Subsolem Septem

Subsolem Septem, the Cosmos under Seven Suns is
a setting of weird, dark and hopeful fantasy.

In the middle of the cold and swimming nothingness the Nine Realms sit
atop the Antlers of the World Skull.

Each of them is a world unto itself,
but at the center of the Skull
rests like a bespoke crown the World Disk.

Here lies the home of all those ordinary
mortal beings most alike to you and me,
a colossal chain of mountains
surrounding its rim protectively.

Ever-scorched by rays of Seven Hateful Suns
the World Disk lies.

In elden days it was a verdant place
with teeming life and flora,
and diverse cultures dwelling on it.

Among them were the ones
who thought themselves eternal;
who called this world Andrastheia.

Now only three things still remain of them:
Ruins; the ruin they brought upon the world

and Seven Suns that scorch eternally,
the height of all their hubris.

Since the cataclysm known as Estur ( “the Bright”),
the World Disk has not known night;
only the brief respite of dusk
which slightly cools the endless heat.

Now, none recall what once occurred.
Now, most who dwell there
call these realms the Scorched Lands.

Now, they scour ruins for ancient artefacts.
Now, they erect monuments
to theriomorphic Suns
and to their Sunlight Emperor
who blesses them with shade upon their skin
and wasting death to all their enemies.
For his blessings alone they can subsist and roam
and rule these lands of yellow sulphur-sand
and rust-red ferrous-salt
and scintillating deadly silt.


These lands are far from lifeless:
with all their sprawling ruins of old
and bustling trading posts,
with ancient ports
that once had sought to reach the stars,
and dried out seas
and endless galleries of husks of trees.
But our story takes us far from here
and deep, deep underground.
There in the Sunless Depths,
we find caverns housing continents.
Carved into the bedrock of the World Disk
by the mysterious Antecessors in ancient times.
Conditions of the surface realms
before the cataclysm
recreated nearly perfectly
for their strange experiments,
deep underground.


And there by mighty Serpent Rivers,
lies Lake Aphon with its dark and gloomy waters.
And cast on them like mirror-glass
reflections of the crystal Cavern-Sky
in all its everchanging beauty.
And by that lake, there ever-fearful at the edge
of the most dreadful Greatwood Leshivoi
lies the City State of Styx
in all its glory and disorder.


Styx was once an Empire ,
led by the God Empress and her High Priestesses.

The Stygian Republic was founded
after the Great Revolution
cast off the shackles of nobility
and freed the toiling people
to drive their own destinies.

The Great Revolution constitutes the start
of the Stygian calendar,
and 354 years have passed in accordance with it.

Now the city is ruled by the Temple Parliament,
made up of elected officials from the Great Unions,
each of which represent a trade or profession.
Despite the typically conservative and
tradition-bound Stygian attitude
much has changed in 43 legislature periods.

More relaxed laws in many areas,
greater quality of life
and advancements in technology and industry
have changed the lives of the populace of the City
and at least according to the the Temple Parliament
“the city moves onward,
everly onward towards utopia”, if one is to
believe their words.


The Stygian Republic is a sprawling,
ever-shifting microcosm.

A tiny simulacrum
of the metaphorical mycellium
of fungus spreading throughout all of reality.

Its streets and railway lines
like strands of mushroom fiber
and wares and people flowing through them
endlessly
like nutrients in beautifully disorganized
yet strangely still coherent fashion.

There is no rhyme nor reason
and no ultimate order to it all
but in the end it all
fits perfectly together regardless.

Styx exists perfectly yet precariously balanced,
between its order and its chaos,
and all its good and bad.

The poverty and excess,
the progress, power plays, repression
and equals parts of misery and majesty;
are all a part of it.


And like the common Temple Prayer goes:
“Styx will be eternal
so long its peoples' hearts pump blood
and dawn spreads daily cross the Cavern Sky.”

So as chairwomen and the unions vie for power
the Temple idly governs;
the shadows creep, the Forest grows.

And just the same
most ordinary people lead their most ordinary lives,
just trying to make ends meet.
To go to work and get to bed,
to live and love
and go to Morning Prayer;
between the shortages and feast days of the Saints.

Some say that only the Stygian people
could be dumb enough to carry on
with all despair and deprivation
but when it all comes down to it:

In Styx the week has 12 days
and still there's work to do for 7 more...

Some light remains within your lantern
and there is so much left to learn.
Do you wish to delve deeper...?