Carne

Carne, the most recent target of the Empire, is a vast expanse of thick woodlands and tropical forests in the eastern end of the Empire's reach. It is the land of shapeshifters and sorcerers. Many who are born to Carnish blood are able to, from birth, cloak themselves in the flesh of beasts, making them a formidable and hard-to-conquer foe for the Empire.

Much of the continent of Irulia perceives Carne as the Land of the Shapechangers, where they are, in fact, the Land of the Sorcerers. The dominant power in Carne is not the Shapeshifters, but instead the council of the Saeveranacht, a cadre of noble sorcerous houses who draw their magic from a similar well as the Shapeshifters.

The Saeveranacht

The Saeveranacht is the name for the ruling council of sorcerous houses that hold power in Carne. Just as the Shapeshifters, the sorcerous houses of the Saeveranacht received their magic as a gift from the Spirits. Though theirs was a more direct form of magic, with three powerful bloodlines possessing the original gifts and many offspring houses underneath them. Sorcerers are rare to see in Divaan, with these houses being some of the only true sorcerers in the world. Indeed they are the most common places to find sorcerers, and their reputation in other lands pushes the sorcerers outside of the Saeveranacht to hide their true power.

Just how the Saeveranacht was able to receive the gifts, or if there was a price they paid and these 'gifts' were more transactional than that, is unknown. They do not share the same reverence of the land the Shapeshifters do, nor do they have the same healthy amount of respect for Spirits the Shifters do. True sorcerers are rare enough that seeing one within Carne is still considered exotic and novel, especially with them not being on the front lines of the conflict between Carne and the Empire.

The Saeveranacht has used the Shapeshifters for generations to do their gruntwork, though only recently with the war breaking out has this relationship turned from power posturing to official laws passed by the sorcerous houses to make Shapeshifters do their bidding. These laws call for the capture, or in some cases deaths, of Shapeshifters to force them into servitude under the houses. Before, there was at least a thin veneer of mutual gain to be had between the two sides of Carne. Now, however, Shapeshifters are openly hunted to be turned into beasts of war against the Empire.

The Shapeshifters

The Shapeshifters of Carne can choose to wear the form of beasts. This power is not, as many of the Empire initially suspected, a learned power or some magical technique, but rather something the shapeshifters are born with. Though many shapeshifters do not shape until they are thirteen winters old, it is still something within their very blood. Their shapes are highly resistant to damage, though magic works as normal upon them, and their shapes do not share pain -- if one of their shapes is injured by an arrow, their born-form and their other forms will not share that arrow's puncture wound.

Their inborn abilities do not stop at merely this, however, and the Carnish shapeshifters share a special and profound connection to the land that provides for them. This is especially so with the fauna of the lands, possessing the ability to speak to them in some limited ways. Lately, during the war with the Empire, this ability has been used to turn the animals from wild beasts into spies and fellow combatants against the Empire.

With the laws passed by the Saeveranacht, many Shapeshifters have fled to Lhynoon to live amongst the Crenaux. The Shapeshifters and Lhynoon have always have amicable, positive, relations, and with these new laws and the war these relations have been put to the test. For some Crenaux, the hunt for Shapeshifters by the Saeveranacht reinforce the Crenaux's strong bond. For others of the Crenaux, it is too risky and has broken these bonds entirely. The latter is becoming increasingly more common, with the Shapeshifters beginning to spark rebellion against the Saeveranacht, endangering those Crenaux who do harbor Shapeshifters and are sympathetic to their plight.

The Gift

Shapeshifter magic is often considered a gift by the people of Carne. A gift from the Spirits, something separate from the spellcasting of the sorcerous houses of the Saeveranacht, the wizards of the Eyrien, even different from witches and the weavers of the Crenaux. While the true nature of the shapeshifter's ability to change their flesh is largely unknown, the shapeshifters believe that the world of Divaan came after the Spirit World, a departure from much of the rest of the world's understanding of it, and that the vast and powerful Great Spirits of the Spirit World have dreamt this world into being. The changing of their flesh is the demonstration of this dream, for once you realize the world is a dream, the restrictions you believed the world places upon you make little sense.

When a shifter turns thirteen, they are sent out into the Deepwoods to find their way into the Spirit World to ask the Spirits for a gift; their first form. As part of this process, the aspiring shapechanger must understand that there is no such thing as a 'true form,' for every form they take is their true form. Every being, every beast, every man, every plant, is a part of the world, and every part of the world has a Spirit to tend to it. Shifters believe they are all part of the Breath of Spirit, and thus everything is one with them.

The Burden

This gift of the Shapeshifters is rarely seen by them as anything other than just that. However, with the war between the Kheravazan Empire and Carne intensifying steadily, this gift has become in many ways a burden. As the Saeveranacht forcefully conscript the Shapeshifters into being infantry units, spies, or living siege engines along with their mage-made horrors, some Shapeshifters are beginning to find nothing but pain and misery in their powers. Folktales spread that, should a Shapeshifter completely lose faith in their gift, so, too, shall their gift lose faith in them and they shall lose the ability to change their flesh. As tensions between the Empire and the Saeveranacht grow, resentment from the Shapeshifters to the Saeveranacht grows as well. Burblings of civil war rise to the top of this crucible of blood and tension.