Asch

A bizarre fusion of Tales of games (especially Symphonia) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (think Symphonia's countries but with Xenoblade lore). Had the Abyss countries instead prior to a war a little under a thousand years ago, which is LITERALLY only relevant for Asch out of all of the characters in the AU. It was originally a Tales of Symphonia fanfic AU by AO3 user rarmaster under the title "You Will Know Our Names" (hence YWKON). They gave me permission to write in the verse and I immediately turned into the Lore Guy, sorry rar.

-> WORLD INFO

There's two major races in this world: humans (bog-standard), and blades. Blades are technically some weird combination of "organic computer"and "energy crystal" that take the form of people, and are able to manipulate the setting's magical energy, called ether. Ether comes in eight elements and naturally occuring blades can only manipulate one of those elements; humans can't manipulate ether at all unless they're in a magical energy link with a blade called "resonance," at which point they can manipulate the ether through their link with their blade.

That's not all there is to resonance - it's also an emotional link between the blade and the human (who is called a driver). Until extremely recently, blades couldn't live without drivers - without a resonance, they would simply be inert crystals, objects not experiencing anything that could be passed around. A blade died when their driver did, and would only be born again when a new driver resonated with them, unless they were killed in another way (usually severe injury to their living body). Although this wasn't permanent death, it was treated as definitely a death, because returning to their core crystal wipes a blade's memories; although their looks and personality would be mostly the same, and they would retain learned skills, they wouldn't have any memory of their lifetimes lived before.

(There's exceptions to this, and I'll get to them, I promise.)

As a result, blades were second-class citizens at best, and often actively treated as objects and abused. It doesn't help that part of a blade's nature is to love their driver - after all, they rely on that person for life itself. But not all drivers are good people - many of them aren't - and numerous blades were abused, to the point that there have been multiple attempts at blade uprisings throughout history. The attempts never amounted to much, though, because of the blade reliance on drivers and how they lose their memories when they die.

All of this was true for millennia, up until three years ago, when a boy named Lloyd Irving, his father Kratos Aurion, and a bunch of their friends changed the system behind blades on its deepest levels. What started as a quest to keep the artificial Aegis Colette from being used as a weapon of war expanded into rescuing the other artificial Aegis, Zelos, and dealing with the survivin original Aegis, Mithos, to put a stop to his plan to kill all humanity so that blades could live free of the abuse they were suffering. Mithos and his sister, Martel, were both broken beyond repair by Various Events, and merged their core crystals with the network that supports blade function, becoming its administrators, while Lloyd and company went home to live (relatively) mundane lives in a world that's at the very least a little less shitty than it was before.

Now, blades don't need to be in resonance with humans to walk around in physical form; they can choose their drivers, and choose to end their resonances; and they will keep their memories after they die. However, the political and social ramifications of this change are still rippling through society; blades still don't have access to many of the same rights as humans and many blades are recovering from their experiences with awful drivers. Additionally, because they no longer need drivers, many blades who had been dormant and out of human hands for an incredibly long period of time are waking up to their new freedoms and having to adjust.

-> MORE ABOUT BLADES

Blades are, in technicality, questionably-biological supercomputers, contained in a crystal matrix (called a "core crystal") that contains their personality, memories, abilities, and everything else. Functionally, blades are beings whose fundamental existence is a core crystal surrounded by a magically generated body; many blades aren't even aware of their semi-digital nature and it doesn't play a large part in their lives. Outside of specialized research facilities, there's no such thing as a blade terminal, and the "network" they have isn't something normal blades can consciously access. (They do not have wifi.)

Until the system reset, blades couldn't manifest bodies without being in 'resonance' with a driver. Outside of resonance, they were nothing more than inert crystals, waiting to be activated. Although they can now manifest largely at will, if a blade is 'killed' - their body destroyed by injury - they'll return to their core crystal for a period of three days or so to regenerate. (Basically this is the same thing as gems in Steven Universe except they used to have a bond requirement.) Prior to the system reset event, killing a driver would also kill their blade - sometimes not immediately, but within a few minutes the blade wouldn't be able to hold their physical form together and revert to a core crystal. Destruction of the core crystal is permadeath. Depending on the damage, even damaging it can be permadeath, or it can cause the blade to glitch in fairly horrifying ways.

There's two aspects to resonance other than the life bond. The first is what's known as the "emotional bleed," which is an empathy-level psychic connection between blade and driver. It's obligatory - although it's possible to partially 'muffle' the emotional bleed and be less affected by the other end, trying to control what you give off requires strict control of your own emotions. The mindset of the driver also influences the personality of the blade to a certain extent - a callous driver will influence their blade towards callousness even if that's not an especially strong part of their personality in other lifetimes, for example.

The other is the exchange of ether. Blades do not generate ether (= magical energy) outside of resonance; humans do not generate it at all, and can't manipulate it without a blade to assist. Ether is a requirement for blades - liquid ether is what they have instead of blood (they do bleed, glowing fluid in the color of their core crystal that dissipates into the air), and in environments completely bereft of it they react as though slowly suffocating. (Generally, these environments have to be artificially created in the first place). As part of the resonance, blades naturally send ether to their drivers to manipulate; they can control the amount of flow, usually to turn it up a Lot in combat, but they can't turn it off entirely. Too much ether (typically from driving a too-powerful blade or too many blades at once) causes ether poisoning, which is Not Great for humans.

The word 'blade' originates from the fact that in addition to manifesting their bodies from ether, blades can all manifest a unique weapon which channels their ether and in some ways is an extension of their bodies. Blade weapons are unique to each blade, and can't really be destroyed, because blades can manifest or dismiss them at will. Typically, the drive wields the blade's weapon to better control their end of the ether flow, while the blade uses ether artes (= spells) directly. However, there are some exceptions to this; some blades use their weapons themselves, and some drivers with particularly "strong" resonance bonds can manifest their blade's weapon without the input of the blade.

Ether comes in eight elements, and blades can normally channel only one of each element. Even the Aegises, although they can in theory use ether of any element, have a primary element they're associated with. Each element also has a 'virtue' associated with it, which is a sort of defining personality trait for blades of that element. Fire and water are associated with bravery; earth and lightning are associated with compassion; ice and wind are associated with truth; and light and dark are associated with justice. Most blade artes are combat spells of their element, but each element also has a few out of combat "tricks" blades can use - fire blades can warm things and light fires, water blades can manipulate rain to keep from getting wet, and similar things like that.

Some blades also have special abilities that are limited to just them. The most common of these is "healing blades" - not all blades possess the ability to magically heal injuries, but enough of them do that it's not considered especially weird. Significantly less common examples include precognitive blades, blades who can prevent other blades from using their abilities, and blades who can manipulate the size of their own bodies. These abilities are unusual sometimes to the point of unique, and most people aren't aware of such abilities (outside of healing blades, which are pretty much common knowledge).

Although blades generally have mindsets comparable to humans, there's a few things about them that differ. Blades have an instictive affinity for their drivers, bordering on love-by-default, and a strong tendency to be protective of them. Overcoming this tendency is possible, but generally requires a blade that can not only rationalize a reason to harm their driver, but that has an emotional investment in doing so. Blades also get severely attached to anyone they consider family, and can have a truly ridiculous degree of "tunnel vision on, consequences don't matter" when protecting them. This applies both to blade siblings (which just happen sometimes) and adopted family.

Finally, while most blades are at least vaguely humanoid, not all of them are. Blades come in a variety of shapes and sizes - some look like animals, some look like animate suits of armor, some look like furries - but regardless of their body type, blades have two distinctive traits. The first is that their core crystal is visible somewhere on their body, usually on the upper torso, and it glows fairly brightly in a color distinct to the blade in question. The second is that coming from the core crystal are "ether lines," which look like glowing tattoos and basically serve as a blade's inidividual markings like a fingerprint. Ether lines also glow, though not quite as brightly as the core crystal, in the same color.

-> SPECIAL BLADES

Artificial blades (general): There are multiple forms of human-created blades throughout the ywkon-verse. Modern artificial blades are nearly indistinguishable from naturally occurring blades; however, earlier artificial blades were created in less savory ways, such as by forcefully combining natural blades. Individual artificial blades have other unique traits; ywkon as a wider verse includes an artificial blade with no element at all and blades who remembered their previous lives prior to the system rewrite.

Aegis(es), the: When the world was created, two special blades were created to oversee the world and the blade system. These blades, when they came down from "heaven" (actually a comet) were called the Aegises by humans. Roughly two thousand years later, the nations of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla used the power of the (very! unwilling!) Aegises to wage war against each other. When those Aegises escaped, Tethe'alla artificial Aegises to attempt to continue the war. The natural Aegises, Mithos and Martel, fused into the blade system's servers as part of the changes to it that allow blades to exist independently; the artificial Aegises, Colette and Zelos, continue to live on the planet, trying their best to lead normal lives. An Aegis still required a driver (prior to system rewrite) but unlike other blades, they would remember their previous lives.

Flesh eaters: Prior to the system rewrite, there was one way out of the system for blades with abusive drivers: becoming a "flesh eater" by taking a human heart (or other vital organ) into their bodies (usually their driver's) and effectively creating a resonance loop with themselves. Because it requires the death of at least some human and is usually assumed to be the driver, flesh eaters are considered the highest order of twisted criminals by human society. However, not all flesh eaters are murderers of any kind; because they're effectively immortal, many are the survivors of experiments on flesh eaters that took place hundreds of years ago. A blade who becomes a flesh eater will not revive from their core crystal if killed; your life with a human heart is your last one. Flesh eaters can't resonate as the "blade" half of a resonance, but they can drive other blades. Their ether lines are dulled and tinted red, and they bleed an unsettling mixture of blood and ether.

Blade eaters: Not technically blades; the human counterpart of flesh eaters, ie humans who have a core crystal embedded in them. This is usually only a partial crystal, which produces a link between the human and the blade where if one of them dies, they both die. (Whole crystals usually are too powerful for the human and kill them horribly.) Much rarer than even flesh eaters; most people, if they've even heard of the concept, think it's a myth.

->BLADE VIRTUES

It is commonly held that blades are beholden to a particular virtue, based on their element, that forms some deep core within their personality. How seriously this is taken by any given individual is approximately akin to "how seriously people take the zodiac in terms of defining personality" in our world, though it does actually have some real influence in ywkon. In general, blades take it more seriously than humans, especially blades who have been in resonance with other blades who don't share their element.

There are four blade virtues - bravery, truth, compassion, and justice - each split between two elements, which each take a slightly different aspect of the virtue in question. The way the virtues play out in each blade is flexible, but as a rough guide:

Fire. The beacon, the guiding light in the darkness. The bravery of leading the charge, of facing all that is before you without a flinch. Bravery in motion, never content, never standing back.

Water. The shapeless, that which cannot be constrained to a single shape. The bravery of quiet resistance, of following one's own path regardless of obstacles. Bravery in tranquility, quiet and indestructible.

Wind. The ephemeral, the whispers of the heart in passing. The truth that there is no solid truth, only a thousand currents of each person's views and ideals. Truth subjective, changing with the circumstances.

Ice. The persistent, the secrets locked away beneath the snow awaiting spring. The truth that we can never know all of the truth, that there will always be ice below the waterline and life beneath the frost. Truth objective, which shatters denial.

Lightning. The brilliant, the moment in which two people connect. Compassion never without the risk of being burned, but for the moment it lasts, the most intense of all experiences in this world. Compassion in empathy, the flash of understanding another's pain.

Earth. The sedate, a grounding place to which all return. The compassion slowest to rouse, but implacable once it begins to move. Compassion in isolation, the relief of suffering for all regardless of circumstance.

Light. The fair, the moment in which the world is right. The justice of hope that it can be made to be right, that all people may thrive freely beneath the sun. Justice in idealism, universal and agreed upon by all who view it.

Darkness. The patient, the invisible thing that all see behind closed eyes. The justice that rights the world with its own hands, regardless of the consequences it creates. Justice in cynicism, personal and unfettered by the ideals of any other person.