In the year that would later be reckoned 1 AB (Anno Bestias, Year of Beasts), astronomers observed a cluster of objects entering the Solar System. There were seventeen objects, and it was immediately clear that they were very similar in size to one another. They were about the size of small asteroids, too small to be self-spherical by gravity.
A little later, it became clear that the objects moved under power, as they slowly accelerated and decelerated relative to each other. The immediate general conclusion was that this was a fleet of immense spaceships, though scientists proposed various natural explanations (without much conviction).
Analysis of reflection spectra indicated the presence of silica and water, and, later, proteins.
Radio, infrared, and laser signals were beamed at the fleet, sending greetings in various languages, cosmograms, sequences of prime numbers, passages of music, all to no avail.
Soon, the fleet was close enough to be imaged by the high-resolution observatory on the far side of the Moon. The members of the fleet were closer in size than first thought, though not identical, round but not perfectly spherical, and shiny.
Soon, it became clear that the fleet members resembled particularly plump, nearly globular, snail shells, made of glass and the size of moons. They were, in fact, space-going organisms. Whether they were intelligent or carried intelligences was another matter. The unending stream of contact attempts produced nothing.
People began to call them Beasts with a capital B, though academics called them exatheria, so that they also became known as "exas" and "extras" and "theers," along with many other popular names. Some worried that they were coming here to feed on Earth's life, though the scientists assured the world that eating every scrap of life on Earth would not come near to repaying the energy needed to launch the Beast fleet from one star to another.
When the fleet was about fifty astronomical units away, the nations of the world launched their own fleet of high-speed probes. A few touched down on the Beasts. Nothing happened. The glassy shells were full of transparent goo, with vacuoles here and there, bubbles ranging up to the size of cities. The goo was water and protein, and warmer than ambient space, but, as time showed, warming up faster that could be explained by the approach to the Sun.
The Beasts were waking up.
Eventually, it became clear that the Beast fleet was breaking up, and a group of five was heading for Earth. This occasioned a stream of probes, drones, missiles, and ships, dedicated to pushing or luring the Beasts off course, or even destroying them with fusion bombs.
The Beasts were far too big to shove off course, and efforts at attack simply malfunctioned. Always.
The Beasts' method of accelerating was completely mysterious, but accelerate they did, and humanity watched helplessly as the Beasts took up their chosen positions. These were at the Lagrange points of the Earth-Moon, Earth-Sun, and Venus-Sun systems. There was one exatherium at each point, except for a pair at the Lagrange point on the far side of the Sun from Venus and another pair at the Lagrange Trojan point sixty degrees behind Earth on our orbit.
The Beasts at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points were clearly visible to naked eyes as bright stars. They were:
(All were named after giant island-sized fish in folklore.)
Once in position, the Beasts began to spin. Soon, all the Beasts had developed a maximum centrifugal gravity of about one third g, varying slightly in proportion to the size of the Beast.
Cautiously, the nations sent more probes to replace the ones flung off by the spinning. There was no reaction. At length and even more cautiously, crewed installations were set up. They were ignored too.
There was much to study. Inside the Beasts, in the watery goo that was their flesh, activity was increasing. Bizarre shapes of all sizes up to and beyond blue whales grew from microscopic specs and moved about. Were they organs or parasites or symbionts? Crew? Citizens? But they could only be observed through the glassy shells of the Beasts.
Until the opercula opened.
Like snails, the Beasts had openings in their shells, with doors. Unlike snails, they had more than one. There was the main operculum, where a snail would have its sole portal, but also many smaller ones, usually slits tucked up between two turns of the spiraling shell. First on Zaratan, the nearest Beast, and eventually on all of them, the opercula opened. Transparent protoplasm flowed out and organized itself into filamentary nets, loose ends tipped with giant leaf-like flaps.
The explorers on the shells prepared to enter and investigate the interiors of the Beasts. But they began to notice other changes at the same time, changes in themselves.
At first, it was very minor. People began to intuit where each other were, what they were about to say, when they were lying. Nothing ever seemed to get mislaid; people always knew where everything was. Eventually, people started running ESP tests. Finally, these tests were steadily, strongly positive.
People in the installations often did martial arts for exercise. They found they were getting better and better at these—soon amazingly better, uncannily better.
In short, it soon became clear that proximity to the Beasts stimulated the development of psychic powers and superpowers. It then became clear that powers were contagious. Simply being around people using powers could bring them out in those predisposed. The Magic Revolution was under way.
The first magic users were the psychics and the supers. There followed the mages and the deodands.
To open the fourth wall briefly, psychics have the same range of powers, the same rules of operation, and the same schools as in the Vaster setting, and as described by the FuRPiG skill set. I've had no occasion or motive to come up with new ones. The schools are:
Quartet - So-called because it divides psychic powers into four fields: telepathy, clairvoyance, levitation (& variants), probability (& variants). The first developed, now regarded as old-fashioned and creaky, but "old school" Quartet still gets respect in many quarters.
Contact - Exercise of powers generally requires present or past physical contact. Popular with militaries and supers.
Enhancement - Powers are psychic amplifications of mundane skills. Widespread, unsystematic, easy to do something in, hard to make into "general magery," readily combined with other psychic schools and other magics.
Visionary - A powerful and versatile school that lets you exercise all learned psychic powers together, but energetically costly and puts you into at least a light trance while working. It starts with clairvoyance. Widely thought to be a matter of "astral projection." Popular with those who use psychic powers as part of religious practice.
Auric - Gives the same range of powers as the Quartet school, by cultivating an "aura," usually visible, as an all-purpose tool. Less tiring than Quartet but subject to limitations of range and material obstacle.
The "superheroes" of the magic revolution are more uniform than the ones of the comics. They all have, varying degrees and proportions, superhuman strength, endurance, speed (but distinct from reaction time), and healing factor.
This unitary "superpower" is telekinesis applied at point-blank range to the user's body, and can be regarded as Enhancement applied to all athletics. However, add psychic powers to this and you get a great deal of the variety back.
The big distinction is between those supers who can fly and those who cannot. Climbing walls and ceilings, an intermediate point, is common.
Superpower is a multiplier, so successful supers are also trained athletes quite apart from their powers. A "speedster" super will look very different from a "tank," even though the speedster is also phenomenally strong (but not as strong as the tank) and the tank is phenomenally fast (but not as fast as the speedster).
Mages are always mages of something; they always have a theme. To briefly open the fourth wall again, they are the same as the thematic mages in the Sundered setting.
It is possible to get a superpowered mage; it just takes a lot of work and not a little intrinsic talent. The result is very like a comics superhero with a particular theme.
The great majority of mages have a single theme, or may broaden their theme over time. A few prodigies have multiple themes, but even then, the themes are usually related.
Mages have themes. The themes are things they are "enchanted with." If a mage is obsessed enough and powerful enough, and if they do not hold themselves back diligently, there comes a point where they really cease to be human. The mounting obsession usually culminates in a physical transformation and a shift into a life of all magic, all the time. These unhinged post-mages are called "deodands." They are not necessarily evil—they may have forgotten about good and evil—but they are dangerous.
Magic done directly by a human (or human-derived) mage cannot create or destroy matter, and must conserve chemical species.
It cannot resurrect the thoroughly dead.
It cannot make significant alterations to the geometry of spacetime. That doesn't mean that things like portals and warp drives can't exist in the setting, but they have to be done by machinery, not just be a mage or team of mages who aren't geared up for it.
The pre-Bestial nations naturally seized on psychic powers and superpowers for military applications. This simply proved too much to handle. Powered soldiers and agents proved too difficult to control if they chose to reject discipline, and the military simply provided one more vector for powers to be communicated into the general population.
The Hero Wars weren't a set of conflicts over specific issues, but rather the name for the way the old international order dissolved, more in a tidal wave of civil wars and insurrections than in conflicts between the old states.
When something like an international order re-emerged, it consisted of a few dozen rump nations, fragments of the old ones, in a sea of city-states. The United States, for instance, "survived" as the eastern seaboard megalopolis plus coastal California. But that was the official version. Outside observers would say the US had been reconstituted two, three, or four times, depending on how various crises were construed. And although the two territories had extradition and free trade, they had separate governments and slightly different constitutions. In between were city-states and pocket empires.
The commonest form of government, in city-states, pocket empires, or nation fragments, was magocracy. At the top of each pyramid was a small team of variegated mages who were also politically talented—not a common combination. Or, sometimes, the top of the heap was a mage dictator.
Under them, besides a more or less ordinary bureaucracy, there would be a cadre of supers and field mages, and under these an ordinary military and police force.
Degree of personal freedom, along with details of government, varied widely, but it helped that there were so many little states; dissatisfied people could shop around, vote with their feet, and give the rulers incentive to be attractive, not just forceful. This helped keep prison-states rare.
It also helped that states had no monopoly on magic. Just as the leakage of magic into the population had torn down the old power structures, it kept the new ones relatively weak. Yes, the rulers were mages with supers for henchmen, but freelance supers and mages were plentiful, and, after a few generations, almost everyone knew some magic.
It is the Age of Beasts not only because the Beasts, the giant space-snails, brought (or brought back) magic and changed the world, but because much of the technology involves magically enhanced animals.
This is most noticeable in transportation. Much routine transportation in and near cities and towns is as fast as by car, done by magic/super horses pulling a variety of carriages and coaches.
It is not a simple reversion. Besides the horses having magical levels of speed and endurance, the coaches and carriages are made of modern materials, have on-board electronics or the equivalent, and frequently run on variable friction runners and so looked more like sleighs.
Long-distance land travel is by trains, but trains that share the roads with private vehicles, and the mechanics are very different, depending on exotic materials produced by blended chemistry and magic, so "alchemy."
Air freight is by dirigible, with speeds and altitudes comparable to our commercial jet travel thanks to alchemy and other magic.
For still faster transport, beasts again become conspicuous because, basically, there are flying horses and Wild Hunts. But these do not move large numbers of people or large payloads, and like a Wild Hunt, are special occasions, commoner than spaceshots but much less common than private jets.
Faster yet, for orbital and cislunar flight to the stations, the Moon, and the Beasts, there are "volantines." These are creatures derived from "celeriads," creatures native to the interiors of the Beasts, then modified by magic for human use.
Gifted with enchantments and superpowers to amplify speed and endurance, horses have made a big comeback. They do not replace motor vehicles, but they mingle with them in large numbers.
Living tools, meebers are a very successful line of artificial life, developed from symbionts/organs/...things found in the Beasts. They are amoeboid, range in size from walnut to bear, and can be telepathically controlled by most people with moderate training. They are not, in fact, single cells, and must be individually cultured. They come in a variety of colors and textures.
The existence of celeriads, implies that interplanetary travel is a part of the Beast life cycle. Celeriads emerge from Beasts in varying numbers, fly away somewhere rocky, eat large quantities of rock, then return to their Beast.
A celeriad looks like a tadpole the size of a blue whale, clad in alligator hide. It has a (very large) parrot-like beak and two eyes, and the symmetry of the head suggests adaptation to activity in gravity. To fly, it extends flexible, branching, antler-like processes from folds in the body, then glows dim violet and flits off.
The celeriads of Beasts at Earth's Lagrange points typically go to the Moon for their rock. Those of other Beasts visit the Moon, Mars, or Mercury, whichever is closest. There are rumors and legends of celeriads in the asteroid belt, but these are dubious.
When it reaches its destination, it eats its rocks, returns, and dives back into the watery goo of its Beast. This is how the Beast acquires minerals for growth and reproduction. Some argue that celeriads should be regarded as organs, not symbionts, of the Beasts.
Efforts were made to use celeriads as mounts for cislunar travel, but they are too stupid and single-minded. So, after magical bio-tech had matured for a few generations, volantines were developed, combining features of celeriads with an assortment of Earthly creatures.
The net result is a five-ton feathered tyrannosaurid with a horse-like head, though the muzzle is tipped with an eagle-like beak. The wings are fingered and membranous like a bat's, but in space, the membranes retract, the fingers stretch and branch to an absurd degree, acquire dim violet haloes, and the beast flies by sheer magic.
Despite the designers' best efforts, volantines are restless and irascible. They frequently don't like their riders much, despite (because?) of the telepathic rapport a volantine rider ought to have with their mount. As a result, riding equipment includes not only harness, saddle, and space suit, but a gun wherewith to shoot your mount if its intentions turn homicidal. It's actually good if the telepathy shows the mount you are willing to use it.
After a flight, a volantine needs a large, high-calorie meal, such as ingots of butter and barrels of syrup. It also needs magical recharging. And, of course, these hungers don't improve its temper.
Plumage is basically white, but with accents around head, neck, and wingtips. Accents and eye color vary widely.
Males and females are about the same size. Males present females with gifts of meat to be accepted for mating. Females give live birth to highly precocious chicks.
There are small populations on Mars and the Moon. The people are adapted for low gravity and air pressure, and resistance to radiation. The Martians are adapted to cold. These adaptations were done by magic and can be undone, so people can emigrate to and from these planets and Earth by transformation, but it is not trivial.
Even with magical terraforming, Venus is hot and dry and has a day that is 58 times longer than Earth's. Like Martians and Selenites, Venusians are adapted to their planet. But, since there is no effective difference in gravity, people can move to or from Venus without transformation; it’s just not comfortable. There is currently a steady migration of Venusians to Earth, where they much prefer hot, dry climates and run communities with little regard for the day-night cycle.
All the cislunar Beasts have clusters of city-states around them, in the form of space stations. The pillars of the economies are trade (between Earth and the Moon, mainly, and the Moon's economy is based on mining) and pilgrimage.
The pilgrims are people who wish to visit the "shrines" on and even within the Beasts, to stimulate their magical power and talents, as the first psychics and supers did. The process is now much more deliberate and efficient.
It can also be dangerously addictive, especially for mages who are not strongly wedded to a theme. Some never leave the "beast-bergs," the "theriurbs," the nearby stations. They settle in one and make frequent, regular trips to the Beast. Or they settle in a shrine and never leave. Such permanent residents are called pulexes, "fleas."
Some take to making long sojourns in the watery goo of the Beast. They are called verrucs, "warts," and may end by letting themselves be absorbed.
And finally, some successfully come away markedly supercharged. If they have solid and obvious enhancements to their magic, they are called nikeras, "victors." Even nikeras don't come away unscathed. They often suffer from psychic ailments of involuntary magic such as Poltergeist, Doppleganger, Thematic Leakage, and Excess Vitality.
Beasts sighted entering Solar System.
Beasts take up position at Earth-Moon, Earth-Sun, and Venus-Sun Lagrange points.
People start to explore Beasts and discover they stimulate magical powers.
Psychics, supers, and mages develop.
Otherworld comes back.
Beast-tech develops.
The Hero Wars: old international order dissolves.
Settlement of Moon and Mars.
Terraforming of Venus.
The Mage Wars.
Terraforming of Venus halted; reversion starts; Venusian exodus starts.
Present Day.
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Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2025