Ashael is your average inhabitable planet orbiting a young yellow star and posessing a single satelite. Ashael's moon, Id Erith, orbits the planet once every 31 days. Because of the significant amounts of copper and oxygen that make up the moon's surface, it shines a pale green in the night sky.

Ashael is a recent addition to the League of Allied Worlds (LAW), having been colonized by humans in 9,983 CE (1790 AD). During the time which my story takes place, 273 years after colonization (2063 AD), the main inhabitants of Ashael are humans (69% of the sentient population), athaenians (14%), gemstone dragons (7%), selkies (5%), dracorians (3%), and a scattered 2% of machirans, centaurs, and other assorted peoples. 2% of the population are vampires, 14% are werefolk, and 3% of the humans are mages.

Ashael is governed by a council made up of one representative for each sentient species constituting 5% or more of the population. The dragons have no interest in politics and the selkies govern themselves, so they never attend Council meetings, however, an empty seats is always left for each, just in case. Ashael's level of technological advancement is regulated to the equivalent of 1700's America in order to prevent polution, global warming, strip-mining, deforestation, ect.

On Ashael, no one is discriminated against based on religion, race, species, gender, or sexual orientation. The only discrimination is against off-worlders and aliens: people born on another planet. Lords and Ladies make up the upper class, with the peasantry making up the lower-middle class. The lowest class are slaves; owned by both the upper and lower-middle class. Slaves are petty criminals, political dissidents, homeless, poor. Slaves are considered property and have no rights under the law. Considering the extremely sexual nature of Ashaelian society, slaves are often raped and abused, or bought by whorehouses to be used for pleasure.

Joining Ashael to the hundreds of inhabited planets is a network of world gates. The first of these wormholes were constructed by an unknown species posessing vast magical capabilities surpassing anything known or understood today. While mages can construct world gates, they are crude, fragile tears in the fabric of space compared to the elegant and resilient ancient gates.

Inhabiting Ashael are more than 500 species of fish, 23 of which are found on no other planet, various species of corals, crustacians, and molluscs, 6 species of whale, 17 species of dolphin, 8 species of seals (not including the four tribles of selkies), 5 species of sea turtle, 3 species of innira (amphibious lake dragon), 200 species of birds, 1000 species of insects and arachnids, 350 species of mammals including horses, chickens, sheep, cows, elk, wolves, hounds, wolfmice, kholdras, shivals, rats, otters, and unicorns.

The main gods recognized on Ashael are Maele and Cheyn - immortal brother and sister balancing life and death between them. Maele, the god of life, love and light, created the worlds and the people. His creations were perfect - so perfect that they wanted for nothing, and so did nothing but exist perfectly. Maele's sister, Cheyn, goddess of death, hate and darkness, found her brother troubled by his perfect creations. He had given them life, but they weren't living. Cheyn, in her savage wisdom, placed pain, hunger, thirst, cold, danger and death among the people. No longer perfect, the people cried out to Maele and cursed Cheyn, but they got up off their butts and started doing things, as Maele had intended them to do all along. Though cursed by the people, Cheyn remains at Maele's side, tempering his light with her darkness.

Also worshipped are Arin, the wolf god, master of the hunt and protector of the hunter, Caraeden, goddess of the wild places and great beasts, and Iana, Caraeden's sister and goddess of the moon and protector of unicorns.

Polygamy and bisexuality is fairly common on Ashael, with 37% of the population married to a spouse of each gender. Each sex is allowed to have to have one husband and one wife, legally, although this can be gotten around by 'chaining', or having several men and women marry to form a chain - M-M-F-F-M-M-F-F- as long as each person is only married to one man and one woman.

The village in which my story takes place is called Traxen, on the south coast of Karvael. It's a small fishing village with a few farms in the hills and several local lords with vineyards and manors nearby. Overlooking the village is Traxen Peak, where Lord Naeven Sactaren has his castle. Sactaren is Traxen's resident mage. Hated and feared by almost everyone, Sactaren lives a reclusive life, bartering his services in return to favors and promises.

Lark is a slave who becomes Sactaren's property. Bought to be the mage's assistant, Lark tends the magic shop and helps Sactaren with spells, while fighting to overcome an horrific past that has left him scarred, both physically and emotionally. As Lark and Sactaren are drawn together by a mutual attraction, will their pasts keep them apart, or will they find the healing each one needs, in the arms of the other?

Lol, that's longer than I thought I would be. And I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something. Oh, well, it's already more than anyone wants to read, lol.

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