What Fels Is
Fels is an imaginary place, essentially, the setting of quite a few unpublished stories I have written over 15 or more years.
I'm working very seriously on a novel based in the city of Fenstre and I have publishing aspirations for it. No world worth its weight is complete without serious "world-building". Over the years, I have written copious notes and drawn some seriously amateurish maps of this planet. I'd love to illustrate some of the people I've depicted or buildings and places, but I'm flat out drawing a straight line at the best of times!
The Collision
At a point in the year 2455 AD, the Universe of Natural Law (our universe) collided with the Universe of Odylicism. In common parlance, this is known as the "Collision". The two universes merged to form the universe where Natural Law and Odylicism are blended. A remnant universe was created as a result of the Collision. This remnant of the Collision is known as the Fabled Third World, something nobody has been to or seen, with the exception of Aegyptus Juvens.
All technology based on electro-magnetism ceased to function correctly. Over the years, it was abandoned altogether in favour of more prosaic industry or by the agency of odylicism itself.
Odylicism is a word I've coined from a concept of "earth magic" I read about some time ago. It means magic, more or less, so the universe as we know it is now intermingled with that of magic.
The mythical creations of Man, i.e his mythologies and legends have take corporeal form, the Muses, the Tarot, the Graces, etc, all are real beings now living eternal lives in a realm known as Exa, which exists in the centre of the "multiverse", no, that isn't my term for it, but it's a good concept we can use. These beings play little part in the lives of the average denizen of Fels, except for a few gifted individuals, this "multiverse" has a heaven and a hell.
Not quite the same thing as in contemporary theology, but my own perverse creation. Heaven is the Welkin, the abode of high beings, and, Cththonia, the abode of the weird and malign. Both of these words have their origins in antiquity, Welkin was a mediaeval term for "firmament", and Cththonia comes from a Classical Greek word meaning "the earth beneath". Exa is Greek for "out" incidentally.
Odylicism
Exa is source of all odylic power, and this power is known as the scytae, I've imagined it as a series of pipes leading everywhere, whereby a seasoned practitioner can tap into the raw odylic source and work magic. The scytae is invoked by being attuned to it, knowing how odylicism works, and being on good terms with those celestial beings who regulate its flow, as such, most odylicism is anarchy.
Add this to the effects of the Collision, and you have one very weird environment. Now, Fels is a planet just like any other planet spinning around a sun, it still is like that, but the Collision has rendered all technological or scientific knowledge useless and forgotten. The indices below represent Fels before the Collision struck our universe, Fels varies in the way odylicism affects it, generally, the closer you are to its north pole, the more chaotic and cogent odylicism becomes, like rivers running uphill, mountains pointing downward, waves going out to sea, that sort of thing.
The Argence
Fels, and every other world/plane/realm is coterminous with other, that is to say, they can all be reached by going inside the Argence. The Argence is the barrier between the everyday world and the realms of Cththonia, Exa and Welkin, as well as the Abodes. One enters within the Argence by means of the scytae, whether it is raw or crystallised. Practitioners of odylicism have learned it is easier to carry these crystals around and use them at will than the effort required to invoke the scytae.
Going inside the Argence is a perilous affair, obviously, one has little control over "where" one ends up, you could find yourself on a meadow under a glorious sun, floating on an iceberg in an eternal ocean, or groping through tenebrous mists in some corner of Cththonia, those in the know can navigate and path-find to a degree, but the novice, well, it'd be an idea to say farewell to friends and family. Such is the nature of odylicism,
That should give a reasonable overview of what goes on in my world, the text below is far from complete and only covers a small corner of one of Fels' four continents, however, it is the part of the world, I have written the most in, please bid Earth a temporary farewell and enter the perfervid world I call my own.
A Brief History of the World and the System it is in
The planet Fels is the fourth planet out from its sun, Alsuhail, Lambda [λ] Velorum. The Shuganidz Science Brigade, a concern operating freely from 4-Navy influence, first explored Fels' system. To use the Anno Domini time-keeping method, the year of discovery would have been 2187 AD. It was named for the discovering party's captain, Lemuel Fels. The system consists of five planets, in order out from the star; Lemuel I, Lemuel II, Lemuel III, Fels and lastly, Trajan.
The inner three are little more than gasless rocks, about the size of Mercury. Of these only Lemuel II has moons, named Childe I, II and III. Each of these appears to be captured asteroids. Fels is almost Earth's twin in every respect, a fact that led to immense colonisation. Fels' moon is named Susanna, after Lemuel Fels' daughter.
| Name | Fels |
| Collective Code # | ABZACA 318607 |
| Parent Star: | Alsuhail (λ Velorum) |
| Star Category: | K3 Giant |
| Distance from Sun in Light years: | 680 approx |
| Alsuhail's Luminosity: | 4500 (Sun=1) |
| Mean Distance of Fels from star: | 5170 million km |
| Revolutionary Period: | 318.42 years |
| Orbital Inclination: | 0.7° |
| Axial Inclination: | 20.41° |
| Orbital Eccentricity: | 0.016° |
| Rotational Period: | 25hr: 58m |
| Orbital Velocity: | 4.1 km/s |
| Diameter at Equator: | 12808 km |
| Diameter at Pole: | 12761 km |
| Density: | 5.3 g/cm³ |
| Atmospheric Pressure: | 1.04 Hpa (mean) |
| Satellites: | 1 (Susanna) |
Firstly, to Trajan. Trajan was also habitable without need for terraforming. It is a bleak world of permanent cloud cover, thunderstorms and high winds. At the time of Fels' clearance for colonisation, Trajan was set up as a way station. Trajan is 17% larger than Earth in mass with corresponding increases in gravity. In addition, the permanently negatively-ionised air was considered good for health. The therapeutic concepts soon evanesced as people grew weary of the dim light and the struggle of moving about in increased gravity. Trajan has no satellites.
Twenty years after the system's initial discovery, habitation of Trajan was abandoned. The planet had soon become a byword for depression and gloom. It remains only a bright point in Fels' night sky for about 490 out of 5600 years, appearing as a visual magnitude -1.8 to -4.7 object. There are folk remaining on Trajan, but their existence is unguessed at by most by the denizens of Fels.
Please continue to the Map of Fels page.
As an interesting aside, you can view pages (real astronomy) about Alsuhail here and a more thorough discussion here.
Thanks to the amazing star map generator found at Extrasolar I can now offer night sky maps from Alsuhail's perspective. The yellow circle in the northern hemisphere map is our Sun, though from Alsuhail's distance, it'd be quite invisible with the naked eye.
The Field Star Map was generated online at this site.
