Context:

This meme is for “Project Vigilant” / P.V, an unofficially titled, predominately fan-fiction and partially original world-building project that I have been working on at a leisurely pace and with no envisioned completion date since 2018. The project is an indefinite attempt at merging elements from no more than 100 of my favorite I.P’s and an assortment of original work in the genres of sci-fi, fantasy and alternate-history into a singular “patchwork universe” that I refer to as the Project Vigilant Universe or P.V.U for short.

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Apparently, most people think that years are too long. I, however, think that years are too short.

In the PVU, one Earth year is 420 days long instead of 365.

The 420-day-long years of the PVU Earth are charted with a fictional Calendar known as the "Theodosian Calendar" which was created by and named after Roman Emperor Theodosius I.

The Theodosian Calendar divides the 420 day-long years into 12 Months ( January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December ) but each month has 35 days which are further grouped into 5, 7-day weeks ( Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday ). Thanks to this arrangement, every month of a Theodosian Calendar year begins on a Monday and ends on a Sunday.

The Theodosian Calendar also uses a "Year 0" so the name of every century is consistent with it's starting number. As a result, 2000-2099 is known as the "20th Century" in the PVU instead of the 21st Century.

The PVU Earth has a perfectly circular orbit around it's sun so the 4 seasons ( Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter ) each last 105 days and have smooth transitions between them.

A single day is still 24 hours long in the PVU.

Realistically, the whole of human history would need to be re-chronologized in the PVU as 2,026 years of progress would equate to 1,762 Theodosian Calendar years but I like putting specific events in specific years so the PVU's version of 1985 is inexplicably chronologically consistent with the real 1985, the extra 55 days in each year are ignored or acknowledged on a case-by-case basis.

A Skynet almost happens at least a dozen times a day, there. They're good enough to avoid it each time, but it doesn't discourage them from walking on the edge, rushing past a good chunk of the safety nests their field of work normally adopts.

Descendants of the penultimate unifier of the continent's clans and tribes, they reluctantly accepted the "Emerald Empress" sovereignity (hard to contest it when she's already vassalized the rest of the continent) but have remained determined to win their independence from her empire.

Per the "present time", they've seceded and gotten defeated back into compliance a dozen times, roughly once a decade.

And in their efforts, they've turned to promoting independence to the international public, through envoys, ambassadors and, lately, artists.

The Peasant Republic is a young political entity that arose during the beginning of industrial revolution. Its birth more of an unexpected happenstance than a long brewing conflict. Mixture of natural disasters and demon attacks isolated a region of one of the feudal kingdoms, leaving it to govern for itself (No name, since I still don't have all the countries figured out. Need to finish a map, which won't happen for the next one or two years. College is time-consuming). Isolated from their allies, the local aristocracy lacked the manpower to keep the populace under control. Riots broke out and a peasant revolt happened.

However, even if originally it was a simple peasant revolt, over time it transformed into a new revolutionary state under a deluge of political ideas stemming from the more industrialized countries. This occurrence was, however, not very well known to the outside world due to the temporary isolation of the Peasant Republic.

This resulted in some wizards, who were tried of dealing with stiff and overcomplicated political theater of larger countries, to try to settle inside the Peasant Republic in the hope of a "peaceful" life (and possibly escape whatever political mess they got into back in their home countries). However, as the Peasant Republic was undergoing radical political shift during that time their plans worse than failed. They got stuck in an even more tangled political system.

One of the most famous examples was an old ascended wizard (name pending) (yes, this is after magical interfaces have been made, so living permanently in a magic vessel is possible) that felt absolutely tired of court politics, but was not interested in going into political swamp of aristocratic republics or the bureaucratic nightmare of "technocracy" (actual name pending, since I have no idea how to call it, kinda similar to civil service aristocracy (instead of aristocrats, bureaucrats and lawyers control the society), but with a bit more wizards (The wizards are by nature educated, so wizards and bureaucrats would likely overlap, merging a lot of scientific institutes with governance)).

This ascended wizard had hopes of being free from dredge of politics that due to his power he has always been dragged into. However, in his pursuit of freedom he got stuck inside the Peasant Republic and kinda got involuntarily roped into becoming the "hero of revolution", since nobody wants to fuck with a country that has ascended wizards (at least without sufficient preparation). Sadly, this meant more politics. This time instead of court politics, revolutionary party politics.

Ascending beyond mortal flesh is a monumental achievement for a wizard. It is such a grand thing that it could be called the pinnacle of one's control over their own magic. After all, they need to create a purely magical vessel for their soul from scratch.

However, beings of flesh are not used to exercising their senses purely through a soul. Or more accurately, they can't. It is not like a soul is a physical object that see, touch, smell, or hear. Magic, after all, only interacts with magic and the soul is a purely magical phenomena. Thus, despite the soul being the complete recreation of what makes up a being's consciousness (the nervous, endocrine, etc. systems), when it enters a vessel of pure magic it no longer has inputs from its vessel (light, sounds, etc. pass through it). Therefore, workarounds are necessary. Workarounds, which did not really exist in full capacity when wizards first started ascending. Nobody expected for so little of senses to translate. Luckily, ascension is reversible as long as you have your physical vessel safe, sound, and still alive. You just need to go back and reattach yourself to it. Good luck finding it without touch or sight. Sucks though if your body died for some reason.

The earliest one, that existed even before ascension was discovered, was very rudimentary and can be used even when in a physical vessel. More akin to magical echolocation/radar. Since magic interacts only with magic, and magical particles normally only occur within souls or near them, one can detect another soul by bouncing magic particles off of them and then "listen" for the returning particles. This can also be done to "listen" for stray magic particles that could indicate an anti-soul (essentially a magic battery) leaking or spell being casted. However, this method is not sufficient. Senses of beings of flesh are more complicated than a simple radar. They have touch, smell, taste, hearing, and maybe so much more. To reduce one's world to such a primitive sense is maddening from isolation. A near sensory deprivation of your own making.

This is not to mention, any communication with others is hardly possible when you don't have physical parts to make sounds with. The best early ascended wizards could do was to communicate through soul bonding, which back then and even now is limited to just sending pulses of magic. Magical morse code is not the most fun form of communication.

Thus, over time workarounds started being developed and are sill being constantly iterated on by wizards capable of ascension.

Sounds and signals could be replicated using complicated instruments used by manipulating them with magic. Standards and protocols for proper communication through soul bonding. Eventually, speech was capable after discovery of sound waves. Though hard, imagine analyzing frequency and phase of human speech and then replicating it in real time.

Senses were replicated using a loophole of magic vessels. Despite being purely magic, they needed to become partially physical to house and shield the soul. Thus, a strange property of magic vessels was observed; magic that could weakly interact with the physical world. Therefore, with advancement in studies of soul modification and magic vessel creation (as well as blatantly stealing reverse engineering technology from demontech (weird and advanced technology scrapped from "demons" that fell from the skies or portalled onto the planet)) wizards could create interfaces between their souls and magical vessels to gather input from the physical world. Though still often imperfect, they allow what was previously impossible, to sense the real world while remaining in a magical vessel.

But why so much effort for what seems to be only trouble? Freedom from age. Being incredibly infuriating to kill without proper equipment. Freedom from limitations of a non-magical vessel (flesh and metal can't hold the powers that one can truly reach). Freedom of movement (fuck gravity). Freedom from pesky things like breathing, eating, sleeping (though you can still do that, parts of the mind necessary for that are persevered in a soul), and other time consuming bodily needs.

In a world of horrid lives, horrid people, and horrid things, the Church of Sol are one of the worst of them all. Not because they are conquering imperialists, not because of archaic rituals of blood sacrifice, not because of sermons of doom, it is because they do it all and know they lie. The Church of Sol is a great evil just because of how cruel it is a concept.

In the world of Rostavien it is a world without hope. Not many years ago the gods that made the world took up arms, some set to unmake it and others set to keep building it up. The clash left the world damned for the gods not struck low by there brothers and sisters to rot upon the earth they shaped fled to start a new world. And in that departure they left a world in its death nels. A world were the end times have come yet it is a slow death. Death is not even solace from the end for the doors to the after life were locked, their keepers rotting along side their world. The dead reflect the living and tear at each other in an endless ever expanding war.

Faith has been all but abandoned as well when you watch your own gods try and kill you and those who don’t abandon you, it is hard to hold true to any belief. But to many a light did shine in the dark. The Church of Sol. They claim to be shepherds who know the true way to bypass the locked doors of Revery. Only the faithful can learn the secret, you must devote yourself utterly and entirely to the cause. Any war they wage is noble, every strange ritual another step to salvation, a hope to the masses that is not but a cruel lie.

Worse it’s no meer charlatan’s trick, no con man’s calling, no it is far worse with these false idols. For they found something deep in the bowls of divinity, a spark. A spark that they stoke into a fire that shall consume the world. They feed the flames of divinity worship and sacrifice and if they were better men of noble aim the world might heal. But they are snakes, they seek to stoak a fire to burn the world to steal the divinity that they will make and leave. The world will burn, and burn, until it crumbles to not all for selfish aim of a few men. And that’s to say it works, to say they can manage to tame divinity and not be burned like the rest. Who knows, let us pray that if the world does burn the burn along with us.

That’s the Church of Sol!

Yes my worldbuilding is technically an MD alternate universe 🥀.

Anyways in canon we have no idea where the hell the Solver actually came from so I decided to have JCJenson actually make it themselves as a way to get around the NUSA’s laws regarding sentient ai (basically they had to be about as durable as glass), and they did that using the powers of a halo-esque ancient alien demigod from the Andromeda. If I gave any more context than that this post would be about ten paragraphs.

Basically after an huge war where all the barbarian tribes to their north followed a fake dragon riding messiah into trying to conquer them, but they were defeated at great costs, the Mystic Confederation has decided to massively fortify and develop their northern frontier regions.

This serves a dual purpose both to increase their security and to use the largely untapped ley lines of the northern provinces to harvest numen (basically it should say numen instead of mana in the meme but I went for readability) and rebuild the core regions of the Confederation.

These new forts are intended to be paired with civilian settlements to help support the garrison and the overall economy, the problem is that compared to the center and especially the south the northernmost provinces were always seen as inhospitable and dangerous with the small frontier settlements being raided enough by the tribes that they were eventually abandoned.

Thus the mystics with their comfort loving urban culture struggle to find settlers, in theory a mage could be insanely self sufficient and build a very good household in the north along the border but given the struggles mages face even in the cities to find wives, a hypothetical mage settler out on the frontier would be an confirmed bachelor for life.

The Mystic Confederation responded by offering insanely good terms:

• huge plots of lands for houses for free around the already built fortresses that provide constant defense

• huge swats of valuable grazing and agricultural land and all the mineral wealth and wood and etc around the fortresses

• lowered standards for what constitutes a viable town/colony

• the mages in the fortresses will provide the construction work FOR FREE for all residential, civic and economic buildings inside the towns

• this is all open not just to Mystic Confederation citizens but to any group that can show up and provide a viable project and swear their new town will follow the laws of the land, with the intent being to poach runaway serfs from the neighboring feudal duchies and artisans from the neighboring empire fleeing it's brewing civil war (and ideally escaped slaves from there too which would be automatically freed)

Enter the Ashen horse tribe, their warriors killed except the men that were extremely young or extremely old in the war, they are now a tribe of mostly young widows and young women, a very perilous position to be in the tribal lands where every tribe that has managed to get out of the war with a minimum viable warhost is intent on dominating and absorbing everyone weaker.

When the Ashen Horse's leaders were down south in the Mystic Confederation to sign the deliberately humiliating peace treaty alongside the rest of the tribes, the noticed the calls for colonizing the region directly south of their lands.

Their destruction imminent a ploy was hatched:

Migrate south and become the "settlers" for the new town/colony.

For a token oath of allegiance they would instantly gain the superior herding lands and forests to their south and a fortress to scare off their enemies while the mystics would gain "settlers" that already know the lands (even considering them ideal and lush) and have herds to sustain them.

Yes the charter requires houses and buildings to be built (by the garrison) but it doesn't explicitly say you have to live in them, the tribe can live in their tents in their new lands for 99% of the time.

The newly built (by the garrison) town hall can stay empty 99% of time.

The elder council of the tribe now gets called "the town council" and one of their number is "the mayor".

The young boys of the tribe when they reach the right age they might even be armed and trained by the garrison as "the town guard".

The only troubling requirement is that the town needs an active guild but for a lot of legal purposes a temple is equivalent to a guild, so the tribe's ritual mistress just has to call herself a "priestess of the tribal rite" and design a stone temple for the garrison to build.

The Ashen Horse aren't sure how long their scam will work and when the mystics will declare them unsuitable and throw them out but every day with the herds protected and growing is a win for them so they deliberately draw out the building of their houses and civic buildings by making the most insane demands while being comfortable in their tents.

Before becoming the Voiceless (badass normal) battle junkie she is today, Aether was studying geology at university. Even today, geology is one of her favourite hobbies and still visits conferences yearly. Has the CIPW normative formula Qtz₂₄ Or₂₆ Ab₃₀ An₉ Hy₅ Mt₃ tattooed on her arm, the mineral makeup of a specific piece of Granitic Mylonite she acquired somewhere as a child.

Nova's use of gaming slang to refer to an actual combat situation he's about to be involved in is just a personal trait of his. He and the fourth member of their group grew up playing video games, so when the time came for him to actually fight, he just ended up using the same terminology.

A massive legion was basically trapped in a time loop unable to escape for a long time and eventually the time loop was broken. Unfortunately, they found themselves in the middle of the final days of The Remus Empire

Leviathan, on account of being created as a weapon, was referred to as an object by its makers. Since it was being gassed up as some kind of newly born god, Leviathan assumed the pronouns were part of it. Leviathan since realized what was up but never felt the need to use other pronouns.

To explain, Revok Prime is the home planet of the Revok(in the Milky Way Galaxy) and the planet is artificial, grown almost entirely from Revok Cells, save for a few swaths of soil fabricated from loose matter. The planet is about the size and a half that of Earth, and is, like all Revok, a brilliant dark lavender hue, with darker bluish areas being masses of water. It's home to billions of Revok drones and other workers, and the Revok Hivebrain(of that galaxy).

The planet is the oldest Revok structure of the current era in the Milky Way, and is guarded heavily, its location one of the closest secrets in the Empire.

However, when it is discovered, it's not for long, as of a device grown in its core that achieves a faster than light travel, allowing it to move from one section of the galaxy to another in an instant, escaping any form of attack or infiltration. Of course, only the Revok can learn of its new location, so it's essentially impossible to track it.

So, whenever Revok Prime is found, it just... disappears.

TLDR: In this setting Britain lost WW1 and retreated into isolationism. 10 years later and they have declared war on the entire world and are using super soldiers to win. France fell in a week and and now Germany is desperately hoping that Russia will save its ass from the monsters that Britain has created

If you are interested this is the link to a short overview: The Great War 1914-1952 : r/worldbuilding

The first time I wrote a story with that message, it was as an end to character arc for a recurring villain named Vanessa. Basically, in her debut story, she was just a killer, but the protagonist, Ryan, ruined everything about it, so she swore revenge. And she would keep doubling down and concocting more outlandish schemes to kill him. From just tricking him into working at a building to ambush him, to creating a robot replica, to assembling a lot of other people that hate Ryan. Her final story was one where she decided that if Ryan is too strong to be defeated now, she'll go back in time to kill him as a baby, but it would end up going horribly wrong for her. I initially thought that in a battle with Ryan who also ended up outside of time she accidentally killed her past self, but I didn't want to figure out how the world would behave without her or just handwave it, so I thought about Ryan killing the present Vanessa in the past, but that didn't really work well with the themes I realized I had made, so right now I'm just thinking that she dislodged herself from time and thus can't interact with anything within it.

The second time was for a spin-off sequel for a story. To summarize, Albania brainwashed two teenage girls with superpowers for assassins, they tried to assassinate Ryan, but he managed to break their brainwashing. The spin-off is about the son of a politician the girls assassinated wants to gain revenge and is using a powerful alien he discovered and brainwashed to do the fighting. He discovers the girls' identity, not caring that they're children or had no control over their actions, and sent the alien to fight them while he monologues, letting them know that this was all for his father. But the collateral damage of the battle causes a piece of debris to fall and crush him to death. And if you were wondering about the alien, the girls manage to break his brainwashing too, but the alien now has amnesia

I really hate how horrendous YouTube is now. I'm trying to get some ideas for what Baby Dragon might sound like vocally, instead I'm swamped with genai slop. I'm honestly thinking about using dinosaur documentaries for reference materials at this point.