Altostratus Story Notes

Altostratus was a short story of a rewritten section from my unfinished rough draft, Flammagentius (2022). Flammagentius was going to be about how the legendary Flammagentius, the champion wartorch of objectkind, lived and died about a thousand or so years before Gwuenevere's time; all seen through the eyes of her descendant, Kinia, who suffered a Perfect Revival to bring back this monolithic war-object. I stopped writing Flammagentius due to personal reasons related to a major breakdown last year, along with the fact that the setting of World of Relics, more specifically The Mundane Realm, needed more fleshing out before completing this story. I do intend to come back to it one day as I still find it an important story for my worldbuilding.

However, there were a few parts I was proud of writing in Flammagentius. These were the dream portions where Kinia rests while under the effects of quicksilver, or liquid mercury, a sedative and painkiller for living objects. These dreams were from Flamminagentius' memories, a sign that this Perfect Revival was successful in bringing her back, but with major consequences. Throughout the story, Kinia slowly transforms into Flamminagentius and gains all her memories, while suffering the existential dread of her identity loss at the same time. Yet in these dreams, there is a bright spot. Queen Nike gives her hope.

 

Altostratus is a short story that explores the budding relationship between Queen Nike (Goddess Nikey from my other story, Rise of Relics) and Flammin. The story hints at their romance, including hints of future tensions between themselves and the war that brought them together.

Now on to the notes:

Citations are included at the end!

The story name was going to be either "Mammatus" or "Mammatocumulus" but I changed it to "Altostratus", due to Mammatus meaning "mammary cloud" in Latin. I just thought it would be a little weird name for this story. However, the way I imagined the setting of Altostratus was the cloudscape Nike and Flammin were flying through were the heavy bulky cloud formations of Mammatocumulus. These clouds are usually seen with cumulonimbus rainclouds and take on an eerie dark and lumpy appearance (Mammatus Clouds, Met Office).

The Skyfall Event is the objectkind's term for the Inversion Event, an event that wiped out all life that existed before World of Relics setting. The Inversion Event was a mass extinction event that killed off almost all life on earth and in the heavens. New forms of life, called Living Objects or Mimics, replaced both god and mortal life. The Inversion Event was coined by Nicodemus the Wise —from my other story, Rise of Relics— for how its magic stripped the soul out of their owners' bodies and placed them in their possessions. The former gods became relickind and the mortals, excluding the very small population of uninverted survivors, became objectkind. Nike was formerly a goddess who died from Inversion during the Inversion/Skyfall Event thousands of years ago. Now she lives as a living flying trident. Flammin, or Flammagenitus —the official title of her fame— was hatched as a living paintbrush a thousand years later. Flammin and her progenitors' earliest ancestors were humans who died out during the Inversion/Skyfall Event.

Writing descriptions of both Queen Nike and Flammin in this story was...interesting. It's a little difficult to describe something as basic as a trident with wings and somehow keep it as a "living sentient being that's also a queen and a dead goddess from a long extinct era who's also very gay". Hopefully, these character's descriptions read well!

Also, the tone of this story, and the entirety of World of Relics worldbuilding, was something I was concerned about. This project is targeted to Young Adults and New Adults, between the ages of 17-25+, interested in dramatic high fantasy and xenofiction stories with unusual characters —i.e. The Dark Crystal series and the Rice Boy worldbuilding comics by Evan Dahm—One of my concerns for this was how to write a serious story about a bunch of talking object people surviving in an unforgiving violent world. This story was a practice in exploring this tone for my project.

Fire lances are really cool and I wished they appeared more in fantasy! In our world, they are weapons that originated in China and are the precursors to the first guns and hand cannons (Fire Lance, Wikipedia). Fire lances and other polearms also inspired my wartorch designs.

Fire lance. (2023, September 6). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance By Unknown author - & “from a A Latin manuscript”t; (see [1]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58389400

Oh, objectkind romance! All objectkind have no sexual attraction, which makes them all instinctually asexual. Their attraction is based on romantic, sensual, emotional, and gender —based on Astrology— attraction. Their attraction can be reinterpreted as sexual/asexual if they are re-imagined as humans. So if you want to see Nike and Flammin's relationship as lesbian, bisexual, biromantic, or sapphic, that's okay —Please don't discourse this, oh burning blades I swear— Nike is canonically bisexual since she was originally a goddess before she died during the Inversion Event. Flammin is Biromantic, with a lean towards sapphic attraction.

On the Astrology/Gender thing bit above, object genders are determined by the time of day and the celestial changes in the sky when the curio — a baby object— hatches from its pericarp —egg casing created with the materials from the curio's deceased parent. Males are usually born during the Day —the sun is completely visible unless its light is completely blotted by stormclouds— while Females are born during the Night —the Moon is completely visible, including all phases with the exception of the New Moon or obscurity by stormclouds—. However, complete obscurity by cloud cover and lunar and solar eclipses introduce nonbinary or trans living objects —depending on the region where partial or full eclipses happen. Flammin was born under a lunar eclipse, thus trans or nonbinary. Nike's gender is not determined by any of this. She was originally a nonbinary goddess with a female body before she died and became a trident during the Inversion Event. All this gender stuff is based on Alchemy's concept of Rebis (Rebis, Wikipedia), the unification of the Masculine —the Sun— and the Feminine —the Moon— in the final stage of the Great Work, the philosopher's stone —the unification of the masculine and feminine.

Quicksilver, or mercury (Mercury, Blaszczak-Boxe), has important medicinal properties for my object characters in this world. It is used as a painkiller and sedative, in large quantities it can lull a living object into a deep sleep. This is a reference to how ancient people believed that mercury had spiritual and magical properties. But, in reality, it's highly toxic and dangerous to humans! The reason why all my object characters can consume mercury is that they are products of an alchemical accident. Ichor, the black "slime" that makes a living object's limbs and facial features, is a reference to both the Greek myth of a god's divine blood (Ichor, GreekMythology) and the Nigredo stage (Nigredo, Wikipedia), alchemy's goal of creating the philosopher's stone. Kernals, the hard ichoridic rock that living objects drop when they die, is a reference to the philosopher's stone.

If you want to learn more about my worldbuilding project, see worldofrelics.carrd.co! To keep up with updates, work-in-progress, and art: follow me on any of my socials here: penwrythe.carrd.co! Thank you for reading Altostratus! Please leave a comment or a critique!

Thank you,

-Penwrythe

*Citations

*I know I need better sources than Wikipedia, but it's a good start for inspiration!

"Mammatus Clouds." Met Office, www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/clouds/other-clouds/mammatus, accessed Aug 10 2023

"Fire Lance" Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance, accessed Aug 10 2023
"Rebis" Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebis, accessed Aug 10 2023

Blaszczak-Boxe, Agata "Facts About Mercury" Live Science, https://www.livescience.com/39232-facts-about-mercury.html, accessed Aug 10 2023

"Ichor" GreekMythology.com, https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Elements/Ichor/ichor.html, accessed Aug 10 2023

All art (cover art, concept art, and sketches) were created by me (Penwrythe)