General lore

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The story takes place at the end of an age. After millennia of glaciation, the world is slowly starting to get warmer. Various human cultures live throughout what we could call the Northern Continent. Busy hunting, creating, travelling and caring for each other, they aren’t able to see what’s happening: giant beasts are dying, spirits are evolving. The world is changing, never to be the same ever again.

Cultures

N.B.: As stated above, all cultures have their own specific languages. Therefore, the English text you’re reading in the speech bubbles should be considered as some sort of translation from these original languages rather than what the characters are actually saying. This explains why some ways in which the characters speak may sound “modern” time to time, as translation is as much a work of cultural adaptation as a linguistic adaptation.

Many human cultures live throughout the continent. In this story, the main focus will be set on:
– the Dormunk (North-Western part of the continent): they have a semi-nomadic lifestyle, following reindeer herds northward in summer and southward in winter
– the Pasa’an (South-East part of the continent): also semi-nomadic, they mainly live off fishing and all gather every autum and winter in the Singing Mountain.

Other cultures will briefly be introduced as well, such as the Choli and the Yaar.

Spirits

Spirits are a human-made category encompassing all supernatural entities inhabiting the world. Like animals and plants, they exist in a wide variety of kinds — they are not necessarily related to each other or are the same kind of entities, but it doesn’t matter as spirits are meant to be unknown, things beyond human understanding. They merge with everything that makes the world, from inanimate things or elements to living creatures. Humans have learn very quickly that trying to have good relationships with them is necessary for survival.

For the sake of lore, spirits can be “categorised” into:
– the spirits of nature
– the animal spirits/animal mothers
– miscellaneous.

For more detailed lore pieces, check out the encyclopedia!

Time measurement

In the comic, you’ll encounter time units sharing most of the time the same name than the ones we use, so to clarity, here is what the words correspond to in universe:
– a year: a full season cycle (for example: from winter to winter, from summer to summer…)
– a season: spring, summer, autumn and winter (Dormunk) OR Cold Season and Gratitude Season (Pasa’an)
– a moon: a full moon cycle.

Units such as hours, minutes or seconds are non existent and people usually use the moments of the day as time references (morning, noon, afternoon, evening…). Therefore, for all the characters, time is more blurry and less exact than the way we conceptualise it.