Tyranix
For as long as anyone can remember, there has been The Order. In control of the entire world, it has oppressively enforced its laws, ruthlessly stamping out any sign of disorder or chaos. Today it stands as a monolithic example of the power of Blue and White mana combined. However, such an imbalance in mana has caused massive damage to the plane as a whole. Wilderness spaces have all but vanished from the world, leaving only an inhospitable wasteland in their wake. This wasteland is dotted by metropoli, containing almost all life that remains on this world. But strange things have been stirring in the deepest parts of the wasteland.
Change is coming to Tyranix.
The Order
Despite the similarities to other cultures in the Multiverse, there are some things that would surprise visitors to Tyranix.
While The Order is immensely powerful, it has a surprisingly small amount of artifice. While artifact creatures would help supply manpower, there is a deeply held belief that no artifact can make decisions as well as a natural creature can. However, it is difficult to maintain magic for long periods of time, so The Order has taken to using large numbers of task mages to keep control. They are able to respond relatively quickly to any disturbance, and have a surprising amount of versatity.
Necromancy has long been established as a specialty of Black, the rapidly failing health of the world has forced other colors to dabble in magic previously held as taboo. As a result, Zombies and, to a lesser extent, Skeletons can be found in White. For the most part, these undead are mass-animated from the loyal dead to be used as laborers. However, on rare occasions it has been decided that someone's wisdom and experience must be preserved beyond death. These people are the subjects of reanimation spells while still alive, saving their wisdom for the good of all.
In a civilization as large as The Order, law enforcement is a necessity. While most crimes can be dealt with by the militia, there exist some criminals that are so vile and dangerous that greater force is required. It is in these special cases that Archons are deployed. These manifestations of justice are among the most powerful forces that The Order can bring to bear. With a single-minded focus on defending the law and punishing criminals, almost nothing can distract them from their prey.
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"Tyranix was not always the bastion of law and order it is today. The Order teaches that long ago, Tyranix was mired in civil war and anarchy. There was no peace to be found in the world, and it appeared to be doomed to die by fire and war. Then the First King came.
Legend says that he rode from the heavens on a winged lion, uniting all the lands as he crusaded. Those who would not join his order were crushed until his kingdom had spread across the entire world. When all the lands were united under his rule, only then did he rest.
As the years passed, it became clear that Tyranix had become the perfect world he had intended. Thus, he left, going forth to bring the righteous blade of Order to other worlds."
-Jalen, novice chronicler.
In truth, the First King was a planeswalker, and his conquest was not as peaceful or as benevolent as the legends tell. Even in those early days, he resorted to cruel and barbaric methods to quell the people of Tyranix. And in the end, he did not leave to continue a mission to spread order to the planes: he was attacked by his greatest enemy, and fled the plane rather than face him. The Order was lucky that this enemy ignored the plane the First King had spent so time pacifying - a lover of freedom, the enemy would have razed all their cities to the ground.
And thousands of years later, he has returned to do just that.
The Rebels
While there has always been some minor dissent, recently the rebels have been organizing on an unprecedented scale. There is debate on why this is, but none have guessed the truth - The Enemy has returned, and intends to free this world. The tactics that this new rebellion are designed from the ground up specifically to target the weakpoints in The Order's structure. They do this by employing precision strikes. However, the surveillance magic that The Order employs is impressively powerful, and therefore a distraction is often required.
In these cases, the rebels turn to a specially trained type of warrior: the berserker. Trained to give in to their rage, they are released into a busy area and simply told to destroy all in their path. The rebels will frequently put a large number of Auras on such warriors before sending him out to wreak havoc. This makes them even deadlier, and gives them abilities normally beyond mortals, allowing them to serve as an even better distraction. The strain that comes from being enchanted so many times at once often drives them insane, but this is not seen as a significant drawback as they are expected to die in combat anyway.
Incarnations of chaos and anarchy, Devils are one of the most useful, if uncontrollable, tools that the rebellion has. Commonly believed to be the manifestation of everything the Archons oppose, their continued existence causes nearby Archons considerable anguish, and as such they are summoned whenever the Archons get too close to finding key members of the rebellion. While this almost never results in any appreciable damage, the distraction it creates is often enough to allow the rebels to escape to another location.
However, there comes a time when a true battle is required. On these rare occasions, when their enchanted champions are important to the outcome of the immediate battle, the rebels deploy their Flagbearers. Using ancient magic, the rebels weave spells of aggression into their battle standards. The result causes all enemies who are not in direct melee combat to focus on the Flagbearer, regardless of other conditions on the battlefield. Unfortunately, this effect only lasts while the flag is being wielded, but the few moments of distraction it brings can turn the tide of battle completely.
The Wilds
In the deepest parts of the Wasteland, long past the point where no living thing could survive, the impossible exists: A vast forest, grown in only a few decades. It is populated by all manner of strange creatures, but perhaps strangest are the Leshy. A new intelligent race, the first generation, now the elders of their young nation, seem to have sprung from the forest fully formed. They believe that they have been created by the world itself as a defense mechanism. As such, they have begun making plans to raid the smaller cities.
On average shorter than a human, they are stocky, outweighing a much taller human. They have skin that appears to be tree bark, growing rougher and thicker as they age, they also have hair that has the consistency of thorn bushes. There is very little sexual dimorphism in the Leshy. On average, females tend to be slightly taller and have less coarse and lighter colored skin, but there are few other differentiating features. They are exclusively herbivores.
Leshy display little sophistication and almost no grasp of tactics when it comes to combat. On those rare occasions when they fight amongst themselves, it almost always amounts to little more than a wrestling match to submission. In their first true war against The Order, they will use magically grown clubs as melee weapons, with similarly grown javelins as ranged tools. In addition, they have shown an aptitude for plant magic, which will be their greatest strength as it has not been seen on Tyranix in generations.
The Leshy will be the true wild card in the war between The Order and the rebels.
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It is a common for philosophers across the Multiverse to debate what form the first life forms took. Traditionally, a philosopher will choose a lower form of life related to themselves: Merfolk choose fish, Viashino choose lizards, and so on. However, those who can visit Tyranix are in the unique position to discover the truth: All the theories are correct.
At the borders of the Wilds and the Wasteland, strange forms of life exist. The mixing of the decay-tinged mana suffusing the Wasteland and the verdant mana of the Wilds has created new life in a very similar form to what existed when the world first formed. A viewer from our modern world would recognize it as an amoeba, but this is not strictly correct. It is actually a form of condensed proto-life, containing the possibility to become any kind of life form imaginable. Reacting to their surrounds, these Shapeshifters will eventually adopt the form that will best allow them to thrive, staying in that form for the rest of their lives. Commonly this is simply a tree, expanding the Wilds slowly but surely, but increasingly commonly they become the animals needed to inhabit the forest. It is unclear what they will become when they interact with the cities of The Order, but the Leshy intend to find out.
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