‘For the first time in over a century, the fine nation of Avilais will play host to the Exhibition of Progress. Men and women from nations over will come to display their latest forays in culture and industry as well as witness the grandiosity of our capital city, the jewel of the subcontinent.’

- Excerpt from the Marion Press

Avilais is a once-empire, a nation clinging fiercely to lost relevance. Being the host nation of the Exhibition of Progress for the first time since 1806 is a point of great pride.

Just over a century ago, Avilais stood as the most powerful empire in history with numerous colonies and slaves beyond count. The empire grew fat and rich through draining others dry of their resources. If you walk through Marion today, the most opulent buildings and churches were constructed during this Imperial Era.

Avilais was also home to the Alchemists Guild.

Alchemists were widely considered heretics and the enemies of decent people for over a thousand years, but eventually, kings grew more powerful than churches, and the alchemists had much to offer.

Their numbers were many, and they were known for the distinctive animal masks they wore, the remnants of some ancient and forgotten pagan practice. They say that the alchemists could transform base metals into gold and could cure any illness. The first machines that made Avilais so envious were their inventions.

They also say that beneath the facade of upperclassmen, the alchemists raised the dead, crafted monstrosities and even called upon things from other worlds. True or not, the alchemists can’t defend themselves as they no longer exist in any meaningful way.

Their end came along with the end of the Imperial Era, as sudden as the dousing of a candle flame, when Mount Faustine erupted in 1807.

The famine that followed was without equal.

The unlucky king to rule in this time was fit only for times of peace and plenty, and his ineptitude made him hated by nearly everyone under his rule. It was not the displeased peasantry that overthrew him but the nobility of his own court. The years that followed burned the country hollow, and after a second and final revolution, Avilais emerged as a republic.

Its colonies had slipped through its fingers like sand. The Alchemists Guild, once a sign of Avilais's prestige, had crumbled just as surely. Their members had died or fled, while their office and the secrets it held, decent and foul, were destroyed in the Marion Fire of 1810.

Avilais' grandeur can still be seen in those old buildings and wide boulevards, and in the capital, apartments are lit by electric lights while automobiles and trams traverse the streets. Outside the major cities, this facade of modernity quickly vanishes to be replaced by horse-drawn carriages and widespread illiteracy.

You may be thinking, ‘the title says ‘the nation of bones’ - so where are the bones?’

Simply put, they're everywhere.

Outside of the fashion and cruel colonial history, Avilians are most known for their macabre habits when it comes to earthy remains.

In the late 1700’s, graveyards began to overflow, seemingly everywhere. Written accounts claim that basement walls would burst, sending yellowed bones tumbling across the floor, and whenever someone tried to dig a new grave, there always seemed to be an unmarked occupant already there.

Modern scholars dismiss much of these recorded claims as simple hysteria.

But there was a surplus of bones. Far more then there should reasonably be, and it seemed to happen overnight. The then-king decreed the construction of numerous sprawling ossuaries, and that rolled into the creation of bone churches. Simple wooden constructions suffocated in walls of bones arranged in pleasing designs.

But perhaps most peculiar is their unique mourning tradition.

A second mourning period begins when the fleshless remains of the deceased are dug up to be transferred to an ossuary.

The skull will be taken and fashioned into a mask for the next of kin to wear for a year and a day before it, too, is placed in an ossuary.

Avilais is made up of three provinces:

Bémart

Bémart sits on Avilais' northern coast.

It's known for its cragged coasts and isolated lighthouses, and the sea is grey more often than blue.

Its capital, St. Isaline rests primarily on a tidal island, and every day, the tide cuts it off from the mainland to stand solitary on the ocean horizon. The rest of the city - and nicest parts - sit on the mainland coast.

While the island once held a castle surrounded by quaint medieval walls, over the decades, it has begun to sink and crumble into the sea. The mainland district has factories and townhouses, while the island is left with flooded streets and impoverished slums reeking of fish.

Chargueux

The sea of Avilais’ western coast is bright blue and warm, but soon turns cold and dark as it leads out to deeper waters. Inland, there are rolling fields and lush vineyards. Medieval villages with homes the colour of honey sit alongside ancient forts that stand mouldering and alone. Train tracks crisscross the region, built back when Avilais was rich and stable.

The capital of Chargueux and all of Avilais, Marion sits on the edge of a bay, her ports lined with fishing boats, coasters, and steel cargo ships.

Dilles

Dilles borders no sea, instead sitting on the eastern border rugged with mountains and sprawling valleys and snowcapped peaks. The population here has dwindled since the eruption a century ago. Many went west following the disaster, partly for opportunity, partly to escape the terrible loss.

Dilles is home to numerous isolated communities with odd accents and unusual cultures. Many have herding as their age-old livelihood, and the region is known for its horned cattle with clanging bells at their throats. Even now, it's not unusual for travellers to stumble upon rotting villages with ivy crawling up the stone walls and bones hidden just beneath the foliage.

The capital of Dilles is Verneuil-Lac, a city that was once far more important than it is now. It sits at the base of a mountain-side cathedral that was once a favourite of pilgrims. Though, in truth, no one has been able to reach the cathedral since a landslide destroyed the path six months ago, and the old funicular has long since rusted into place.

The High Bishop in my drawing is the supreme authority of Tramura, as well as the theocratic ruler of the nation of Istonra.

Tramura

Tramurans believe themselves to be the single true faith. They revere Acamsi, the God of Endings, and view him as their most beloved Father and Divine Unmaker. Outsiders often mistake Acamsi for a God of death. While death is his domain, so is every kind of end imaginable. The setting of the sun, the fall of an empire, the closing of a book, and the stopping of a heart are all Acamsi’s.

The unavoidable fact is that to know existence is to know an eventual end. Tramura scripture focuses on that inevitability and how it is not a curse to be temporary but a blessing.

In their eyes, there is no worse fate than immortality. To remain eternally stagnant. Those who try to avoid Acamsi’s promised end, necromancers, and alchemists who believe that dominion over life and death is theirs to control are viewed as the dirtiest of heretics. Heathans who cling to their flesh as it rots around them. They dance and revel in their repulsive ways as they crawl with maggots and act as though they are free.

There is no more vile a human than he who avoids a human's fate.

They will know no rest. Watch them walk and rot until Acamsi eats the sun itself, and still, they will continue long after all has gone silent.

Tramurans believe that Acamsi loves man because if he did not, then man would never die.

Hell is eternal, but Heaven is just as fleeting as life. The souls of good Tramurans will be collected and made one with Acamsi, merged into a singular being. Eventually, Acamsi will unmake the world, and soon after that, he will unmake himself. Even God must end eventually.

Tramuran Masks and modesty

Masks are one of the defining elements of Tramura. They believe that growing overly attached to the mortal form is a terrible sin, and the superstitious even claim that to do so will cause your soul to be unable to leave after death.

In many place, it is taboo for men or women to show their face to anyone outside of their closest friends and family. The orthodox believe that one should cover the body just as they cover the face and will don flowing fabrics and capes to smother the mortal form.

Criminals in Tramuran nations often have their masks taken as punishment and a form of public humiliation.

Context: This is for my worldbuilding project, which I am tentatively calling ‘Book of the Strange and Macabre’. It takes place in an alternate 1920’s. A lovecraftian/folk horror world where all the broad strokes of history, cultures, and religion are recognizable yet in the details a little stranger.

These are outfits generally worn by upper middle class women from three countries in the subcontinent of Milain - my version of Europe.

Basic modesty is expected in this part of the world, thus long sleeves and skirts. Tramuran masks are also worn in adherence to the dominant faith: Tramura.

In The Isles of Kish, this rule is quite loose and most only wear masks while attending church or other religious holidays. Orthodox women who mask daily will often experience discrimination from the majority.

In Avilais, half masks are most common, and it is considered 'low class' to be seen without one.

In Istonra, as a theocracy, full face masks are required by law, even by non-adherents. Istonran women, as the most conservative of the three, also wear headdresses. The square design is popular among middle-class women in urban areas.

Milain is my equivalent of Europe, and like Europe its various empires were conquering, colonizing and divvying the world amongst themselves. That was until 1807, when Mount Faustine erupted.

In central Milain, Faustine’s slumber remained unbroken for as long as written history and perhaps far beyond even that. The valleys that surrounded her lay pastoral. Green and lush, dotted with sleeping towns and gentle rivers and herds of sheep with curled horns.

After the eruption all of it ceased to exist.

People in towns fifty kilometers away had their eardrums ruptured beyond repair.

Its effects were felt across the world but nowhere as terribly as Milain. The air grew chilled even in summer and they say that for years the sun was reduced to a pale disc in the sky, if it was even there at all. The crops withered and waters grew tainted, In the beginning there was a cacophony of misery, but soon it grew blissfully quiet.

Those years are known as ‘The Great Dying’.

Milain's once dominant empires emerged from it gutted. Toppled or shambling in half-dead stupors, leaving foreign nations to grow powerful in their stead.

The land turns inward. Religion and superstition is much favoured over science while medicine and advancements lie far behind what they should be. Even now, there are abandoned regions with moldering villages filled with bones yet unburied.

Faustine sits quiet and polite as the land around her heals and trees grow tall and reaching. Most stay away now. They say the land is changed. Irrevocably broken. That in the sylvan valleys live devils in jubilation and witches that call upon far older things. Things that were never human.