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Quiet and the Arch Lands

Quiet and the Arch Lands is a collection of worlds, lore and developing stories owned by Tayleaf, started in 2013 and continued to this day, it is a ever-evolving storyline.
 

Etymology

Quiet and the Arch Lands is a collective name, referring to a large amount of lore and worlds. The name is made up of two main locations, one being Quiet, a massive whale-shaped elemental that resides in the skies over Earth, and the Arch Lands, also known simply as "The Archipelago", which is a collection of islands located in distant space. 

Quiet was named by the creatures that took up residence on him, named because in all the years he's existed, he has never once spoken a single word. 

The Archipelago got its name for its appearance. As opposed to most worlds and moons found in space, that being sphere shaped rock, The Archipelago instead looks like a strange disc containing a collection of islands, similar to an archipelago found on Earth. Those witnessing it could only describe it as such, and the residents of the world do not wish to give it an actual name. Naming days and the act of Bestowing a name upon someone is a somewhat sacred act within The Archipelago, and it has been decided that something as complex and fluctuating as their world could not possibly be bound to a single name. For simplicities sake however, they refer to their planet with the title given by onlookers, being "The Archipelago" or simply, "The Arch Lands".

A'huun Magic

The magic that powers and creates almost every aspect of these stories is known as A'huun.
A'huun
(Pronounced a-WHO-n , rhymes with "a moon")
adjective form "A'hunic" (ah-HO-nick)

The word A'huun was adopted retroactively at the point in time that the Khle'ahd returned to Earth to discover their origins and met with Quiet. It is an ancient Khle word meaning "breath of the Earth".

A'huun is everywhere on Earth even to this day, but at a far lesser density than ancient times. It pools in certain location, but the majority of A'huun is located with Quiet, and on the Archipelago.
It sparks new life sporadically, and with guidance from certain entities. Creatures born from A'huun are known as the A'huun Vii (a-WHO-n VEE).
You can learn more about A'huun Vii here.



Plot

Eons ago, the earth was raw and wild. Continents of land fought a volatile and dangerous sea, battling to establish solid borders and form continents and oceans. During this time, there were four powerful elements, being earth (land), water, fire, and air. These four fought each other endlessly, and caught up in the conflict was a fifth element, that being a wild and intangible energy known as "A'huun". Being invisible to most creatures, intangible and hard to understand, it was both squashed, and simultaneously created during the warring between the other elements. Pools of it would gather, only to be washed away by waves, or scattered in the wind, the excessive tumult of the other elements however only sparked more A'huun, causing a great deal of imbalance and even more volatility. No sentient creatures lived upon the Earth at this time, but if they had, their lives would have been chaotic and impossible.
A'huun, to those who can observe it, is described as a shimmering mist, one that is somehow both lighter than air, but can also gather together and become weighty enough to gather in low areas and sink into crevasse in a surface. It has no smell or taste, but can be detected by certain beings and species. When exposed to low amounts of A'huun, most creatures simply feel more alert, and a sense of energy.  However if pressure or an excessive amount of A'huun is gathered into one place, it becomes increasingly chaotic and even dangerous. It begins to spark and hiss, spitting along surfaces like embers from a welding torch, and as the pressure increases, it becomes explosive. The energy manifests itself both tangibly, sometimes causing pain or displacing creatures in space, and also temporally, causing rifts in reality, abnormalities, and even displacing creatures through time itself.

A massive convergence of A'huun is exactly what set this story on its course, and is also what fuels it to this day.

The Beginning
During the volatile churning of Earth's primordial oceans, life forms of all kind were finding their place in the world. Entire continents were vying for position, oceans and seas were forming, fire from the bowels of the planet rushed towards the sky, eager to create its own places, and the wind eagerly rushed about, witness to all that was occurring on the face of the wild planet. As the energy of the planet continued to build, A'huun became the only element that somehow could not find its foothold. It was carried on the wind, rushed about and dashed against mountains, sliding down into the valleys it would pool and begin to build, only to be washed away by the next rainstorm. On and on this went for thousands of years, the A'huunbecoming more and more volatile in its desperate search for a place to claim. Whether by sheer coincidence, or some internal magnetism of the mysterious element, A'huun began collecting together more fiercely, and over the course of four thousand years, had nearly pooled in one location on Earth, this being a massive primordial forest, circled by a chain of mountains. This natural basin was rich with plant life, overflowing with animal species, and nearly tropical in climate. The A'huun pooled here and grew strong enough that even the frequent rain storms did little to scatter it. The mountain wall protected it from the wind's tumult, and so it was here that the A'huun finally took hold, and grew for many years.

A element as unpredictable and unstable as A'huun however was never meant to collect to such magnitude. In time it began decimating the area, only to repair it without purpose only moments later. Entire cliff faces would vanish and reappear inches to the side, gravity pulling them unforgivingly down into the basin floor. Animals would blip in and out of existence, the air crackled with visible blue and purple lightning. Trees would grow from seeds to adult height within moments, only to reverse growth days later. Strange mutations began effecting the animals that would enter the basin, wings began appearing on land-bound creatures, and birds found themselves morphed strangely into beasts with claws and teeth. All of this was painless at least, as the A'huun's strength was so thickly effecting the area that nothing actually would have seemed strange to anyone observing. The magic had taken hold, and untethered to the rules that the other elements had to follow, it billowed and swelled, unchecked.
That is, until its very existence threatened itself. So wild and chaotic became the pool of A'huun, that finally, it reached a breaking point. This event was known as the Great Upheaval.

The Great Upheaval
During a point of excessive A'huun pooling, it eventually reached a density that could no longer sustain itself. The abnormalities and rifts turned inward on the A'huun itself, creating rifts and tears in very space and time itself. At the peak of this massive outburst of energy was a powerful event, referred to as The Great Upheaval. This event caused several things to happen at once during a chaotic and powerful explosion. 

The Silent Pull
Similar to how a incoming tsunami draws water from the shores to feed its energy, so too did the Upheaval. In the moments before the explosion, a deathly silence fell upon the entire primordial basin. All creatures within the basin and for miles around the perimeter became weak and collapsed into a dreamless sleep. Their A'huun-fed bodies and spirits seemingly pulled, drained by the powerful mass of energy swirling in the center of the basin. The entire area became unmoving, not a single sound could be heard. Many of the trees within the basin had fed solely on A'huun, and during this time of withdrawal, were drained entirely, petrifying them instantly. Even the clouds above the basin were drawn in, and in the seconds before the explosion, the appearance of the A'huun core would be described as such. An intense orb of light, many stories tall had gathered, swirling and flickering with energy. Sparks and lightning hissed but fizzled out as they were swept away in the swirling mass. The surface glittered and shimmered, and as more energy was drawn in, the absolute silence of the moment became deafening. The once massive sphere of A'huun collapsed in upon itself, shrinking inward, becoming more intense and more bright with each passing second. Tendrils of A'huun drifted towards the orb, drawn out from the landscape itself, from the trees and all living creatures within miles. The intense withdrawal of all A'huun from the land below the orb would prove pivotal in the seconds that followed. The energy mass flickered and twitched, quaking in an uncomfortable gasping motion, as if it were desperately attempting to retain its shape. Finally, unable to contain itself any longer, the orb of light shattered.

With no easy path back into the earth below, having withdrawn all tendrils and streams of A'huun from the land, the explosion sought the path of least resistance, that being upward. Energy exploded from the orb, a crackling roar that rung out deafeningly in the silence. The magic that had built for centuries was wild again, but it was too great for the land to contain. Rushing like water from a burst dam, the A'huun raced along the ground, crashing into the mountains of the basin and rushing upward. At the same time, the core of energy itself, unable to find its path back into the earth, rushed upwards as well. The impact of the explosion equaled an untold amount of modern day explosives, and the land of the entire area buckled. Deep fissures raced along the floor of the basin, breaking it free from the land in a massive upward rush. Chunks of earth the size of entire islands were thrown into the air, the mountains cracking and bursting apart. The shockwave of energy rushed and tumbled across the land for miles, passing over the still-sleeping creatures outside of the basin, their weakened state saving them from the crushing force.

With nowhere to go, and carrying a massive amount of land in its wake, the A'huun shot upward, a beam of light shooting away from the planet at untold speed. The release of energy reached far above the clouds, above the smooth marble of Earth's atmosphere, and rocketing far into space itself, carrying the broken shards of the basin with it.

The A'hunic Shift
During the explosion, the nature of A'huun itself became anomalous, shifting from a purely wild and unpredictable element, to an energy that manifested a sentience. This sentience developed differently on Earth than it did for the A'huun that escaped the planet, the main difference being, Earth-bound A'huun gained its own sentience, and also became able to bestow that sentience into other creatures and elementals. The Ex-Terra A'huun lacked its own sentience however, its energy focused inward in a different way, forming itself not into an elemental, but eventually into a planet of its own, where its A'hunic energy sparked strange otherworldly creatures, unbound by Earth's structure and reason. 

The Earth-bound A'huun
The Upheaval explosion spent nearly a third of the A'huun in its entirety, burning it up in the violent rush of energy. The remaining two thirds became split nearly in half. One half remaining within Earth's atmosphere, and the other half breaking free and shooting off into distant space. The A'huun that remained on Earth post-Upheaval had burst upward and outward during the explosion, but the event had changed the nature of the A'huun permanently. This is known as the A'hunic Shift. The Earth-bound A'huun  had impacted the land so intensely, it had fused to it, and in the moments after the explosion, the energy shockwave surprisingly reversed its course, rushing back towards the now-decimated basin. All of the surface land of the basin, including all flora and fauna had been carried into space with the escaping energy, left behind were smaller, albeit still quite large, chunks of Earth. The Earth-bound A'huun, now bound to these shards of mountain stone and soil, began collecting itself, and thanks to the A'hunic Shift, began forming a conscious sentience. The energy and stone organized itself where it felt natural, that being floating over the crater. Drawing all the remaining energy and shards of earth towards itself, orienting itself and taking shape.
An onlooker would describe it as a strange lull, following the massive explosion, where the earth seemed to be trying to draw itself up, to pick up the pieces. Confused and new, the consciousness was attempting to put the pieces back where they belonged. Coming finally together and shifting and grating, the earthen chunks took on a rough appearance of a massive stone whale. Smaller wisps of energy took hold of the remaining rubble, floating alongside the whale. These being much less powerful, they did not fully gain a recognizable shape for decades, however we know them now as the Great Rays, a small swarm of smaller elementals shaped like manta rays. Why they took on forms reminiscent of ocean creatures was never explained, and some believe that the A'huun itself didn't know why. Some theorize that the bones of a great ancient whale may have been deep within the layers of the earth in the basin, and influenced the A'huun's path. Others think that perhaps so much of the basin's land had been removed during the Upheaval, that the floating location where the remaining A'huun gathered actually used to be ground-level, and that displacement caused the newly formed sentience to believe it was somehow swimming. (All the knowledge we have of these events has been given to us via memory-dreams from Quiet himself, and so if he understands the reason for his shape, he has chosen not to share it with us.) In any case, the creature that was left floating over the, now much deeper, basin is what we now know as Quiet.

The Ex-Terra A'huun
The energy that broke free from Earth's atmosphere continued on its trajectory for an unknown amount of time. Up until now, the observed occurrences were presented as memory-visions from Quiet, and being earth-bound, he could only sense the departure of a massive amount of A'huun as it left the Earth's bounds, and drifted farther and farther away. Quiet was able to sense it and its growing distance for several hundred years, however in time its distance became too great, and he could no longer sense it. The events that brought the Ex-Terra A'huun to their current state were explained by the very first Khle'ahd, who wrote it in great books and kept its story safe for centuries before being able to reconnect with Quiet and learn the origin of their home.

The beam of A'hunic energy that had broken free from Earth traveled onward, untethered now, and free to soar onward for lightyears. It carried the massive shards of Earth along with it, frozen in time. Many of the trees had shattered during the explosion, but some still stood, motionless in the vacuum of space. The energy rippled and rushed, it had not gained sentience in the same way that Quiet had, but it seemed to have gained some inkling of a purpose, and along its journey through space, it began to take on a new form. Along its path, it began to siphon energy out of other worlds and dimensions, slipping in and out of timelines. It had no rules, was anchored to no one. The tendrils of A'huun touched many pockets of unnamed magical energy along the way, however the most significant by far, was the energy that would become what is now known as the Khle'ahd. Formed from a unknown mixture of the Ex-terra A'huun, and swirling astral magic from several timelines that had found themselves tousled by the A'huun's wake, the creation of the Khle'ahd was both anomalous, and fortuitous, because it was with their arrival and guidance that The Archipelago truly began to take shape. 

The Resulting Worlds
The two worlds that were created as a result of the Great Upheaval were Quiet and The Archipelago.
Quiet being a massive earth elemental located on Earth. You can read more about him here.
The Archipelago being a much larger planet-world located in an unknown area of space. You can learn more about it here.

Significant Characters

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Species

Significant Closed Species

Other Species and Unique Creatures and Terms
A'hunic magic has created and facilitated the origin of many specific species, however it is more frequent for this chaotic energy to create something entirely new and unique, that does not fit into a general species collection. 

Significant Events

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