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[Arhra]

A strange invasive thing is spreading across the land, hidden under an ominous cloud. It captures food and lumber and stone and people and other things to grow. It is called a city.

You are going to get to the bottom of this, so berate, befriend or battle everyone you meet until the problem is fixed.

This city is a little out of place (not that such anachronism uncommon). But such a huge gathering that distorts all the land around it to serve it is a terrible disruption to this cozy little fairytale world. The world is where the mundane and the fantastic mingle easily. A castle might float in the sky, a ghost might show up to your party and or a city might grow from a peculiar seed. It is an adventurous world populated by all sorts of people: wandering knights and beautiful princesses, martial-artists and monks, thieves and beggars, priests and healers, witches and magician, gods and monsters, shopkeepers and craftsmen.

Darklings
A constant trouble is that the world is half baked. The world was created by Nous, but halfway through he vanished. Perhaps he wandered off or fell asleep or died.

This left the world littered with drafts and abandoned concepts and unfinished things which in turn made a lot of people were very upset. During the Dark Days there was constant fighting as people argued about what the final shape of the world should be. Most troublesome were the incomplete creatures for their strange, buggy powers had odd interactions or were not easily countered and they found common ground in their mishmashed, corrosive natures.

The Dark Days ended when someone found an abandoned miracle and wished on it for the strength to defeat them. That person was the Sun. It broke the world. The elements were disarrayed and the border between life and death thinned by the Sun's atrocious power. Some of the incomplete creatures crawled into the depths of the earth to escape the light of the newborn Sun and others fled into the Outer Darkness. They all are called darklings now as they dislike the light of the Sun (and of the Moon).

The definition of a darkling is a complex thing. To give an idea, the strange creatures of the Outer Darkness are darklings. They are often the most bizarre of the darkling ranks - spirits embodying stillborn concepts and bizarre forces like phlogiston or aether. When they are outside of the Underworld, ghosts are darklings because 'They are not supposed to be here'. Some people think this is in poor taste, as it is the Sun's fault the border between life and death is so fragile. While the Underworld seems to be a dull place to the living, the ghosts seem to have a good time. Ghosts have a lot of parties so they don't often leave. Many attendants of the underworld are also darklings. Nous considered many ideas for an afterlife and didn't really clean up. As a result there are hells in the underworld and heavens in the sky. Ghosts do not naturally end up there, so angels and demons tend to be very bored. Demons try to host parties, so as to attract ghosts to their hells. As there are not many ghosts in the sky, angels tend to be more bored than demons. They are behind a lot of 'alien abductions'.

Technically the Sun and the Moon are also darklings by the original definition, but it is not a good idea to say that to their faces.

This perpetually cloud covered city is likely to be some darkling thing woken from its slumber.

A Lively World: Humans
It is the nature of humanity to do great things and dream great dreams. This fierce energy is invested into anything they do, it can be put into their bodies, their minds, their hopes, their dreams, their homes, their friends and their tools. They easily forge connection to the world around them. The grounded materialism a human possesses means they difficult to injure, highly resistant to spiritual attacks and not easily tricked. A human might march into places where gods and demons fear to tread and scatter the darkness gathered there.

Luckily most humans are content with a quiet life and do not do such things.

Humans get along with each other well and frequently band together in small villages. They are easy going but it is not wise to excessively provoke them.

An Awakened Land: Spirits
Broadly, a spirit is any supernatural being or creature and come in endless variety. They are by nature a little less substantial than a human, since their bodies only really exist to help them fulfill their purpose. They might be called gods, demons, ogres, fairies, or any number of other things. Animals and objects can gain personality and life, becoming a kind of spirit themselves. Even a human can become one.

All spirits embody a principle. They are remnants of the thoughts and whimsies which gave reality its shape and are responsible for directing that their particular force. Unless they are lazy. Since their origin is conceptual, they are easily affected by immaterial things. Spirits share a weakness to various spiritual attacks, charms, wards and so on. They are more easily affected by faith than humans and gullible in general. They often have additional weaknesses.

Magical
Everyone has some measure of spiritual power and it is possible to improve it with devoted effort, with cleverness or by cheating.

A spirit's marvelous abilities are narrow, flowing out of their conceptual origin but these powers are very strong at the same time. A spirit of travel is hard to beat in a foot race!

A human, on the other hand, develops their abilities through their experiences. In addition to learning interesting talents they might be gifted with some strange item or power through their journeys. The large reservoir of energy a human possesses makes those work very well

A magician is a person who studies natural phenomena in order to invoke them. To find out the traceries of the words and thoughts left behind by Nous to understand their origin and how to call them forth from that place once again. Humans are very good at this. A serious magician tends to be a bookish sort, their homes crowded with books, notes and strange relics. Black magic is slightly different. In the same way darklings represent forbidden and incomplete principles, Black magic is learning to invoke these principles. To become a black magician, a sacrifice is needed. The user must give up a part of themselves, for the magic will not answer to anything that is whole.

Another form of magic is theurgy: loaning your energy to a spirit. Such a magician seeks spirits who might be weak but who have interesting abilities and makes a pact to supply them with power in exchange for the spirit serving them. Alternatively one might might seek out a god (a powerful spirit) and offer one's services to it in exchange some of their own spiritual power for miracles.

Profile
To be perfectly honest this is largely inspired by the Touhou method of problem solving: run in the direction of the problem, beat suspicious looking people up until you get to the mastermind and then have a tea party with everyone. This is going to be more than a little silly and battles don't usually end with anything worse than unconsciousness. I've been pretty vague in a lot of areas so if you have any questions just ask!

Name: A first name. Possibly even a second name.
Gender: Man, woman, robot, etc.
Race: Sprint or Marathon
Profession: Optional!
Description: Physical description, outfit and personality. A little about your history.
Abilities: What you can do.

Sample character:

Name: Lia Kiparen
Gender: Female
Race: Spirit of Lost Things
Profession: Investigator First Class (self appointed), 'Unguided Detective Missile'

Description: Wide golden eyes, sharp, delicate features and a lanky build. A propensity for warbling and whistling. Descended from magpies. Lia's hair is a patterned mix of black and white, with feathers scattered through it. Her clothes are a wild mixture, tending to give the impression she dressed inside a tornado. She wears a short black dress as the base layer, and various pocket bearing clothes, sashes and pouches over it. A long scarf is wrapped around her neck and goggles are perched on her head. Her stockings are different lengths.

Lia is curious and excitable. Things tend to vanish in her presence, so she's often called a thief. She is prone to wild speculation and even wilder accusations. Lia has declared herself as an investigator, looking for lost treasures, checking about strange happenings and generally getting involved with other people's business.

Her advice should probably not be followed, but even a broken clock is right twice a day?

Abilities: Lia is a spirit with an affinity for lost things. She can pull things that are well and truly lost out of a strange place called the Super-Sargasso Sea. Lia also calls it her Nondimensional Ocean. Items have a tendency of going missing and being unexpectedly found around her. Lia is sensitive to hidden and misplaced things.

Bermuda Sign: Curses things to become lost. You might never be seen again. A rather terrifying power but not usually very useful for fighting. She can use it to banish small projectiles or weak enemies.

Loose Change: Lia's stockpile of lost coins gives her an endless supply of projectile weapons. She can also use them to buy meals and other inexpensive items.

Grand Discovery: A powerful move. It relies upon two facts. 1) Some very large objects have been lost over the years and 2) Most people are vulnerable to massive blunt trauma. This is probably why so many archaeological digs find broken pottery...

Forgotten Armament: There are many fine weapons thought lost forever. By investing a lot of her power, Lia can temporarily call upon one. It's a bit of a gamble?

Lose Your Way: In an emergency, Lia can close her eyes, spin wildly and run in a random direction. No-one knows where she will end up, not even her.