🪐 Planet Tathar

The astronomical objects and bodies in the universe are predominantly living, sentient things themselves, with conscious thought and awareness. Collectively the living ones are called celestials, and are treated like their own species. They speak a language that is incomprehensible to anything lesser than a celestial; siatos come the closest to being able to naturally hear it, but it's comparable to whalesong to them, and they still can't derive much meaning from it beyond basic emotion/intent. Celestials are not prone to conversation in any case, and even when speaking to each other their language is rough and simple.

Some terms, astronomical or otherwise, are also modified or used for different purposes.

Siatos are a species of incredibly powerful creatures, often regarded as gods by mortals. Siatos have varying degrees of control over reality, being able to manipulate anything from the shape of the land, to the mortals who live in it, to how the laws of physics and spirituality operate. They are born during a world vein rupture, alongside the creation of a new island, to which they will eventually be bound. While relatively weak when they're born, they become more powerful as they age and their island grows.

Siatos are naturally immortal, and will live as long as the planet they draw their power from does, or until their body is completely destroyed, something only feasible by another siatos of equal or greater strength. While siatos can bleed, they can not bleed out and do not suffer any effects associated with blood loss. They bleed pure siatine, which is infinitely provided to them by the planet. When a siatos is injured, they pose a significant risk to the surrounding area due to the reality-warping properties of raw siatine.

There are some circumstances that can result in a siatos becoming temporarily or permanently mortal. For protosi, if they run completely out of energy and continue to expend it instead of waiting for it to refill, they risk losing their immortality or dying outright. For megalsi, leaving the shore of their birthland will limit their otherwise infinite pool of energy, which if then completely spent will result in them becoming mortal until they can get back to their birthland. Notably, while siatos have an innate capability for levitation-based flight, this ability relies on using energy, meaning wingless megalsi with no energy could very well get stranded on other landmasses with no safe way back. Siatos also have the ability to willingly make themselves mortal, though exceedingly few do this.

Something worth noting is that siatos do not speak the languages of any mortals, but they can still 'commune' with all mortals. They understand approximate meaning and intent, and can communicate their own approximate meaning and intent back to the mortal. This is somewhat comparable to how humans have rudimentary understanding of the intent and body language of animals, and likewise many animals can discern the emotional state of humans. A siatos actually speaking, such as to another siatos, is completely incomprehensible (and usually distressing) to mortals. Testimonies from those who have witnessed siatos speaking describe the experience as "an earthquake, but in the air and in your body."

Communication between siatos and mortals can become somewhat more complex and intuitive over time, similar to studying the behavior of a specific animal and learning how to better communicate with it, but there is no way to achieve a direct linguistic connection with siatos, much like how no matter what, a dog will never comprehend the concept of English enough to understand the written word.

Siatos are divided into two categories depending on their age:

Relatively young siatos who are born of newly-formed islands, which they can control to a limited extent. Protosi are more restricted in their abilities, namely being unable to affect death itself, lacking a personal domain, having a personal pool of energy that is emptied and refilled instead of being able to draw continuously from the planet, and overall not being able to affect things quite as extensively or dramatically as megalsi. They gain more power as their birthland expands, whether naturally or by their own will- though the latter can be dangerously draining. When a protosi begins to deplete their energy, they can yield their immortality to unlock an additional burst of power and become mortal, or attempt to keep their immortality and risk dying outright if they continue to overspend their energy. When a protosi's land becomes big enough, they become a megalsi, but the exact threshold for this is not known.

One benefit protosi have over megalsi is not being so bound to their birthland; megalsi can not travel beyond the shores of their land without risking running out of magic, while protosi could comfortably abandon the planet outright and choose to explore space instead for long stretches of time. A land without a siatos will still develop, but the landmass will grow much, much more slowly, and life will have to develop on its own.

Protosi can mate with mortals to produce a particularly powerful mortal, or with a megalsi, but not with another protosi. The child from a protosi/megalsi pairing will occupy the same land as the megalsi parent, and is the only way to tether multiple siatos to one landmass other than by two separate islands fusing together.

Extremely powerful siatos. While the full power of megalsi is restricted to their birthland, they now exercise complete control over it, from its shape and terrain, to its climate, to how much of the planet's energy the resident mortals can utilize and in what way, to even how death itself operates. Megalsi can still leave their birthland and take with them a small pool of magic as protosi do, but as megalsi age this pool grows smaller and smaller as they become more and more dependent on the direct flow of magic from the planet.

Megalsi all have have a pocket dimension they can live in away from the mortal realm, which they also exercise complete control over- and can decide who's let into it.

Megalsi can not mate with mortals, but can mate with other megalsi or protosi. The process of mating is very different for siatos than mortals. For protosi, this is more dependent on intent and contact. For megalsi, the process is much more dramatic: both megalsi will meet on one of their landmasses and combine their powers to tear off a piece of it. Once this piece is isolated, the energy spent by both siatos and the trauma caused to the underlying world vein will manifest into a new protosi to occupy the island. This process is very risky, as it involves one megalsi leaving their land and limiting their power, so it's only done by megalsi who trust each other deeply.

Typically weak beings with relatively short lifespans, which are known by the celestials for their ease of communicating with each other, which enables rapid development. Mortals live on a miniscule amount of the planet's energy, so when they do eventually die, this energy is freed from its vessel. If they died in the land of a megalsi, what happens to this spirit is up to the megalsi. In the event of this not being an option, like dying in a protosi's land or otherwise beyond any megalsi's reach, the spirit will merge with the planet's energy and lose anything that identified it as an individual, such as its memories and appearance.

Magic, a bright gold colored liquid. It can be found in most things to some degree, but especially in anything personally made by a siatos.
It is, in simple terms, also what causes things to be “alive.”

Siatine is found in smaller amounts in things that can rely on other sources for life. The ground and rocks have very small amounts due to a lack of demand and are more just leftovers from when the ground was formed. Plants have small amounts due to getting energy from light and water as well, but plants in harsher locations will rely more on siatine, thus having more of it and being more yellow in color. Plants can also grow in darkness or extreme heat or cold due to siatine. Early mortals were rich in siatine, but due to having all sorts of sources for energy would rapidly lose it, though this is often theorized to be the reason mortals can access magic "by default".

The greatest concentrations of siatine are in the world veins, and in the core of the world itself. However, raw siatine from the veins is incredibly volatile and dangerous, at its worst being capable of rending reality, but more often causing a physical, physiological, and/or psychological change in its surroundings and anyone near it. Siatine is more safely collected after it has been ‘filtered’ through something, most often plants, rocks, and newly-formed land. However, it can also be found in large amounts in younger or more magical species’ bodies, for example the meyumas of Endelon and novus of Allerya are naturally rich in siatine.