Sides & Factions
The Two Sides
Each side is right about one danger and blind to the harm its own answer does. Beliefs come from section 3; everything else in this table is a proposal.
| Evane | Facets (others call them the Shattered) | |
|---|---|---|
| Belief | Magic may only be used for good and must never break nature's rules. | Magic was given to people to use for anything it can do. |
| Magic | Mostly mirrored; the Waymakers draw parallel. | Mostly asymmetric: a different shape per thumb. |
| Look (Idea) | Pale stone and silver; symmetrical buildings and clothes; both sleeves embroidered alike; a glyph band on each wrist. | Salvaged mirror-glass and amber light; deliberately mismatched clothes (one long sleeve, one bare arm); each person wears their own sigil. |
| Structure | Five factions, always competing. | (Idea) No hierarchy. Households called cuts gather around a teacher; Lanternfall is run by whoever turns up to its open council. |
| Wants (Idea) | The Great Mending: re-still the Glass so the warps close for good. | Glyphs free for anyone; the Shardfield left alone; an end to un-teaching. |
| Right about (Idea) | Asymmetric casting does strain the Glass and widen cracks. The rules keep ordinary people safe. | Evane rules forbid healing that would save lives. Evane archives keep glyphs from anyone they don't approve of. |
| Blind to (Idea) | A Mending would end asymmetric magic, darken Lanternfall and leave its people powerless. Some warps are their own failed mendings. | Giving glyphs to anyone puts power in hands that can't hold it. Bystanders pay for their freedom. |
Un-teaching: the Evane punish forbidden casters by sealing their hands' memory of a spell. It is the Facets' deepest grievance and the Evane's darkest habit. It is also a real, narrow mechanic:
- Only a Warden court can do it, and only after a crime: casting a forbidden spell on Evane people or inside an Evane town, and getting caught. Casting Facet spells in the wild never risks it.
- The court seals the one spell used in the crime. A sealed spell fizzles with "Your hands have forgotten …".
- Sealed is not erased. Retrace the glyph from the start to relearn it, or pay a Facet unbinder in Lanternfall to break the seal, which Evane NPCs will hear about.
- Repel can never be sealed: the door-mark is older than the Wardens, so no player is ever left without a spell.
- In code, sealing removes the spell from the known-spell list and records why.
(Idea) The name matters: calling them "Shattered" or "Facets" is a choice NPCs notice, and could feed the reputation system (section 7).
The five Evane factions
The first four come from section 3's examples. The Waymakers are the fifth, and Gale is theirs. Each faction owns exactly one drawing style.
| Faction | Rule it guards | Drawing style (one per faction) | Glyph colour (Idea) | Seat (Idea) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wardens of Measure | Balance, cause and effect; every spell has a cost | Straight lines and hard corners, mirrored | Pale blue (Repel's #7FD4FF) | Twinhold |
| The Tenders | Growth and decay, the cycle of life | Long unbroken curves, mirrored | Violet (Coil's #B48CFF) | Greenvault |
| Keepers of the Hour | Time and the order of events | Spirals and loops drawn a set number of times, mirrored | Open | The Hour Stair |
| The Still Choir | Sound, stillness, the unseen | Tiny, slow, minimal strokes, mirrored | Open | Hushfold |
| The Waymakers | Motion: what moves keeps its course | Parallel: both hands travel the same way | Pale green (Gale's #9CFFB0) | The Long Road (no fixed seat) |
- (Idea) Rivalry: the Wardens think they lead; the Tenders think nothing matters more than life; the Keepers think everyone else is in a hurry. The other four call Waymaker casting barely Evane, so most quarrels end up there.
- (Idea) The Still Choir talks in mirrored hand-signs, the same gestures as mirrored casting. It is the one faction that quietly trades letters with the Facets.
Facet culture
- (Idea) A Facet's standing comes from how many glyphs they have given away, not how many they hold. Hoarding is the worst insult.
- (Idea) Cuts are named after gem-cutting terms (Bevel, Crown, Table, Culet), as are most Facet spells (section 7).
- (Idea) Every Facet designs a personal sigil from two unlike shapes, like their spells. It is worn on the clothes, painted on the door, carved on the grave.
- (Idea) Facet colour is amber (Facet Seal's #FFC66B): sunlight bent through cut glass.
- (Idea) Their flaw is the mirror of the Evane's: no one is allowed to say "not yet". Children are handed spells they cannot control.
- (Idea) The one-armed gateway. Rook, the player's way into the Facets, lost his left arm in a glass storm. He casts by drawing one half, holding it open in the Glass, then drawing the other half with the same hand. To the Evane that is impossible; to the Facets it proves two hands were only ever a habit. (In gameplay the player still draws with two thumbs.)
Concept art
Prompt
Split composition concept art for a mobile fantasy RPG, two sides of magic facing each other across a dividing line: on the left the Evane, a perfectly symmetric white marble and pale gold gateway with a robed mage mirrored in a still pool, calm sky blue light; on the right the Facets, a jagged asymmetric archway of shattered prismatic crystal shards in teal, violet and magenta over dark slate, a mage in mismatched shard armor, rainbow caustics; strong contrast between order and fracture, stylized hand-painted 3D JRPG game art, soft cel shading --ar 16:9 --sref https://cdn.midjourney.com/e1cbf51f-e14d-47a5-878b-299fa466e41a/0_1.png`, --sw 50
Midjourney job c6bd1a85-d3c7-4f61-9373-0e0716f5ee3e / 3, 1
Prompt
Split composition concept art for a mobile fantasy RPG, two sides of magic facing each other across a dividing line: on the left the Evane, a perfectly symmetric white marble and pale gold gateway with a robed mage mirrored in a still pool, calm sky blue light; on the right the Facets, a jagged asymmetric archway of shattered prismatic crystal shards in teal, violet and magenta over dark slate, a mage in mismatched shard armor, rainbow caustics; strong contrast between order and fracture, stylized hand-painted 3D JRPG game art, soft cel shading --ar 16:9 --sref https://cdn.midjourney.com/e1cbf51f-e14d-47a5-878b-299fa466e41a/0_1.png`, --sw 50
Midjourney job c6bd1a85-d3c7-4f61-9373-0e0716f5ee3e / 3, 1