Before the Age of the Rupture, it was one.
The Material Realm, home to mortals and known creatures, existed isolated from the other planes that make up the reality of Arcanum.
But something happened.
An event whose true nature has been lost to time.
The oldest records speak only of the Rupture. A magical cataclysm so vast it tore apart the boundaries between worlds.
When the Veil of reality broke, fragments of the upper and lower planes were trapped between dimensions, forming a gigantic luminous scar that still crosses the skies of Arcanum today.
That scar became known as the Prismatic Veil.
By day, it can be seen as rivers of crystalline light crossing the firmament. By night, its colors light up the horizon like a permanent aurora.
But the Prismatic Veil is not just a celestial phenomenon.
It is a place.
A world.
A reality of its own, suspended among all the others.
A living border that separates the Material Realm from the countless planes that lie beyond it.
A World Between Life and Death
The Prismatic Veil became a territory where the concepts of life and death no longer have absolute meaning. There, Anima flows differently.
- Newly freed souls can travel its luminous paths.
- Echoes of vanished civilizations still wander among its fragments.
- Beings that were never born in the material world build their own communities among the currents of energy that cross the plane.
For many scholars, the Prismatic Veil works as a bridge. A place of passage. A meeting point between what lives, what has died and what is yet to exist.
It's a place where memory, essence and identity often matter more than physical matter.
The Rise of the Aetheri
It was in this impossible environment that the Aetheri arose. Formed from the very Anima that permeates the Prismatic Veil, they were not born of parents, bloodlines or kingdoms.
Each Aetheri emerges when currents of primordial energy reach enough balance to give rise to consciousness. They are beings made of Living Essence. Conscious fragments of the Veil itself.
That's why many of them see death not as an end, but as an inevitable transformation within a larger cycle.
- Life feeds Anima.
- Anima returns to the Veil.
- And from the Veil, new existences eventually arise.
Aetheri Society
Unlike mortal civilizations, the Aetheri don't organize themselves into kingdoms or empires. Their communities form around natural phenomena of the Prismatic Veil itself.
Some devote their existence to watching the lower worlds. Others become guardians of the passages between planes. And there are those who cross the Veil and walk among mortals to better understand the cycle that connects birth, life and death.
The Meaning of the Primordial Aurora
Of all the phenomena of the Prismatic Veil, none is more revered than the Primordial Aurora. According to Aetheri tradition, it was its first appearance that allowed the oldest members of their kind to arise.
To this day it's seen as a symbol of renewal, transcendence and continuity.
It doesn't represent the beginning of life.
Nor the end.
But everything that exists between the two.
Traits
- Born from the Anima of the Prismatic Veil.
- Inhabitants of a plane that separates the worlds.
- Bound to the cycles of life, death and rebirth.
- They have no biological origin.
- They see existence as a continuous flow of transformation.
- They form one of the oldest civilizations known after the Rupture.
When the skies broke apart, mortals saw a wound.
The Aetheri saw a home.