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 vesperabats, 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 vesperabats 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.
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.
Duskroot is destroyed. A minor stronghold, its enemies were cunning and coordinated and its allies didn’t lift a hand. As vultures at a corpse, mercenaries hunt for 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.
Collected apocrypha.
Many lore documents have been written over the years, and can be browsed in this archive.
The best place to start reading is the Anamesis and Aretology series of posts.
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!
Be aware the value of the archive’s posts varies; it includes old, outdated documents, and some with simply lackluster writing.
A 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 I 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, I 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 I’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; I keep so many notes close to my chest. There’s well over a novel’s worth of stuff I have 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.
What is red ichor? Weevils tell stories, the oldest stories, of bats before they bled wrong. But what changed? Why regenerating direbeasts, why magical bloodletting, why these hungry plagues of relentless mutation?
Lie on the altar bleed revelation.
(Continue reading…)To be blindfolded in a world of baleful, enchanting illusions is simply survival. To wear that handicap proudly can be excused as excess. But when your world contracts to that dark, claustrophobic interiority, where do the monsters dwell?
Mantes could once hear another’s thoughts as keenly as voices. They still hear voices; they just don’t listen.
(Continue reading…)They say, “Every mantis has fluff on her antennae and spikes on her arms. You don’t know her until you’ve seen both.”
A diamantis has two personas, known classically as their fluff and their spikes. Or, as arthropods with a long history of relations with mantidkind would put it, the mask and the monster.
(Continue reading…)Follow-up to: The Duality of Mantes
Diamantes don’t have a concept of friendship.
To some, this is a ridiculous thing to assert — mantes are a social species. How could they function without this fundamental stitch in the interpersonal fabric? Indeed, at a coarse level, the skepticism is vindicated. If a “friend” is simply some bug you like, whose company you seek out and enjoy, who helps and supports you, then of course mantes have friends.
(Continue reading…)In a land of drought and scarcity, death is certain. Wise bugs weight the scales — who to favor, who to value? One day, Makuja will decide who lives and dies. Until then, she enjoys the world’s favor. But what wisdom comes to a girl with every privilege?
(Continue reading…)Iecka feels an itch under her mask. Right in the middle of her labrum, where her maxillary palps can’t quite reach. She sighs, and lifts a dactyl — a thick one at the end of her raptorial foreleg — and slips it beneath the silk to scratch. It breaks protocol, yes — but she looks down at her patient, and she dares the unconscious, practically rotting form to report her. If he could, he would, she was sure; Iecka recalls the disgust on his withdrawn palps when he had first seen her yellow and black chitin.
(Continue reading…)The first vesperbane stronghold was lead by a series of five — some would argue four — military dictators before its collapse. Every single one had popularity and legitimacy no more than tenuous. Yet it endured three trials conducted as war before its collapse. This is that history.
(Continue reading…)Heartlands bugs farm many animals, from mealworms to hogs. All flesh is mutable under the ministration of red ichor. What arises from generations of beasts selected to be good hosts for mutant blood, and blood in turn selected to make its hosts tasty and fat?
And what arises when that same hunger is turned back on the genus Insect?
(Continue reading…)The story of Clan Wormthew née Gildenighter is a tale of conniving desperation, pride’s own survival instincts, and blood that betrays its veins.
The story of the City of Eels is awakening from one nightmare to another. You can only watch.
(Continue reading…)The moths of the heartlands bear eyes of constant, darkling sorrow. Once prized for beautiful silk, now beauty consumes them. Stare into the light, and pray it burns your eyes.
(Continue reading…)Think about it like this. Say you’re a vesperbane, and your enemy is trying to nudge your thoughts against your best interest, poison your senses and imagination with false images, and so on. All that tricky illustionist shit. You, obviously, don’t want this to happen, so how do you manage that?
Why not just say fuck it and go with the flow?
(Continue reading…)A diamantis perches upon a flower-throne, tarsi clutching spokes. Trellises shield her, leaves enclosing like curtains — but those vines compete with flowers picked and placed.
Azalea and carnations adorn creeping fig; a pallete pink and orange, in a three-step gradient, and the note of contrast is a sharp violet appearing in only four places. Three lie on her body.
(Continue reading…)