Wanderstar

“They do say that inspiration and madness go hand in hand, I suppose. But did he have to scribble his formulas all over my fucking walls?”

— Eldemar, frustrated innkeeper

All humankind has an instinctive horror of the Aether. It is the vast darkness beyond the flimsy curtain of reality, a not-place which no human was ever meant to glimpse. Yet humans inhabit it, and journey upon its black tides, for what else can be done? The pharos routes are the veins of the world’s commerce, and the blood must flow.
There was a time when the pharoi did not exist, when all the Aether was a trackless, directionless roil, and navigating it a hopeless proposition. Without them, perhaps the splinters might have remained islands unto themselves, the nations of the world trapped in isolation. Perhaps we owe a debt of gratitude to the pharoi’s architects, the Aether-dwelling Valqari.
Nomads, scholars, and iconoclasts, the Valqari are a people in diaspora. Some are lifelong travelers, flitting from place to place in small aetherships according to the whims of mood and money; others still have settled down in the cities of other nations. Most, however, dwell in the mothership of the Valqari fleet, the largest and most majestic aethership ever constructed—the great vessel-city of Wanderstar.

The Outsider

The Valqari are an itinerant people, but such was not always the case; once, they had a slice of stable reality to call their own. No living person has seen that place, but it survives in the Valqari’s historical canon. Valqari children grow up hearing stories about the Lost Splinter, and the catastrophe that befell it.
It began—so the Valqari histories tell us—on a day like any other, no more than a century and a half after the Shattering: the sky split asunder, seemingly without cause, and through the wound the Aether came pouring in. The Valqari, scholars even then, made calculations and arrived at a dire conclusion: within a generation, their homeland would sink below the black waves of the Astral Sea.
The people of the Lost Splinter desperately sought a solution, and before long their frantic experiments drew the attention of a vast and alien intelligence. The Outsider, as the Valqari call it, came out of the Aether and offered them salvation.
The Valqari’s assent was not unanimous. Even in those early days, there were people who believed that the Outsider’s arrival was a little too fortuitous, that it must have had a hand in their predicament. For every Valqari who took the Outsider up on its offer and left the sinking splinter in the first aether-arks, another stayed behind to meet their end with dignity.
The Outsider keeps in regular contact with the Valqari to this day. Many of the most powerful Valqari mages learned their art under its tutelage.

The City & The City

The Valqari were refugees: displaced and landless, grieving and aethersick. In the years that followed, many more of their number succumbed to the dangers of the Aether. Perhaps it’s not strange that the two traits which have come to characterize Valqari culture are a prideful independence and a fey, dark sense of humor.
All the same, in the midst of all their hardships, something strange began to happen: within a generation, the Valqari began to acclimate to the Aether. Now, centuries on, many Valqari children are star genasi, and most grow up with their inborn fear of the Aether tempered to a healthy respect. Longing for their lost home is built into their culture, but it seems likely that the Valqari of the present day would be less comfortable there than they are sailing the Astral Sea.
Still, even after all these many years, the wounds of their loss remain fresh. Wanderstar is notorious for being a city with two faces; during the “day,” when the sun-lamps illuminate the Grand Concourse, the Valqari are orderly and peaceful. During the “night,” when the lamps are put out and the city is lit only by the Aether’s glow, its inhabitants give in to their grief: they wail and bay like hounds, and engage in wild and hedonistic acts. It’s a strange place for an outsider to be.

Exploratory Aethernautics

One might expect a people with the Valqari’s history to loathe the Aether, but in fact the opposite is true. They venerate it; they set great stock in horoscopes, and study the stars of the Aether with some fervor. Valqari culture holds magic as holy, and the Aether, after all, is pure magic. Yes, it inspires terror in anyone who gazes upon it—but isn’t that what holy things are supposed to do?
In the Aether, at last, the Valqari fascination with magic could truly flourish. They built the pharoi, and maintain them still; to do so is considered an act of worship, and many young Valqari embark on years-long pilgrimages during which they travel to each of the pharoi in turn.
Others leave on exploratory missions, deviating from the pharos routes to scout the wild Aether. Such brave and foolhardy souls are deeply admired, and not expected to return. Still, they are following in worthy footsteps; it was the Valqari who, centuries ago, found the remaining splinters, and introduced their inhabitants to Aether travel. It is with good reason that the Valqari tongue, Aetheric, is spoken as a lingua franca all throughout the world.

Bringing Home the Bacon

Every year, the Valqari rake in a fortune in fees from Orphan’s other governments, who pay for the privilege of using the pharos network. Hence, Wanderstar is a rich city, but—with its twenty-five thousand or so permanent residents—by no means a large one. And yet, as desirable a target of foreign aggression as one might expect this to make it, Wanderstar doesn’t have much in the way of armed forces. Why?
The reason is twofold. First, the Valqari are confident that no other nation would be foolish enough to try to prosecute a war in the open Aether. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they are confident that they are indispensable.
Through the years, there have been a multitude of attempts by other nations to replicate the pharoi, but all such experiments have failed. The Valqari jealously guard the secrets of pharos technology, understanding that so long as they do, Wanderstar’s safety is assured, and its fortunes will continue to rise. Nobody wants to get on the bad side of the pharos network’s architects.

First Among Equals

The Valqari value truth and freedom, and dislike tyranny. Wanderstar has no single ruler; instead it is ruled democratically, with every citizen entitled to vote on important matters. The result, according to some, is an enlightened, egalitarian society. Others claim it’s a bloated, sluggish system in which nothing ever gets done.
For all the talk of equality, Valqari society is rather stratified along the axis of learning. The members of the Order of Astronomers—the greatest of Wanderstar’s many lodges and sects, and the custodians of the Valqari’s wealth of knowledge—are not leaders in any legal sense of the word, yet they have enough sway to easily influence the outcome of any one vote. Every so often someone will criticize this state of affairs, but any earnest attempt to legislate the Astronomers out of their position tends to fail in the voting phase.
The highest position in the Order of Astronomers is the office of Chief Astronomer. The current Chief Astromer is—and has been for a while now—Sarennan Silverhair, Sarennan of the Veil, The Stargazer. Sarennan, a magician of vast power, is a disciple of the Outsider—and, according to some, its puppet; such dissenting voices claim the Outsider is working to twist Valqari society to its own unfathomable ends. This is considered a fringe belief.

WANDERSTAR

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Head of state: N/A
Languages: Aetheric
Currency: Valqari aster

The language of the Valqari, Aetheric, has become the lingua franca of aethernauts and merchants all over Orphan.
Example names: Adhanna, Adjin, Akeya, Daravar, Iko, Kamadhirou, Kirin, Malena, Marrahel, Medhi, Odja, Oqori, Riwan, Shimansa, Sila, Soreh, Taniwa, Telin, Yasidha, Zouri.