Binder Lolilyuri, ruler of Lorian Demesne
Demesne is an original story by Shadow Crystal Mage.Out on the frontier of a new continent, the wizard Lori and her group of settlers try to build a community for themselves in a land actively hostile to intelligent life. With their wits, their will, and their newly built Dungeon to protect them against the Iridescence, they should be fine. If they can survive the wild animal attacks. And the supply shortages. And other settlements poaching their people. And famine. And bandits... A slice-of-life fantasy story.
The story can be found here
on its SpaceBattles.com thread or here on Royal Road.
Demesne contains examples of the following tropes:
- A Child Shall Lead Them: Karina from Lori's Demesne is one of a handful of people whose names Lori actually remembers, and is her next candidate for the position of Lord after Rian. She's also around 11 years old. Over time she becomes the semi-official spokesperson for the other children in Lorian.
- There's also Shanalorre from River's Fork, who is around Karina's age. She takes over as Binder after her parents die in the first dragon to pass by
- A Dungeon Is You: Dungeon Binders are a less extreme version than is typical for the trope. Binding a dungeon core provides an awareness of everything within the demesne and an effectively limitless supply of power, but the system doesn't come with an interface or manual, and Binders have to figure things out for themselves.
- Accidental Discovery: Dungeon binders are understandably secretive about their abilities, and many of the things they do are functionally state secrets. Lori spends quite some time trying to recreate various routine aspects of being a Dungeon Binder, and makes most of her discoveries by accident. So far she's figured out efficient border expansion techniques and how to condense magic into beads, but she's still trying to figure out how to perform the other forms of magic besides wispering.
- Alien Geometries: Horotracting's specialty is to manipulate distances - this can be incredibly useful in demesnes where growth is glacial at best and halts entirely where it contacts the boundaries of another demesne. They also have some ability to slow or speed the passing of time, although outright time travel is impossible.
- Alien Sky: There are several moons orbiting the planet that are used as markers of time.
- Ambiguously Bi: Mikon doesn't have a problem with the other women pursuing Rian and is actively attempting to get closer to them.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Rian is Lori's.
- While he's away on the trip to Covehold, the job gets handed to Riz. She is much more beleaguered by the job than Rian ever was and has to be regularly reminded that the position is temporary.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The world doesn't seem to have any sort of birds, leaving a lot of room for various kinds of insects in the local ecology. Some of them are even farmed for cheap sources of meat.
- Bizarro Elements: Whispers can control the elements via airwisps, firewisps, waterwisps, lightwisps, darkwisps, lightningwisps, and earthwisps. Notably, waterwisps only affect water and not all liquids, and lightwisps and darkwisps have almost nothing to do with each other.
- Bothering by the Book: When a trading partner tries to trick Lori into accepting a deal where River's Fork would get more of a valuable source of dye in exchange for less valuable metal, Lori responds by insisting on an exacting audit of their records. The hope is that the wasted time and providing for everyone while the audit is performed will be enough of a strain to penalize River's Fork and demonstrate the value of trust between trading partners, while not being enough to jeopardize future relations.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Lori aspires to be this, but little things like preparing the village for spring floods and making sure her idiots don't starve to death keep getting in the way.
- Broken Bird: Shanna. Where to start... Her parents both died shortly after establishing their demesne when a dragon passed through the area. The dragon also killed about half the people she knew in the demesne. She was able to bind the core and become a dungeon binder, tying her to the land forever, shortly before a relief expedition from Lorian arrived, prepared to offer shelter to all the survivors. Her uncle sees her only as a child and is trying to control things himself. The head of their militia tried to kill her, and not everyone thinks he was wrong to want to do away with her when Lori, a competent and trained wisperer, was right there and had weathered the same dragon that killed so many with no losses. Several people dissatisfied with Lori's rule also moved to River's Fork and started to stir up trouble just like they had in Lorian. While she is a deadspeaking savant with the ability to heal people, she has no formal training and is unlikely to ever replicate the feats her father, a fully trained deadspeaker, was capable of, and has to watch as the creations he gave his life for slowly crumble around her. In her viewpoint chapters, she is shown to be a deeply traumatized person living with the knowledge that she will inevitably die in the same way her parents did, and thinks her main duty is to be a steward to her people until Lori takes over after her death.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Savants are people who can instinctively perform some sort of magical effect without formal instruction. While they can accomplish complex magical feats even as young children, their area of competency is very narrow, and they usually require advanced education before they are able to perform even simple effects that are unrelated to their natural abilities.
- Biomanipulation: Deadspeaking in a nutshell, with a side of Animate Dead.
- Death World: The land outside of a demesne spontaneously develops rainbow-colored crystalline growths called Iridescence. Its effects on humans is particularly awful and will drive an exposed human mad as the crystals grow into their flesh. Civilization is confined to Demesnes, where their magical field interferes with iridescence growth. The only reason life can exist outside demesnes and travel between demesnes is possible is because the crystals are fragile and can be dislodged by a strong wind, and are washed away entirely by water.
- The Ditz: Landoor. He's one of the stupider people Lori has to deal with, and for some reason thinks he's Lori's successor just because he held her staff once for about a minute. He's so consistently stupid Lori actually remembers his name, if only to make sure he's not involved in any project critical to the demesne - unless there's a reasonable chance for death or dismemberment, then he's her go to idiot.
- Don't Try This at Home: An In-Universe example. Students are routinely taught how to make a dungeon core expressly so they don't accidentally recreate the process and commit treason. The process is also similar to how the beads of magic used as currency are condensed into a solid form, adding some extra reason for forbidding any experimentation down that particular line of magical theory.
- Draconic Abomination: Dragons in this setting refer to periodic, semi-aware magical storms. As long as a demesne is ready for one, they're about as routine and dangerous as a hurricane... assuming your hurricanes like to transmute random patches of ground to various metals, throw zombies around, or merge large predators together to see what would happen, anyway. The cleanup from the first one to go through Lorian sets the town back by about a week. It also guts River's Fork Demesne and manages to kill both their Binder and the Binder's back up, along with a large portion of their settlers.
- Demesne Based Economy: Not only are they the basis of the economy, they're the basic unit of civilization.
- Egopolis: Lori is the dungeon binder and founder Lori's Demesne, with the capital city of Lorian. This is notably not an example of
Portmanteau Couple Name between her and Rian, but try explaining that to her demesnites. There is also a boat she appropriated called Lori's Boat. - Elemental Powers: Wisperers are able to manipulate non-biological matter via wisps. Known varieties include airwisps, firewisps, waterwisps, lightwisps, darkwisps, lightningwisps, and earthwisps. What exactly counts is a little vague, with bone being manipulable by Wisperers via earthwisps, but wood is the province of Deadspeakers regardless of whether it's green wood or dry.
- Embarrassing First Name: Lori is short for Lolilyuri - pronounced Lo-Lily-Yuri. She mostly goes by Lori to spare people from butchering the pronunciation.
- Forgetful Jones: Lori is bad with names - that's what Rian is for.
- Friend to All Children: "Friend" might be overstating things a bit, but Lori cares strongly about the safety and well being of children and will go out of her way to look after them.
- Over time Rian figures out he can exploit this to get Lori to do things she wouldn't normally have the patience for. He just needs to point out how an issue (e.g. ambiguous marriage laws) could negatively affect children and she'll grudgingly focus on resolving it.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Due to the Iridescence, the most common swear words in the story are "colors" and "rainbows".
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Rian, especially at the start of the story. He's gotten better about it as time goes on and he becomes accustomed to his new situation in Lorian, but it still pops up now and then.
- How Do I Shot Web?: A Dungeon Binder is supposed to be able to use all four of the magical disciplines, but there isn't enough overlap between their approaches for Lori to figure it out on her own.
- I Meant to Do That: Lori is not above claiming something unintentional was her goal all along.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Lori is abrasive and not at all subtle about how much power she has in the demesnse (all of it, at least until they work out a system for taxation), but she has a soft spot for children and is a diligent worker in setting up her town.
- King Incognito: Rian is implied to be from the upper tier of society on the Old Continent before leaving for the frontier for unexplained reasons.
- Like Brother and Sister: Rian and Lori, eventually. He's a stand in for the sibling she always wanted, and she's a stand in for the sister he left behind on the Old Continent. Which one is the older sibling depends on the situation and who is most blatantly disregarding their personal well being at the time.
- Load-Bearing Boss:
- This is one of the things working against River's Fork Demesne after its original binder died. He had set up the demesne's infrastructure to require regular maintenance from an experienced Deadspeaker without considering what would happen in case of his sudden death. Less than a year later and the demesne is in shambles and its people are on the edge of starvation. Shana is able to keep things from collapsing outright, but isn't experienced enough to fix (or even understand) the subtler dynamic problems of the demesne's plant-based infrastructure or repair things that get damaged by outside forces.
- Subverted in Lorian. Although her death would be seriously inconvenient for anyone who survived her, Lori made a point of setting things up so the buildings she made wouldn't collapse without a Wisperer's attention. Lest anyone confuse this with concern for her demesnites's continued well being, she did it purely because refreshing bindings is tedious and she didn't want to add to her morning maintenance routine.
- Love Triangle: Umu and Mikon are both openly interested in Rian and aren't even trying to hide it, but he seems unreceptive to either of them. They are joined by a third character, Riz, after the settlers from River's Fork move in.
- Machine Worship: One of the local religions is centered around worshiping the scientific method, known locally as "the mysteries of the alknowledge".
- Magic A Is Magic A: There are 4 types of magic: Wispering, Mentalism, Deadspeaking, and Horotracting. The main advantage of being a dungeon binder is being able to do all four.
- Magnetism Manipulation: The underlying mechanism that Mentalism runs on. This includes the fields in their own nervous systems, leading to at least one sect of Wuxia style monks who increase their physical abilities and perception in addition to more typical Mind over Matter pursuits.
- Marital Rape License: Brought up and explicitly averted when Lori witnesses the first batch of marriages.
- Morality Chain: Rian becomes Lori's over time. He's just about the only person who can point out flaws in her reasoning and reign in her more despotic impulses. His insistence is also the only reason Lori bothered to give her demesne's people protected rights in Lorian's first code of law - if he ever leaves she's going to throw out the whole idea and make a code she finds less onerous.
- Murder by Inaction: Lori's plan to claim River's Fork Demesne after finding it's been bound by a child savant is to wait for the next dragon to pass by and see if she manages to survive.
- My Beloved Smother: Lori clearly views both her mothers as this. Reading between the lines, they were more or less normal parents who were out of their depths when it came to relating to their daughter's needs and desires.
- Mystical Plague: Long term exposure to iridescence causes humans to become irrational and violent as its crystals grow into their victim's nervous system and brain. Notably this also affects animals, but since most beasts are exposed to it all their lives, it doesn't have any negative effects on them.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Dillians are giant crocodiles that like to make their home in the open ocean. There are some down river from Lorian big enough to make those traveling on the Coldhold incredibly nervous.
- Number Two: Rian is Lori's first lord and is largely responsible for making sure Lori has to interact with as few people as possible.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Lori's brilliant idea to sit on a rock she was moving with wispering, getting hurt falling off of it, and needing to be saved by Shana after the wound becomes infected. And Rian trying to go beast hunting while sleep deprived because he felt like he wasn't contributing to the demesne's survival, despite everything he was doing as its only lord.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Deadspeakers - and dragons - are able to reanimate the reasonably preserved dead and can access their magical abilities if they had any in life.
- Practical Currency: The common currency of the old continent are small beads of condensed magic that a practitioner can use to fuel their powers in addition to being a medium of exchange. Despite this, they're pretty much a fiat currency, since any dungeon binder who knows the trick of it can make them in any quantity and denomination they wish.
- The demesne Lori is originally from has cornered the market on controlling various exchange rates.
- Punny Name: The only other mammals besides humans are aquatic species known collectively as fursh. The most common ones in Lori's Demesne are seels - they're like seals, but longer.
- Running Gag: Rian is definitely not an isekai. That would be silly. And wrong.
- Serious Business: Lori worked a number of odd industrial jobs while training her wispering and has great respect for craftsmen of all kinds. She won't even think of using their tools without permission and even remembers the names of some of them she works with often.
- Siblings Wanted: Lori always wanted to have a younger sibling, but her parents were not cooperative. Kind of hard to blame them after their experiences with Lori.
- Slice of Life: The entire story is about the day to day practicalities and problems of a new frontier town. There are no villains or antagonists, just mishaps and hazards that add some spice to the goings on of Lori's Demesne.
- The Power of Glass: Specifically its power to insulate against magic, including iridescence growth. It's popularly used to transport delicate trade goods that can't be rinsed with water (such as books) between demesnes, but Lori is eager to get her hands on some to further her magical experimentation.
- Those Two Girls: Umu and Mikon. Played with - while they're not unfriendly to one another, one of the main things they have in common is an inability to attract Rian's attention.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: Gold is good for making very fine wires, novelty ornamentation, and non-corrosive surfaces, but doesn't have much value otherwise. Lori is far more excited to get her hands on a boulder-sized lump of titanium (created by the whims of a passing dragon), which has many more uses.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Lori is genuinely concerned for the well being and fair treatment of the children in her demesne. This is exemplified when she finds out that Shanalore claimed River's Fork's core. She had spent the entire trip psyching herself up to kill whoever had claimed the core the instant she discovered their identity, only to stop at the last minute when she realized the new binder is a child.
- World of Technicolor Hair: Colors such as pink, green, and purple are so common that Rian gets called exotic for having brown hair and eyes.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: "Living on the edges of society" has an entirely different meaning when your civilization is confined to demesnes. The poorest people live at the literal edge of the demesnes where they're most vulnerable to dragons, and tend to have jobs that take them outside the boundaries protecting them from the iridescence. The most valuable land is underground at the center, by the dungeon's core.
