"Legends-era" (meta term)

The "Legends era" of the setting of Nephele is a sub-setting of stories that have better technological progress than the "Locusts-era" of stories, and feature social norms close to Earth in the decade of the 2010s. Technology featured as available to the characters of the Legends era can include things like jet liners, cell phones, the internet, and social media. The Legends era has more of a comedy tonal bent than the Locusts era, but this isn't a strict rule. It's just inherently memey to have orcs on tinder. The Translation Rule applies heavily to cultural references in the Legends era.

"Legends-era" is a meta term because characters in universe will not use it. It is strictly for out-of-character convenience, to refer easily to the general time frame that stories can be set in. The "Legends era" post-dates the "Locusts era" by around a hundred years, and major or impactful figures from the Locusts era may be known to Legends era characters as historical figures. The name of the Legends era refers to the Prince of Legends, a heavily culturally dominant figure of this time, in the same way that the Locusts era is named after the Queen of Locusts.

It is common for Princes of the Legends era to not be heroes or royalty, but to be popular celebrities, corporate CEOs, or charismatic political figures. While in the Locusts era, a Prince would earn their Court of followers through their deeds or their blood, Princedom is largely earned in the Locusts era through marketing, media, and publicity efforts. In addition, it is not uncommon for major companies to require devotion to their executive staff as Princes as a condition of employment in their company. Musicians, actors, and internet content creators commonly finding themselves rising to rapid Princedom and only remaining as a Prince for weeks or months before their popularity wanes. In contrast to the Locusts' era tradition of few, extremely strong Princes that consolidate their own power through military force, the Legends era features hundreds of very brief flirtations with Princedom that are gone as soon as they arrive, swept aside by the cycle of perpetual news and changing opinion.

Since the threat that the Queen of Locusts posed from the throne to the wellbeing of the entire planet, very few Princes have been allowed to ascend the Throne Above Thrones to become Monarchs. The world has learned a dire lesson: that a Monarch turning on the planet is extremely difficult to stop. The Blade of Sacrifice is used to enforce the prevention of any new monarchs, who no one trusts to have ultimate power over every resident of the world. Nephele is considered to be in an interregnum, and its years are numbered as such. From a resident born and raised in the Legends era, it is normal to be of the opinion that Monarchs were a brutal remnant of a less enlightened and egalitarian age.

Effort magic and magecraft are no longer in a golden age of brutal and violent innovation, due partially to the lack of constant warfare between Princes competing for the Throne among each other. Mass training of military forces by wealthy nations does not result in physically superpowered individuals, but favors individuals who are good at operating remote drones or who do work such as orchestrating coups and aggressive bot-farms of misinformation. In the civilian sector, it is common for jobs to not train a single person in a broad field, such as a local gunsmith or cobbler, but to outsource many parts of a process to thousands of individuals, each working in minor and extremely specific fields - operating a machine that drills millions of identical stocks, for instance, or managing finances in a mega-company that makes large supplies of shoelaces. In addition, effort-gifts gained outside of a professional field, such as someone who puts long hours of passion into singing even though they do not make money from it, are seen as frivolous. This results in effort gifts being increasingly narrow, specific, and difficult to neatly categorize.

The Legends era features as a major plot event a drama series being made in the Hollywood-esque studios of Port Yanga about the events surrounding the death of the final Monarchs one hundred years previous, as well as contracts made with long-presumed-dead Angels of Eyes by members of the crew. During the making of this series, characters born long after the defeat of Eyes, Locusts, and the menace of the Unearthed return to locations seen in the Locusts-era and see how major surviving figures have changed and how opinions on them have twisted with the passage of time and with changing social norms. This is tied together to the fruition of a long gambit by the King of Eyes to resurrect himself as a being combining the indestructible, world-changing power of a Monarch and the embodied flesh of a Prince.

The golden age is not gone. Golden for who? Golden because of what?

It is waiting, to take back every inch you've struggled for to get away from it. It is waiting for you to forget what was purchased in blood. To forget how bad things used to be, under the shadow of how bad things are right now. It is waiting for you to miss it, and once you do, it will bleed up from the ground, from where it was never really dead.

It can wait a long, long time.