Summer Realm
The Realm of Summer What are the Themes of the Realm? In the realm of Summer, everything is at its physical prime. Everything is idealised – trees are taller, mountains more mountainous, lions more fierce, the sea darker blue and more terrible than any mortal sea. It is a world of splendour and beauty, but also of irresistible awe and majestic terror.
It is a realm where the moment is king, where “right here, right now” is what matters. Forget the past, let the future look after itself. Death is virtually unknown here – its a realm where you can slaughter and eat a pig and throw its bones on the ground and next morning the pig is back again, seemingly none the worse for wear. It’s a realm where you can fight to the death today, and then drink together the next day as friends.
It is a realm of power and youth, where everything is larger than life. Every creature here knows it is the reason for existence, that it can achieve anything it puts its mind to, and that it will live forever.
This is a realm where the individual matters; its a realm of heroism, but also of villainy. The creatures that dwell here sometimes play at morality, but it is just pretense. They take what they want, when they want it, without much regard for anyone else. After all, how can they do wrong when they are the pinnacle of creation?
This is a realm of conflict; the individual against the environment, against powerful creatures, and against other individuals. There is an element of striving to create a place for oneself in the world, but it is a striving that never ends.
What kind of Magic does it cover? At its most basic summer covers the magic of strength. It enhances individuals, making them more than they are. It doesn’t heal wounds, but it grants the capacity to resist and overcome injury. There may also be an element of enhancing larger groups of individuals, up to the size of entire armies, but the limited duration of the magic makes these enhancements more appropriate to a specific battle than an extended campaign.
This magic can be used on living things but also on inanimate objects. It can strengthen an animal, a soldier or a sword with equal capacity.
This is also a realm of confidence and self-assurance, and can be used to reduce the effect of outside influences on the individual, allowing them to be “themselves, but moreso.”
Summer magic may be limited by the sun – it tends to fade at sunrise and sunset. This ties with the rhythms of the Summer realm, where a new day is effectively a new start. It provides short term buffs, leaving the realm of Autumn to create larger-scale, more downtime oriented buffs.
What is the Realm like physically? The Realm is a lot like the material world, but more so in every way. It is a realm of immense mountains and trees, a realm of vast churning seas, great deserts and even vast and implacable glaciers.
The Realm has creatures that are like animals, but they often possess a magical nature. There are no small animals here – majestic stags, immense eagles, mighty lions, fearsome dragons, awe-inspiring unicorns and leviathan sea creatures are more common. These creatures exist to challenge and provide sport to the Eternal inhabitants rather than as creatures with complex ecosystems.
The Realm is very much subordiate to the Eternals here. Where it is wild, it is wild because they want it to be or let it be. There are no real settlements here as mortals understand them – an Eternal may have a castle, or a lodge, or a palace, but they do not have peasents tilling the land. They may have great feasts every night, but there is no suggestion that those feasts are needed to provide sustenance – they are events ratherthan biological functions. It’s not entirely clear to an outsider where the food comes from, or who makes the fine clothes the Host wear. There’s no industry here either – if an Eternal chooses to make something, it is a unique piece of art and more than likely a powerful artefact, not just another sword.
The simplicity and straightforwardness is a subtle but constant element. This is a realm of bows, not crossbows. It’s a realm of torches rather than lamps. Its not a realm where machines or complex devices have a place.
What are the inhabitants of the Realm like? The Eternals of Summer are the Host. They are creatures that combine elements of traditional faerie or elven lords with elements of heroes and villains from myth and story. Each is a larger-than-life creature, each considers itself the central figure in its own narrative. Each is an individual – when they come together to do something it is always as a number of individuals who choose to do the same thing at the same time.
No Eternal of Summer will voluntarily choose to be subordinate to another, and will rebel quickly if forced into such a position. There are lesser creatures, not really part of the Host, who sometimes serve as their aides, lieutenants and courtiers, but these creatures are a class that is somehow separate to the Lords and Ladies of the Host.
They are like Tolkein’s elves, living in the moment, eternal and unchanging. They have no room for doubt, always confident who they are and what they are doing. Fear exists for them only as something to be overcome, adversity is something that is met head-on and vanquished.
These lords and ladies of the Host represent individual power – they don’t organise into seelie and unseelie courts. When you meet more than one Eternal of Summer, they are informally hanging out together or one of them has dominated the other in some way.
Some of the Host affect mortal trappings – one may appear as a Knight in platemail, a courtier in fine silks, an Arab-themed Djinn, a Nordic jarl in fine fur and gold torcs, but at the end of the day these are just images. The core elements of strength, arrogance and boundless confidence remain the same. It is entirely possible that some of the Host appear as orcs. The Host compete against each other constantly. It is no coincidence many of them possess antlers, representing their tendency to figuratively and liteally “lock horns.” They are very passionate, but their passions are “of the moment” rather than the deeper and more mystical passions of Night. Their rages and their affections are transient things, quickly forgotten. Occasionally membes of the Host raise armies of lesser creatures and play at war. They always lead their armies from the front.
Within the Empire the lineage of Changelings are associated with the Realm of Summer. They possess immense reserves of confidence and a drive to excel in whatever capacity they find themselves
What do the Eternals want from Mortals? The Eternals of Summer don’t understand why mortals are not more like them – why they insist on fettering individuals with laws to protect the weak, why they don’t just take what they want, why they insist on talking and planning instead of taking the world by the throat and meeting their obstacles head-on. Many of them feel a desire to share their viewpoint with the material world.
Several of them want to influence the Empire and make it more strong, and more dominant. They are not, ultimately, political creatures. They try to change the minds of individuals in the understanding that the individual will then change the Empire. They encourage conflict, and oppose compromise. They also seek out conflict for themselves – they want to be challenged so they can overcome those challenges. They do not like to lose, but how they react to a defeat obviously depends on the individual.
The Eternals of Summer appreciate and encourage direct, simple, straightforward solutions to problems. Kill your enemy. Conquer the territory. Seduce your lover. Eat the pie. Three word sentences.
What are some things these Eternals can give to Mortals? The Eternals can offer strength, and artefacts that grant strength. They possess powerful weapons, armour and trappings of warfare such as banners. These are usually aggressive items, and may often bring with them powerful roleplaying effects encouraging recklessness, arrogance and megalomania in motals that are tantamount to curses.
They can provide articles that enhance or focus the magic of Summer. A particular resource they can offer is wine or mead created from magical flowers that intoxicates but temporarily grants power to an individual wizard to perform Summer rituals. Gifts of the Realm of Summer tend to be straightforward, as do their bargains. They are actually reasonably trustworthy, as Eternals go, sticking to the spirit of a deal rather than the letter. However, they may sometimes be genuinely unaware of some of the side effects dealing with their Realm may have on mortals.
They may offer beasts – or their own soldiers – to a wizard for a short period of time, or arrange for an individual to test themselves against one of the challenges of the Summer realm.
They are said to be able to produce fruit or drink that retards aging, refreshes the body, and gives the vigour and passions of youth to the aged. Allegedly it can even grant some measure of immortality.
They can offer a number several things that have an almost narcotic effect – exceptionally alcoholic beverages, food of intense and overwhelming taste and finery, drugs that are so powerful they may be physically damaging and instantly addictive (at least psychologically). Everything is more powerful when it comes from the Summer realm.
What themes aren’t appropriate to this Realm? This isn’t a realm of pixies and roses. Nor is it a realm of heroism in the sense that superman and batman are heroes. This is a realm where the villains are as over-the-top and passionate and wilful as the heroes – there’s no real dividing line between the two.
This isn’t a realm of Summer in the sense that it is bright and sunny and hot. There are frozen wastes here as well as deserts, mountains and oceans. . The Ice Queen is as likely to be a Summer Eternal as she is a Winter Eternal, provided what she represents is pride and strength. There’s no organization here either – no seelie or unseelie rubbish. There’s just a lot of very powerful, very wilful, individuals.
These creatures are straightforward but they are not stupid – well not normally so. They expect and respect those who are frank, direct and bold. They respect swagger and bollocks, provided it is backed up with backbone and actual ability. Chutzpah and moxie with the day with Summer, not empty bragging, and the Eternals themselves to do not engage in empty words either.
While there’s elements of elves or faeries here, these are also hero-figures. Thor and Hercules might fight right in with these Eternals, as might a figure like Wayland Smith who makes unique and powerful artefacts as the archtype of the “best” smith in the world.