The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Introduction to the world of Sol

Somewhere in a time and space different from our own (or as some people love to say – a Realm different from our own), there is a world that revolves around a star called 'Sol'. The original name of this world is lost with its earlier history. Somehow, most of the history of the planet, its origin, the origin of its culture, has been lost. All that is known is that star is called Sol and that Humans have always been the dominant species. How they came to be on the planet is also lost. Some say that they were created, some say the came from another world and were forgotten. Some say they evolved but somehow no evidence was available to support any of the theories.

There are some theories why that world does not have an ancient history. It is believed that a powerful organisation at some point in the past, wanted people to stop praising the past because it reduced the respect for the current leaders. So, they started a vicious campaign to remove all reference of the earlier history. They succeeded in their campaign for 100 years till they were overthrown by a new organisation, which came to power by leveraging the lack of historic reverence of the previous organisation. On our world, this would be called 'Karma'.

The Star is called Sol, and this being the third planet in orbit around the star, the planet is called Sol-3. None of the other planets in the system are habitable for humanoid life. So our story is restricted to this third planet only.

Sol-3 has a pretty advanced civilisation. The planet has two large continents (Myruse and Balioton), and another continent (Aquadom) which had, for some reason, sunk under the ocean tens of thousands of years before our story.

There are over 200 countries, nations and city-states in the planet. However, out of these, only 7 were large and powerful. These are :

· Romana (in Balioton)

· Bravadia (in Myruse)

· Feroah (in Balioton)

· Thousand Nations (in Myruse)

· Monte (in Myruse)

· Olixer (in Myruse)

· Aquadom (in Aquadom of course)

Romana and Bravadia are the largest and most powerful nations on the planet. Fortunately, they started building and expanding from opposite ends of the world, on different continents. As they grew larger and more powerful, they did not encounter each other. When their spheres of influence reached close to one another, both had become too powerful for either to win an outright war. At that particular time, they had comparatively weaker rulers and entered into a mutually dependent relationship, not as friends but not as enemies either. Trade was the connection between them, but each of them waited for the other to implode so the other can take over as the winner.

Faroah was an ancient country that grew from history of a religion-based rule but which slowly adopted a more modern lifestyle. Thousand Nations, on the other hand, was formed as a federation of over a thousand city-states that initially got together for mutual protection. Both Faroah and Thousand Nations were democratic. And they hated Romana and Bravadia which were Monarchic. In reality Faroah was a theocratic democracy, but they considered themselves anti-monarchy.

Monte, on the other hand, was relatively small compared to the other 4 leading nations, but an exceedingly powerful nation located entirely in the mountainous, Northern part of Myruse. It had managed to maintain a good but independent relation with all the major nations, while keeping itself fiercely independent, which gave it a level of protection.

The strangest country, however, was Aquadom, which was formed in the sunken continent. They were relatively secretive of their technology and their way of life. Their ability to build habitable civilisation deep inside the ocean, well protected from marine predators, was a closely guarded secret. The new ruler of the country, however, had studied in Bravadia in his youth and therefore, had made little changes that allowed outsiders to come in limited numbers. On the other hand, technology that Aquadom was now willing to sell to others gave them massive source of income not earlier available.