Overview

Aether is a highly volatile element, lacking a default state and seen more as a fundamental force akin to gravity and light, rather than a substance. While it has no “will” of its own, Aether will try to preserve itself and avoid entropy, this being one of the reasons for its inherent instability — or versatility. Aether fulfills various functions in the natural world–being found in minerals, water, the atmosphere, and all organisms in Koegama–and can be further altered and modified to expand its capabilities. With technological advances, Aether can now also be found in various processes, from machines to ink morphs and even infused on the currency (gama) itself.

In living beings, Aether will compose their DNA and in turn shape various bodily functions and abilities, and in turn Aether shapes how they grow, adapt and evolve. Aether will compensate for missing adaptations and influence quick shifts in the structure of an organism, leading to rapid natural selection and evolution, which in turn results in species having far greater diversity and divergences among themselves.

Aether tampering

Aether tampering is the process in which Aether modifies the DNA of an organism, causing different traits and mutations to develop in a species. While most organisms experience Aether tampering, their DNA also contains encoded “fail-safes” to protect areas deemed important to overall functioning. This doesn't completely stop the process, but narrows down the range of possible changes and protects the organism from unnecessary and harmful mutations.

Sapient species, however, are more susceptible to broader Aether tampering. As they lose the need for certain functions or can afford less "fitted" characteristics, the body parts responsible will lose their Aether tampering protections and become much more diverse and varied.  As the more resource-heavy protections have been observed to be discarded the quickest, the most common universal change experienced as a result of Aether tampering is a loss of consistent pattern and coloration within a species. Other examples include Hanasei horns and Luminae ears becoming much more visually varied beyond their original, purely functional adaptations.

Aether Skills

Aether manipulation isn't solely restricted to regulating bodily functions and machines; most organisms can also manipulate Aether directly. These are called Aether skills, an array of abilities that any living being can develop. Most creatures only have one to two skills which help them in their specific niches, but the sapient species are able to hone and learn new abilities outside their species natural range.

Most characters will start with one novice Aether skill, determined by their species. To improve and learn new skills, one can head to the Aether Prompts or buy Aether Vials.

Elemental tree

Air

Gako

• Novice: Users at this level have the ability to manipulate the surrounding breeze in a small way, creating weak gusts of wind that they can use to accelerate their running speed. They can also sense air currents and scents better than those without this skill.
  
• • Uses: Commonly used by navigators to steer their ships, spelunkers to find hidden exits and hunters or couriers who need speed.
    
    
• Advanced: Users have an increased control of the surrounding wind; they can use the wind to boost their jumps (allowing for greater distances laterally and vertically, as well as “double jumps”). They can also slow their falls and hover slightly above the ground for a few minutes. Advanced users can create small windstorms that may do minor to moderate damage.
  
• • Uses: This skill is especially useful for anyone that spends time in trees and tall buildings or near cliffs. It is also used to manually power sailing ships and navigate steep terrain.
    
    
• Master: In addition to manipulation of wind currents, users can now create their own. They can use these currents to float slightly above the ground and hover at speeds of 40 km/h. As masters of their abilities, they can also create updrafts to maneuver in the air for up to half an hour at a time. They can also summon and pilot cyclones for as long as they have the energy to; the larger a cyclone, the less time they’ll be able to maintain it.
  
• • Uses: Primarily used to travel quickly across choppy terrain or when aquatic travel is not available. It is also used offensively, both to deflect ranged attacks and buffet opponents.

Tumuna

• Novice: Users of this level have enhanced senses of hearing. They are able to manipulate the volume of sounds they make (like footsteps or grunts), either muffling or enhancing them.
  
  • Uses: This skill is useful for public speakers and those that might need stealth, such as hunters, spies, or rogues.
    
• Advanced: Users at this level can hear infrasound clearly. They are able to access specific sound frequencies, tuning in and out of them at will. They can also control their own sounds in volume, pitch, and frequency. In addition to their own sounds, they gain the ability to manipulate quiet noises they did not produce this way as well. They’re able to project soundwaves (making noise appear to come from elsewhere) and are capable of perfectly mimicking a variety of sounds.
  • Uses: Commonly pursued by stage performers, like actors or singers.
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• Master: Users can hear all sound frequencies. They have a better understanding of and control over sound waves, allowing them to manipulate others’ perceptions of those sounds; this includes their origins, properties, and volumes. The sounds they manipulate can be produced by anyone or anything. They are also able to create soundwaves that act similarly to shockwaves, causing physical damage based on intensity. Smaller waves may cause ear ringing or minor headaches, while larger soundwaves may break the sound barrier. These larger waves cause a sonic boom in the immediate area, damaging people and objects nearby.
  
• • Uses: In addition to the uses of lower tiers, this skill provides a way to disorient and seriously harm opponents. It is also sometimes used in excavation efforts as a way to clear rock and debris.

Heat

Ignis

• Novice: Users at this level have a higher tolerance for heat than those without it, being able to withstand naturally high temperatures and arid climates, such as those found in deserts. They also have the ability to sense heat, manipulate existing flames, and create small sparks.
  
• • Uses: This skill is especially useful for survivalists. Desert dwellers are particularly fond of it, having realized its utility in day-to-day life. It is also commonly used to start campfires and hunt in cooler climates.
    
    
• Advanced: Users can now summon mid-sized flames (roughly the size of their own head) and can extend the range and duration of existing flames, along with a better degree of manipulation. They can sustain higher temperatures of 70° indefinitely (and 100 °C for a shorter while) and can resist serious burns, along with having full heat vision. They can heat the immediate area around them, up to a +5° C increase.
  
• • Uses: Generally used offensively, but it also sees use by craftsmen, such as glassblowers and metalworkers.
    
    
• Master: Users are now immune to burns and heat exhaustion. They can stay inside flames for as long as they wish, as well as inhale and exhale smoke with no internal damage. They can create large flame walls and fully manipulate flames into any shape or size—including projectiles and flamethrowers. Not only that, but they can combust materials with fire resistance and can heat a large area surrounding them for a max of +10° C.
  
• • Uses: This skill is almost entirely offensive, but it is sometimes used by smiths and chemists to superheat materials. It is also occasionally used to purify and sanitize medical tools.

Hibus

• Novice: Users can sense and draw out a small amount of static electricity from the air. They’re immune to small-to-moderate shocks and can shock someone with a low voltage (of about 20 V) by touch.
  
• • Uses: Primarily used to stun prey during hunting, sometimes also used by pranksters.
    
    
• Advanced: Users can send currents far into the air, and even farther in good electrical conductors (such as water). The power of the current dissipates the longer it travels. They can manipulate static at values of 100 V and are resistant to their own shocks.
  
• • Uses: A skill often seen in use by oceanic predators. It’s also useful for electrical work.
    
    
• Master: Users can now create their own lighting strikes with their static manipulation, at a strength of 2,000 V. They can create their own currents and send them along their bodies, similarly to an electric eel. They are completely insulated from electricity and can absorb lightning strikes to enhance their physical abilities. However, too much usage may exhaust the user and weaken their defenses, allowing them to be harmed by electricity again.
  
• • Uses: Used in shows of strength (generally as an intimidation tactic) and to stun or potentially kill opponents. It is also sometimes used to power machinery in a pinch.

Earth

Tocha

• Novice: Users can sense the earth beneath them, locating objects buried near the surface. They can manipulate small pockets of earth and have an easier time digging burrows.
  
• • Uses: Commonly used to tunnel beneath the earth, find hidden treasures (such as gems or precious metals), and forage for food (like roots or insects).

• Advanced: Users can now better orient themselves underground and can sense materials deeper underground, at a max of 150 meters. They can manipulate their weight while submerged in sediment and change the sediment’s properties, softening or hardening it. They can also create light tremors, for a range of 10-meter around them.
  
• • Uses: Often utilized by miners and tunneling creatures to better maneuver underground. This skill is also useful for the building of dens and shelters.

• Master: Users can control large pieces of the earth. This includes creating walls and other large constructs, summoning stalactites, and creating earthquakes of a 7.5 scale in a 50-meter range. They can now create and manipulate different types of sediment and its properties more effectively, creating sand, clay, etc. They can create mental maps of burrows and tunnels and can pinpoint the shape, size, and placement of things buried at a max of 300 meters underground.
  
• • Uses: This skill is very useful offensively and defensively; it is often used to block blows and projectiles and to attack foes. It is also useful for the navigation of mines.

Aes

• Novice: The user can manipulate small rocks (allowing them to move them without touching them) and has a better sense of the composition of rocks and metals at a glance. They can bend metals more easily without the use of brute force.
  
• • Uses: Most commonly used to appraise precious metals, it is also used by jewelers and metalworkers to refine their pieces.
    
    
• Advanced: Users can now change the composition of rocks and metal and turn them into different, but similar, materials and gems. They can manipulate larger minerals with more precision. They can change metals’ states of matter (from solid to liquid and back) and move them a greater distance without touch.
  
• • Uses: This skill is useful in metalworking and jewelry design, but it is also used to forge currency.
    
    
• Master: Users can now heavily alter the composition of any rock or gem to turn it into another material. They have full control of metals and minerals and can turn them into liquids or solids freely. They can create different materials from ores and boulders or from scratch (with aether) and can sculpt them into varying shapes and sizes.
  
• • Uses: While this skill is not useful offensively, it is very versatile. Some seek its users for their abilities to create new currency and valuables from thin air. They are typically well-known sculptors or smiths.

Water

Nam

• Novice: Users can change the flow of a body of water’s current to boost their swimming speed; they can create small currents and control small amounts of water (up to a maximum of 10 L). They can also breathe underwater without the use of gills for several minutes.
  
• • Uses: Often used aquatically, this skill makes traveling in the water much easier. It is popular with divers.

• Advanced: Users can now swim faster and control water better to aid in feats of acrobatics and diving, and can stay underwater for up to 20 minutes. They can run on the surface of the water for small bursts. They can also control and move medium amounts of water at a max of 100 L, and they can create small waves. Furthermore, they can now steal water from the air, rather than needing a body of water to use their abilities.
  
• • Uses: This skill is very useful in arid climates, where bodies of water may be hard to find, and is often used to stay hydrated in these areas. It is also useful for exploration and travel.

• Master: Users are now able to stay underwater indefinitely, and they can redirect entire currents to move around faster. They can stand steadily on the surface of the water. They can steal water from living creatures, the ground, or create it from scratch, controlling a maximum of 1000 liters. Likewise, they can create large waves at a peak of 10 meters and summon whirlpools.
  
• • Uses: A strong offensive skill, it is also used in naval travel and by survivalists.

Gero

• Novice: Users are more resistant to cold and can withstand naturally freezing temperatures, such as those of tundras. They can manipulate small chunks of snow.
  
• • Uses: This skill is integral to arctic survival. Seen often in the tundra, it is also useful in deep-sea travel and exploration.
    
    
• Advanced: Users can now resist colder temperatures of -30 °C naturally and -50 °C for a short while; they are resistant to frostbite. They can control larger chunks of snow and can freeze small sections of water, along with manipulating already existing ice. They can cool the surrounding area up to a maximum of -5° C.
  
• • Uses: This skill can be used offensively (in the summoning and throwing of icicles) but is more commonly used by arctic creatures to safely traverse their frozen homes. 
    
    
• Master: Users are now immune to frostbite and hypothermia. They can freeze water straight from the air and create snow and ice from it, along with being able to create it from scratch. They can fully control snow and ice and freeze large bodies of water, along with being able to walk on it without breaking the ice, no matter the weight.
  
• • Uses: Sometimes used to fight (and is strong defensively, by summoning an ice shield). It is also useful for arctic hunting and fishing.

Matter Tree

Flora

Kusho

• Novice: Users can encourage plants to grow on a small scale. They can attune to plants more easily, gain knowledge of a plant’s needs, and can grow crops easier.
  
  • Uses: This skill sees most of its use with gardeners and farmers.
    
    
• Advanced: Users can now grow plants from seeds and plant remains, and they can speed up their growth at an accelerated rate. They can also make flowers, seeds, and fruits sprout more quickly. They can manipulate a growing plant’s shape and size slightly.
  
• • Uses: Often used by farmers to raise the yield of their crops. It is also commonly used to increase the amount of food a herbivore has available to them.

• Master: Users can grow plants to their mature form in a matter of minutes, (for larger plants such as trees) or even instantly (for smaller plants such as grass). They can create plants from scratch or organic matter and can give them any shape or size. Plants that are not natural die roughly two minutes after their summoner stops supplying them with Aether.
  
• • Uses: This skill is popular with conservationists, as it can be used to support reforestation efforts.

Donuma

• Novice: Users have a small resistance to toxic substances. They can turn small amounts of aether into venom, which can cause mild numbness, drowsiness, or itchiness. The effects pass in a couple of minutes.
  
• • Uses: Used to weaken prey and sometimes to defend against attacks.

• Advanced: A user’s resistance to toxic substances is much higher. The effects from their venom can be amplified, causing mild paralysis, fainting, muscle pain, or light bleeding. They’re able to make parts of their skin poisonous for a short time.
  
• • Uses: A highly defensive skill, it is primarily used by prey to escape predation. It is also commonly used to incapacitate prey without this resistance.

• Master: Users are immune to toxic substances, and they can extract poison from flora to use themselves. Their venom can be deadly, with long-term paralysis, heavy internal bleeding, organ failure, and necrosis as some symptoms. They can produce their own antivenom. They’re able to make larger parts of their bodies poisonous for a long time, or their entire body in short bursts.
  
• • Uses: Commonly used to debilitate foes and catch prey. It is also commonly used by foragers, cooks, and vegetarians, who can make toxic plants safe for consumption by extracting their poisons. 

Death

Kinru

• Novice: Users can create a handful of spores that grow into mushrooms. They can attune to natural mushrooms and incentivize their growth on a small scale.
  
• • Uses: Often used in farming and by scavengers to help decompose waste and produce more edible food.

• Advanced: Users can now create more spores that grow at an accelerated rate, and they will now send part of the energy they absorb to the user. Corpses hosting these mushrooms can now be reanimated for a short period. Users can also connect to natural mushrooms for the same effects, though only for a couple of minutes.
  
• • Uses: Commonly used to absorb energy without having to hunt or forage (usually by very sedentary creatures), this skill is also sometimes seen as a way to multitask or feign having a pack or herd to deter predators.

• Masters: Users can now grow their spores instantly and use existing spores, established mushrooms, or their growths for the same behavior. Mushrooms can now give anywhere between half and all the energy absorbed to the user, though the mushrooms will die quickly if they don’t retain about one-third of the energy they absorb. In addition to this, corpses hosting the mushrooms can be reanimated indefinitely; living beings can be zombified if infected, and a higher concentration of spores leads to more control of them for a longer time.
  
• • Uses: While not very useful in direct combat, this skill can be devastating to opponents if they become infected. It also lends well to overwhelming foes with sheer numbers. Outside of combat, this skill is also used to parasitically leech energy from unsuspecting victims.

Saisei

• Novice: Users are more resistant to illness and bruising. They can encourage the healing of small cuts and injuries and can create small body parts for a short time, such as spikes and bumps.
  
• • Uses: A fairly defensive skill, it is often used to become hardier and survive more easily in dangerous environments. It is also used to deter predators by making the user more difficult to eat.

• Advanced: Users can now sustain heavier blows, and they can shift or disperse injuries to mitigate some damage. They can heal non-fatal injuries faster.
  They can regenerate lost parts of smaller size, such as fingers, pieces of limbs, or scars; they can create one larger body part, such as a new limb, horn, tail, etc. Not only that, but they are only able to use these new limbs for a few minutes before they are reabsorbed, however.
  
• • Uses: This skill makes its user much hardier, allowing them to survive for longer and to defend themselves in combat or from predators.

• Master: Users have exceptional defenses and can heal non-lethal damage on themselves and others in a short time. They can survive fatal injuries for several minutes longer than those without this skill. Users also gain the ability to regenerate large parts of their body (such as limbs); the loss must be recent and lack scar tissue, however. They are now able to create multiple large body parts and can hold them for longer. The more limbs, the more energy required to summon and sustain them.
  
• • Uses: A largely defensive skill, it is often seen in use by long-lived beasts, survivalists, and daredevils. It can also sometimes be used to create temporary, usable wings.

Light

Igazo

• Novice: Users gain low light vision and have an expanded visible color spectrum, being able to see infrared and ultraviolet. They can manipulate light and shadows in small ways, twisting them slightly.
  
• • Uses: This skill is generally used by predators with a need for greater vision, such as those that hunt from the air, in dense forests, or the deep sea. It can also be used to camouflage the user in shadow or distract attackers.

• Advanced: Users can absorb part of the lights and shadows in a one-meter area around them. They can use absorbed light to restore energy or to glow, while absorbed shadows will cloak them temporarily. They have an easier time manipulating light and shadows and can make them tangible for a couple of minutes.
  

• • Uses: This skill lends itself well to stealth, and as such is usually used by creatures that need to hide. It is also useful for very sedentary creatures, such as ambush hunters, for its ability to restore their energy without movement.

• Master: Users can now fully absorb lights and shadows in a 10-meter area around them, turning the area either pitch-black or completely unshaded. They’re able to turn both shadow and light tangible and can manipulate their shape, size, and state. They can create shadow and light from aether. In addition, they can use shadows to turn incorporeal and become a shadow themselves. Incorporeality drains more energy from the user the longer they spend in that state, and when exhausted they’ll be ejected from the surface they are hiding in, becoming corporeal once more.
  

• • Uses: This skill is useful combative as a way to evade or block damage, but it is also used to navigate impossible terrain, either by creating platforms of light or hiding in shadow to cross gaps.

Sadem

• Novice: Users can create small illusions with the surrounding light. The illusions are intangible and fade away if touched. They can dazzle foes by creating small light orbs and disorient the foe with them if the orbs touch them. The confusion lasts a few seconds.
  

• • Uses: This skill is commonly used to escape or evade predators. It is also commonly used by performers to enhance their performances.

• Advanced: The illusion users create can be more complex, imitating real-life objects and creatures. The more complex the illusion, the more energy it takes to maintain. Users’ light orb projectiles can have varying shapes, and they can now cause mild hallucinations along with confusion, which can now last up to several minutes.
  

• • Uses: This skill is often used by prey creatures to intimidate and scare off predators. It is also used to disorient foes.

• Master: Users’ illusions can now be tangible and act independently, following basic instructions; they can have multiple illusions active at the same time. They can apply illusions to themselves; being able to turn invisible, change their appearance, etc. The hallucination effects users can impose on foes expand to nullifying Aether abilities, perceiving bleeding and other types of damage, feeling stronger or weaker than normal, etc. Hallucinations now last up to an hour.
  

• • Uses: While this skill can be used offensively, it is also used to buff allies’ abilities and to confuse and trick opponents. It is also useful in situations that require stealth or distraction.

Mechanics

Biira

• Novice: Users have a higher tolerance to changes in pressure and elevation, and they’re able to make small objects levitate.
  

• • Uses: Commonly used by deep-sea divers and mountain climbers to mitigate issues with travel, it is also sometimes used by scavengers and performers to “hold” things without touching them.

• Advanced: Users can shift their density slightly, making themselves lighter or heavier than usual, and they can resist extreme and quick pressure changes. They’re able to make larger objects levitate and alter gravity to make other things orbit or be repelled by them. They can also inflict pressure on small objects to crush them.
  

• • Uses: This skill is often used by aquatic and flying creatures to make swimming and flying easier, though it is also seen in use by acrobatic creatures to jump higher or further. It is also useful to foragers who may need to open tough shells.

• Master: Users can shift their density and gravitational pull at greater ranges and are immune to pressure changes. They have higher control over objects’ gravity and can alter their density and gravitational pull freely as well. They can create fields of a 10-meter radius where they’re able to change the gravity independent of the outside area. Moreover, they’re able to compress objects into black hole-like projectiles which absorb anything that comes into contact with them. These projectiles fade away in half a minute and cannot destroy anything more than twice their mass; the larger the original object, the more energy needed to turn them into projectiles. The black holes are two times smaller than the original object used to create them.
  

• • Uses: Used primarily by oceanic creatures, this skill is also useful in combat. A versatile shield, it is often used to absorb blows and, more grimly, to destroy opponents that touch their black holes. It is also used to create traps.

Jitium

• Novice: Users can slow or accelerate the effects of time on non-living objects on a small scale. They’re able to warp space to shorten the distance in gaps of up to one meter. The effect is only visible to them, as others will see it as teleporting from one place to another. They cannot do this repeatedly without quickly tiring themselves.
  
  • Uses: This skill is regularly used to cross large distances in shorter amounts of time, but it is also sometimes used to ripen fruits or shorten cooking time on a small scale.
    
    
• Advanced: Users can advance the effects of time on objects for longer, and can do the same to small living beings on a shorter scale. They can heal small wounds by regressing the tissue back in time. They’re able to warp larger parts of space to teleport themselves at distances of up to 1 km away from their original position and can bring another object with them; alternatively, they can warp the object by itself for a shorter distance.
  
  •  Uses: This skill is commonly used to heal minor scrapes and cuts, as well as to cross normally non-traversable gaps. It is also used to transport heavy objects with less effort than manually doing so would be.
    

• Master: Users can now advance an object to a period before it was destroyed or right after it was created, and they can affect small living beings further. They are also able to control time temporarily on larger living beings, advancing or regressing some body parts or the foe entirely; this can range between minutes and weeks, depending on the time elapsed. They’re able to restore limbs and large wounds by regressing time, but if the old part is too different from the current body, the tissue will die, making it a risky endeavor. Likewise, they have a better grasp on controlling space, being able to teleport multiple objects back to back while keeping their current velocity. They can teleport themselves, another person, or a single object at distances of 20 km away from their original position, but the farther teleported and the larger the object, the more energy consumed by the user.
  

• • Uses: Though this skill can be used offensively, (to rapidly age tissue or weaken opponents) it is more often used in support (to heal or transport others). It is a favorite of restorationists and antique collectors for its ability to fix aged and damaged items.