Kasdeya

"'You've actually been here before, but we just made sure you forgot.'""― Sign in the deserts of Kasdeya"Kasdeya is an accessible world in the known multi-verse. Although it is a physical place, it is not a planet you can see floating in space. Kasdeya simply exists.

It is the home world of SWORDS agent, Daphne, and closely aligned with the Unseen World of egregores. Many people from across various dimensions visit this world in their dreams, despite never setting foot here, physically. These visitors seldom remember this place, but it always remembers them.

Description
While Kasdeya cannot be found floating in space, or through a telescope, it experiences seasons and a setting sun like any other planet orbiting a star. The sky is marked by a single sun during the day and three moons against stars and satellites by night.

The physical landscape is mostly divided between massive, neon, high-rise cities and seemingly endless deserts. Curiously well-maintained roads cut through the deserts, which are anything but empty. The mild, arid land is not only home to the odd town and hermit, but beasts, exquisite flora, dizzying canyons and psychic entities. Importantly, gas stations and rest stops dot the long desert roads.

The Unseen World and Kasdeya are closely linked, making this world a second home to egregores. Very few inhabitants, Speakers, are aware of this world.

Culture
The art, music and stylings of modern Kasdeya are similar to a retro 1980's aesthetic.

An esoteric, low fantasy magic is baked into everyday life. People leave wards on their homes, seek out aura reading experts in times of need and pray a poltergeist doesn’t become an uninvited houseguest. Here, superstition is reality. Liminal spaces are equally real sites of altered existence and fated encounters. Cities become psychic entities in their own sense. Objects might gain a soul, sometimes more, after surviving a century. This does not mean, however, that strange beings are readily accepted or not feared by the human majority. Quite the opposite.

Importantly, not all humans can practice magic, but those who can are considered no more exceptional than someone born with a talent for music or athletic prowess. Many magicians take what would be “mundane” jobs in this world as spell weavers, clairvoyants, or exorcists, for example.

Dreamwalkers
Despite, in many cases, never setting foot on Kasdeya physically, many people from across the multi-verse visit in their dreams. No one knows precisely why this happens, but records show that since the beginning, extra dimensional "dreamwalkers" have found themselves here. The only time dreamwalkers have never been spotted on Kasdeya is during the Lost Hour, occurring everyday at 3 a.m.

Dreamwalkers are easily spotted, cast in a soft blue aura and pale, almost like a ghost. Just like in any other dream, they are typically capable of speaking and interacting with the people and environment around them. Among Kasdeyans, it's considered taboo to frighten or harass dreamwalkers, though amicable interactions are common.

The Nature of Magic
Just like biology or mathematics, magic is something people in this world have studied and debated for centuries. Although born with the inclination, those able to practice magic can choose to study it in order to improve or specify their skills. There are many particular areas of magic (sigil work, divination, telekinetics, illusions, etc.), but the philosophies behind what makes it all work, are the same.

Although the exact interpretations and wordings of the ‘Basis of Magic ’ vary depending on where you are, they are broadly accepted to be the following:


 * 1) Reality is malleable.
 * 2) Coincidence is a false truth, there is only inevitability.
 * 3) Everyone and everything has a form, truth, and reasoning.
 * 4) Knowing all three grants control.

The previous are so well understood and ingrained in the common sense of the world that even non magicians can recite them.

Early History
It is unclear exactly how Kasdeya came to be, but it's rate of technological and cultural development was fairly similar to that of Earth. Notably, certain technologies developed sooner than on Earth, or were augmented by magic (such as photography and advanced irrigation tech). Its people learned that it was best to congregate in large population centers rather than remain spread out in the strange deserts, thus sprawling cities grew rapidly, like islands in an arid ocean.

Schools of magic were established early on, as magicians sought a way to better understand their psychic realities and teach the next generation. For much of Kasdeya's history, schools of magic (then called Hidden Academies) were reclusive places, tucked away in the deserts, and far from the cities. It was expected that the parents of children born during the Lost Hour would send their child away to live at these schools, and usually at a young age. These academies had reputations for being dangerously strict, secretive and highly competitive - throughout the centuries tales abound of students being lost to an Unseen world, going mad, or being killed by beasts in the deserts. Despite creating many talented magicians, public criticism eventually led to these academies being dissolved in favor of more casual magic schooling.

Nonetheless, knowledge of the Unseen World has remained obscure, with few known Speakers in their history; most were disregarded as bizarre loners, at best.

The Lost Hour
Every night, at 3 o'clock in the morning, time  just. . . stops. Clocks freeze and reality is slightly altered for the duration of one hour. This is known simply as the ‘Lost Hour’. Spaces play psychic tricks, spirits reign supreme and bizarre creatures lurk - one might even be able to see egregores, or slip into their domain, without being one of the Speakers.

Anyone born during this time will be capable of practicing magic. Furthermore, as they grow, they will be able to more safely and freely go about their lives during this time since they belong. Those who are not magicians do everything they can to avoid being out and about at this time. In fact, the many rest stops that dot the desert roads are less to provide respite on a long trip, and more to ensure that those on the road don’t get caught out in the desert during the Lost Hour.

Many believe that the Lost Hour is the product of dreams and psychic desires from across the multi-verse being poured into Kasdeya. Speakers would argue that it's a direct convergence of the Unseen World that occurs naturally and regularly, like the tides. Recorded history cannot recall a time when this did not occur.

Quell Disturbance
Although the Quell never infected Kasdeya directly, its affects were felt during the peak of its power. Suddenly there was a noticeable decrease in dreamwalkers and dangerous egregores become hungrier, bolder. Regarding the second matter, most Kasdeyans only saw an increase of reckless emotion and tragedy - the few Speakers struggled to mitigate their insatiable allies, even killing some.

Since the presumed containment of the Quell, the problem has since waned.

Inhabitants
Humans are the primary inhabitants of Kasdeya, populous as they are in the multi-verse. Most people live in the massive cities that dot this world, and carry out fairly normal, modern lives. Those humans who've taken residence in the vast deserts are mostly magicians. Aside from largely Earth adjacent plants and animals, the deserts are populated by psychic entities, spirits and odd monsters. Such beings do live in the cities as well, but pre dominate the deserts.

Egregores
While spells, psychics and superstitions are accepted realities in this world, egregores are not. To most people they live in the world of conspiracy rumors and tales meant to scare young children. However they are very real, originally from the Unseen World, whose reality is tightly knit with that of Kasdeya.

Egregores are bizarre and powerful spirits, born of potent group thought, memory and/or emotion. They are capable of bending the rules of the reality they live in. They tend to attach to the person or place from which they were “born”. They are sentient, though do not think about morality in the same way people do, being eldritch beings and all. Most look like a bizarre collage, something that should not reasonably exist. They subsist on perpetuating the thoughts or emotions from which they were created - altering the living things and space around them in order to stimulate whatever they need to feed on.

The rare people who can interact with them, and end up caring for them, are called Speakers.