Black Nerve: a Xenofantasy
A Chimerical Hope · Eifre Quest · Gathered Apocrypha
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. 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 bats 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 bring forth 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 — who kill bugs 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 is the story of Team Duskborn, a trio of nymphs united by tragedy, thrust into a world eager to kill them or use them, each driven by an impossible dream.
Read the first chapter here, or see an overview here. It is incomplete.
Black Nerve: Eifre Quest was a story driven by user suggestions.
You are a young mantis who hopes to become a scholarly vesperbane, but the examiners do not see your potential.
Read the first chapter here, or see an overview here. It is incomplete.
Several major lore documents have been written.
Narratives:
- In Dialogue With Plagues, a recounting of why bats bear the curse of endlessly mutating, regenerating blood.
- A Complete History of Western Overscourges, an overview of the history of the first stronghold through its leaders.
- Demise and the Gods, a retelling of a common heartlands creation myth.
- In the Hours Before Sunrise, an incomplete summary of the life of Adelphyne Anthimati before the events of A Beatific Cage. It is incomplete.
- On The Plurality of Evening, a vignette in which a mantis discovers a hints of secret vesper lore.
Exclusion Zones:
- Lardsuckers and (What Were) Grubsuckers, describing an important heartlands industry, and how it was almost ruined.
- Gildenighter, Wormthew, Eelwoven, describing another exclusion zone.
Mechanic Exposition:
- The New Theory of Enervate Physicss, an incomplete exposition of the detailed mechanics of enervate.
- On Enervate (or, the old theory of enervate physics), the first attempt to describe how enervate works.
- The Fourfold Divisions of Vesperbanes, describing various taxonmies of vesperbane powers.
Mental Manipulation:
- Notes on Umbracogs, a brief primer on the heartland's mental powers.
- Nous Inspira, describing an eccentric spell for defeating mental manipulation.
- Some Notes on the Ophisrhodon, an exposition of the infamously powerful mental blood secret
General Exposition
- The Duality of Mantids, an exploration of diamantid psychology.
- Crepuscules, a hastily written reply to someone questions on discord. Yell at me to finish editting this instead of reading it.
Black Nerve: Wasp, Beetle & Snake is an abandoned story. The first chapter follows the struggles of a hopeless, estranged surgeon in a dying town. Snippets and summaries of the second chapter have been released.
"Untitled", black nerve isekai fragment.
[TODO: add Silk & Ember?]