Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Update, Postponed Chapter

Hey folks. I wanted to throw this post up so no one was left wondering where the chapter was. Starting last night and continuing into this morning, heavy rains and a clogged mainline beneath my building caused my apartment, a basement level unit, to flood with sewage water. It filled the entire unit and soaked through my carpets, which as you can imagine was a fun thing to wake up to.

I’ve been dealing with this for over 26 hours now, and it has unfortunately put me behind on my writing. I do not have tonight’s chapter ready. It’s nearly done, but I haven’t had the attention to give it proper proof reads and bring it up to standard. For this reason, I’ll be postponing the next post. I’ll try to have it up tomorrow, but I can’t promise an exact time.

Very sorry for the delay,

Sov

P.S. I need 500 words to make a Royal Road post, so I decided to include a list of some proper nouns that’ve become common in the narrative. Hope they’re helpful! This is a very self indulgent and rambling writeup and might contain information I haven’t explicitly shared in the story yet, so read at your own risk.

Aura: Energy that radiates from living things, said to be the emanations of the soul. It allows mere mortals to express their will in ways beyond the purely physical.

Phantasm: A construct of aura, which can be deliberately created by someone who’s awakened the ability to use their aura or naturally in the wild thanks to the interaction of various supernatural phenomena in the world.

Auratic Art: Sometimes also called a Soul Art, these are techniques cultivated by practitioners of magic to perform some specific function using a phantasm, or a construct of aura. They are used by soldiers as often as sorcerers, and are a mainstay of warfare especially in the subcontinent of Urn. Some are unique to specific individuals, some are inherited, and some manifest from impactful events in nature or history that can then be refined into a usable power.

Aureflame: A physical emanation of aura which often appears as flame. Many phantasms are made of aureflame, strictly speaking, but it is most often used in reference to particularly pure and refined spiritual energy like that used by the Knights of the Alder Table.

Od: Spiritual potentia lingering in the world after aura has burned off. It is most often thought of as the “shadow” of aura, a lasting impression of the emanations of the soul that permeate much of the world. It can often take shape as ghosts and other spirits, and over time can even spark new life and awareness in vessels which are typically inert, such as old trees, hills, and even storm clouds. It is theorized that fear, awe, and worship from living beings can speed up this process. Many beings in the world, such as ogres and earthly gods, are created this way either by accident or design.

Elf: Sometimes called The Sidhe, The Old Children, Irks, and Faeries, elves are a wide collective of semi-immortal beings who have inhabited the world of the Alderes for countless ages. They can take many forms and have created many civilizations of their own. Their fey nature can make them both fickle and affectionate, wise and whimsical, loving and wrathful, all of which has made their shared history with humanity complicated. They are often inexplicably drawn to mortals, despite the unhappy results these meetings often culminate in.

Changelings: The half-breed children of elves and mortals. Tied to flesh and cursed with finite existence by their human parentage, while given partially liquid shapes like their fey ancestors, they often appear malformed and monstrous. Though some rare examples are known to possess an alien beauty, none can be mistaken for anything but what they are; the misbegotten results of incompatible existences, cursed to live forever between two worlds and often abhorred by both. Despite this, the eons long lives of elves and short memories of humanity mean that more changelings are made regularly, especially since these bastard children rarely find affection outside of their own kind, leading to successive generations of births with ever more inscrutable results. For this reason, the world is full of half-mortal creatures with uncertain origins, some tracing their ancestries back so far into the dim depths of history that it is no longer certain what ancient union created them. They lurk in the fringes of the world, some wishing only to be left in peace and others stewing in resentment…

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Trolls: Technically a subspecies of elf, these nightmarish sentinels are all gnarled, ancient, and sullen. Though known for their carnivorous appetites and foul moods, their roles in the guarding of ancient leylines and significant crossings from even worse beings has left trollkind in an odd position of tolerance by humanity. The world is old and full of hidden evils, and there are many hidden cracks in the barriers that guard sane reality from what lies beyond. Trolls watch these festered wounds, and for the price of their chosen toll they will continue to keep watch even until the world’s warmth wanes and they can bask in cold silence again…

Angels: Celestial spirits possibly even older than the elves, distinct in that they originated from beyond the earthly realm and descended down from the unchecked colds and heats of the starry void. As varied in form and temperament as the Sidhe, from winged seraphs to more surreal shapes, they are the exiles and castaways of distant, cosmic empires.

Onsolain: A collective of angels, earthly demigods, and the most ancient and potent of elves who bent the knee to the God-Queen upon Her descent into this world nearly a thousand years ago. They are collected into a concilium known as the Choir of Onsolem, named in honor of the heavenly realm their queen was forced to abandon as the endless war for Creation raged. There was once another Choir, and some of the original, true Onsolain who once basked in the brilliant fires of Heaven still remember the glory they have lost.

Heavensreach: A towering pinnacle of the Fences of Urn where the Choir of Onsolem holds council. Built up from the highest mountain in the range, it is said to pierce through the very shell of clouds and air that encircle the mortal world and touch upon the vastness of the celestial void beyond.

Malcathe: A common, if slightly deragoatory word coined by the elves to refer to any being whose ancestry cannot be easily traced to Sidhe, Mortal, or Divine parentage. Oftentimes they are simply born of many generations of further interbreeding between changeling parents, but many in fact hold either Infernal or even Abyssal roots, being vampires, kin of fiends, the twisted offspring of heretical rites, or even dreaded cambions.

The Wending Roads: Sometimes simply called the Wend or the Old Roads, these are a vast and complex system of phantasmal pathways that encircle, riddle, and bleed into the material world. They act as a borderland between the mortal coil and many more distant, even extraplanar realities. Once, they formed connections across the stars that beings such as the Onsolain could traverse, all connecting to the divine kingdom of Onsolem where the God of Creation held court. However, that fabled path is now closed and it is said that Heaven is in the hands of demons and heretics, glutted victors of a catastrophic war that shook the very firmament.

Hell: Sometimes called the Great Sheol, The Lakes of Flame and Fume, Inferno, and the Sixty Six Rings, this is among the most infamous and vast of the Realms Immortal. Stretching across the hinterlands of the divine tapestry that is Creation, it lies atop and encircles the deeper, even more dismal maw of the Abyss. Cruel angels, ancient gods, damned souls , the ruins of forgotten empires, and hungering demons dwell here along older, less easily named things.

Orkael: The greatest demesne of Hell, also called the Iron Realm and Prime Infernium. Orkael is the seat of the Zosite, the mighty devils who guard the greatest breach into the Abyss and work tirelessly to imprison the demons who spill forth endlessly from that gaping maw. Though ordained by the God of Creation in a long ago age, it has become a brazen and independent power as anarchy spreads across the cosmos. It is ruled by the Iron Tribunal, a council of infernal angels who read the will of Zos.

The Abyss: A realm that lies beneath Hell, though it is not contained and bleeds across the worlds, strongholds, and dimensions of Creation. It is the home of demons.

Abgrüdai: A race of demonkind who defied the will of the Second God and flooded forth from the Abyss long ago. They are innumerable and ravenous, yet among the forgotten gods and dreaming titans who dwell in the Abyss they are unusually intelligent and drawn toward mortal kind, who they work to corrupt and twist into their own image. Though they are native to the Abyss, they have spread across Creation like a plague and return to their home only with great struggle. The vast majority of them dwell in Hell, which they war over incessantly with the Zosite, or in Heaven, which they sacked more than a millennia ago in a lunatic feast that left no victors.