Welcome to Corporeus

A World from Light

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It is said that within the darkness of Vacuos there exists a trail of light that stretches into infinity. This is the Lumin Path, and upon it rests all realms mortal and immortal. In the Age of the Chalice, the Lumin Path dripped from it a divine essence like liquid gold. These drippings fell from the Path and gathered together, gaining sentience. The collections of this essence became the first gods: the North Wind and the West Moon, as well as Synedda and Nerei, goddesses of fire and water. The birthplace of these gods became known as the Crux, which remains the nexus of all magical power outside of the Lumin Path.
The first gods had vast and unimaginable power, but only abstract form. They desired change. The gods created a great shield of impenetrable glass: the Purgoran Shield, within which new life could exist. They created new gods who themselves spawned more of their kin. The major gods involved in the creation of Corporeus are listed below.

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Deity	Alignment	Domains	Symbol
Akhana, goddess of the sky and sun	CN	Nature, Light	Sunrise with rays curved upwards
Barathane, god of time, moss, and lichen	NG	Grave, Nature	Skull atop a bed of grass
Calydon, god of schemes and plans	LN	Order, Forge	Quill and hammer
Doros, god of dust and darkness	NG	Twilight, Nature	Black sun with six rays
Efsane, goddess of song	CG	Life, Peace	Platinum harp
Garga, god of wealth and gamblers	N	Trickery, Knowledge	Silver cat's paw
The Grey Wolf, goddess of friendly beasts	CG	Nature, War	Wolf's head with eyes closed
Keresh Than, god of folly and lies	CE	Trickery	Pentagram of entwined cords
Keshava, goddess of freedom	CG	Life, Nature	Black and white hawk wings
Kizarmak, god of early death	CE	Death, Grave	Red thorny vine
Korimos, god of guidance and paths	NG	Order, Light	Golden outstretched hand
Meliae, goddess of banquets	LG	Life, Order	Two crossed goblets
Nerei, goddess of oceans and rivers	NG	Nature, Tempest	Pool of green and blue water
The North Wind, god of change	CN	Tempest, Life	Three encircling wind gusts
Phaethos, god of the great void	CE	Death, Arcana	Four-pronged claw over a red eye
Sivillos, god of thunder and storm	CN	Tempest, Arcana	Fist grasping a ball of lightning
Skanda, goddess of rage and war	CE	War, Death	Drop of blood encircled by pointed wings
Synedda, goddess of fire and wine	CG	Nature, War	Golden vase reflecting flames
Thrakr, god of smoke and ash	CE	Forge, Trickery	Dragon's head spewing ash
Tuir, god of scholars	LN	Knowledge, Peace	White mask atop an opened book
Tyrocles, god of fame and legends	LE	Order, Light	Golden reflective shield
Veda, god of rot and plague	LE	Grave, Death	Two attached rat skulls
Vedem Alla, god of stone, earth, and growing things	LG	Life, Nature	Green sprout with three leaves
The West Moon, god of fate and prophecy	CG	Twilight, Knowledge	Black waning crescent moon

The Age of Heart

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The Age of Heart saw each generation of divine offspring creating new realms for their children to inhabit: the great Dials of Corporeus. These were mechanical echoes of the Purgoran shield engineered with binding contracts preventing the entry of harmful powers. In exchange, each realm's denizens were bound to their Dial, as leaving meant an end to their protection. Many still chose to venture outwards, and so the stilted tunnels of Chorus were fashioned: extra-dimensional pathways where whole kingdoms have formed and fallen over millennia. Chorus paths form a web-like network between the planes of Corporeus and have been the bane and blessing of many travelers looking for passage between planes.

Anguish

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As each generation of life grew more distant from their forbearers, the light of divinity was diluted. Form grew concrete and power grew scarce; a far cry from divinity's formless and fathomless powers of old. Finally diverging entirely from divinity, this new generation beheld the first mortals to walk the cosmos.

This deeply upset many gods who believed themselves to be perfected, superior models for all life. A schism occurred. Wrathful and inconsolable that their creations would turn away from them, many gods parted ways with their mortal kin -- peacefully or not. These were the cataclysmic Ages of Anguish, which lasted nearly ten thousand years and saw immeasurable destruction by divine hands. Scars from this age still mark the land today.
At the end of this era, when the Dial-priests finally wove enchantments powerful enough to expel divinity, the prideful gods left of their own accord. Those that stayed were forced to separate from mortality forever, though their part-divine offspring remained. Those gods that left created the elemental chaos of Incorporeus, where liminal spaces are now host to myriad domains of these wayward beings. Those gods drift endlessly there, out of space and time but still able to ply their powers in the inner worlds.

Godly Realms

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All things told, the gods created fifteen separate worlds. Each was more refined, complex, and further from divinity than the last, having been created by a subsequent generation born further from the Lumin Path.
The first were the Cardinal Planes of fire, water , air, and earth. The second were the Ordinal Conjunctions of steam, ice, dust, and lava. The last planes within Corporeus were the Dominus Conjunctions, making up the inner ring of Dominant Space. These planes were those of stone, smoke, moss, and storms. The final worlds to be created were spawned outside of the Purgoran Shield itself. Considered cursed by some, the plane of Materium was born as a triplet with mirrors in the Shadowfell and Feywild. Dominal theologies often prophecy the downfall of these worlds: that outside of the Shield's light they are destined to fall into ruin.
Each and every realm has its own Planar Crux, which serves as an anchor to fasten the world away from -- and safely encased within -- the Purgoran Shield. Any loss or damage to a Planar Crux is a calamitous event for the realm. These cruxes are often located in places of great civilized populations, where since ancient times each world's strongest entities have safeguarded them. Some exceptions exist where the very location of the Crux would be enough to compromise it. For those worlds, secrecy has been the remedy for many years.

The Storm's Eye

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Born of the union of elemental air, water, and fire, the plane of storms has served as a cradle of civilization since the Age of Heart. Fable has it that a giant-queen of the clouds traded her left eye for a piece of the skies. She breathed life upon the fragment and the rains that fell from it enlivened into stone and grass. Her descendants would name the growing islands after their own sons and daughters; the greatest of which was Zivilon, the Storm's Eye.
Zivilon is a floating archipelago several miles wide that hosts nearly a million residents in its soaring vistas. Since ancient times, it has been protected by a massive storm that churns around its borders. This storm is a cocktail of bewitched elemental magic cared for like a garden of flowers by the Mith'Missos -- a Zivil phrase meaning "Divine bearers" or "Stormkeepers". The Mith'Missos are a profoundly secretive group of priests and mages with strong ties to Zivilon's central government: the Lords of the High Throne. The storm they have cultivated is deep and powerful, with equal mystery to its true origin. It is said to never peer too deeply into the grey winds, for something may look back.

As planar travel became more common with the development of the great Ingress Stones, folk from around Corporeus flocked to the wide-open skies near Zivilon to build new lives. There, they could escape the dangers of the more primal elemental axes of water and fire. Zivilon swelled in size and influence due to this migration and as new cultures and technologies intermingled in the sky city, so began the modern Age of Grace. While the city's original inhabitants were the Attrachti storm giants, the air genasi and the Kaath'Dunal elves, modern Zivilon has a far more diverse constituency.

The City of Free Skies

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Zivilon's peoples are its heart, and that heart has a history steeped in war. Since its inception, the city-state has waged dozens of brutal conflicts with the neighboring planes. As a plane with an enormous and regimented military, Zivilon is widely regarded as one of the most powerful worlds in all existence: the city has never lost a war in all its written history. Claiming the spoils of those wars further enriched the Storm's Eye. Old enemies in Nornodheim of the plane of stone remember the bitterness of the War of Dials, which resulted in a priceless artifact of theirs being taken forever: the Ussos Gate, a hundred foot portal now used as the primary nexus of trade and transport to and from Zivilon.

These spoils of war included significant advancements in magical technologies. Zivilon is filled with arcane wonders such as the Mirrorhouses, which are tavern complexes containing the Kaath Mirrors: communication devices that allow a user to see and speak with individuals across any plane of existence. Other notable advancements are the airship, the steam battery, and the Zivil mortar -- a weapon that fires bursts of deadly compressed air. The weapon is known as a 'puffer' among the lower-classes of Zivilon for the sound it produces when fired.
The Storm's Eye is ruled by the Lords of the High Throne, a diplomatically elected caucus of citizens that skews towards older air genasi. The Lords control lawmaking and military enforcement, as well as wartime powers of mobilization and economics. Zivilon's vast military is strictly organized and commonly composed of conquered cultures assimilated -- by choice or force -- into its ranks. The Aquilon Legionnaires, a battalion of two hundred elite Aarakocra sky-knights, is the city's most eminent symbol of power. They fly the sigil of Skanda, the goddess of rage: a red drop of blood encircled by two white wings with swords for feathers. Other less public-facing military powers exist under the Lords' banners, such as the Complicitas -- a spy network that has manipulated the start of many past wars.
Most trade and cultural pursuits are left to the Six-guilds, which operate as a cartel of businesses controlling the majority of the gold flowing through the city. Membership into the guilds is held at a high standard; there have been multiple incidents where a guild's contract with the organization has been severed due to "low moral standing" or too much public criticism. The one major economic power allowed to operate freely outside the purvey of the Six-guilds is the Mercantari. Numbering only in the hundreds, the Mercantari are a loose conglomeration of extraplanar travelers that have ties outside the city. The arrival of one of their caravans is a rare and popular event that brings thousands to the city streets to inspect the fresh wonders they bring.

Beyond the Storm

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Beyond Zivilon, some planes thrive while others have been left to ruin. The planes of stone, moss, and steam host kingdoms and empires with as much history and tradition as Zivilon. The plane of Materium, one of the more primitive worlds, is by far the most diverse and tumultuous of them all. In contrast, the primal Ordinal planes of water, fire, earth, and air have little room for civilization of any kind, as the environments are suffused with energies too hazardous for most mortals.
The remaining conjunctive planes of smoke, dust, ice, and lava are the ancient sites of many terrible rituals and battles that have left vast ruins on their surfaces. Still, pockets of hardy life have found various means for survival in such places.

A Spark of War

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Many planes throughout the cosmos still bear deep-seated grudges against Zivilon for its warmongering past. Though the average Zivilite may deny the validity of such feelings of enmity, the historical context is fresh in the mind of any long-lived elder or scribe. This has led to a tenuous peace that lasted for centuries, as no other planar power was willing to act against the Storm's Eye.
Two years ago, the dam of war broke open. Emissaries from the plane of dust laid siege to the city of Kalmassari, a peaceful agricultural stronghold in the plane of steam. The invading forces razed the city and every single one of its greenhouses to the ground. As Zivilon had been allied with Kalmassari for centuries, it mobilized quickly in retaliation. Legionnaires flew to the plane of dust and enacted a terrible vengeance upon the aggressing forces. Thousands were killed in the battle. In response, a massive attack was launched upon Zivilon. Unable to pierce the city's storm wall, enemy mages commandeered the Ussos Gate and used it to shuttle troops into the city. The subsequent battle left twelve thousand Zivilites dead and the city's Garden Ward savaged, collapsing into the skies below.
As the gauntlet of war had been thrown, many parties rallied their banners. Zivilon now faces forces from the vast nation of Quirrach of the plane of dust, the forests of Thrahin of the plane of moss, and even the Bracken Ones -- a priestly militia of the primal plane of water. Zivilon's allies include the historically pacifist plane of steam and the Chaos Furnaces of the primal plane of fire. This conflict is known as the Wars of Melding: a cosmic clashing of elemental forces.
Though the city's enemies are many in number, Zivilon is winning the war. Its technologies and sheer volume of resources have given it the edge in any battle thus far. The Lords of the High Throne hope to end the war with one final incursion: a siege upon the Basalt Palace in Quirrach of the plane of dust. With the promise of a quick and overwhelming victory, the city's first mandatory conscription has occurred. Thirty thousand soldiers and even many young nobles hoping to make a name for themselves have formed one final army to capture the enemy's royal seat. The day quickly approaches when the city of Zivilon will once again stand above all other worlds.