Menhir - The Pillar World

Menhir is a massive pillar of rock, floating in the aether. Gravity always points down below the base of the pillar, regardless of the true center of the world. This world features magic with an emphasis on the many unique magical creatures that have evolved to live on the cliff faces of the pillar world.

Menhir can be split up into different layers from top to bottom, which all have very different biomes and ecosystems. Starting from the bottom, we have The Abyss, Plinth, The Basin Canopy, Glaciers Bite, The Fungal Tropics, The Crystal Wastes, Giants Ring, Paradise, The Precipice, The Summit. Piercing through the middle of all layers, is the indestructible, impossibly-black core that the rest of the world latches onto for support. Through unknown technology, the core regulates the whole pillar, keeping temperatures, weather, ecosystems, and populations in check through the use of temporary branch-like extrusions of the black stone. Due to the extreme nature of the world, there is only one kingdom, situated at the bottom layer of Menhir in Plinth as it is the most habitable layer. The Kingdom of Coda is where all mortal kind live, in one massive mega-city. Completely unknown to all that inhabit the pillar world, the core is secretly a mechanical core, with inner workings that no one has ever seen, this world is not natural, it was built. you can find the entrance into the core at the very top of the world.

Due to all humanoid beings living in the same city, at a certain point the many races become so mixed that they now refer to themselves in a collective known as mortalkind. A mortalkin's physical appearance varies massively, from smooth brown skin to shiny red scales, deep blue fur, or vibrant multicolor feathers. Amidst this cacophony of traits, is the one thing that connects Mortal kind. Sentience. Mortals speak, learn, build, and craft. While the core replants trees and keeps animal populations steady, people still have to traverse the cliff faces of Menhir in order to hunt and gather, making resources stable, but slow to collect. This effects the culture of mortalkin who heavily focus on surviving rather than thriving.

In the city of Coda, the higher up you go, the more wealthy and powerful mortalkin live. The top region of coda also controls the water streams that come from the above layers of Menhir. Coda's adventurers are known as Cragsmen, and it's their duty to climb Menhir and report what they find in the upper layers. For the longest time, the cragsmen have never gotten past Glaciers Bite. Suddenly, the council of coda has forbidden all exploring past the Plinth layer and has completely disbanded the cragsmen guild. There are rumors spreading that just before the council shut down the guild, one of the best cragsmen got past Glaciers bite, but before they could report on their findings, they were forced to take the dive into the abyss, which is a traditional execution method for criminals.

The land and animals contain multitudes of magic. Mortal kin have some control over basic magic, however most of their advancements come from harnessing the magical materials of the pillar world. Due to the world reliance on the core to keep each layer's unique ecosystem stable, many mortalkin worship the core in a religion known as Centralism. Centralists revere the core as the caretaker of the world.

The only other plane that exists is that of souls and spirits, that exists parallel to the material world. This plane is all but unknown to the entirety of Menhir, but effects things subtly. In areas death, you might find inanimate objects that have suddenly become sentient due to a lost soul getting stuck.

The mortalkind only know of their current age, however there was one lost age before this, where mortalkind lived further up Menhir in the crystal wastes. The Ruined city of Dal Segno still remains, however all history and knowledge of it's existence have been long forgotten. Any Cragsman skilled enough to climb up that high would see clearly that this lost civilization was trying to harness the massive elemental crystals in their layer of Menhir.

Trade and Economy are very stagnated due to there being only one city. there are a few smaller settlements in the Basin Canopy above the city but trade with them is minimal. They rely heavily on the forrest platform below the city for hunting and gathering, and water streams trickling from above thanks to the threshold between The Basin Canopy and Glaciers Bite creating a permanent ice melt. Coda itself is broken up by 4 Megalithic plates of stone known as the disks. The largest Disk has been converted into farmland which is the primary stable supply of both grain and livestock. Coda also blankets their roofs with nets that occasionally catch things falling from the layers above and even save a few lives.

Coda is broken up into 4 districts, each one sitting on a massive stone plate jutting out of the cliff side. From top to bottom we have The Principle District where all government and influential mortalkin live, The Field District where farms and livestock are maintained, The Middle District where the average mortalkin lives and works, and The Bottom District that acts as the slums, completely blanketed in the shadows of the upper districts. The Council is the government that decide the rules of the city, The Ministry makes up the many offices and legislative buildings found on the Principle District. The sigils are the enforcers of the rules, unlike the council or the ministry, the sigils have a strong presence in the lower districts. The Centralist faith have their hand throughout all districts and factions. There are also a few working class guilds such as the merchants guild, the union, and the hunters guild. In the Bottom District is another guild called Cellar, which have been bought out by the sigils, allowing them free reign over the slums of the bottom district as long as they keep the peace. The Cragsman Guild used to be present too, for all adventurers, but it was recently shut down and outlawed by the council.

Every single layer of Menhir is teeming with a large amount of unique creatures and terrain. The further up you travel, the more dangerous the creatures become, which is why Coda is built in the bottom layer known as Plinth.