Omnibus of Cartography

Participants

As a player, the fantasy setting of Nycos is simply a catalog of resources. Searching through the categories will offer you an overview of the pieces of the story, a topline structure that is not tied to the narrative.

Directors

As a director, they are a scaffold, a structure upon which the stories are built, a means to create your own narrative. Using the categorical information, once you comprehend its purpose, you can construct your own passage through any one, if not all, of the Iterations, and perhaps your own pathway through the Grand Cycle.

Citizens

As an enjoined persona, the articles under each category provide a more direct, and hopefully personal awareness of how those pieces weave together. The articles provide context and connection to the stories of my own campaign, and perhaps offer at least a bit of meaning and background to how the Iterations have played out. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

City-States (By Continent)

The population centers of any significant size are built on a survival principle of collectivism and protectionism. Each of them, whether culturally isolated as many Eldrin Conclaves are, or culturally diverse as are the Citedels of Men, protects their populace from external threats. By their own size however, they must by necessity transact business across the intervening lands through cargo caravans, elite couriers, and occasionally more extreme forms of transportation. These are but a subset of all the possible kinds of governances.

Communities

The beginnings of the resurgence of any society depends on points of contact where the whole begins to be greater than the simple sum of its parts. The Outposts, these trade points. are the touchpoint for the group structure of families, establishment of society and the foundation of civilization. The thin and tenuous link between the great Cities and the Wild Lands depend on the towns, villages and even larger social centers. These Communities provide the balance between the two ends of the strata, acting as the conduit where both communication and commerce takes place.

Ruins

Nine times has the cycle spun, and now, in the Ninth Iteration, access to the artifacts and realities of every one of the Eight Cycles provide insight into the pathways of time and space. Power and control exert against the capriciousness of uncertainty and vitality to alternately confuse and reveal the splinters of the Shards. How those elements connect and interact are lost in the annals of time, and it is in the Ruins that these mysteries can be solved.

Eldermeres

Most fantasy settings are cast in shadow and mystery. On Nycos, such places are collectively called the Eldermeres, partially in remembrance of the ancient times when the unified Eldrin were the planet's primary stewards, and partially because no one came to name these places otherwise. The Eldermere encompass all the wild places, where magic reigns over all unchallenged.

Wilderness

Overgrown and reclaimed by nature, the wilderness holds great resources for life and subsistence, but is not favorable for the preservation of the comforts and luxuries of life. The dangers and kinds of wildlife varies by region.

The Heptide Web

At the center of the lore are six interlinked powerplants, for lack of a more precise term. They defy the other classifications, being both out of sync chronlologically and dimensionally, and so have their own classification.

Otherwhere

Beyond these obvious kinds of local, natural biomes, there are other states of being, called the Otherwhere. In these places, the very rules of physics, time, space and energy may or may not apply and nonetheless do also have a place in this world.