Unity Lore: Part 1 - Where We Are Now

Lore time, hurray! 

In this first Clearwater Chronicle lore post, we'll be talking about the core foundations of the universe that will answer a few major questions. Where are we? Why are anthro animals and Pokémon living together in the same place? What's all this stuff about gods and goddesses? 

In this first part titled Where We Are Now, hopefully all of these questions will be answered along with some illuminations about other aspects of our fun, floof filled, modern fantasy setting. Hope you enjoy!

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In the near future, 

the galaxy is at relative peace. Worlds have their own localized conflicts, but there are not any interstellar wars due to the distance between populated worlds. The deities of each planet ruled over their individual planets and maintained them. While the deities of these worlds had some awareness of life existing outside of their own localized spaces, they kept this knowledge to themselves to allow their people to live out existence on their native planets.

That was until the threat of end times arrived in the form of an invading coalition known as the Blackwave, evil gods from another plane that came with prospects to conquer the entire galaxy with their vast army of demons. Resistance to their march meant death, and many unprepared or unaware worlds fell within hours to the vicious advance of the demon army. Feeling this catastrophic destruction with their innate sense, the gods from three different worlds fled their planets and took the souls of their people with them so they could not be conquered or corrupted, going deep into a far corner of the galaxy to escape the Blackwave's reach. Upon meeting each other, these pantheons decided that the only way to destroy their threat to their existence and the lives of their people would be to come together as one.

These three pantheons formed an alliance with each other with a singular goal: train a group of most powerful mortals in history to challenge the Blackwave's army of monsters and take back the galaxy. Together this council of divines created a new planet from scratch called Unity where the souls of heroes long since past could be reborn to aid in the fight, and also to be a safe haven for all of their peoples going forward.

The Council of Divines is the group that was eventually formed between the three allied pantheons, a group that maintains responsibility and governmental roles on the planet of Unity. The organization is split between three houses each of which have fundamental roles in Unity's creation and continued prosperity.

House Aetheria - The creators and keepers of the core of Unity, a huge sphere of pure mana which acts as a magical generator that all people who live on the planet can tap into to fuel their lifestyle and their developing abilities. The Aetherians hail from the world of Izona, a world which was similarly abundant in magic at a certain point in its history but became ravaged by war and then, subsequently, a magical famine that lasted for nearly a millennium. It was a collection of powerful mortals that restored peace to the world and revitalized magic for everyone. This new golden age marked a moment where Izona's mortals were the strongest, and those many of those who lived during this time were first on the council's list for reincarnation.

The house is headed by two goddess sisters: Ira, the goddess of chaos, and Skye, the goddess of order. The two sisters were known to quarrel in the past and some of their largest interpersonal conflicts lined up with the dark periods in Izona's history. Coming together united, the sisters provided the fledgling planet with a near limitless source of magic that they had created when they were born thousands of years ago known as the Aether. The Aether sits at the very core of the planet, swelling ambient magic outward through ground so that anyone who steps foot on the planet can tap into it.

House Arcera - The architects of the planet of Unity and the sculptors of the land and sea of the planet, this house created the supercontinent, Vitas, that almost all unitians live on. The Arcerans hail from the world of Arcera, a world of humans and powerful monsters known as pocket monsters. Within the last 200 years, the population was supplemented and reshaped by the appearance of a species known as hybrids, which were perfect genetic fusions of pocket monster and human DNA. This species eventually grew to be the most abundant of the species on the planet due to a massive incident caused by a rogue group of humans that sought to use the power of hybrids to rule over the world. After this incident, the deities of the world descended and took on a more active role in ensuring peace for the planet's future.

The house is headed by two deities: Erin, the goddess of evolution, and Satojiri, the god of creation. Erin previously was a mortal, but she ascended to godhood when the previous god of evolution perished and passed his position onto her. With this passing of the torch came with a new form and a substantial increase in power. It was her transformation into a hybrid goddess that led Satojiri to become a hybrid himself, along with all of his children. Satojiri created the world of Arcera along with his sons and daughters.

House Sortera - The maintainers of the spirit realm, the place where souls await restoration and reincarnation as well as atonement for past sins. Hailing from the metaphysical world of Sorterias, they merged their purely spiritual existence into the physical realm so that they could lend their full strength to stopping the advance of the Blackwave. While the diversity of species in Sorterias is much greater than typical worlds, Sorterians all have a uniquely strong link to spiritual aspects of life such as creativity, fulfillment, connection to the land, and life and death itself. The denizens of the world fended off a large-scale assault from a hostile entity that sought to sever the spirituality that kept Sorterias alive, so their experience in fighting beings of darkness make them very capable fighters.

The house is headed by two deities: Akisha, the goddess of life, and Zankuro, the god of death. Akisha ensures that souls are born into proper vessels for their next life, but is also responsible for retrieving those souls when their time comes. Zankuro is the caretaker and gatekeeper of the spirit realm, determining which souls are ready for reincarnation and which need to be rehabilitated with trials and even punishments before they are allowed to be reincarnated.

Each of the three houses have numerous minor gods, some of whom chose to live among the people of Unity as if they were mortals. All of the deities in the council of divines meet regularly at a building on Unity called the Gathering Hall, the oldest structure on the entire planet. This is where the floor is opened up for the deities to report on the status of their people, the general state of the world, and have strategic meetings on how to best combat the Blackwave threat.

The council of divines carried a large amount of souls from their worlds along with them when they fled. This collection of souls includes the spirits of people long since past. The council decided that with their goal of building an army of mortals with the strength that could rival their own power, reincarnation would be a viable option for populating the planet of Unity. The council humbly explained the situation, making a plea with those who had lived full lives once before to join them in their effort to save the galaxy and the whole universe from destruction.

Every previous life had a choice in this arrangement: stay in the spirit world to continue their peaceful afterlife or reincarnate into a mortal body again either to help defend or cultivate the new planet. Being reincarnated would come with a number of benefits that would reveal themselves very quickly once they made the jump from the spirit realm back to the land of the living as a unitian.

Unitian is a term for people who were either born or reborn on the planet of Unity. While unitians share some common properties between them, they have subdivisions depending on their world of origin. 

• Aetherians are anthropomorphic creatures with outwardly animalistic traits, specifically based on animals from a distant planet called earth. The most numerous of all the types of unitians, aetherians are known for their unique magical talents that they're born with known as gifts. Gifts can be mundane or they can be absurdly powerful.
• Arcerans, also known as hybrids, are anthropomorphic fusions of humans and the monsters. The second most common type of unitian, arcerans wield innate fighting abilities that utilize the strength of their own bodies or the forces of nature themselves. These abilities, called arceran arts, can be cultivated by physical training or even simple life experience.
• Sorterans are beings of spirit that use the magic present in Unity's core to physically manifest for long periods of time. They are the most physically diverse of unitian types in that they can be anthropomorphic animals, humans, or other exotic forms. Hailing from the spirit realm and not being physical beings at their core means that they can become immaterial at will, using the spirit realm as means of short range travel. 
• Humans are also known to exist on Unity, but they are considerably rare and do not have innate magical abilities except in very rare circumstances. Nevertheless, unitian humans can gain the ability to harness magic through training and through exposure to the leylines that link directly to the Aether at the core of the planet.

Despite some minor physiological differences, all unitians are extremely powerful whether they had a previous life on another world or they were born on the planet as a native. This is due to several factors, but the largest contributing factors to the strength of mortal unitians is the method of reincarnation. 

The reincarnation process, often called rebirth or rebirthing, dramatically increases potential for growth in physical strength, natural ability development, and especially magical ability for those spirits who are reborn. The name is derived from the symbolic nature of the action, in which a god or goddess spends time physically carrying the spirits of those who wish to be reincarnated. Two methods of rebirthing have been discovered, both of which have their benefits and downfalls for the deities who choose to help restore mortals to life.

Spirit incubation is the first method, the one that was initially used to rebirth the first three generations of unitians. This method has the god or goddess form a sort of eggshell around the spirit so that it may exist outside of the spirit realm and then carry that egg around with them, nurturing it with their presence and ambiently passing some of their magical ability to the spirit in the egg. Incubation is not extremely efficient, but it leads to the spirit inside the egg maintaining their previous physical form with very little changes beyond the magical inheritance from their god or goddess. 

Spirit mending is the second method that was discovered after the third generation of unitians, discovered from decades of research and battles against the Blackwave's demons. It is an adaptation of the method demons use to increase the power of spirits by holding captive spirits inside of their physical forms. This capability was reverse engineered by the council of divines and is now the most common type of reincarnation used. Goddesses place the spirits of those to be reincarnated into their wombs, which has the side effect of mimicking the look of pregnancy in the rest of their bodies. While this method has some very powerful benefits in that it is much faster than spirit incubation and it much more directly passes the power of the goddess to the spirits being reborn, it has the tendency to more radically change the appearance of the reborn. This can be as simple as physical traits being altered or as radical as the entire species of the reincarnated person being changed.

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That's all for now! I hope that you enjoyed this peek into the history and metaphysics of CC's world. We look forward to revealing more in the future, so stay tuned!