I’m really obsessed with the idea of worldbuilding that refuses to clarify its relationship to reality
When we read books we instinctively try to categorize books based on the kind of book they are, oh this is fantasy, post-apocalyptic, etc. and we try to find out things and clarify what kind of world it is and whether or not the things in it are make believe and how make believe they are.
So what if I…Messed with that process?
For instance. A book is set in Ohio. We mention the names of cities in Ohio and pieces of Ohio’s history and famous landmarks in Ohio and it’s incredibly well researched, even down to the names of museums in Cincinnati or something. We’re talking very firmly established in the facts of a place. It’s kind of an eerie book and in some ways the setting seems weird or cloudy or dreamy but it seems grounded in just the amount of facts that are in it about the setting.
There are little factoids dropped here and there. At first very boring ones. Something that happened at an Ohio water treatment plant in 1995. What it takes to serve on a jury in Ohio. Ohio laws about spraying pesticides on corn. Facts about corn itself. Probably one of those cutesy little facts about weird local laws.
They start to get…stranger. The little bits of worldbuilding. Did you know that Ohio has had more nuclear power plant accidents than any other state? In this small town in Ohio, you used to need a license to perform an exorcism! This charming small town’s mayor is a ghost. In Ohio, it is legal for doctors to draw more of your blood than they need to sell to third parties. There are no Dollar Tree’s in Ohio. (Have you ever seen a Dollar Tree in Ohio? Are you sure?)
At some point the reader catches onto something that is clearly not right. Maybe the book states at some point that Indiana is to the east of Ohio instead of the west. This is clearly a mistake, and they move on.
Some things about the everyday realities of the setting seem peculiar. There seem to be quite a bit of packs of wild dogs about, and mold seems to grow a lot quicker. Grass is described very strangely—a shade of green that isn’t very characteristic of grass. There seem to be a lot of cults, and there are a lot of empty lots in town enclosed with razor wire for no apparent reason. Sometimes a character’s hands grow suddenly cold, and they panic and hasten inside. Frostbite? Is it the climate? Why does the author write that way?
At some point, though, it becomes clear that the author is fictionalizing a bit. It may certainly be the case that nuclear accidents have occurred in Ohio more than any other state, but the tale of how deer from that area glow in low light is probably made up. And though that famous televangelist existed and it seems plausible enough that he owned tigers, like some kind of janky drug dealer would purchase, it seems implausible that he regularly fed people to them.
As the story continues, more and more facts seem a little off, though. The spatial relationship of Ohio to its surrounding states, and the shape that Ohio is (it’s described at one point as having a panhandle, and as bordering East Tennessee) seems to make less and less sense. The wild dogs are massive, and have smoldering eyes like hellhounds. One nuclear disaster apparently wiped out a full sixth of Ohio’s population. The deer, plagued with cancer from the radiation, have turned carnivores. The wild horses run under a red sky—the sky is always described as red. The original capital of Ohio is lost, its stones dashed down in the war that made its citizens turn to cannibalism. The invasive plants of Ohio can pry open windows, and once choked a woman in her sleep. The people of Ohio dream more frequently of birds of prey gouging out their eyes than people in any other state. There are plagues of rats in Ohio that sometimes devastate towns. In Ohio, unexplained disappearances are rarely investigated. There are eagles in Ohio—their wings blot out the sun. Ohio briefly seceded from the Union in 1922, and there are those that still believe in the Free People’s Empire of Ohio. Ohio shares a border with Arizona. Ohio has a coastline on the edge of a dark and perpetually cold sea.
It becomes abundantly clear that this is not Ohio. It is something else, named Ohio and superficially wearing Ohio as a skin, but it is not Ohio. And looking back, it is hard to tell when it stopped being Ohio. When it stopped being just quirky Americana and an eerie mood and started being…this. Small details were off early on, but these were not noticed, because they seemed so normal. The sky was always described as red, but that was because it was supposed to be sunset…right?
The governor of Ohio has been struck down. All bow before the God-Emperor of Ohio. The black wolves of Hell await those who will not bow with their teeth.
i’m such a huge fucking fan of having and using magic requiring effort. whether mental, physical, or both. i’m so fond of magic systems that make you sweat, bleed, cry and get your hands dirty when you use them. i love it when powers are earned, not inherent, through years of study and/or exercizing them like a muscle. and i love it when a seemingly effortless display of power is terrifyingbecause of this.
YES!!!!! MAGIC THAT REQUIRES MAINTENANCE! MAGIC THAT DRAINS! MAGIC THAT CORRUPTS BODY AND SOUL!
Explore Torn World with a free story - this of how children in different parts of the world ask for exciting stories of the dangers they may face as adults.
Lafayette Hajjar was an Andolucian operative, clandestine cell leader and intrinsic magician active during the height of the Cold War. A tactical genius with incredible arcane talent, she was infamous for her deadpan and apparently socially-stunted disposition. She saw action in various proxy wars, surviving and even winning engagements with other notorious mages of the era like Marietta Hildegard and Edward Montblanc. Official government records attribute over two-hundred solo magician kills to her, a figure that many speculate to be under-reported.
sometimes i get so worried i can’t hear my heart beat
anyway, anyway
hi again everyone! sorry, ive been tied up by exams a lot recently and haven’t been able to draw much, but i managed to whip this up in firealpaca, i hope you like it! <:
“Níðhöggr Ingebretsen was a Scandinavian-born tier 7 magician that served as acting lieutenant to an Andolucian covert operations cell based in Basilica, Haurent. The cell was lead by the infamous operative mage Lafayette Hajjar, and he was known informally by all relevant members as her second in command, carrying out numerous assassinations under her direction. Certain agents have posited that their relationship was more than professional, a claim that both Hajjar and her handler have denied. He served in her unit for approximately seven years.
On January 15th, 1959, Ingebretsen and Lafayette Hajjar were engaged by the tier 12 magician [NAME OMITTED] during a routine package drop outside the Andolucian embassy in Haurent. Both were grievously wounded during the battle by [NAME OMITTED], whose unprecedented ability to [REDACTED] enabled them to violently incapacitate both agents. The fight mainly took place upon the frozen lake surrounding the embassy, and as a result, the water was heavily contaminated by demons drawn up by the magical energy of the participants.
Analysts surmise that Ingebretsen fell through the rapidly thinning ice at some point during the engagement. Hajjar, who survived the battle, testified that they had become separated due to poor visibility from weather conditions on the battlefield. When finally relocated, she reports that he was found facedown, half in the water. Although alive, demons had visibly eaten away at roughly three-quarters of his body–during her debriefing, Hajjar described the damage as catastrophic and beyond medical help; they had burrowed into his chest cavity, adhered to large patches of exposed epidermis, and reportedly were forcing their way out of his left eye socket when she found him.
Nonetheless, Ingebretsen was said to have recognized her, and although badly damaged, managed to communicate a request for a mercy kill. Hajjar reports that she took out her sidearm with the intention of shooting him in the head, but suffered a crisis of conscience and instead moved in pursuit of the fleeing [NAME OMITTED], leaving him on the ice. Ingebretsen’s body was subsequently never found–authorities arriving on scene in the immediate aftermath recovered several of his fingers and a number of teeth, but little else. It’s been presumed that he was dragged into the water by the accumulation of demons.
The Andolucian intelligence bureau officially lists Níðhöggr Ingebretsen as deceased, but like most of its drowned operatives, it holds out the hope that he will resurface as an amalgam in one of their regular-interval summonings and return to active duty.
Lafayette Hajjar reports that his last words to her as she held him on the ice were a barely coherent, "It hurts.”
“Amagician (also referred to as a mageorking) is an individual able to consciously shape and alter the physical and chemical properties of their environment through currently unknown mechanisms. Notably, this manipulation of parameters is confined to a spherical area centered on their person.
This range is popularly referred to as a kill radius due to the exclusive use of the term in both demiurgic and analog warfare, and its relative circumference varies from magician to magician, increasing with age. The kill radius of a magician grows at a rate constant and often unique to the individual, and has been found to increase with a proportion consistent with the Fibonacci integer series in mathematics.
The first magicians were born during 1930, and are thus referred to as the first generation mages. There was no precedence, genetic or otherwise, for their sudden appearance, and the births occurred worldwide at a relative frequency of 1/10,000 across all demographics.
Biologically, magicians appear virtually identical to normal human beings, save for the presence of a tapetum lucidum, typically found in nocturnal vertebrates, behind each retina. As a result, their eyes are highly reflective, and often bear noticeably decreased or vivid pigmentation. Unusually, the presence of this structure does not appear to have a notable effect, detrimental or otherwise, on the vision of the individual. Scientists hypothesize that this is due to the light-refracting properties of the radius surrounding a magician, which as a result is faintly visible to the naked eye.
The subsequent discovery of ‘magic’ prompted vast and sweeping changes to virtually all aspects of international society—from cultural norms to geopolitical borders. Governments felt threatened by the existence of magicians, but also immediately realized their destructive potential.
As a result, existing warfare and combat stratagems had to be massively retailored. Thus, World War II was the last of the so-called ‘complete analog’ wars, fought solely with technology (aside from a few scattered incidents involving child soldiers and the opportunists eager to take advantage of young first generation magicians).
The nature of the kill radius singlehandedly elevates the magician into becoming what is statistically speaking, the deadliest and most effective groundside unit on the modern battlefield. Entire units, if bunched closely together into standard attack formations, can be massacred in seconds if they are caught within the ‘reaping circle’ of a mage.
The kill radius is unaffected by physical boundaries such as walls or doors, making it an ideal choice for espionage and undetectable assassinations. As a result, although records are inconclusive and there was no officially documented body count, historians believe that the 1965-1972 portion of the Cold War marks one of the bloodiest periods of human history, and boasts the largest amount of mage-related deaths.
Magicians are considered to hold an absolute advantage over the environment within their radius. This control is limited only by the skill and precision of the individual. Typical strategy in warfare consists of capturing opposing troops (magician or otherwise) within this area. The magician may then utilize any means at their disposal to neutralize the enemy—typically by igniting the oxygen within the air or otherwise briefly making the space around them inhospitable through chemical means. Skilled combat mages are notorious for their creativity and unpredictability in executions—it is common for them to publicly display the horrifically mangled bodies as deterrence during wartime.
After use, the radius of a magician has been shown to leave a complex fractal ‘fingerprint,’ on whatever surface the magician happened to be standing on. The residual image changes rapidly depending on the type of force the mage has exerted on their environment (alteration of gravity, manipulation of vectors), but they are not extremely dissimilar between individuals.
As a result, it was theorized that magicians utilize a branching subconscious language, similar to a programming code, to act on their surroundings. The effects of research in the 1950’s led to the invention of schematics: simplified two-dimensional representations of radial fingerprints.
When drawn out on flat surfaces, magicians may utilize them as functional kill radii, and perform the action specified by the schematic even when not in close proximity of the area. Scientists hypothesize that this is because it acts as a sort of conduit or circuit for the magician’s energy in the absence of a real radius.
Schematics provide mages with invaluable shortcuts for tasks that require surgical precision, such as most medical situations. To heal a wound, a magician must instigate rapid cell division in the affected area, a process that can result in the formation of deadly tumors if not done with complete concentration. To avoid that possibility, a schematic of a successful procedure may be used instead.
Less sophisticated schematics are also often used in combat in lieu of conventional explosives, able to be drawn under a bridge or truck and detonated when the magician is safely far away.
Most countries have adopted the Mauss-Crowley system of classification, which ranks magicians within a series of twelve tiers. The tier of a magician is decided mainly by their level of precision, or ability to interact with matter on increasingly specific levels. A tier 11 magician, for example, would be able to operate on the atomic level, while the theoretical tier 12 could manipulate events on a subatomic scale.
The twelfth tier may also be designated to mages that demonstrate intimacy with previously unprecedented aspects of reality—the infamous Edward Montblanc, for instance, was awarded the rank in 1953 for being able to interface with the time-space continuum.
Due to their relative rarity and low population, most militaries assign only one or two mages per essential squadron of human soldiers. Units that are composed completely of magicians are referred to as chapters, and are typically pulled for black ops, espionage, or other high-risk operations.
Magicians in the military are typically paid extremely generous salaries, but roughly two-thirds of it is withheld by the government until they reach retirement age (35). The likelihood of a combat mage to survive past the age of 25 is about 33.5%.”
“Don’t you fucking talk to me about Ingebretsen,” Cutler says, more sober than anything. He thumbs a match out of the box, snaps it against the side like a master guitarist. The room becomes incrementally brighter. Mercedes waits.
“Lafayette saw him drown, you know. Montblanc’s a sadistic asshole, even for a magician. Cut both of them up. Went out on the lake afterwards, saw his blood smeared all over the ice. He’d been dragged under by something abyss-side. Place was black with it.”
He pauses. “Cigar, Arroyo?”
“No thank you,” says Mercedes, staring into the teacup. Across from her Cutler is hunched and unreadable, a dark, wiry thing slotted into the dense shape of the armchair.
“Didn’t see him again until about two years later. One of AMSD’s facilities happened to pull him out of the water in one of their routine systemic summons. Lafayette got the call, ran down. Think that’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen on her at once. Soon as Nid saw her, he nearly tore her arm completely off,” Cutler moves to indicate, “At the elbow. He was crazy like a dog. Didn’t speak at all.”
A long sigh. “I hear you hate anchor demons, Merché.”
“Always and forever, sir. I don’t agree with their usage in warfare.”
“You afraid of water?”
Mercedes pushed away a bad memory with a shudder. “Aren’t most magicians?”
“So you know, then, the reason.”
“Of course.”
“Laf fought him to a standstill. Took two hours. Wouldn’t let any of the guards or me interfere. I still don’t understand why she didn’t just kill him. They let him return to active fieldwork after all that, incredibly.”
“I knew Nid. Watching him now, there’s something really wrong. Doesn’t move right, doesn’t talk right. Grins and says terrible things. Most amalgams are like that. I’m inclined to conclude something found his corpse and is wearing it to screw with us.”
Cutler leans in, fingers steepled underneath his chin. There is a quiet, unnerving desperation in the gesture that makes Mercedes subconsciously inch backwards in her chair. “You know, one of these days, I might kill him, if Hajjar doesn’t. Laf liked him and all, but there’s only so much of his bullshit she can take. You’ve seen the eyes on that kid? There’s nothing in them anymore. He’s empty. Sure, you can search for some resemblance of a soul in him, but if I had to be honest it’s probably rotted away and dangling by its shoelaces somewhere.”
He stabs his cigar out on the table, a slow, humorless smile smoothing out his features. “The truth is, Mercedes, we’re all too chicken to go in and dredge it up.”
This is the ceremonial version of the flag used for the Waxeroi people. The Waxeroi people are a mixed Heronoi-Arnadjanai people, gifted with the beauty of the former and the strength of the latter, but exiled from their homeland to escape a purge where they were blamed for the Thralondian invasion.
Dark blue represents hope, white represents faith in the Gods.
The flag incorporates elements from three different cultures: Heronoi, Norse, and Arnadjanai.
The full Moon and white fern are symbols of the Heronoi, showing that the Waxeroi consider themselves just as Heronoi as their mainstream kin.
The unicorn in the right is a symbol beloved by both Arnadjanai and Heronoi, suggesting that the Waxeroi are the best of both worlds.
The elaborate design in the middle mixes Norse symbolism and Rakolan traditional art. It incorporates two or three runes:
* ᛝ - yngvar (Rannarisk) or yquowara (Heronoi), for Freyr and his blessing
* ᛒ - bjarkan (Rannarisk) or bajarikan (Heronoi), for Baldr and his courage
* ᛟ - udhal (Rannarisk) or jothoru (Heronoi), for Odin, a god of knowledge feared by the Heronoi as a bringer of doom. Because he welcomes them as outcasts into his arms, and they are ready to face every challenge and overcome them.
The lines branching from the curve’s right represent paths, and the Waxeroi’s painful descent to freedom and happiness. The stars along the paths, numbered nine to the sacred number of the Norse, represent their rise from being outcasts into being the inspiration to many people.
I really need to do more studying and write an essay on how Americanism is a genuine folk religion which reveres capital and the vague concept of “the free market” as a god of providence to be pleased in order to lead a prosperous life, also that the founding fathers are prophetic, perhaps even messianic figures who basically gave birth to this god through the revolutionary war, and that the vast majority of conservative Christians in America revere capital more than the god they claim to serve in an ironic sort of golden calf situation.
I think you’re just stupid, bro
This does sound like some of thecivilisations in my works - corporate states who don’t give a darn about the poor and needy.
Worldbuilding prompt: America, but corporatism is the state religion.
Speculative biology of Eversong Lynxes because I am really just a great, big nerd.
Lynxes start grey and patternless before shedding into a golden adolescent coat. These gold-red juveniles are the most commonly seen of the Eversong Lynxes, as it is in this stage of their life that they are seeking a territory… or a friend. Like many creatures of the wood, they have a symbiotic relationship with the Elves, and will frequently hunt and grow up alongside them.
As adults, the lynxes’ coats become darker. Matriarchs and ‘Ghostclaw’ lynxes sport this russet fur.
Old ranger’s tales tell that the oldest cats; sometimes over a thousand years old themselves, may be jet black… but since the destruction of Thas’alah and the sacking of Quel’thalas, none of these elusive, shadowy elder cats have been seen.
Cultural worldbuilding tool: Give them an untranslatable word or or expression or a few. Even if this culture doesn’t have its own language, there can be a slang term, or final traces of a lost language that nobody fluently speaks anymore. But those few words have lingered, because they simply cannot be replaced with something else.
Like calling someone _____, which directly translates to “the chicken salesman”, but is actually an expression for a very specific kind of a con man. It’s a reference to an ancient play, in which the scammer in question first steals someone’s chickens, and then sells the victim their own chickens’ skulls back as a magical ward against chicken thieves. Most people who use the term don’t even know the origin, and fucking nobody has actually seen the play.
A single word that means “the weeks of after-image”, a word for that time in mourning, when the grief hasn’t set in yet, but you notice the ‘after-images’ of the deceased everywhere, silence where they used to make noise, their favourite tasks sitting undone.
One that can be translated to both “outlasting determination” and “survival spite”, though neither translation really satisfactorily expresses the feelings involved. It’s a common term for the phenomenon where two elderly people who fucking hate each other live into improbably long ages because both refuse to be the one who dies first.
i love doing untranslatable idioms. for instance, the kyri in my forge verse have an idiom where “painting your wagon” sorta means taking advantage of someone else’s misfortune, but can also refer to a death in the family, in an irreverent way, like ‘kicked the bucket’ or ‘bought the farm’. because it’s a tradition that if you inherit a wagon, or buy one that’s up for sale because its owner died – which is always real cheap, because of the work it takes to make it Not Haunted afterwards – you have to change its whole look. the old superstition is that the ghost won’t recognize it. which gives it some obscure additional meanings based on those superstitions.
so that’s confusing for outsiders, because even if they learn ‘paint the wagon’ as equivalent to ‘kick the bucket’, or as meaning like “bad things happening to that guy turned out lucky for me,” it’s still going to be confusing when someone up and says “eh you just gotta paint the wagon” when they mean like… not giving your new address to your crazy ex.
I once wrote a thing in which a courteous sign-off for a written communication was a phrase that literally translated as “Eyes of my mothers.” A footnote explained that this was an abbreviated version of a longer phrase meaning “May the eyes of all my mothers dilate upon you.”
One of my favorite underutilized bits of Star Wars worldbuilding is how feelings literally soak into the physical world around you, if you’re Force-sensitive.
Sometimes in really awful ways–Maul’s rage is still radiating off the walls in the Theed hangar 30 years later, because nobody goes in there to put new feelings into the walls, Luke can still feel Rey’s imprint on the meditation stone on Ahch-To after she leaves, Anakin and Ahsoka can still hear the screams of the dying in the Jedi hangar after the bombing–but that would also be there in good ways.
Imagine walking into the Room of a Thousand Fountains where you touch a stone bench where Master Yoda was just meditating on, you’re not even psychometric, you can just feel the warmth and calm he left behind while he sat there. Imagine walking into the the Temple gardens where a Jedi Master was watering their space azalea bushes and you can feel their contentment radiating off the walls. Imagine walking into the refectory and feeling last week’s younglings class’ excitement over their upcoming field trip, how golden and glowing it is in the Force. Imagine walking into the Jedi Temple aviary, where they keep their pet birds, hearing the gentle cooing of the convors, but also feeling the connection all the Jedi before you have had with these animals, the joy that’s been permeated into the floor and walls with how much they’ve loved their time spent there.
Imagine how being a psychic space wizard that can soak feelings into the world around you would change how you interact with that physical world. Imagine how giving a river stone isn’t just giving a neat rock, but giving someone the ability to hold affection and care literally right there in your hand, because you focused on putting all those feelings into the rock beforehand. Imagine how art performances would change, if you’re psychic and your audience is psychic, how you can literally hand them feelings or sit them on a cushion that you put a specific feeling into it, when you get to the climatic part of your play.
Imagine how being able to put feelings into physical objects and then hand them to someone would play out!!!!
Imagine how long it would take for that feeling to leave, and imagine how it would feel when Obi-Wan realizes he can no longer sense his Master’s presence on the teapot or his cloak
That’s the sad shit I’m talking about, yes! I mean, I love celebration of how this would change Jedi art classes and stuff, but also think about Yoda on Dagobah where he wraps up every night in Qui-Gon’s cloak that he uses as a blanket, using the warmth of Qui-Gon’s feelings as a comfort after everything he’d lost, until his own feelings soak into the blanket and he can no longer feel Qui-Gon’s warmth, only his own sadness.
This about the pot that Obi-Wan made that Yoda took with him to Dagobah, the one he had to shatter to protect himself from a probe droid, was it easier or harder to let it go, knowing that only a few faint traces of bb!Obi-Wan’s warm and golden concentration that were baked into the pot were left? That it was mostly only Yoda’s own loss?
He’s a Jedi Master, he lets these feelings go, he doesn’t let them bite into his heart, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel them in the first place, it doesn’t mean he isn’t mindful of them, acknowledging them and then letting them go, but they still brush a fine mist of his sadness over the pot, layer after layer after layer until there’s so little of the grandkids left in his things.
Or think about Obi-Wan with Anakin’s lightsaber, that he doesn’t have to be psychometric to feel the sheer intensity of what Anakin poured into both the crystal and the metal of the saber, the hate and rage and pain and suffering as he killed the younglings, as he helped kill Mace Windu, as he killed everyone in his path, all while knowing it was wrong, but refusing to admit it, refusing to turn back, all while he attacked Padme, all while he attacked Obi-Wan, the people he loved most, Anakin was holding that saber while he did all that, every feeling is just soaked into that saber. Every time Obi-Wan picks it up, of course he feels those traces and they’re so powerfully intense, how long would it take for that to dissipate, especially with his own sadness piled on top of it, each time it was held in his hand?
Just imagine how careful Jedi have to be about the feelings they project out into the Force because that shit doesn’t just go out into the ether!!! That stuff stays in the walls and gets screamed back into your face, not just through the Force echoing it back at you but ALSO that the WALLS AND FLOOR AND CHAIR YOU’RE SITTING ON are all soaked with whatever feeling you’re leaking out.
Do you want that feeling to be screaming anger or a gentle calm?
okay this is just the first couple watch throughs (and I haven’t been able to figure out any of the text but) here are my initial thoughts of what I think I can identify on the map in the new TDP S4 intro
First to get the Obvious ones out of the way
What looks like baby / a much, much younger Aaravos, close to Ezran’s age if not a little younger
Then we have Sol Regem at the top of the map, the same way we have Thunder / Avizandum at the top of the Arc 1 map
The constellation below Sol Regem on the right looks like a Bumblescorp, which Claudia famously mentions in 1x06 to Viren (a joke set up for the “If you must make a choice between Soren and the egg, choose the egg”)
The constellation to the left of Sol Regem looks like a Sunfire dragon like Phyrrah, the one the boys and Rayla rescue in 2x07 and returns in 3x09 for the battle
Then a constellation of what I thought at first were fish, but upon closer inspection they’re actually like our favourite grumpy friendly Bait - a pair of Glow Toads (reminiscent of Pisces)
To the far northeast of the map we have an elven combatant who seems to have a skull at the front - perhaps Garlaf the Annihilator? Although it’s hard to tell if he’s Moonshadow with the horns, so maybe not
We have some kind of many-legged creature (like the Startouch panda-bear from Tales of Xadia?) playing a string instrument, which could be a reference to the strings in the sneak peek S4 song “Of Love and Loss” that a character in canon apparently will play
We have birds, a book, and a tree in the far midwest. It makes me think of the tree in Katolis’ courtyard, as that seems to be linked to Aaravos and the Orphan Queen (planted 300 years ago), this map is clearly much older. Trees of knowledge are common in mythology and the two birds represent freedom, family? This also may have increased importance as its the one clearly Nature motif constellation and S4 is going to be Book 4: Earth.
We have a unicorn near the bottom, which makes sense as they were around aplenty before humans hunted them to near extinction for dark magic, and they’re canonically connected to the Star Arcanum. This is the second constellation with a possible Claudia connection (as she hunted a unicorn for the Avizandum slaying spell) next to the Bumblescorp.
A very bright star all on its own, near the south east of the future Pentarchy side of the picture. The South Star perhaps that people use to navigate?
Crown in the very middle of the map, which is clearly important (perhaps why the King of Dragon is always portrayed aligned with it) but the significance / meaning is otherwise unknown.
What looks like the Mama Banther and Baby Banther that Callum mentions in the “Written in the Stars” skit, or something comparable to wild boars (if very hairy)
This figure reminds me of Lady Justice due to not really having a face and the robes. It also seems like she’s holding one hand up that’s cupped and one hand straight. It’s similar but it’s hard to tell to a common gesture in historical Christian art that means “Speaker”
We have a second elf who seems to be Moonshadow, judging by the regalia. It doesn’t seem to be Queen Aditi - but, maybe? She / they seem to be frowning or upset about something and the headpiece is reminiscent of the Sunfire queen crown / Sol Regem’s horns
Last but not least we have whatever eldritch abomination this appears to be, right in the middle of the Xadian side of the map. It seems to have eyes and something of a face (is even a little similar-ish looking to Aaravos’ insectoid conduit) but I wonder if it’s supposed to be a whirlpool, or even reminiscent of the essence of Magic itself? It gives me eldritch but accurate Biblical angel vibes
And of course the map has the six primal sources near the bottom, with Star glowing purple at the top
Also worth noting that not all the constellations have little name tags, but the ones that do goes as follows:
