This story doesn't have an actual name yet; the world's (technically island's) name is Alothia, so that's what we're calling this thread. Eventually I'll get an actual name going, it'll probably be something to do with Chaos because that's the whole shtick, but that's at some point in the future. Probably after I irreversibly fuse everything I know and love about this story with TAU. (Don't worry about it.)
Alothia is a very large island in the middle of an ocean; the inhabitants don't know much about any other worlds or areas out around them besides Alothia itself, because they're largely preoccupied with everything on Alothia trying to kill them. There are additional hazards out into the ocean itself that make travel extra difficult; I only have the vaguest senses of these so far, but they aren't as major of a plot point. The main claim to fame is the magical situation. Alothia is steeped in magic, and especially steeped in chaos magic, and it has been for as long as anyone's great-grandparents can remember. The technology level is somewhere in the range of typical fantasy (bows/crossbows instead of guns, some magical replacements for lights, etc). Most of the island has nature running wild, with everything from deep nearly-jungle wooded areas to a volcano on the peak and possibly a hydrothermal vent analogue.
There are three main things to break down about the world itself to really get the overall vibe and I'm hoping I can actually summarize them neatly enough and shortly enough to make sense lol.
First: there are five magical elements, and all magic able to be cast by humans as well as (most) entities on the island can be sorted into one of these five categories: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Chaos. Fire also includes lava and magma; Water includes clouds, rain and any body of water; Earth includes stone, dirt, and arguably most plants; Wind includes both air and lightning. Chaos is both a catch-all category for any spell that doesn't fit into the other four (e.g., a spell to unlock a door, which isn't really any kind of Earth or Air spell), and also a distinct Thing of its own that typically boils down to probability/chance magic (e.g., influencing events towards the least expected/most chaotic outcome). Humans have different magical strengths, some work better with specific elements than others, but generally anyone can learn magic, and there isn't a distinct organized school for it. It's mostly
Second, the entities. Humans are the main inhabitants of Alothia, or at least they consider themselves to be. They live primarily in settlements, villages or towns that have been protected by rings of hearth-wards (a chaos magic that keeps out any nonhuman or non-animal entities that haven't been explicitly invited inside). Some travel is possible between settlements, but it is dangerous, because anything that lives on the island that isn't a human or animal is very magical and very dangerous, and can't always be killed. Those entities are called sprites, and demons.
Sprites are minor elemental spirits; they don't have a huge amount of intelligence, usually somewhere around a young child's equivalent, and they are made up of their element and will die if isolated from it (e.g., catching a water sprite in a warded jar and carrying it inland). They're mostly hazards, and can't really be reasoned with, but can be fairly easily tricked and outrun if one comes across you and decides to get mad at you for splashing through its favorite stream. Fire sprites live mostly in the volcano and the possibly-to-be-created vent situation; air sprites on the wind and up on the thermals; water sprites in ponds, streams, and shorelines; and earth sprites along the ground, anywhere from the forest to the mountain. Nobody knows whether chaos sprites exist or not, because they've never seen one. (Speculation is that they either don't exist, or they're invisible to humans, or they can mimic the appearances of other sprites to blend in.)
Demons are powerful elemental spirits. They have a human or higher intelligence level, usually humanoid appearance, and can survive being cut off from their element for longer periods if necessary. They can sometimes be reasoned with, but tend to get very territorial, and it's best to just avoid them if at all possible while traveling. They can't use magic from other elements (e.g., an earth demon can't use water magic), but they can craft more complicated spells and uses of their own magic; each one has a colloquial name from the humans because calling something a "fire demon" all the time is boring. There are only two demons of each element in existence at a time, but not always the same two, because of the third point I'm about to hit down below. There are chaos demons: these are nicknamed Greenstrikes because of their ability to move at blur-fast speeds, and the overwhelmingly green bias in their clothing. Greenstrikes also look the most human and are the most terrifying to other humans, because their powers include shapeshifting, mimicking voices, and more. They follow nothing more than chaos, and you'll never know when you encounter a Greenstrike if it's going to kill you in a horribly amusing way or just trip you facedown into the mud and leave with a laugh.
Third: the process of Succession. There are only two demons of each element in existence at once, but this changes. As sprites live longer, gain more power and intelligence, sometimes they pick a fight with the demon of their element. Sometimes the sprite wins, usually via ambush or having lots of other sprites help. And when this happens, sometimes, the demon's magic is absorbed into the sprite, and it then becomes the new demon. Whatever sprite kills a demon of its own element, inherits its magic and takes its place permanently, or until another sprite kills it. Each demon has its own appearance, personality, magical quirks, and so on; Greenstrikes in particular have animal-shaped masks that cover the upper half of their faces, and these masks change animals from demon to demon.
This is already really long so I'll cut off my further rambles here and just say this: the story itself that I plan to write in this world focuses on one human teenager, who gets ambushed by a Greenstrike while out with her friends, accidentally kills that Greenstrike, and then wakes up to find that she's taken its place and become the new Greenstrike - the Fox Greenstrike, specifically. The main part of the story is her unraveling the secret of where the chaos sprites come from, and coming to terms with what she now is - because succession isn't a process you can undo, accidental or otherwise.
Alothia my beloved <3333 Please feel free to ask me any questions about anything!!! I'll keep rambling about this on and off for a while I expect
