Brighthaven

Brighthaven (or just Haven) is a world of magic, no one's sure if it's in a different dimension or on a different planet in the same dimension as Earth (depends on who you ask). The land is rich with magic and every thing both living and non living is saturated in it. As such one can find all of the environments one can on earth (such as forests and deserts) but there are also unique environments due to magic. The actual flora and fauna does differ by quite a bit although you can find some species you'd find on earth also, mostly domesticated that was brought over by human mages.

During the time of Asteria; Haven is a thriving modernish world (they have some technology we don't have and some technology we do have (tools of war mostly) cannot be found there.) During young Serendipity's stories (about a century before Asteria's birth) it's more mid-1900s tech wise. It should be noted that technology is much more green there, both due to some beings having a much stronger ties to nature and also due to this little spell that hangs over everyone's head. No one wants to be the person to see if manufacturing that causes a lot of pollution would activate the curse.

Authors Note: This world is the combination of my original writing project, called The Legend of Serendipity, and the more recent story of Astraea and Samuel. As such it's currently going through quite the revision, which is done as I have time and brainpower. This space will host character and worldbuilding notes, as well as any scenes/short stories as I'm happy enough to share them. I've come to realize that I do not have it in me to write a novel and honestly I really don't enjoy it.

Author's Note: this is a rough history of the world overall. While most of this very old (several thousand years ago) the fallout still plays a major role in the world today and frankly when you have races that can live for centuries or even millennia (not many but there are a couple) that length of time isn't as long ago.

Before Migration: The original races (marked on their species sheet) were pretty peaceful (mostly due to them preferring different environments) and not much is known. This is due to how long ago this was, most of these beings having an oral tradition, and due to the losses from the Mage wars.

The Migration: this was a time of a couple centuries where magic beings (including magic welding humans) fled earth (and possibly a few other worlds) due to a forgotten catastrophe. Fighting started pretty much immediately, over resources mostly, but there were other reasons to. The human mages were especially aggressive during this time, which is why this time is also called the Mage Wars.

The Mage Wars: Lasted for several centuries and Magic from both the natives and the immigrants/colonists caused massive destruction, nearly destroying the world. Finally the Daughters of the Stars decided enough was enough. No one except the Daughters (who aren't saying) know if they are natives or more migrants but either way they used the power of the sun (the only time they were ever known to do this) to bind everyone to the world, making it so that if they ever used magic in such a destructive way again the spells would blow back on the castors and their people... killing them all. This spell was controversial to say the least but accepted after the Daughters realized that the spell had changed them so that they were no longer able to reproduce unless they found a male bondmate. Detractors hoped that this would thin the blood of the Daughters of the Stars but, so far, this hasn't happened.

The Compact: the various groups (helped by the fact that the war took quite a toll) managed to find and rebuild their homes. The groups still fought amongst themselves but it was nothing like the wars of before. Over time they created an international group called the International Compact for Peace, or the Compact for short, which includes laws that all member countries must follow. Membership was slow but by Serendipity's time all large nations are members and a vast majority of smaller nations and independent groups are also members.

The Vesla arrive: a handful of centuries after the Mage Wars a new people appeared. They claimed to be fleeing slavers from another world and just wanted a safe place to live. Things were pretty peaceful around this time so everyone was worried that these newcomers (clearly magical and not bound by the same spell everyone else was) could destroy them all. Once they learned of this, however, the Guide Star (the leader of the Vesla who brought them) offered to bind herself and her people to the same compact and to freely share the works of their bodies and minds with all in thanks. The binding was done and the Vesla chose a remote, hard to get to, and not very fertile coastline and made their home there.

The Building of the Great Library: 1000 years before Serendipity's story the Vesla had built up their home into a thriving fishing and trading port. By this time they had managed to both share their own wisdom with those around them and collect the wisdom of others. They decided to build a library for their collection, one that anyone could visit. The only rule being is that if any members of a group wanted to use this library they had to also contribute to it. This did have some pushback by some of the more secretive groups but the Daughters of the Stars saw the wisdom and came down as a large group, each one holding a chest that contained translated books of their mythology, science, magic, and even their ballads and stories. The queen at the time said that while her people did keep their language secret from outsiders they were willing to offer everything else to this cause. The Leader of the Vesla accepted these works and assured everyone that while they had to contribute something they didn't have to contribute everything. With that said, some groups, to this day, do not use the Great Library for this reason.

Current Day: things are mostly peaceful, although there is a great debate among some groups of Earth immigrants about returning to their original home. The portals have been opened for close to 50 years now and some groups have even built lives on Earthside. To keep Haven secret though there have been several international laws set in place regarding secrecy and the use of magic on Earth.