Animal Star Backstory (Patreon)

Animal Star is a world of beasts and magic, cruel nobles clashing with rebels and pirates, and automatons toiling by candlelight, looking up at the night sky and wondering if there's room in it for them, too.

The main story explores all these things while following a small cast of main characters, but my intention for the project is for it to be an anthology series, with short fiction filling in the world's timeline and offering glances at new perspectives. If you want to know more about what Animal Star will be and look like, check out this post if you haven't already!

Today I thought I'd share some of this universe that's lived inside my head for a few years now... let me know if you'd like to see more writing and posts like this one! This information is the background backstory canvas of what you'll read in the work itself, revealed slowly through immersion. It's not essential knowledge to have in your pocket going forward, just a peek at some of what's in the well I'm drawing from!

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BACKSTORY - THE DEATH OF ORIGIN & THE BIRTH OF THE LAST STAR

In Animal Star's setting, space isn't a cold void, but a warm, breathable, ever-extending sea of starlight. The stars suffuse it with this life; they are life, bound to it inextricably. When a new life is born, so too is a new star. When a life ends, its star fades and dies as well.

At the story's start, no new stars have lit the sky in centuries.

In the time before the last star's birth, humanity lived upon the planet Origin. It orbited the God Father, an ageless star whose passive magic served as fuel for war and great machines of industry. It was, despite this, taken for granted as a reliable exception to the rule that all stars one day die... until it, too, began to fade.

In a panic, Origin's ruling rich commissioned their escape: a massive ship built by workers threatened, tamed, and tricked into submission. The planet was stripped for parts, then burned for fuel, its husk glowing in tow as the God Father died and humanity's survivors set off into the dark of space.

While countless slept frozen below the deck, still others lived awake within its halls under the rule of tyrant after tyrant, their many thrones and crowns changing hands with the ship's shifting fortune. Some lasted for months, others for minutes, each more cruel the closer their doom felt. With Origin's last embers fading, it seemed that life would meet its terrible end devouring its remnants in the dark...

until...

...a new star was born, the last star of humanity.

It was close, closer than any star had ever been, within reach of their vessel. So close that its power could be harnessed unfiltered, a magic in the hands of man, not systems and machines. It was a miracle.

A church was founded, with the child bound to this new star and born to noble parents worshipped as its faultless living deity. Power shifted and doctrine emerged:

Humanity's sin was its desire. In their great want, they had destroyed their home and then each other in its ashes. The new power, the light from the Son, Anima's Star, was a test. Used in excess, it turned mages into mindless beasts, a fitting punishment for those that carried forward the spirit of the men whose actions killed off all the animals on Origin. Those who committed lesser sins of want still bore a stain, beastial features that marked them for their folly. No new life and no new stars would be born until this test bore fruit—a pure, placid humanity.

Self-denial and restraint became the language of the law and the measure of man's virtue, all while the prosperity that magic brought led to a vivid age of excess.

The nobles that had survived the journey's many massacres became as lesser gods themselves, mastering starlight sorcery and using spells to extend their lives, seeking a legacy without heirs, fearing death, and coveting always Anima's effortless immortality. As new riches amassed, the ruling class staggered their workforce's awakening, keeping many asleep, trading their frozen forms for their precious potential; none could foresee, after all, when man would be allowed to add stars to the sky once more. In place of the living, dolls, automatons built upon the bones of the dead's sentience, became the labor that the idle wealthy needed to survive.

Mankind took root and flourished on new worlds built from Origin's ruins: Hollow, its desert husk, covered in sands of ash, made porous by the mining of its core; Churn, its rescued seas, ballast transformed into a thriving ocean paradise; Green Moon, its orphaned satellite, overgrown with alien flora; Ghast, its memory made real, a holy giant; and Centerpeace, a seat of power built from the ship's skeleton. All orbited the Son, bathed in its light.

Centuries passed, a tumultuous era of lifeless expansion...

...and our story begins! 

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That's all for now, I hope it's piqued your interest! I have some final art from the first part worth sharing already, so expect that next and soon. I'll likely be introducing the main cast to you in that same post, and then maybe after that I'll do another one like this explaining how magic works in Animal Star. I hope you'll be looking forward to it!

Until then, thank you all for your support for me and my upcoming work. I couldn't do this without you!