Politics
Governance in Nimbus is overseen by the Shinsei Council (神聖会議), a theocratic technocracy composed of six Elders and one Tenshō (Heavenly Light), a quasi-divine figure elected once every century through a ritual known as The Calling of the Crown. These rulers are seen as conduits of Shinju’s will, believed to interpret divine messages during Kōkai shifts. They wield both spiritual and technological power, acting as gatekeepers for all energy, resources, and knowledge harvested from Shinju.
Ne-no-Mori:
Ne-no-Mori has no unified governance and no systems that are set up are ever seen as legitimate in the eyes of Nimbus. Instead, it is a fragmented mesh of local district coalitions, warlords, syndicates, and survivalist communes. Some districts still cling to ancient decrees from Nimbus, enforced by Envoys — diplomats who are part-priest, part-tax-collector. Others rebel entirely, forming resistance networks such as The Rootborn, who believe in direct communion with Shinju and seek to sever dependency on the Nimbus. Governance here is pragmatic, often built on charisma, fear, or mutual survival.
The Shift
Every 12 hours, Yume transitions between the Seikai (Material Plane) and Kōkai (Dream Realm). These are not symbolic states—reality shifts physically and metaphysically. It is always daytime in Kōkai and night in Seikai
Night:
The city of Yume is thousands of years old and home to billions, it is, quite literally, layers of city stacked over and over again for millenia as the waters of the world slowly rise. At night, the city is usually bathed in neon lights that reflect of frequent rains and snow. Ne-no-Mori is most active during this part of Yume’s cycle: factories run, transit flows, and people plug into the System via neural jacks or fiber-tendril terminals. However, reality is also harsher, pollution threatens everyone, rain floods the city’s underlevels, and it’s a hive of human activity—good and bad.
Day: In Kōkai, the world enters a state of transformation. Technology operates on different principles: data becomes light, the world is flooded with magical energy, stored within the World Tree, life blooms in minutes—plant life of every kind rushes to cover the city in bark and leaf and flower.
In Nimbus, Kōkai is seen as divine illumination. In Ne-no-Mori, it’s a time of strange miracles and dangers. Many sleep away the daytime to avoid the oddities and possible harm, societally it is seen as odd to go out during the day, only the strange, the very poor, or the morally dubious would need to be out then.
During it’s time in Kōkai, people on Yume gain functional access to the planet they orbit, Leviathan, as will asll people who gain access to The Dream Realm and are willing to make such journeys. Due to the stories of colossi, giants, and other massive creatures, it is clear that at least some people have made the trip either to Leviathan and back, or directly to Yume from other worlds.
Life and Technology
In Nimbus:
Life is pristine and ritualized. Automation handles most manual labor, freeing citizens for study, devotion, and aesthetics. Citizens wear flowing technosilks that shift color based on biometric mood data. Artificial light grows food in suspended orchards and nutrient clouds. Everyone is connected to private nodes of the Soular-array, a network of soul-attuned Artificial Intelligences that offer companionship, moral guidance, and schedule tracking—like a spiritual therapist and digital assistant in one.
In Ne-no-Mori:
Ne-no-Mori is a glowing sprawl of scrap towers, jungle-wired streets, and neon-lit canals. Technology is scavenged, fused, and homegrown. Bioluminescent myco-farms feed entire districts. Cybernetic implants are often DIY, powered by pirated energy from the light cables above. People use toji-cards, plastic prisms encoded with moving light images, as ID or currency. Daily life is a constant hustle: fixing machines, warding off syndicates, trading dreams, and surviving the floods of Winter. And that is just those that are out and about, many, maybe most, simply plug straight into the System, spending years at a time in complete solitude, completely avoiding the harsh outside world for the digital one.