Welcome to the heartlands. The sky is a dark ocean of fractal whorls, writhing tendrils, and black turbulence. The horizon is broken by trees of chitin and cuticle crawling ever higher. The land is ravaged by plagues and malediction, and every day settlements are lost to defectors and crepuscules.
And this is a triumph. Long before this slow death called peace, mantids and other bugs labored as slaves under draconic vesperbats, enthralled by their magic. Until one day, a mantis stole the ways of magic from her master. This power, shared with her sisters, let mantids vanquish the bats and claim dominion over heartlands and all its bugs.
A thousand years later, the vesperbats are creatures of myth, but those vanquishers, known now as vesperbanes, still stake their claim. Leashed by elected leaders, they justify their existence by building cities, healing those who can afford it, and slaying their defecting peers. Vesperbanes have sworn to kindle of a dream of peace and flourishing, and every oath binds.
Yet these banes, charged to be the stewards and wardens of this land, are instead mercenaries who would crack skulls for coin — bugs who kill just by existing.
This is the Pantheca of All Kinds United. Behold the most just, most stable society the heartlands has known. May it everlast.
A Chimerical Hope in Black Nerve 2023-01-31 Story of three bugs with grand dreams caught in grander schemes. 96.6k words
Duskroot has been destroyed. A minor stronghold, its enemies struck with cunning and coordination while its allies didn’t lift a hand. Now, as vultures at a corpse, mercenaries are hunting for the survivors.
Awelah escaped Duskroot. She lost everything. Vengeance drives her, but can she kill a angel beyond death?
Ooliri has a mission to defend Duskroot’s refugees. He has to prove he belongs in a family of medical geniuses. But healing isn’t enough — can he bring the dead back to life?
Makuja seeks safety among the refugees. Death and servitude leaves her gaze empty. It’s easy to be a follower, but is there a purpose worth living for?
First, the three need answers. A grand scheme is unfolding, and Duskroot was only the first step.
Eifre Quest in Black Nerve 2022-01-22 A reader-driven web serial. 147.2k words
You are a heartlands mantis nymph training to become a Vesperbane, a warrior-scholar granted magic. That’s the hope, and it’d let you escape this dinky farm-town plonked at edge of the heartlands, where the Ambrosia Woods breathes down its thorax. Unless — until — you you get noticed and sponsored, you’re stuck out here, peerless and overqualified for your tutors. Frustration and impatience come easy.
One day, alone, you hear a scream from the depths of those cursed woods. It’s a mantid’s scream, and heartlands mantids don’t live in the ambrosia.
At present, there is no great introduction to this sprawling expanse. Eifre Quest is what most long-time readers started with, while A Chimerical Hope, written later, was intended to be the definitive introduction to the setting. And yet, neither truly broaches Black Nerve proper.
Even if you were to read everything hosted on this site, you would not truly understand the heartlands. Efforts at writing a proper overview might begin if someone expresses interest. Can anyone hear me? Please contact us!
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Be aware the value of the archive’s posts varies; it includes old, outdated documents, and some with simply lackluster writing. Note on Continuity Because Black Nerve has been in substantial development for years, there have been several revolutions and revisions in how the setting functions and how we conceive it. There is no reconciling the oldest text with the newest, and many in the middle have inconsistent details and implications. As a historical aid, we would classify break the worldbuilding into four chronological (metatextual) “eras” or versions. Version one of the setting (codename “dragonbane”) is the most unrecognizable, absent so many defining features of the setting. Very little survives from this early on. The defining text, There Lies Already the Shadow of Hope, isn’t even indexed under the auspicies of Black Nerve, though you can find it if you really look. If you find anything dated from 2019 or early 2020, it’s likely a dragonbane era text. Version two (codename “stewartry”) is the first we’d say is genuinely Black Nerve, but much of the magic system, sociopolitical complexity, and even terminology is not yet there. This era is most easily identified with the run of Eifre Quest, but the true driving force was an attempt to design a “Black Nerve RPG” that mostly went unpublicized. A lot of core worldbuilding derives from nature of interactive questing and game design. Most of the posts from 2020–2022 have a stewartry era flair. Version three (codename “chimera”) is something of an iterative revision of version two. Things are more complicated in line with a more modern version of the setting, but a lot of the work that makes it so profoundly different from what came before can’t be appreciated from the outside; we keep so many notes close to my chest. There’s well over a novel’s worth of stuff we haven’t published. 2022 and early 2023 posts are chimera era. Version four (codename “pactjumper”) is more of an aspiration than anything, but the “Anamnesis and Aretology” series of posts largely comprised the intermediate form between versions three and four; look there to understand where the push is heading. But, lacking a defining text, there’s no real basis for understanding what pactjumper era Black Nerve is all about. Keep an eye out for With Gnawed Wings Defending. You can already read a teaser. Another potential project in the current iteration of the setting is: Our Bond is an Altar.