So about that Caithe & Tayne story...09.IV.2024
In this post, I want to introduce the story a bit more and pay due respect to the person who inspired it.
On the origins of it all
This story is a part of a setting that i'm continuously developping since around 2019. It initially stemmed from certain fanfiction i still have several paper notebooks of in my possession, which in turn stemmed from the works of my then best friend and writing mentor. A person who usually calls herself Sunwheel Red Falcon.
She is an aspiring writer of her own original setting and I always gasped at her wordsmithing talent. And she also wrote a lot of comedic self-fanfiction. This was my point of entry into the story: with her permission i also started writing in the setting of this self-fanfiction. However, over time my story started diverging from hers, straying from comedy and fanfiction into like... the main fictional setting of my life. And that was also fine with her! I had full permission to use her concepts for whatever I might need them.
Over time, after i enrolled in a university, we've fallen out of touch, and she isn't willing to reconnect now. But i'm still reworking and continuing that same setting as i will probably do for the rest of my earthly life. In some sense all of it is a tribute to her.
I'll make sure to include links to her works if I manage to unearth them (update: found it! here are her stories, they aren't in English though). There isn't much overlap left, especially in that part of the setting i'm working on right now, but one that is i'll do my best to credit in these forewords. For the first arc, only the central characters of Caithe and Tayne stem from this work, though Tayne became a completely different character over the years of development, only retaining her name (they were rivals in the original, not loving sisters). Caithe is changed to a way lesser extent.
Additionally, I want to credit a person who goes by the name of Amal. She was the one who motivated me to start the current iteration of this setting with the whole archon arc and who kept me through writing the first chapters of it with her commentary.
Some intel on my plans
There is a very large plot of multiple arcs that sits and slowly develops in my head since that 2019. This story here is its first main arc (Tayne's arc); the second one (Shade's arc) is to be a rework of my earlier reimagination of Sunwheel's self-fanfiction, authorised by her, and will take place on late 2010's Earth, and the third one (Asriel's arc) will be a reimagination of my fanfic that started it all, set in the postapocalyptic land of 23rd century Earth.
Funny thing is, neither the overarching story nor its first arc (and don't even get me started on chapter names...) has a normal name yet (Caithe&Tayne is just a temporary descriptor). I'll try to come up with something better in the future.
update 17.VIII.2024: the first arc found its name, it will be called Iridescence!
update 26.II.2025: Iridescence now utilizes the act structure. These acts are embodying smaller sub-arcs, not the arcs i was just talking about.
Each of these arcs (and acts within them!) has such an absolute ton of info currently roaming my brain rent-free that I predict the unrolling of it all to take literally decades. However, I kinda feel the need to :3
Creator chose to use archive warnings
I feel the need to state that the story will contain the following:
• Character deaths
• Moderately graphic depictions of violence
• Light depictions of sex
There'll be nothing super bad to advise viewer discretion in my opinion, though. Trying to keep it accessible to young adult audiences :D
Characters
I made most characters of the story in the makowka picrew maker! You'll see their pictures in relevant chapters in place of my avatar on the left sidebar :3
The character maker obviously cannot perfectly convey all the details of the character's appearance (i.e. Wiktori's mask), so the pictures are not canon-canon, but they're a good approximation.
Glossary of local terms
Reading this is in no way neccesary to understand the story, in fact, it's more here for my reference. You can skip this part if you want.• Arcana - sophonts of digital consciousness.
• Arcane - the art of transforming reality with the use of microscopic autonomous programmable machines (microbots).
• Archons - a species of humanoid sophonts which inhabits the Cosmos.
• Avatars - terminals to hierophants, possessing a fraction of the power and knowledge of their parent.
• Celestial power plants - stations which produce energy from starlight, located close to their parent star. Arrays of these plants can catch and bind a noticeable percentage of the star's power. Provide energy to most of the Cosmos.
• Close Metacosmos - the region of Metacosmos surrounding the Cosmos. Is significantly more traversable than the farther regions.
• Cosmarium - an interstellar network exchanging information between all digital devices in the Cosmos.
• Cosmic gates - see Wormholes.
• Cosmos - the first universe known to house sentient life. Has around ten million stars and is largely static.
• Departments - twelve horizontally-structured communities of archon volunteers which administrate various interplanetary tasks needed for the archon civilization.
• Dreamscape - see Metacosmos.
• Dreamwalkers - sophonts that can consciously influence the Metacosmos through lucid dreams.
• Elevators - vertically moving rooms, allowing for rapid ascension or descension between floors of a building. Can be summoned by activating a special tablet bound to them.
• Hierophants - five powerful arcana, made artificially by the archon civilization and helping the departments in their tasks.
• Holograms - arcane technology making an illusion of presence of an object or person. Frequently used by arcana as bodies. Can be, and frequently are, semicorporeal, allowing for solid touch in some or all places.
• Humans - sophonts inhabiting the Starscape, resembling Archons in anatomy and physiology, but separated from them genetically.
• Metacosmos - the extradimensional realm outside all regular space. Matter cannot exist here without space surrounding it, and it does not store energy. Has four spatial dimensions locally, but can be bent in much more. Can be influenced by complex activity of sophont minds, allowing to create space and other stuff there.
• Oblivion - the "vacuum" of the Metacosmos. Never exists naturally in close Metacosmos.
• Origin - a planet in the Lumi system which the Archons originated on.
• Scrolls - pocket digital devices with a retractable holographic screen.
• Sectors - fifty (or fifty-one) formal administrative regions of the Cosmos.
• Sophonts - any and all sentient beings.
• Starscape - a universe born in close Metacosmos. Smaller than the Cosmos, but denser with stars. Is mostly overtaken by a fascistic regime led by High Emperor Yinlogon.
• Wormholes - archon technology that creates a tunnel joining two wormhole frames through a short bridge of space, allowing for rapid travel. Smaller wormhole frames provide for subplanetary travel, while larger cosmic gates - for interstellar travel.