Fantasy RainRealms Lore

[TurboTornado]

GENERAL​

RainRealms is a world defined by the unrelenting Rain. Seldom, the clouds part enough to see the Great Bee, the striped sun of this world. Below the clouds lies a vast ocean dotted with numerous island between which fisher dinghys, merchant galleons and warships alike travel. The sea is the lifeblood of trade and culture.

The islands are inhabited by array of different races, elves, orcs, and elementals. The more untamed and virginal islands are home to dryads and pluvs.
Pluvs "Children of the Rain" as they call themselves, are a folk of elfin features. Their skin is white with black spots in youth but with age, it turns grey. They revel in the rain, but hold great superstition against the sea viewing it as their final resting place.

While rain never ceases, there's still great deal of variation in it. People of RainRealms recognise two main variants - the ordinary or common rain and the Astral Rain.

Astral Rain is a monsoon period which over the course of a year sweeps the entire planet. During it, the latent magic within the water and the earth stir and release into the air. Because of how strongly certain races, especially pluvs and fire elementals, react to the Astral Rain, ships have to cover their decks with a thick canvas to avoid injury or even death.

Magic while uncommon exists in two forms in the setting, a wilder innate magic of Dryads and Elementals and a more controlled learned magic the other races use. Many cultures worship magic as a divine gifts and magic users become shamans, however nowadays these shamanistic practices are dying out in result of sea elf colonization. The sea elves often pluck magically-gifted children from their homes in the colonies at a tender age and ship them off to military academies to become battle mages.
Others spend their entire childhood on a ship, whether to uphold a family legacy or make ends meet, they often find themselves tangled with eldritch beings, vengeful souls and other such maritime nuisances. Followed by rumours and tall tales, it's no wonder the landlubbers look at them with suspicion.

HALF-BREEDS​

While humans don't exist in this world, there is still a variety of half-breeds. While all races can intermarry and produce fertile offspring, unions of elves and elementals or pluvs are most common.
They are often ostracized, sometimes even by their own family, especially if they are visibly mixed. (see attached picture for a half-elf half fire elemental example).

ELEMENTALS​

elemental is a misnomer, as they are not a manifastation of the elements but mortals with elemental shards in their souls, but it's hard to be surprised when the Plateau folks who came up with the term likely never encountered an elemental in their life.


Water elementals often join all kinds of crew and they are prized as navigators and weathermen. A weatherman is a crewmember responsible for weather forecast, a role which water elementals are especially suited for as they can feel oncoming storms.

Similarly way to water elementals, air elementals are often found on ships of all kinds, creating winds to power the sailships when the weather is too calm.
Traditionally they live in highlands which used to be mountains once upon the time, before the First Rain. However with the boom of maritime commerce many air elementals move to harbor cities. Some gain wealth and renown as skilled Windweavers, while others are up for disappointment as they find out their fate whether on land or on sea is daily backbreaking labor, and from there many turn to piracy because if they have work around the clock for their keep, they may as well receive their fair share.

CALENDAR AND TIMEKEEPING​

Rainrealms use two calendars, the Monsoon Calendar based on Astral Rains and the Mariner's Calendar based on how long a trip around the world takes.

The Monsoon Calendar divides the year into two distinct parts, the in-year which represents the majority of the year taken up by the common rain and the out-year which is the time of the Astral Rain. In this system of timekeeping, the year is often depicted as a horseshoe. While this way of measuring tims came to the people of RainRealms naturally, the growth of commerce demanded a more consistent calendar and thus the Mariner's Calendar was born.

The Mariner's Calendar makes no distinction between in-year and out-year, viewing as one contiguous unit. In this calendar the year has a fixed beginning which never changes. A year in a Mariner's Calendar is much longer than in the Monsoon Calendar. However neither calendar is solar or lunar as in RainRealms the opportunity to observe celestial bodies is few and far between,

A good rule of thumb for converting your age between the calendars is [your age in Monsoon Calendar] divided by 3.14. To find out your age in Monsoon Calendar reverse the process.

The First Rain, which is the beginning of both calendars, is estimated to have been roughly 6 thousand years ago.

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