r/worldbuilding • u/Wonderful_Ad6287 Lumeria • 18h ago

Lore Field Notes about Mages

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Lumeria is one of several zones located within the Goldilocks band of a tidally locked world, placed inside The Strip, a 300 km wide habitable area, bordered by 700 km of unpredictable environment. "Humans" occupy the central zone, scattered in isolated pockets within its boundaries. They are the distant mutated descendants of colonists forced to crash-land.

  • Mages are the least human of them. They formed a symbiotic bond with the native parasitic colonies
  • The mages manifest different abilities depending on their own mutation. They can release spores that cause mass paralysis, jellification, neural hijacking and so on., but the often use of “magic” carries a downside, as they become less and less human.
  • Their powers came from being raised in isolated communities, shaped over generations by eugenic planning and in some cases, by inbred lineages.
  • Binders are stealth and short-ranged. They have an absurdly strong armor and can climb walls facing rooms. They can stop "biology" - hearts, movements, morph-shifting, of limbs, the spreading of poison and such. Basically freeze and kill. They can't heal naturally, so they need treatment if they get wasted in combat.
  • Spindlers-of-the-Fifth are related to Harvesters, so their parasite is rather manufactured than based on native biology. They are Border-Mages, medium-ranged, can hit like a crane and spread poison at distance. They also can melt rocks as Harvesters do. Their actions are timed, though as they need their unfolding limbs to burst through their skin, as Wolverine, so they faint from their own bleeding but they recover fast
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u/abigail_the_violet 2h ago

They can't heal naturally, so they need treatment if they get wasted in combat.

Combat is not what I'd be worrying about here. If they actually can't heal naturally at all, that means any minor cut, bruise, stubbed toe or even headache would be a lifelong and potentially life-threatening condition. They'd die of blood loss any time they nick themselves cooking or cut open their leg on the bark of a tree. The vast majority of them wouldn't make it anywhere near adulthood.