With three times Earth's land area, Varnur remains a largely untamed world. Sixteen sapient races share the same continents. There are trains, ships and airships, and nearly every technological advance relies on magic. Yet swords and spears remain the weapons of everyday life.
Here, magic has rules. Those rules shape the stories.
Sixteen races think, speak and work magic in Varnur. Some live in peace with the others. Some live off them.
Orc, vampire and beastfolk: individual exemplars, not racial averages. Common scale: height from head to feet.
The most numerous and most political race in the world, split into nations that never stop fighting each other. The average human is middling at almost everything. Some are very far from average.
There is nothing to draw: a demon has no body of its own. It wears someone else's, person or beast, and only one thing gives it away: an eye with no white at all.
Almost no one in Varnur knows what that means. In the villages they only say: a bad beast doesn't die, it changes skins.
The purest embodiments of the elements, and the most selfish. A complete dragon can trade its dragon form for a humanoid one, and only then does it speak. Most of what common folk call a dragon is actually a dracoling.
Red, its body as hot as the flame it breathes.
A blue-and-gold serpent that flies without wings and spits boiling water or ice.
The smallest and fastest, all white, with a scream that stuns its prey.
The largest of all, shelled in stone. It cannot fly, but it swims through the ground.
Extremely rare and nearly invisible. It shines like the sun or darkens like night.
Covered in plants and extremely rare. Slow to fight, it vanishes into thin air when threatened.
Pitch black, with lightning running across its skin.
In Varnur, almost everyone uses some magic. Nine in ten people know the basics of at least one school, learning what their lives call for. And no one is entirely defenseless. When faced with death, anyone's body can instinctively thicken the surrounding air into a defensive barrier. This happens across all races, even to people who have never studied magic and cannot explain what their body is doing. Raising that barrier deliberately requires training in Wind magic.
Magic is common. Mastery is rare.
Two paths of study. Level measures a mage's control over their own mana: beginners need gestures and words, experienced mages need only will it, and the rare few at the top draw on the mana in the air as well as their own. Form measures how well they know a school: first they control what already exists, then they create, then they master its most demanding techniques, until they command everything known to be possible with that matter.
The schools. Water, Earth, Fire, Wind and Light. Transmutation, Summoning, Enchantment and Molecular. Alongside them are Body Reinforcement and Object Reinforcement.
Magic comes from imagination. No two people at the same stage in the same school cast magic in quite the same way. Its shape, its glow and the way it is cast grow out of each person's life.
All magic has a price. Every effect costs mana. A mage can exhaust their reserves or injure themselves by channeling more mana than their body can handle.
No one is made of steel. Reinforcing the body has a limit, and there is no magical healing. Even a great mage must live with their wounds. In Varnur, almost anyone can bring down almost anyone.
Adventures in Varnur with choices, a die and more than one ending. The series is in development, with an adventure planned for each age group, and the magic follows the same rules as the rest of the world: everything the characters do here is grounded in abilities they have throughout Varnur.
Play Your First AdventureAlgeo is eleven when soldiers under a demon's control attack the village where he lives. He survives alone.
Written for adults: it contains war, loss and violence.
Explore the Saga and TalesFollow the launch of the Algeo saga, chapter by chapter, with the Tales of Varnur along the way. Choose your interests and receive updates from Varnur.
