The Origins on Starmist Prime and the Flight to Valaralda
Eons ago, the highly advanced planet of Starmist Prime was attacked by a warlike alien species known as the Xelle. Knowing their world would fall, the leaders of Starmist Prime enacted a desperate survival plan, sending generation ships to distant "Seed Planets" including Valaralda, Mar (Earth), and Eryn. To prevent their incredibly powerful quantum-tunneling technology from falling into enemy hands, they cast their most dangerous devices into the universe. Chief among these was Xyclami (also known as Guruthos or The Fall), an apocalyptic machine of near-limitless power that functioned as both a superweapon and a vast storage bank of Starmist Prime's history and culture. Kira (later known as Kythaela or Keya), considered the smartest and "first among us," fled Starmist Prime in a faster spacecraft. Her younger siblings, the alien Operators known as The Twins (Nelenor and Velion), fled later, bringing Xyclami with them. Drawn by the souls of the Seed Planets, Kira arrived in the Valaralda system thousands of years before her siblings.
100,000 Years Ago: The Great Awakening and the First Mages
When Xyclami and The Twins finally arrived in the Valaralda system, their approach appeared in the sky as a mysterious orange celestial object. In the village of Errenmel, Kira (living as the storyteller Kila) was blamed for this terrifying omen, branded a witch, and locked in jail before vanishing. The arrival of Xyclami triggered the Great Awakening, bringing magic to Valaralda and causing the seeds of the first Prime Trees to sprout. The sudden influx of magic caused immense devastation and madness among the unprepared agrarian populaces. In Errenmel, the father of two young sisters—Lara (Lorelei) and Cara (Cariel)—discovered magic and accidentally performed a permanent Soulsplinter. His "evil" half murdered his "good" half and his wife, forcing young Cara to kill him with a butcher's knife and nascent magic. Cara escaped into the forest, where she endured a decade of horrific abuse by a hermit, fracturing her soul but unlocking her mindmaster magic.
In the city of Ilyrion, a junior astronomy professor named Aten recognized the celestial event as a scientific phenomenon. By carving a piece of prime maple, Aten discovered mistweaving and became the first mage, subsequently founding the Department of Magical Research, the Corps of Astronomers, and the Eglaria. Aten soon met The Twins, who were searching for their sister Kira, and realized Xyclami was a technological device. Craving absolute control over the machine, Aten drugged The Twins and orchestrated their imprisonment. Using magical gates, Aten sent two secret expeditions to trap The Twins. Nelenor was taken to the brutal jungle planet of Eryn and ritually sacrificed to create a Prison Tree made of black willow. Aten and Lara traveled to Earth (Mar), where Velion was imprisoned within a golden cypress sapling in an underwater cave that would later become Atlantis. The horrific soulsundering rituals killed the students who participated and permanently banished The Twins' souls to the ethereal dimension of Ambarhal. Cara, however, was stranded on Eryn, where she was enslaved and brutally mutilated by the native wolf-men known as the rylak. Left for dead, she discovered the dark art of soulbinding, amassed an army of jungle beasts, and massacred the Skallgr pack in revenge.
The Age of Akhenaten and Selenia
Aten eventually discovered how to project his soulstrand into Ambarhal without dying, achieving immortality and unlocking access to all fourteen magical Aspects. He took the name Akhenaten and became a god-king, building the sprawling desert metropolis of Nekhrumet. To permanently sever The Twins from Xyclami, Akhenaten built the Pyramid Offensive System, a network of massive pyramids designed to capture and store the energy of millions of sacrificed human and elven souls. Cara escaped Ambarhal, returned to Valaralda, and adopted the name Selenia. Disguised as a blind beggar, she became Akhenaten's mistress and ruled beside him, though they secretly plotted against one another to seize control of magic. Akhenaten successfully forged Edrafen (The Key) by slicing fragments from the sleeping Twins' souls, creating an artifact meant to unlock the Prison Trees and control his Pyramid system. To hide Edrafen from Selenia, he constructed the deadly Tomb of Akhenaten in the Thesserin Desert, guarding the artifact with seven lethal magical tests. He then faked his own death via mistweaving to escape her relentless pursuit.
20,000 Years Ago: Tarathiel, Alleria, and the Sending Act
Eighty thousand years later, an Ilyrion archaeologist named Tarathiel (Trey) translated ancient hieroglyphics warning of Guruthos (The Fall)—the cosmic weapon of death returning to wipe out civilization. Convinced the planet was doomed, Tarathiel and his wife, Alleria (Arra), pushed the Sending Act through the Senate. The Act proposed using gatesending to dispatch teams of elves to other planets to assemble an ancient Defense Mechanism. At this time, Lara (Lorelei) was operating as the Speaker of the Senate under the name Leriaar, and she harbored a fierce, unrequited love for Tarathiel. Selenia (Cara/Cariel) violently threatened Leriaar in private, forcing her to cast the tie-breaking vote against the Sending Act. Selenia wanted the expedition to happen illegally so she could manipulate it, but she also commanded Leriaar to memorize the cosmic coordinates of the Persephone system so Earth could eventually be brought back. Tarathiel, Alleria, Leriaar, and dozens of volunteers (including Akhenaten in disguise) performed the secret Sending to Earth and Eryn, but the extreme trauma of the gates wiped their memories completely, afflicting them with gatesickness.
Ancient Earth and the Soulsplinter
Over the next fifteen thousand years, the amnesiac elves lived among humanity. Around 5,011 years ago, Alleria (living as Koranaar) and Tarathiel (living as Usunaar) resided in the Supe Valley of Peru. When human Kotosh warriors attacked and murdered Koranaar, the trauma unlocked Usunaar's dormant powers, making him the first active Prime Mage on Earth. Roughly 2,269 years ago, during the Roman era, Tarathiel and Alleria were reunited and married again. However, Tarathiel was plagued by dark, violent urges. After striking Alleria during an argument, he desperately attempted an unstable mistweaving technique to purge his evil instincts. This caused a permanent Soulsplinter, splitting his soul into two entities: the gentle scholar Trey, and the ruthless, power-hungry Quynn. Quynn immediately abandoned Trey and Alleria to seek power.
The Cothellon, The True People, and The Sundering (300 Years Ago)
Quynn eventually joined the Cothellon (the Planners), a technologically advanced faction of elves led by Lorelei (the Cundu). Quynn tracked down the amnesiac Trey, masquerading as his abusive father "Simon" for centuries and orchestrating psychological torture to trigger Trey's dormant Prime Mage abilities, repeatedly wiping Trey's memory when experiments failed. Meanwhile, Akhenaten (living as Orym) also joined the Cothellon, serving as their Scientist General and designing the massive floating sky cities. Simultaneously, the human John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Jalnab) discovered the existence of elves. After his elven wife Edith was murdered, John died, passed through Ambarhal, and resurrected as an immortal Prime Mage. Anticipating a magical apocalypse, John founded the True People and constructed Gondor, a high-tech subterranean human survival city. The True People infiltrated Cothellon construction teams and secretly built a weaponized Escape Module into the unmapped Unders of the sky cities.
The ancient mage Cariel had also infiltrated Earth. Posing as the High Priestess Myriani in the Eldrim village of Sylrantheas, she birthed Silanar and secretly placed parasitic "soulbleeds" on her thousands of descendants (including Arra) to siphon their physical energy for her own magic. She also manipulated the human survivors, acting as their savage god, Magona. Kira (Kythaela) arrived near Sylrantheas with amnesia and was adopted by Tanyl, who raised her as his own daughter under the name Keya to cover up the tragic death of his wife, Aelynthi.
Three hundred years prior to the main story, a record-breaking Category Five storm named Typhoon Velma devastated the California coast. Believing human-driven climate change had doomed the Earth, Silanar and the Eldrim World Council enacted the Sundering Act. Using the Book of Souls, Silanar unleashed a global soulsundering ritual that instantly annihilated 99% of humanity, banishing over seven billion human souls to Ambarhal. The unprecedented magic caused all original Prime Trees on Earth to wither and die. Fleeing the disaster, the Cothellon accelerated their Ascension, levitating seven massive replica cities (including New San Francisco) high into the atmosphere and trapping millions of human topsiders inside. However, Orym secretly defected to Silanar, realizing that the Cothellon's ultimate goal—the Conjunction, which would use Earth's core to gate the entire planet across the galaxy—would destabilize the core and destroy the Earth. Silanar ordered Orym to remain undercover within the Cothellon.
Season One: The Metal Wood and the Battle for Earth
In the modern era, Phoenix (Megan), a deadly killgirl in Her Majesty's Navy, accidentally destroys a Cothellon whiproom with untamed forcefinder magic after her partner and lover, Beam, falls during an assassination mission. She is demoted to the trashboys by her mindmaster leader, Queen. In her new role, Phoenix discovers the Gearheads, a rebel crew led by Dust (Dillon/Dill, Orym's son) who race modified undercars and plan to overthrow the city's corrupt government. During a massive city-wide riot caused by the Clean Up the Streets Act (Measure K), Phoenix discovers that Queen has been using her dark poplar magic to brainwash Beam. Phoenix and Beam confront Queen in a mid-air battle inside a flying firebubble. Driven by love and fear, Phoenix helps Beam shatter the mind control, allowing Beam to drive her pinblade through Queen's throat. Instead of fleeing to the topside, Phoenix and Beam remain in The Under to co-found Shock Crew alongside Dill, and Phoenix gives birth to a son, Rylan (secretly fathered by Quynn).
Ten years pass as Phoenix raises Rylan in The Under. The peace shatters when a rival faction, Waller Crew, mounts a vicious ambush against Shock Crew. Forced to unleash her volatile forcefinding abilities, Phoenix accidentally destroys the reinforced whiproom floor, plunging herself, Beam, and a ten-year-old Rylan into the huntroom below. To escape capture by the Planners, the trio leaps through a gate and arrives on the surface of Earth. They are immediately captured by the human Remnant in the stronghold of Gulthurub, led by the Warlord Zel and the supposed god Magona (secretly the ancient elf Cariel). Drawn into a brutal surface war between the Remnant and the Eldrim, Beam is fatally shot by elven arrows, but Phoenix miraculously resurrects her using a joyful, green lifebubble. The conflict climaxes on the island of Stromboli, where Magona triggers a catastrophic supervolcano intending to wipe out the planet. Pushing her magic past all absolute limits, Phoenix envelops the erupting mountain in a colossal forcefield, channeling the energy back into the earth to freeze the eruption. The immense exertion causes a fatal soulburn, and Phoenix sacrifices her life to save the world. Devastated and heartbroken by the loss of her partner, Beam abandons Rylan to the harshness of The Under and flees alone into the wilderness.
Five years later (The Death Edge), Trey, a mundane bookseller in Newfris, watches the Department of Civil Service abduct his wife, Lora (secretly Lorelei). Desperate, he joins Dill's Shock Crew rebellion. During an ambush, the floor of The Under collapses, and Trey, Callan, and Rylan plummet 3,000 feet toward Earth. Rylan miraculously stops their fall with darkprime magic. On the surface, Trey meets Arra and the Eldrim. When Callan is fatally shot, Trey acts on instinct and heals him, unwittingly revealing himself to be a lightprime soulsoother.
The climax of Season One arrives (The Prime Trees) when the Cothellon initiate the Conjunction to physically link the seven sky cities and teleport the planet. Quynn leads a brutal Cothellon assault on Sylrantheas, burning the village to the ground and murdering Callan, a trauma which fully awakens Trey's Prime Mage abilities. Lorelei corners Arra and fires a gun at her head; Elanil heroically sacrifices herself to take the bullet. Elanil's death shatters Arra's mental block, instantly unlocking her as a Prime Mage. Arra violently obliterates the Cothellon's Fennas Elenathon receiver site. To counter the sky cities, Silanar and thirteen other mages sacrifice themselves to create fourteen new Prime Trees (the Prime Forest), which Rylan rips from the ground and levitates into the sky. Trey, Arra, and Quynn form a soulcircle in Gate Control and successfully sever the device from Earth's core. Undeterred, Lorelei executes the Conjunction, gating the entire planet across the universe into the Persephone system, next to Valaralda.
Season Two: The Absent Memory and The Twin Fury
With Earth now in the Persephone system, Trey awakens on Valaralda with fractured memories of his life as Tarathiel. He attempts to reclaim his old job at the Anthropological Society to prepare for The Fall, but is rejected by President Myrddin. Concurrently, Orym leads an Ilyrion Space Agency submarine expedition to investigate a darkprime signal emitting from Earth. Deep beneath the Mediterranean, they discover the lost city of Atlantis and the golden Prison Tree Telperion. Seduced by the Tree's power, Orym touches it, inadvertently releasing Velion’s soul. Realizing his catastrophic error, Orym escapes through a dimensional gate and abandons his crew. To find the Key to the Defense Mechanism, Trey, Arra, Lashel, and the guide Shorn embark on an expedition to the heavily trapped Tomb of Akhenaten in the Thesserin Desert (The Crystal Curse). Trey survives the lethal tests and successfully retrieves Edrafen (The Key) and a mysterious Soulmirror. The tomb triggers its ultimate fail-safe, sinking into the desert and burying Shorn.
Cariel, drunk on power, intercepts Trey, Arra, and Rylan. She violently raises the subterranean Memory facility into the sky above the desert, creating the floating Palace of Memory. She horrifically tortures Arra by crucifying her to a bookshelf to siphon her energy, and forces Rylan to open a colossal planetary gate that forcefully pulls the planet Eryn into the Persephone solar system. Pushed to the absolute brink, Arra severs the parasitic soulbleed connecting her to Cariel. She engages her mother in a world-shattering aerial battle, destroying the Palace of Memory before finally slitting Cariel's throat. However, Cariel enacts a fail-safe, secretly fracturing her soul into thousands of spiders as she dies. By forcing Trey to activate Edrafen, Cariel's actions permanently unlock Ambarhal, fully releasing The Twins (Nelenor and Velion). Appearing as 50-foot-tall Anubis gods and maddened by 100,000 years of captivity, The Twins immediately lay waste to the city of Ilyrion in search of the "Imprisoner" (Orym). Simultaneously, the destruction of Ambarhal's barriers allows billions of trapped human souls and deceased Prime Mages (including Phoenix, Alinar, and Hycis) to flood back into the physical world.
The Splinter Soul and The End of Magic
Fleeing the destruction, the heroes sail a leafboat across the Airon Sea, surviving a super-hurricane conjured by The Twins. Nelenor tracks Orym to Earth, shrugging off underkid attacks in Lusvunub. Hammond and President Tiala attempt to reverse the core of the United Sky Cities to blast Nelenor, but he deflects the energy, completely obliterating New San Francisco. The final, apocalyptic battle erupts at the Salt Spires on Valaralda. Rylan, utilizing his "superuser" access, secretly hacks the AI of the Xyclami device. He convinces the machine that The Twins' emotional rampage and the interference of billions of souls threaten its integrity. Xyclami suspends The Twins' Operator privileges, dropping them to the ground and stripping them of their godlike powers.
Orym, having recovered his memories as Akhenaten, travels to Nekhrumet. He obliterates his own Soul Tree to clear the magical interference, then activates the Pyramid Offensive System. The pyramids release a million souls and overwhelm Xyclami. The machine executes a hard reboot, permanently severing The Twins and leaving Orym as the sole Operator and a living god. Drunk on his omnipotence, Orym murders Lorelei and Allain when they attempt to pacify him with a mistweaving illusion of Starmist Prime. Orym retreats to the ruins of Old San Francisco, warping reality to create a horrific nightmare of bleeding crystal and giant spider-monsters. The True People finally reveal themselves, deploying the weaponized Escape Module from Gondor to swarm Orym with Destroyers. Orym easily defends himself until he hallucinates President Tiala aiming a gun at him, causing him to drop his magical shields in shock. He is brought down, and Cariel’s spider-fragmented soul swarms his body, suffocating him and flooding Xyclami with millions of souls. The machine undergoes a final hard reboot, killing Orym.
With Xyclami demanding a new Operator within 60 seconds or risk uncontained destruction, Trey and Quynn are forced to grab the device together. The unstable power enrages them, and they begin attacking Arra and Phoenix. Putting down her weapons, Arra walks up to Trey, kisses him, and uses mistweaving to remind him of his true identity: Tarathiel. Empowered by her love, Trey overcomes Quynn, reintegrating his splintered soul to become whole. As the complete Operator, Tarathiel commands Xyclami to shut down permanently.
Epilogue
Magic is instantly and permanently erased from the universe. Without their godhood, The Twins and Kythaela (Kira) peacefully travel to the jungles of Eryn, hatching a preserved dragon egg to rebuild Starmist Prime. On Valaralda, Tarathiel and Alleria renew their wedding vows on the cliffs of Ilyrion. Honoring the friends and family lost in the long war, the survivors—now mortal—prepare to clear the ruins of Ilyrion and rebuild civilization using human technology, unburdened by the chaos of magic.