards. Some were large enough to dot an entire field with Fragments. Beholding those gravesites and all the Divinity the Adac had bled over the years was the end to the experiments. It was decided that the Noradac were not the life that the Gods wished to preside over, for they were too costly and finite to maintain. Those that had worked with the Noradac for some time had found no shortage of appreciation and admiration for the beings they’d relentlessly experimented upon, and had since unlocked several other facets of the Spirit's existence.

In place of discontinuation, they proposed timelessness; the Noradac wouldn’t decay over time and would live forever. This proposal was accepted for the time being, and when Y’shendra created the first Mortal Races, the Noradac found their place as servants of the Gods. The gravesites that had accumulated over the course of the spirit’s existence were forgotten.

When the Hyr'Norai first discovered Fragments, these crystallized pieces of the Adac, there was a moment of hesitation among most of the Gods. Y'shendra urged patience, she wished to see what would become of the encounter, and to her delight, the elves began to use the Fragments to improve their quality of life. This reaction was acceptable, and the Gods left the elves, and eventually the humans, to enjoy the crystalized carcasses of their first attempts at life.

Then came The Bleeding, and for the first time in more than four thousand years, a Spirit died. In the Bleeding, many of the Noradac were corrupted. Some even began to prey on the villages of man. Eventually, with enough mages, artillery, and blades, humans were able to fell a troublesome corrupted spirit. The flash of light that was left in wake of the killing blow was reportedly brighter than the sun and burned the skin of those that stood nearby. Others were rendered blind through shielded eyes from some distance away. When the light cleared, left in place of the Spirit was a smoldering Arcanacrag.

When the rest of the world learned that one could obtain Arcanacrags, these priceless constructs of Ether-laden Divinity, by hunting and killing Spirits, entire factions formed with the goal to hunt as many Noradac as possible. Arcane weaponry was developed with the purpose of slaying Spirits with ease, powered by the same Arcanacrags they hunted for. Overnight, a new industry was formed in the business of hunting Spirits, and overnight it fell. The great Spirit Hunts only spanned thirty years at most in their height, for revealed became the Arch Hollows.

Massive crystalline structures made of raw Arcanacrag were discovered after the bleeding. Though they were wrought with radioactive corruption, various hostile creatures, and were dangerous to do so much as breathe upon, it was far cheaper to fund a slave's training in navigating the Arch Hollows than it was to hire a hunting party of several dozen men and pay for their expertise. Quickly, the market shifted, and Arcanacrag funding was put toward mining gear and refinement of the corrupted Arcanacrags across the world.

To this day, some seven hundred years later, Arcanacrags are still infinitely valuable, but only because massive entities monopolize the mining of Arcanacrags, and large hunting factions charge unbelievably high for the commission of killing a Spirit, and then astronomically more for the delivery of the Arcanacrag. There is much discussion about what the superior type of Arcanacrag may be (Spirit-Born or Hollow-Born), and both have their merits, but both are incredibly dangerous to harvest and require their own specialized tools and resources to acquire.

Uses

To begin with the uses of an Arcanacrag, it should be noted that the energy they command is not too dissimilar to the process a Mark of Control commands. They both convert ether to generate a variety of effects, and both generate a radioisotope as a byproduct of the conversion process. This radioisotope is often bled into the Fragment's surroundings as nothing more than background radiation. Excessive external energies can force the Arcanacrag to release a burst of energy that will spike the stored corruption as well as the rate of ambient bleed, and render the structure unstable. Subsequent applications of energy will result in harsher reactions and even higher spikes of corruption. All Arcanacrags have a summit of how corrupted they can get before the amount of energy they expend is equal to the corruption leaked in each release.

It is important to note that it's for this very reason that Arcanacrags should absolutely not be used for arms and armor, as they can easily kill the user with the effects of the energy released on impact, if not by the flood of radioisotope generated with impact.

The use conventional use of an Arcanacrag varies widely based on several factors:

• Purity (level of corruption)
• Potency (refinement)
• Size
• Type
• Mounting

They are capable of fertilizing fields, aiding in construction, creating tools for World Magic, healing the sick, empowering magic, innovating all sorts of sciences, and much more. The specific use of an Arcanacrag is largely determined by the Adac that created the fallen Noradac's crystalized essence. For example, Arcanacrags born from Evitrix's Adac commonly show uses that aid in the manipulation of materials, construction, and crafting.

The level of corruption in a fragment can begin to polarize the Arcanacrag's purpose, but also makes them unstable. It is well known that Arcanacrags are very sensitive to external sources of energy, and this is even more prominent in Corrupted Arcanacrags. Corruption is measured on a scale of one to five, with one being almost completely free of corruption, and five being so toxic and unstable that they actively corrupt their surroundings. Level five Arcanacrags can aggressively burst with undesirable effects with so much as the energy found in a mortal's warm breath. Continuing the example of Evitrix's Arcanacrags, corrupted samples can dismantle objects and cause blind rages in sentient life, sometimes so severe that individuals have been known to attack hard surfaces with their skulls until death. it should be noted that even the purest Arcanacrags have the tendency to explode when introduced to excessive external forms of energy. This includes, but isn't limited too, extreme heat, loud and sudden noises, impact, and friction. The more corrupted a fragment is at the time of exposure to external energies, the more devastating and wild the resulting blast can be.

The potency of an Arcanacrag can only be altered while the fragment is Corrupted. It's when these fragments are unstable that they can be subtly altered and corrected on an extremely small scale with the use of Sundering. This process can take hours to weeks depending on the source of the Arcanacrag. Those found in Arch-Hollows tend to require more refinement while those calcified remains of Noradac are usually in much better condition.

The size of an Arcanacrag alters the scale at which its effects are applied. Tiny shards of Fragments, cut through Sundering, can be localized to specific tools, whereas great mountains like Arch-Hollows are known to drastically and lethally warp the surrounding environment a great distance around them.

Brass is a metallic alloy composed of Zinc and Copper and is thus far the only known alloy capable of acting as a conduit for Arcanacrags. Much like copper wiring to electricity, brass can transfer the properties of an Arcanacrag to another material in contact with it; typically another metal. An Arcanacrag's effects, when placed within Brass mounting on an object, are usually altered as they're channeled through another material due to various impurities.

For more detailed uses, see the variants listed below.

Variants

Work in progress.

Sunderscraps

Sunderscraps have existed since the rise of the Ald'Norai, but weren't worldwide or common in their distribution until after the Great Spirit Hunts. It's not commonly known that the Ald'Norai manipulated Arcanacrags hundreds, even thousands of years before the rest of the mortal races began to experiment deeply with them. In the current age, some scholars hypothesize that the Ald'Norai had access to Sundering technologies far superior to what is currently available, but there is no solid evidence of this theory but the formidable Relics that the Ashen Elves left behind.

It was only during the last three hundred years that Sunderscraps were discovered by other Races.

The first Sunderscraps began to surface after the manipulation and alteration of Fragments with Brass birthed the tools necessary for converting the latent ether in mages into a form of crystallized ether. The first apparatus was a simple needle that needed only be thrust into the Soul of a mage, directly through the sternum and into the heart, and held there for a minute while the mage crystallized and produced a single Sunderscrap, based on their strongest mark of control.

Three hundred years later, the apparatus used in Sundering had been innovated to a point where it only takes ten seconds to render the mage immobile, and a Sunderscrap can be produced for every mark of control they possess as strong as the victim mage was in that specific Raw Magic, as well as a number of other Sunderscraps without a mark attached to them.

Being that Sunderscraps are born of mortal meddling and without the purview or intention of the Gods at all, many religious foundations heavily frown upon this practice. Some will even set out to hunt and destroy Sunderscraps with their own elite orders, embarking on massive campaigns to gather and destroy Relics, Sunderscraps, and Sunderers themselves.

Some nations, like that of Lorien and Grisic, freely employ Sunderers to provide Relics for their militaries. Other nations, more loyal to the absent Adac are more likely to rebuke and reject Sundering for placing the God-given power of a mark of control in the hands of the unworthy.

While Sunderscraps do not come in as many varieties as Arcanacrags, it is undeniable that they're infinitely superior for the creation of personal effects than Arcanacrags.

Uses

The use of a Sunderscrap depends largely on whether a Mark of Control was consumed in its creation. Sunderscraps with no mark attached to them are referred to as 'Markless Sunderscraps', and those with a Mark of Control are referred to as 'Marked Sunderscraps'. Both are almost completely impervious to heat in that no amount of flame will ever damage a Sunderscrap, and both have some level of resistance to kinetic force, but this is much less prominent in Markless Sunderscraps.

Marked Sunderscraps are used in Sundering to create Relics, empowered weapons, armor, trinkets, and objects with a variety of magical effects on the user. The effects they extend to the metal they are imbued within vary widely based on the strength of the Mark of Control used in their creation and the skill of the Sunderer.

See the Variants below for more detailed applications of Marked Sunderscraps.

Variants

The powers that a Sunderscrap contains are inert and suppressed until they are Stricken to an object through a process in the World Magic called Sundering. These Strickened objects are often referred to as Relics, and are both highly sought after and cursed across Atharen for their terrible might. Below is a list of all known Sunderscraps and their appearance.

For more information on Relics, refer to the Sundering page under Relic Abilities.

Maladite (Bane): Appears as a smoky brown-black crystal formation shaped vaguely like the body part that housed the mark on the Donor Mage.

Vaponel (Baptism): A deep blue stone of no particular formation The crystals are structured so tight and jaggedly that it's opaque in appearance.

Aramond (Brand): An opaque grey stone that shines on the various even, flat surfaces that cover it. Perfect triangles dot the crystalline formation and create a unique display of geometry as they widen toward the body of the Sunderscrap.

Swilcon (Druidism): Oddly shaped in its lumpy distribution, Swilcon is an opaque gem of deep green reuleaux triangle growths, tipped with a brighter shade of green across the body of the gem.

Alterald (Malformity): A gem that varies in color from gold to amber to crimson. Though it carries no distinct shape, it appears to be adorned with long strands of thin crystalline structures that curve and flow unnaturally, akin to crystal fur.

Phrade (Mentalism): The stone is normally a clump of crystal with larger segments of harsh triangular edges. Though it's translucent, a cloud of saturated purple swirls within.

Umbridot (Nightfall) Almost completely clear if not for the shady tint to the crystal, Umbridot is lettered with specs of white that cluster toward the center of the formation.

(Oath): Under construction.

Echal (Remnant): Almost completely alien from any crystal structure, Echal appears as a bed of silvery grey with a variety of gold and amethyst growths all over the surface.

Blaryl (Resonance): A seafoam green chaotic crystal structure with several crystalline growths of different shapes and sizes. Some growth appears to stretch adjacent to the center of the cluster rather than away from it.

Revyx (Sigilic Pyromancy) The body of the crystal is an opaque grey that almost looks like a rock bed, but is actually crystalline in texture. Several lumps of fiery crystal rip through the structure, some of which can be peered all the way through.

(Squall): Under construction.

(Summoning): Under construction.

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