The world is a globe, surrounded by a bubble floating in an endless void of dark water called the Second Sky. In the Second Sky, there are two fish that have swam around the world for all of time, the Sunfish and the Moonfish. They look like an Opah and a Mola, respectively. The Sunfish glows a brilliant yellow and emits hot light, while the Moonfish glows a faint, pale blue and emits cold light. They seem to be chasing each other, but make no progress. Out in the far distance of the Second Sky are other bubbles. They twinkle slightly with the light of other fish, and other worlds.
Since Madarch's historical significance was deemed incredible, the founding of Madarch marked the beginning of a new era starting at year 0. While the rest of the calendar works.
A day can also be called a lap, because it is the time it takes for the sunfish to make a complete lap around the world.
A month can also be called a sway, because it is the time it takes for the moonfish to cycle back and forth along the sunfish's path once.
A half-year is called a scale, because the two fish balance each other out in the spring and autumn.
A year is made up of three seasons; Umthangosiad (winter) from Ioan to Mai, Doohrisel (summer) from Mai to Medi, and Gorliv (flood) from Medi to the epagomenod. Each season is 4 sways long. The epagomenod lie outside of the year.
There are 12 sways in a year, and 30 laps per sway. At the end of the year there are 5 extra days in the "epagomenod", a correction accounting for the very small amount of extra time accumulated across the year. Thus, there are 365 laps (days) in a year.
Go to this website (opens in new tab) and go to the "Save/Restore" tab. Copy paste the code in the button below into the box and you'll be able to see the calendar!
{"year_len":365,"events":0,"n_months":13,"months":["Ion","Chwe","Mawr","Ebri","Mai","Mehe","Gorff","Awst","Medi","Hydref","Tach","Rhag","Epagomenod"],"month_len":{"Ion":30,"Chwe":30,"Mawr":30,"Ebri":30,"Mai":30,"Mehe":30,"Gorff":30,"Awst":30,"Medi":30,"Hydref":30,"Tach":30,"Rhag":30,"Epagomenod":5},"week_len":7,"weekdays":["Sthun","Mwar","Merch","Iau","Gwen","Sadu","Sul"],"n_moons":1,"moons":["Moonfish"],"lunar_cyc":{"Moonfish":30},"lunar_shf":{"Moonfish":0},"year":25,"first_day":0,"notes":{"32-1-1":"Founding day","32-1-22":"Seven queens day","32-8-30":"Revelation day","32-3-15":"Outvoyage day","25-9-1":"Crafts day (Byr)","25-12-20":"Ancestor day (Sgript)","25-2-10":"Caprice day","25-2-11":"Caprice day","25-2-12":"Caprice day","25-5-25":"Old masters day (Gwyrth)"}}
A form of energy mentioned in the ancient legend. It is unknown how it worked except that it seemed to be able to channel through and give special effects to minerals and metals to create simple or complex machines, even fusing with Sengl souls to create conscious artificial beings. Whether Michor still exists today is entirely unknown.
Floating islands of various sizes slowly float high above the clouds over Madarch, raining rocks and dirt down underneath them. These showers of stone are disastrous to those beneath them, however quickly they may pass, and they are called geostorms. The umbrellashroom, a species of mushroom that has an extremely wide cap that can be opened and closed using a rigging system, is able to help defend settlements like the penal colonies against geostorms. It's said that Wyrms, or dragons, live on them and they are not interested in coming down.
The ocean surrounding Madarch is called the Durhir. It is a clear blue colour compared to the purple hued lakes and rivers, and noticeably lacks fungi compared to land. Instead its floors are covered in vibrant, large coral reefs, sponges, kelp and marine trees. On the coast of Madarch, there are beaches with colourful and thick sands of crushed coral and shell. A lot of the coastline is lined with beautiful chalk bluffs, the large fossils of Whirling Scourges (a sort of macroscopic dinocyst) sticking from their faces. The sea is a valuable resource for Sengl, containing food, water, shells, and medicine derived from jellyfish and urchins. No attempt to explore far past the coral reefs have been fruitful. Most days, the water is quite calm. The weather in Madarch is not usually very temperamental besides geostorm. However, if one goes out too far into the sea, where the coral becomes sparse and the sea floor drops into a dark abyss, it rapidly becomes dangerous to sail. Extreme storms pick up with little warning, and there are enormous monsters that attack ships. Wyrms have been sighted far out on the sea.
As a Wyrm island passes overhead, it rains down loose rocks and dirt onto the world beneath it. This can be extremely dangerous, as a rock threatens to hit your head or go through the roof of your home. Thankfully, umbrellashrooms are used to block most of the stones. Geostorms seem to have been much, much more severe and common in the ancient past. Over thousands of years they have calmed and slowed down, but the many years of raining dirt and rock onto Madarch has buried much of what was constructed back then. It also choked out most of the plant life on the island, allowing fungi to thrive instead. However, certain regions of Madarch are much lower elevation, seemingly spared from the geostorms continued wrath. It's no coincidence then that these regions are far more abundant in plant life, although Sengl have not resettled there yet.
Occasionally, a thunderstorm will happen to originate from the direction of the two sister islands of Madarch- Cap and Cosun. If it does, and you listen closely to the rain and thunder, you can hear pained wailing, roaring, or droning trumpets. These are considered bad omens.
Rarely, at certain times of the day in certain foggy places, usually along the cliffsides on the coast, one can see the vague figure of a massive, shadowy giant that looks as if it's standing in the ocean or above the forests. It's unknown where these giant spectres come from, but they seem harmless, and disappear when one moves.
A miasmendicant is a physician trained for dealing with non-fungal diseases. To protect themselves, they cover all their skin and wear a mask with a long rostrum stuffed with incense (as an aroma) and slowly burned by a small, controlled flame at the tip of the nose. The mask is often stylised to resemble a weevil’s sad, long face.
On Madarch, surface mushrooms are dominant over plant life, although the latter still exists in abundance, such as grass. Mushrooms can grow to massive sizes and take many strange forms, filling the niches that plants usually would. The soil of Madarch is dense with mycelium, and gives the grass a pale purple hue. In the summertime, mushrooms release their spores, necessitating facial protection when outside. Some mushrooms even resemble reptilian animals, able to move around in a limited manner without the mycelium, and release spores from their frills. Underground are extensive cave systems created by dead, hollowed out mega-hyphae cells.
Since trees are sparse, especially in the settled areas of Seth, most wood for construction is imported. However, a technique has been developed to make mushroom stalk sturdy and water-resistant like wood. It involves heating the mushroom at very high temperatures and sealing it with resin. The drawback is that the mushroom material will shrink considerably in the process. While this material is not yet in common use, it soon will be to save resources and money. Using the same technique, one could whittle a small piece of mushroom into a sculpture, and shrink it in heat so that they would get a miniaturised version of their sculpture. This style of sculpture is known as a "shrinky-dink."
Umbrellashrooms are tall mushrooms with extremely wide and flexible caps. By sterilising them to remove spores and attaching rigging to their caps to contract and expand it manually, they are invaluable in their ability to protect people and buildings from geostorms.
Skyscrapers are an extremely tall mushroom, conical at the tops. They are quite rare but tend to bunch together.
Underneath the surface of Madarch are vast and labyrinthine cave systems made out of dead, hollowed out and extremely large hyphae from the mycelium of fungi. Certain plants, animals, and other fungi are adapted to these cramped, dark environments.
At first, slime molds seem related to the slime-type anghenfilod. While on the surface they are similar, their non-hostile attitude towards Sengl seems to imply they are not monsters. It is unknown exactly what they are, but they appear to be something between a fungus, anghenfil, plant and animal. For convenience sake, most just consider them fungi. They are cute, round, and brightly coloured, and pose no threat to Sengl. They can be dried and eaten.
Shimmerine is a flowering bush native to Madarch that releases a prismatic pollen, which colours the soil around it. It can be used as a spice powder, and tastes similar to tomatoes. The shimmering pollen attracts pollinators like birds and bubblebees.
Sultaniyya trees are native to Gwyrth. They are tall, heavily branched and have few but very thick leaves that form a dense canopy strong enough to build on. On the top of the tree is a dip like a bowl where water from rain showers coalesce, which keeps the water pure and drinkable. The leaves can be used for cooking, like plantain leaves, but with less flavour on their own.
Bubblebees are a sort of biological bubble creature, related to jellyfish. They float through the air by exchanging gases in the atmosphere through nanoscopic pores in its thin, translucent membrane. They are detritovores that “eat” the spores of mushrooms and the pollen of flowering plants. The spores help them keep their structure and make them a little more durable, and when they die they drop the spores and pollen they had ingested. They are very attracted to shimmerines and other sparkly things.
These palm-sized bugs start out looking cute and fuzzy, but once they find a nice spot on a mushroom trunk they secret a tough resin that they build a permanent shelter out of. This “scale” resembles an old shield, or maybe ancient shields were made to resemble these bugs’ scales. Who knows! They eat the piece of the trunk that they attach to, but they must inevitably move to different spots to feed. Instead of digging deeper into the trunk, they break down their scale and expand it. They always follow the same circular pattern of expansion. The scale can grow to pretty large sizes within the shieldbug’s lifespan. They seem to excrete a sort of honeydew that encourages mould growth, so they might be useful to keep for small mushroom gardens, or dairy farmers. These bugs can be scraped off of trees and made into dyestuffs or lacquer.
These weevils have soft black wool, similar to sheep. Just as soft and useful as sheep’s wool too… But it does have a peculiar smell to it. You just have to get used to it. They live in the cooler southern fragments, while actual mammalian sheep live in the warmer northern fragments.
Coweevils are rotund, spotted weevils with an extremely gentle and passive nature. They mostly just kinda stand there. After they mate and lay their eggs, the mother creates a special sac which she fills with a fatty liquid similar to mammalian milk. It’s very sugary, and when the coweevil larvae reach adulthood they are able to puncture the sac with their rostrum and drink the milk which makes their chitin grow with them as they rapidly grow. The milk taste like coconut, and is a very popular and healthy drink.
A species of forest weevil that has a red, white and black chequered pattern on its elytra. Their mouths are shaped like a scraper, which they use to eat shieldbugs off of mushroom trunks.
These flightless weevils are tall and have abnormally long legs. Their two back legs are specialised for communication, similar to a cricket. They have supreme endurance, able to walk very long distances without tiring, making for very reliable steeds even if their speed cannot match a horse. They have a big appetite for sugar, and like to stop at large flowers to drink their nectar. They are also called horse-faced weevils. Since they’re native to Madarch, they run cheaper than imported farland horses.
The largest known aquatic Animal, these sea slugs produce a hydrophobic slime similar to fat oils. This oil is used all over Madarch as a flammable material or even congealed and used in clothing for protection against cold weather. Sheat scrapers are fishermen who use specialised nets to scrape the slime from the sheat without needing to capture or harm it.
These are massive slugs. Some of them have shells. They’re often hunted for their meat, which is valuable as it does not rot, it only dehydrates and becomes crunchy. They can be found in wide open plains in roaming packs, or in skyscraper forests attached to the sides of skyscrapers to eat them. Sometimes, when a snailmmoth with a shell dies while feeding on a skyscraper, it will stick there as it desiccates. You can then cut into the shell and clear out the dead material inside, and use the shell like a shelter. Despite their slowness and nutritious bodies, they don’t have many natural predators. The thick slime they produce all over their bodies keeps animals away. Hunters use long pikes to pierce their brain since normal weapons cannot reach.
Coral squeezers are a kind of giant clam that incorporates coral into its shell, resulting in varied shapes and colours. They can be hard to spot unless they are moving. They eat the fish that seek shelter inside coral reefs, luring them in with their shells before closing shut.
Bulls are portly, spotted creatures that graze on plant grass. They produce milk, though it tastes dull and is not as nutritious as coweevil milk. However, their pelt and horns are useful materials and their meat is tasty.
A Gizya is a domestic species of monkey native to Gwyrth. They are known for their intelligence and deep bonds with Sengl. They have longer lifespans of around 50 years. In Gwyrth, they are often trained to carry messages.
Horses are muscular, beautiful beasts that boast extreme endurance and fast running speeds. Not native to Madarch, they’re sometimes imported from the farlands. They’re invaluable travel companions, but very expensive. The hybrid between a horse and a donkey, a mule, are incredible pack animals, and are cheaper, but do not run as well.
Madarch’s native sheep live in the hotter climates of the northern islands. Just like farland desert sheep, they have a single large fat deposit on their backsides to keep the rest of their body cool while also storing nutrients. Their wool is usually beige or light grey, and is very comfortable to make clothes out of.
Beneath the ground in soft soils are gummy worms, the multicoloured gentle giants as thick as trees. They are highly toxic to animals like borebeetles and moles. To Sengl, their toxin tastes pretty sweet or sour, and is used in making candy. It can also be used as a pesticide for gardens or crops. Plants grown in soil soaked in gummy worm toxin will bear multicoloured leaves, potentially attracting pollinators.
Mimics come in many forms, of course, but some can be categorised into distinct groups based on their preferred camouflage strategy.
A mimic with many spindly legs that hang from ceilings disguised as a chandelier. When prey walks beneath it, it will drop and wrap its legs around its prey’s head as it injects toxins into the brain through the ear. Despite the tips of their legs resembling candles, they cannot light themselves on fire, but instead have bioluminescent bulbs at their ends. Watch out for when a chandelier’s flames do not flicker, or are lit when they should not be. It may be an arachandelier.
A fauxtar resembles a headless horse. Instead of a neck, they have a gaping mouth-like hole that grabs its prey and pulls it inside. It injects neurotoxins into the body of its prey that give the prey intense sexual pleasure to keep them complacent as the fauxtaur feeds on them. Centaurs do not appreciate the resemblance in name.
"Dungeon" is a name given to the interiors of subterranean ruins from ancient Madarchic civilisation due to their abandoned state and inhabitation by anghenfilod. They are interconnected series of rooms, almost labyrinthine. In ancient times, this was simply the common architectural style as it kept people safer from geostorms, which were much more ferocious and common back then. Now, after thousands of years, their interiors have been broken down and hardly resemble their old, bustling selves. Even while abandoned, many valuables have been left behind. It's an open mystery how some artifacts of the past like coins, weapons and armour have been able to survive to the modern day.