Welcome to Astria !
The aforementioned omniscient god made me his pen-holder. And since he has some free time on his plate, he chose to become an improvised guide to make you discover his planet. I ask of you some indulgence if his godly obligations catch up with him. After all, he wouln’t need my help if he had no flaws.
- Ysmahel…
Gosh! He monitors me even here. Well, since I cannot say anything more, I’ll let him introduce himself.
Dear reader, humans are out of fashion. Welcome in a society of water, rock and fire, welcome in a world where cities are born, where revolution is coming and the Day is lazy. Welcome on Astria!
The Personal Diary of an Omniscient God is an infinity crucible of stories, in an immensily rich and coherent world: society, religions, creatures, geography,… Everything if perfectly original, and perfectly put together.
Univers
Fantasy
Original species
Matriarchal society
Coherence
Release date : Ju 2022
Size : 14x21cm
Infinite crucible of stories
Very rich visual possibilities
Adrien Mangold was born in 1990 in Picardy, in a hobbit’s hole. For his eleven’s birthday, his father has the good idea to bring him to the movies to see The Lord of the Rings. And from there, no turning back: Adrien falls in the “imaginary worlds” like you can fall in magic potion. He struggles to wait to finish his stories before creating his own universe. And it is said this one will navigate between sci-fi and fantasy… but without any boundaries!
As the book has “sandbox of stories” side, the named characters avec introduced in the synopsis. You’ll find here the visual inspirations of the writer for the elemental races.
In order to make the reader discover its universe, Astria picks up without thinking a cartographe, an inventor, a schoolgirl and a locksmith around the world. These happy chosen one having nothing out of the ordinary, he decides to make things more exciting: he gives himself the objective to have them in a same place at the same time before the end of the journal.
Working both for this happy free-time and his more and more insisting divine obligations, Astria will follow many elementals which will offer both adventurous stories and slices of live to explore his world.
A carpenter has almost finished her professionnal journeyship around Astria to get her diploma. However, the queen’s project will prevent her to finish: every fire being is indeed invited to gather for an extraordinary pilgrimage to discover… the Night! This journey will be for here the occasion to accept herself and her choices which makes her be seen as a marginal in the society: a female carpenter, why not, but a female who choose to become a guard? This is shameful! But when she begins to save lives, things might change.
A jeweler lost his fiancee to an incurable disease. Religious have taken her away just before she died by making her believe in an impossible cure. Consumed by hate, he attacks one of them in his village. The sanctions will bring him to travel all around Astria, to be enlisted to shake the leaders of the world, until he understands the darkness in others won’t cure his loneliness.
A border guard, failing in her duties, is cast away from her brotherhood. As a last chance, she becomes the bodyguard of a worldwide-known singer. She travels with her in the cities where she sings, and reconstructs herself along the journey, until she finds peace of earth when she meets a jeweler.
A wandering child bears his survival thanks to his friendship with a savage predator, but mainly to the discreet help of Astria himself. He lives day after day, with no goal nor specific future. Until the god needs someone smaller than him to help a schoolgirl he grew attached to.
A priest wanders on Astria to announce the coming of a new queen and gather as much volunteers as possible for a “night march”. Faithful to his cult and his queen, he becomes the witness of threats to both of them. Along his travels, and because of the sumptuous buildings he builds to preach thanks to an innate mastery of a certain king of magic, the planet herself becomes jealous of his art, to finish by giving birth to a city in this image.
And while all of this happens, Astria discovers the limits of his omniscience, and that by trying to make four anonyms meets, he might well lose a whole world.
A Personal Diary of an Omniscient God offers a fantasy outside the usual tropes, and wants to bring as much amazement as possible. No more castle, poisoned daggers and fireballs, we discover here a world without orcs, elves… nor humans!
Astria is a planet created and ruled by the god of the same name. Everything has been hand-made. Three continents for three species (fire, rock and water elementals). The demographics are directly handled by Astria. The social and educative systems are planned outside the usual family as we know out. Procreation, rather than creation a newborn, makes the environment change. The sun stays still, and forces the population to follow it on the rare occasions he moves… The planet has in substance “two faces” symmetrically build by the population: one of Night, one of Day, and the people migrate when the sun changes face.
Astria willingly keeps the society preindustrial. The cleverest inventors always disappear mysteriously. Everything is then build upon arts and crafts in a era which could evoke our own Renaissance times. Elementals choose a profession, learn from a master, and belong to workshop of even guilds. They make great pilgrimages, be it a full visit of the planet (much smaller than Earth) to perfect their craftmanship, or for the migrations needed to follow the sun. These migrations are the perfect times to exchange knowledge and culture, and the god often uses these moments as key events for his society, for example when he wants to have a new royal couple.
During this time, on the dark side of the planet, some ill-intentioned ones choose to stay in the Night to plunder abandoned cities, and, if they survive to the crazy dangers of the Night, they can become rich as in their wildest dreams.
On each side of the planet, you can find the main populations of humanoid elementals, but there is also many giant or wild creatures, with specificities depending on the face they live on.
The society is a matriarchal one, where female handle education and ruling of the world, and the male are artisans and soldiers.
The book
Gallery
Characters
Summary
References
Universe