Welcome to Cyre!

Geography

The country is Prokovia, like Russia, the adjective is Prokovian, like Russian. The tourist trap where Erik finds himself literally trapped is Cyre (rhymes with tire, with a hard C, but I can never remember that myself), located on the southwest coast of the Silk Sea. The once-fashionable hotel where he now resides is the Vesely. (If Potato, the cat, or Erik himself should happen to escape, please return them to Room 1409, their jailer worries.) The ambience is a bit Eastern European, but with vastly different history. The language is Prokovian, which will be rendered as a Google-translate-friendly version of Russian, so you can copy-paste and see what they’re saying. The Kirov Ghetto, a block of subsidized housing for innate magic-users, stands mysteriously abandoned, with most of the furnishings and belongings still inside.

The world map is seriously messed up and oversimplified, but there are many vaguely familiar countries with vaguely familiar people living in them. Anatolia is the continent Prokovia calls home. It bears a resemblance to Europe, but is located in the East. The long war is over, but another is already brewing.

The Prokovian Empire stretches across much of northwest Anatolia, meaning they have a lot of tundra and steppe-land and not much respect. They also have an uneasy alliance with Marsellia, a country not entirely unlike France. The Marselline Empire (which still lays claim to nearly two whole islands in the South Seas) unconditionally surrendered at the end of the last war, almost two decades ago. They have a high degree of autonomy, but their radical ways and penchant for revolt are well-known, and highly suspicious.

Recent History

Prokovia is experiencing a tentative cultural renaissance, having come out of the Prokovian Conflict of 1359-1371 with a new foothold in the East, and a bit more clout. Marsellia is not quite an ally, and not quite a colony, but their association seems friendly on film and paper. Their PM is a frequent visitor at the Czarina’s palace in Khorivgrad; a marriage or some other alliance may be in the works.

Actually owning and operating Marsellia, and trying to keep its people under control, is a bit less rosy. Apart from the warm water sea access and lovely vacation spots, it’s not clear what the place is good for — though the Czarina seems to have some ideas. Marselline people are famously unruly, prone to blowing things up, setting them on fire, and seditious rumblings in general. There have been some incidents in Prokovia that might even be construed as a Marselline attack, but the PM insists they have nothing to do with it.

Anyway, Prokovia is embracing Eastern dress, modern technology and a modern worldview. And if you are not embracing these things up to the Czarina’s standard, a nice man in a nice suit will visit and remind you that there are still plenty of nice gulags, er, settlement villages in the north for people who prefer a simpler life.

Altogether, there is a lot of electricity, pavement, infrastructure, and new construction in progress. Soaring brutalist architecture, sharp lapels and shiny shoes are in; cobblestone, peasant garb, muddy boots and anything with too much “personality” is out.

“Modern” Life

Magic is real and merges seamlessly with technology and human beings. There are people walking around with inorganic material (and organic material that was not originally theirs) replacing their missing pieces. There are also people walking around with unnatural rainbow-hued skin tones — these are innate magic-users and they are dangerous, disloyal, and best left to themselves. (For more on Magic, see Mechanics.)

Fashion tends towards what we would call 1920s styles, with punk and grunge overtones for unruly young adults, and true iconoclasts willing to dress down to nothing more than a flour sack tailored with safety pins. Prokovia prefers its dress snappy, its hair oiled, and its faces shaved, but outside of the largest cities, not many people can afford to do that. In small towns and farming communities, headscarves, colourful dresses and tunic-length peasant tops are perfectly acceptable. Simpler outfits and obvious stains indicate poverty or dissolution, and are pitied. In cities, either style will be openly mocked, and “peasants” encouraged to walk in the gutter and keep the sidewalk free for civilized people. (Please, for the love of god, do not expect me to keep the fashion consistent in the illustrations!)

Housing options range from country estates with attached farmland and sharecroppers, to townhouses and residential skyscrapers, to… nothing. There is no housing here for you. Go away. Innate magic-users, and normal human beings who are willing to risk their lives doing magic for work, are offered subsidized housing well outside city centres, near their jobs. Many of the dangerous ones grow tired of the necessary restrictions and move elsewhere, and good riddance to them.

Technology

Magic has given the tech a boost in some places and held it back in others. We have toasters and microwaves but no airplanes, rigid airships being quite enough with a little augmentation. If you lack a telephone, you are extremely rural or destitute, but a new disc-view radio with colour images, a projector and stereo sound is conspicuous consumption or a certified mid-life crisis object. The Hotel Vesely is in evident decline, with balky plumbing and electricity. Its residents often make do with old-style appliances powered by sacrifices (It is possible to have a hotplate that eats mice. More useful than a pet snake!) and a lot of magic-based piecemeal repairs.

“Television” is something you might view on the aforementioned DVR, but it’s easier to call it all “radio,” as all programming is simulcast with and without images. A standard DVR offers a peephole viewer for one or two people, showcasing line-filled low-resolution images produced by a rotating disk. High-contrast makeup, animation, specially-designed puppets, or some combination thereof are a must. You may consume serials, news, and music on whatever type of home radio you can afford, in periodicals with magically-animated pictures and sound, or at movie theatres. Postcards with magically-animated pictures bear a suspicious resemblance to GIFs and memes.

Much cobblestone and funky old brickwork remains in Cyre, and the city is well known for its spire-filled skyline — the tourists love it, so it’s impractical to pave over all of it. Sidewalks are meticulously maintained, however. Buses, cars, taxis and bicycles are the preferred methods of transportation. Horse-drawn carriages are allowed, for the tourists’ sakes, but horse leavings must be cleaned immediately.

Obvious use of magic is considered rude — though allowable in the case of horse leavings, which are ruder. Preprogrammed, factory-made items are considered straight up tech, and are acceptable for public use and/or cool. There is an official government stamp certifying safety, which many such objects display conspicuously.

Good magic is performed in factories and research facilities, by licensed, registered, educated professionals. Anything that looks a bit too janky or DIY is regarded with the same horror as a downed power line, and professionals (or police) may be called to deal with it. 

If you dared get around with a giant spider made of repurposed garbage that has been hacked so it runs on sugar, you would be asked to surrender peacefully and then shot.

Music

They seem to be getting some familiar music in this universe, but not exactly. Copyright laws necessitated some gymnastics — as far as that goes, I am still taunting Happy Fun Ball, and I believe we have a moral imperative to melt Happy Fun Ball, but I am aware it’s a risk, and you should be too. In-story, just remember that the decadent Eastern music they pirate in Prokovia is packaged way differently and doesn’t sound the same. I am using the original band names — even when they don’t necessarily make sense — because the real artists deserve credit for the works I’m referencing. (And, in my opinion, the corporate interests that own those works do not.)

Musicians long ago discovered they could modify sound waves with magic, in real-time, without recording, amplifying, or mixing. That’s where the Voice From Music process comes from, and why all silent films were sung-through musicals. Mordecai’s old job allowed him to play the dialogue. Bowed instruments were once ubiquitous in pop music backing tracks because it was easiest to modify their vibrations. The advent of the electric guitar — and the inevitable experimentation that occurs when you give a bunch of musicians a noise-box that can be plugged into anything — has pushed “cello rock” almost entirely from the mainstream. The original VFM process is still sometimes used for its unique folky, indy, old-timey or quaint sound, but the addition of electricity is considered an improvement in all other contexts.

Magic allows for data storage in a quasi-digital format. All types of recording technology, including drawings and photographs, have been using it to improve quality and add features for quite some time. Currently, music can be heard on radio, record (single and LP), and audio ribbons — and viewed on Audio Spekto or Spek (if you have a disc-view radio), Sinkie (a silent postcard that auto-syncs to any recording), and music reel (still popular in theatres, and with the best resolution of all). Wax cylinders are outdated and no longer produced — if you find one, good luck restoring or playing any of its original sound. All of these have much better resolution and/or storage than the versions we are familiar with.

It’s pretty obvious this universe is not getting their music in the order to which we’re accustomed. Magic is both a randomizer and a convenient excuse. Different artists are assigned to different eras and I’ll try to spread the wealth of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s over several decades, sometimes shuffled together like a pack of cards. More recent music is out there, too, but we know the classics are classics because there has been a lot of time to weed out the Top 40 crap, so I will try to stick to the good stuff. …Mostly.

Milo remains an exception, selecting his favourites based solely on emotional attachment. His taste encompasses the full spectrum of things that make him happy because they sound happy, to things that make him happy because Calliope and the kids like them. He is willing to put up with some screaming, as long as he can control the volume. Erik, on the other hand, is interested in anything that sounds fun. If it happens to offend his uncle’s too-narrow tastes, that is a plus!

Eventually, if only for my own reference, I will have to produce a timeline matching up artists and their albums to years on the calendar. I am certain I will screw it up. In the meantime, know that Elton John and disco (known as synco, due to a lack of discs) were contemporary for David and Barnaby, and the Beatles and British (Elban) Invasion for Mordecai. The optimistic synth-pop new wave trend of Erik’s childhood has faded into disaffected punk and grunge, just in time for his young adulthood —  like 80s music became 90s music during my teenage years. It almost makes sense! (Thematically, at least? I hope.)

Magic vs. History vs. Society

A warning: In all cases, even when things look familiar to us, in Soldier On they exist in a totally different context. This reality is hackable, people have been making changes for a long time, and they will continue to make changes as long as they have that ability. The paper may look perfectly ordinary, but if you turn up the blacklight it glows and gets messages like a smartphone. That person may sound French, but ask them their opinion of the mouse-themed terrorist organization that’s shredding the homegoods and furniture of politicians back home. (Mordecai is in favour of it.)

In realistic terms, I’m one person and I can’t juggle an entire divergent planet without dropping a few things. The blanket excuse is not that people in Soldier On are better or worse than us, but that they had access to magic and we didn’t. Some differences will be motivated by cultural commentary, but most of them can just be chalked up to the fact that their universe works differently — period. Someone decided one random domino needed to be knocked over, magic gave them the ability to do so, and the next thing you know there’s an inland sea where the Ural Mountains ought to be.

Bear with me, and try to remember that you’re not at a clothing store looking into a regular mirror when you see aspects of your culture and history mangled beyond all recognition. I am probably not trying to insult you by implying those pants make your butt look three feet wide. I’m running a funhouse. Sometimes a nightmare funhouse, but in most cases, things just look weird because it’s neat when things look weird. You should be here to see weird things, not to buy pants. If you need an honest assessment of your butt, there are historians and sociologists in the real world who can devote a lot more time and energy to it.

More on the Setting:

• Gazetteer — A list of places in-story, with some history included. [I have it. I will put it up eventually, but it’s a lot to update, be patient with me.]
• Glossary — Weird words, intentional weird spellings and weird uses of language.
• Hyacinth’s Calendar — What we’ve covered in-story, with dates.
• Ages and Artists — I have put off doing this for seven years and I’m goin’ for eight, baby!