World & Cosmology
The world of Koryga is not a creation; it is a consequence. It functions as a single, vast organism struggling against a terminal illness. Its fundamental law is not one of physics, but of biology: Symbiotic Maintenance. Every living thing, from the smallest Myxoid to the great, engineered Ailuropodine, must exist in a state of active energy exchange. Life is a constant, demanding duty of giving and taking. To cease this exchange is to invite oblivion. This oblivion has a name: the Withering. It is not a force or a malevolent will, but a principle of decay made manifest, an accelerated entropy that unravels any system not engaged in the work of survival. It is the universe’s honest account, and the balance is always due. Where the Withering wins, it leaves only sterile grey dust and the corrosive slime of Corrosive Myxoids, creating silent, dead landscapes known as the Ashen Tracts.
The ground beneath the soil is not stone, but a skeleton of rusted metal and dormant technology. The inhabitants live unknowingly upon the ruins of their makers, a prior civilization that fell to its own cleverness. These Sunken Archives are the world’s subconscious, leaking fragmented data and toxic energy like a deep, internal wound. The strange powers and terrible blights that plague the surface are not magic, but the symptoms of this ancient, technological sickness. The sky is not empty; it is a ceiling. The world is a closed system, a terrarium built for an experiment long since abandoned by its researchers. The air itself feels recycled, the water tastes of ancient memory, and the silence of the Ashen Tracts is the sound of a machine that has finally, irrevocably, broken down. Survival here is not a victory; it is merely the postponement of a final, quiet stillness.
Core Systems & Institutions
Technology & Artifice
Power in Koryga is not arcane; it is a demanding biological craft. Biotic Husbandry is the ability to influence and guide living systems, a skill born from deep observation and physical strain, much like shaping a bonsai or tending a flock. A practitioner does not conjure energy from nothing; they channel their own vitality to coax a response from another organism. They might hum a low, resonant tone to encourage a Myxoid colony to shift its form, or use precise breathing and physical stances to weave living roots into a shelter. The cost is always paid in the user’s own biological currency, risking exhaustion, sickness, and personal decay. The most advanced discipline is Symbiotic Grafting, a form of living surgery that fuses different organisms into new, functional wholes—from the living armor of the Regalis to the shifting, woven homes of the Silvanus. This is not creation, but careful curation. Its greatest limitation is biological rejection; a forced, incompatible bond creates a cancerous monstrosity, a localized outbreak of the Withering. Every tool, every structure, is a partnership, and every partnership requires constant, active maintenance.
Faith & Philosophy
The two great philosophies of the Ailuropodine are not matters of faith, but competing survival strategies born from the same existential threat. The Regalis practice a state religion devoted to absolute Order. They believe the Withering is a physical manifestation of chaos, and that only rigid laws, unwavering discipline, and the complete suppression of individual will can build a fortress strong enough to outlast the decay. Their fortress-city, the Bastion, is their temple, and its crystalline laws are their scripture. They see freedom as a synonym for entropy, a weakness that invites ruin. Conversely, the Silvanus follow a pantheistic animism, believing the world is a single, interconnected organism. They do not seek to conquer the Withering, but to heal the sickness of which it is a symptom. They find strength in flexibility, adaptation, and a deep, symbiotic harmony with the Myxoid network and the forest. For them, dominating a living system is a perversion, and the Regalis’s sterile order is a prison no better than the grave. The central question of the world is a practical one: is it better to die free in a decaying world, or to survive as a cog in a machine that never rusts?
Dominion & Order
Society is cleaved in two by the chasm between the Regalis Regime and the Silvanus Clans. The Regalis are defined by the Bastion of Unwavering Vigil, a monolithic fortress-city that is both their home and their ideology made manifest. Their society is a single, complex machine governed by the Chancellery of Forms, a bureaucracy that accounts for every unit of biomass and allocates every resource according to function. Individuality is a crime against the collective; duty is the highest virtue. Their order is maintained through constant surveillance, rigid social castes, and the unyielding enforcement of law. In stark opposition, the Silvanus have no central government. They exist as a decentralized network of independent clans and groves, their society held together by shared traditions and the living, mycelial consciousness of the Myxoid network. Their order is emergent, like the intricate, non-verbal politics of a goose flock—a system of instinct, obligation, and fierce territorialism. They value freedom and self-reliance above all else, viewing the Regalis’s control as a sterile, living death. This ideological divide is the source of a tense cold war, a conflict between the fence and the forest.
Barter & Obligation
The economy of Koryga is a closed loop of desperation. There is no currency of gold or silver, for such things cannot be eaten or used to mend a failing symbiotic bond. The only true wealth is stable biomass. Trade is not for luxury but for survival, a direct transfer of vitality from one community to another. A clan with a surplus of purified water might trade it to a neighboring grove for a strain of blight-resistant fungus. A Regalis outpost might exchange precisely measured mineral supplements, essential for their Crystalline Myxoids, for Silvanus knowledge of a safe passage through a corrupted zone. Caravans are not laden with silks and spices, but with seed stock, Myxoid cultures, and rare nutrients. This makes every trade route a lifeline and every raid a mortal blow. Within the Bastion, even this primitive market is abolished. The Chancellery of Forms uses a strict credit system, allocating resources based on an individual’s designated function. There is no free market, only the cold, logical distribution of assets to maintain the machine of the state. In this world, a debt is not a financial burden; it is a claim on another’s life force.
Conflict & Doctrine
The primary war is not between factions, but against the inexorable advance of the Withering. All other conflicts are merely symptoms of this terminal condition. The military doctrines of the Ailuropodine reflect their core philosophies. The Regalis wage a war of containment. Their strategy is to build walls—of stone, of law, of doctrine—to hold back the tide of chaos. Their soldiers are disciplined, heavily armored, and fight in rigid formations, embodying the principle of Order as a weapon. They see the Silvanus and the chaotic life of the forest as vectors for the blight, and their campaigns are framed as necessary purges or ecological corrections. The Silvanus, in contrast, practice a fluid, guerrilla-style warfare. They do not seek to hold territory but to maintain the health of the ecosystem. Their wardens act as antibodies, moving silently through the forest to excise pockets of corruption, guide life away from blighted zones, and sabotage those who would harm the whole. Then there are the Umbra, who have no doctrine but nihilism. They fight to hasten the end, seeing the struggle as a pointless agony. They are agents of entropy, and their raids are not for conquest, but to spread the cleansing fire of oblivion.
Mysteries & Anomalies
The world of Koryga is haunted by the ghost of its own past. The greatest mystery is the origin of the Withering and the nature of the precursors, the forgotten civilization that built the world. The answers are believed to lie in the Sunken Archives, the decaying technological ruins that form the world’s underworld. These places are not dungeons of myth, but sterile, metal tombs humming with the sound of failing machinery. Anomalies are not magical curses but symptoms of this technological decay. The Whispering Ashfall is a zone of accelerated entropy caused by a leaking war-machine engine. The Sarcophagus Drone is the audible hum of a failing precursor power core, its energy disrupting the delicate frequencies of Myxoid life. The Architect's Trace is a latent stratum of data within the Myxoid network, a fragmented environmental echo of the world’s creators. To access it is to risk madness, as the alien logic of the past poisons the fragile biology of the present. These mysteries are not quests for treasure, but desperate searches for a diagnosis, a hope that understanding the cause of the sickness might reveal a cure.
Peoples, Factions & Cultures
Ailuropodine Regalis
The Regalis are a people who have chosen the cage over the wilderness. Forged in the belief that only absolute Order can defy the Withering, their entire society is a single, rigid machine housed within the fortress-city of the Bastion. Their fur is often meticulously groomed, their movements are deliberate, and their lives are dictated by the unwavering logic of the Chancellery of Forms. They have traded individual freedom for functional purpose, viewing emotion, spontaneity, and self-interest as dangerous forms of chaos. Their art is geometry, their music is the hum of their symbiotic architecture, and their highest calling is to be a flawless component in the great machine of the state. They practice a forceful, commanding version of Biotic Husbandry, compelling Crystalline Myxoids to form their glowing fortresses and armor. To the Regalis, the wild, chaotic life of the forest is not just different; it is a disease, and their sacred duty is to contain or purge it. Beneath their discipline lies a deep, gnawing fear: that their walls may not be strong enough, and that the chaos they have sacrificed everything to hold back is already inside.
Ailuropodine Silvanus
The Silvanus are the untamed heart of Koryga, a people who believe that survival is found not in resistance, but in adaptation. Living in decentralized clans throughout the Verdant Maze, they have woven their society directly into the fabric of the living world. Their homes are grown from living roots, their paths are guided by the sentient Myxoid network, and their laws are the unwritten, instinctual obligations of a flock. They are fiercely independent and deeply connected to the ebb and flow of nature, viewing the Regalis’s sterile fortresses as tombs. Their practice of Biotic Husbandry is a partnership, a gentle coaxing of life rather than a forceful command. They find beauty in the chaotic, unpredictable patterns of growth and value the freedom to choose one’s own path above all else. This freedom, however, is a heavy burden. It offers no grand walls against the Withering, only the strength of one’s own hands and the resilience of one’s community. Their greatest fear is not decay, but the loss of their connection to the world—to be isolated and alone in a forest that no longer speaks to them.
Ailuropodine Umbra
The Umbra are the ghosts at the feast, the embodiment of surrendered hope. Twisted by decay and parasitic symbiosis, they are gaunt, sickly Ailuropodine who have embraced the Withering as an inevitability and a mercy. Their fur is patchy and stained, their bodies are scarred by crude grafts with Corrosive Myxoids, and their eyes burn with a nihilistic fever. They haunt the Ashen Tracts and the blighted edges of the world, living in scavenged, chaotic camps. They see the struggles of the Regalis and Silvanus as a pointless, prolonged agony. Their philosophy is one of active entropy; they do not merely accept the end, they seek to hasten it. Their warbands are not armies of conquest but culling parties, agents of the blight who destroy settlements and slaughter the living not for gain, but to grant them the "gift" of a quick end. They are a walking memento mori, a constant, terrifying reminder of what happens when the duty of survival is abandoned. Their deepest tragedy is that they are not a separate species, but a potential future for all.
Vessels, Constructs & Locations
The Bastion of Unwavering Vigil
The Bastion is the heart and soul of the Regalis Regime, a monolithic fortress-city that is less a place and more a declaration of war against chaos. Rising from the plains in stark, geometric masses of dark stone and glowing Crystalline Myxoid, it is the ultimate expression of Order. Its internal layout is a deliberately disorienting maze of relentlessly symmetrical corridors, designed to trap any who do not possess the rigid mental discipline of the Regalis. The entire city hums with a low, resonant frequency, the life-song of its symbiotic architecture. It is a city that watches, its health monitored by the glowing patterns of the Weft of Vigil. The Bastion is a symbol of strength and permanence, but it is a hungry one. It demands a constant tribute of rare minerals and biomass to feed its living walls, a need that drives the Regalis’s aggressive expansion. It is a perfect, beautiful, and terrible machine, a fortress built to keep the Withering out, but which has become a prison for those within.
Myxoid Barge
A Myxoid Barge is not a constructed vehicle but a living, semi-sentient organism cultivated for transport through the world’s canals. Appearing as a massive, mottled green colony of protoplasm, its surface is slick and cool, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic light. To the Silvanus, who coax them into service with offerings of nutrient paste, they are partners—slow, reliable, and part of the natural order. To the Regalis, who use more forceful methods to command swifter, more aggressive interceptor variants, they are distasteful but necessary tools. These barges are a clear dividing line in philosophy: the Silvanus ask, and the Regalis demand. Vulnerable to corrosive agents and capable of being biotically influenced by a skilled pilot, the barge is more than a simple vessel; it is a creature, and its loyalty is not always guaranteed. Its slow, steady pulse is the heartbeat of the world’s hidden waterways.
The Progenitor's Cradle
This precursor research facility, now almost completely submerged in a toxic swamp, is a tomb holding the world’s most devastating secret. Its only visible feature is a hexagonal metal hatch, an unnatural shape of perfect geometry amidst the organic decay. Inside, flooded metal corridors hum with the sound of failing automated systems. Vats of inert protoplasm and dormant genetic equipment line the halls, relics of the science that created the Ailuropodine and, inadvertently, the Withering. The facility leaks raw energy, attracting Corrosive Myxoids and creating pockets of lethal spatial distortion. All factions seek the Cradle for its forbidden knowledge, believing it holds the key to salvation. It is a place of immense danger, where the air is poison and the very fabric of reality is unstable. It is not a dungeon to be conquered, but a sarcophagus whose opening may be a greater catastrophe than the plague it created.
The Sunken Song
The Sunken Song is not an artifact, but a world-breaking equation. Housed in the heart of the Progenitor's Cradle, this precursor terraforming machine is a hybrid of dormant microbiome and ancient technology, designed to rebalance an ecosystem. When activated by a specific biotic resonance—a forgotten lullaby—it can absorb corrupted biomass on a planetary scale and release a "Verdant Wave" of purified, life-giving energy. It is the ultimate hope for a world dying of the Withering. However, it is a flawed and terrible power. The machine itself is the source of the Withering, an unforeseen entropic feedback loop from its operation. Its activation is a cataclysmic gamble: the song that builds is also the song that breaks. Its use can heal the world or amplify the blight into a final, all-consuming wave, making it the most dangerous and coveted secret in Koryga.
Vigil-Stone Outpost
A shard of Regalis order jutting into the chaos of the Verdant Maze, Vigil-Stone Outpost is a frontier fortification and a microcosm of the Regime’s ideology. Built from dark stone and glowing Crystalline Myxoids, its architecture is all sharp angles and cold, symmetrical lines, a physical manifestation of the law it enforces. Commanded by Anastasya Orlova, it is the point from which patrols are dispatched and the will of the Chancellery is imposed upon the borderlands. It is a place of sterile interrogation rooms, humming data-slates, and the unwavering blue-white light of symbiotic technology. For the Regalis who serve there, it is a bulwark against decay. For the Silvanus who watch it from the trees, it is a cancer, a dead stone choking the life of the forest, a symbol of the rigid, unyielding doctrine that threatens their entire way of life.
The Woven Deeps
The Woven Deeps are not mere tunnels, but the living circulatory system of the Silvanus homelands. These shifting labyrinths are grown from the fused roots of ancient trees and vast networks of Photosynthetic Myxoids, which pulse with a soft, internal green light. The entire system functions as a single, distributed consciousness, able to sense intruders and reconfigure its layout to protect the groves within. For the Silvanus, who can read the network’s intent and gently guide its growth, the Deeps are safe highways and a formidable natural defense. For a Regalis soldier, they are a disorienting, claustrophobic nightmare where paths vanish and walls of living wood seal them in. The Deeps are the ultimate expression of Silvanus philosophy: a defense that is alive, adaptive, and utterly inseparable from the environment it protects. They are a fortress that breathes.
Notable Characters
Anastasya Orlova
A disciplined officer of the Ailuropodine Regalis, Anastasya was once the embodiment of Order, her faith in the Bastion’s law absolute. Her world is defined by straight lines, clear commands, and the cold, logical light of Crystalline Myxoids. Her defining wound is the shattering of this faith, the discovery that her government is not a perfect machine but a nest of conspiracy, deliberately spreading the blight it claims to fight. This revelation forces her into an uneasy alliance with Lauri Vatanen, a creature of the chaos she was trained to despise. Her journey is one of painful ideological metamorphosis, as the rigid soldier must learn the warden’s flexible ways to survive. Haunted by a forgotten childhood lullaby, she carries a personal connection to the world’s deepest secrets, a key she doesn’t know she holds.
Gerasim Frolov
Gerasim Frolov is not a soldier; he is a priest of a religion whose only god is Order. As a Justicar of the Regalis Regime, he is the unyielding will of the Bastion made flesh. His lost eye has been replaced with a crystal lens that sees the world not in shades of grey, but in the binary of purity and corruption. He believes the Withering is a physical symptom of chaos, and that the freedom of the Silvanus is a disease that must be purged. His weapon, the Judgement Rod, is an instrument of this faith, transforming living flesh into inert crystal. He is driven by a fanatical certainty that his brutal methods are the only path to salvation. His greatest weakness is this very rigidity; he cannot comprehend adaptation or mercy, viewing them as forms of decay. He is the world’s most terrifying surgeon, willing to kill the patient to excise the tumor.
Ilmar Kallio
A Lore-Keeper of the Silvanus, Ilmar Kallio is an old warden who has seen too many seasons of decay. He moves with the slow, deliberate grace of an ancient tree, his quiet voice like stones shifting underwater. His purpose is to commune with the forest’s deep memory, entering a dangerous trance to retrieve knowledge from the Myxoid network. This service is a slow sacrifice, as each communion drains his own life force. He is the keeper of his people’s history and their conscience, a quiet but persistent force who challenges Lauri’s cynical despair. His defining act is one of ultimate freedom: a voluntary surrender to his enemies to save others, his fearless laughter in the face of capture a final, profound lesson on the nature of a cage. He believes that a fence is a statement of what you value, inside and out, and he has chosen to value the future of others over his own.
Jukka Anttila
Jukka is a Silvanus shaman whose knowledge extends beyond the forest and into the garbled technical lore of the precursor world. He is a cynical, reluctant guide, his wisdom soured by the knowledge that history is a cycle of catastrophic mistakes. Captured by the Regalis for his unique expertise, he sees the current conflict as merely chasing symptoms of a much older disease. He is the one who knows of the Sunken Song, not as a myth, but as a terraforming machine, and understands that its activation key is a forgotten lullaby. He is a man caught between worlds, fluent in the language of both biotic resonance and precursor technology. His driving goal is not to save the world, but to prevent the survivors from repeating the same hubris that destroyed their makers, uttering the terrible truth: "The song that builds is also the song that breaks."
Lauri Vatanen
A once-brilliant Silvanus pathfinder, Lauri is a man haunted by failure. The death of his kin on an expedition he led shattered his confidence, leaving him with a persistent tremor in his hands and a deep-seated guilt he numbs with the addictive nectar of his grove’s heart-plant. His journey is a painful, reluctant crawl from the fog of intoxication and self-loathing back toward the warden’s duty he abandoned. He is defined by his weakness, his desperate need for the flask at his belt, and the slow, agonizing process of facing the world sober. Forced to confront the consequences of his inaction, he must reclaim his skills in Biotic Husbandry to face a blight he feels he deserves. His arc is one of atonement, transforming his grief from a paralyzing weight into a source of grim, focused resolve, culminating in an act of ultimate sacrifice.
Yegor Voronov
Yegor is the prophet of the void, a gaunt Umbra warlord who believes the world is already dead. He sees the struggle against the Withering as a pointless agony and has appointed himself its most merciful agent. His right arm is a parasitic graft of a Corrosive Myxoid, a glistening black sludge that drips acid and is slowly consuming him. He does not raid for supplies but to "cull" the living, spreading the blight as a quick end to a meaningless fight. He is a force of pure entropy, a living embodiment of the world’s final, silent collapse. He offers the desperate a corrupt bargain: a "better symbiosis" that grants strength at the cost of one's soul. His tragedy is that his nihilism is born from a place of profound pity for the world’s suffering, a pity he expresses through total destruction.
Items, Weapons & Artefacts
Judgement Rod
The signature weapon of a Regalis Justicar, the Judgement Rod is an instrument of ideological enforcement. It is a heavy mace, but its head is a living, humming Crystalline Myxoid. To the Regalis, it is a sacred tool that transforms the chaos of life into the perfect, static order of crystal. On impact, the Myxoid head does not merely crush; it invades the target’s tissues, initiating a rapid, agonizing crystallization that turns living flesh into a brittle, inert statue. It is a weapon that does not kill, but sentences. Each use is a sermon delivered in pain, a physical manifestation of the Regalis doctrine that any life not conforming to their rigid Order must be corrected into a more permanent, stable form. It is the ultimate expression of Gerasim Frolov’s brutal philosophy.
The Nectar Flask
A simple gourd flask, cracked and stained, it is Lauri Vatanen’s most constant companion and the symbol of his profound failure. Lined with a thin Myxoid film to prevent leaks, it contains the addictive, anesthetic nectar from his grove’s heart-plant—the only thing that can still the tremor in his hands and numb the guilt in his soul. The flask’s weight at his belt is a constant, hollow ache, a reminder of the duty he has fled and the solace he desperately craves. Its eventual destruction, first in a fit of despair and finally by being dropped into a deep, clean lake, marks the key stages of his recovery. It is not a magical item, but its presence and absence chart the course of a man’s journey back from the brink.
The Weft of Vigil
The Weft of Vigil is the architectural and ideological sigil of the Regalis Regime. It is a repeating geometric pattern of an unblinking eye, woven from glowing Crystalline Myxoids into the very walls and armor of the Bastion. It is not merely decoration; it is a living diagnostic system. The steady, cool white light of the Weft indicates the health of the symbiotic structure. Should the light flicker or shift to a sickly yellow, it signals the onset of the Withering, an early warning of structural and ideological decay. For the Regalis, it is a beautiful and constant reminder of their interconnected strength and the vigilance required to maintain Order. For all others, it is the oppressive pattern of a cage, the symbol of a society that is always watching.
