The Setting:

Ghost Perch Ranch: Volume 1 mostly takes place within the confines of an independently owned animal ranch in isolated post-collapse Oklahoma, south-west of the ruined city of Tulsa. Sheltered by its powerful patriarch and his weapon relic, Ghost Perch Ranch harbors a large extended family, as well as a rotating body of contracted laborers.

The Characters:

Clan Zugravescu: The narrator Todd, and his mother Osberh “Osbie”. Like the other matriarchs of the ranch, Osberh is a survivor of the apocalypse, and a refugee of her fallen country. Todd is... well by now you should know Todd. Raised by too many books, and trapped by the world he’s born into. We don’t know what’s happened to him between the events of the narrative and the present, but we know he’s older, he’s estranged from Ghost Perch, and he’s learned a great deal more about the occult.

Clan Hektor: Straddling the boundary between middle-school chemistry, home-ec, pool lifeguard first-aid, new-age mysticism, and invader magic, Anne Hektor is an alchemist and sorcerer of mediocre talent. She has three children: Priscilla, Cooper, and Ashli. All of her children appear to have been deeply impacted by some kind of oracular, psychic trauma, though the story has yet to go into details.

Clan Jeminee: Mabel Jeminee and her two daughters: Saleena and Ursula. Ursula is Todd’s closest cousin in age. Our first introduction to a human character with a transmuted bloodline. She looks up to her cousin in basically the same way Todd looks up to Ashli.

Clan Kim: Aunt Seung-Hee and her daughter Su-Hope. Seung-Hee Kim is a prolific gardener, and the last practitioner of pre-invasion religion at Ghost Perch.

Vaunda Greene: The local priestess of the cult of Diana. She may be irreverent, but she’s also the primary ritualist of the local cult. More dangerous than she lets on.

Rahit Sadiqi: The second in command at the ranch, titled: “First Hand”. Rahit manages the day-to-day operations of the ranch at large, as well as serves as a surrogate father figure to the kids. As the only other figure on the Ranch who both owns his own fully manifested gun, and horse, he is equal only to Mister Quade Walton.

The Mister: Quade Walton is owner of one of the last few remaining functional firearms on Earth. He rules over the property of Ghost Perch Ranch, and defends it against both the earthly and unearthly dangers outside its borders.

The Hands: A collection of men who work the grounds of the Ranch as employees. With few other options, without land of their own, or the power to defend it, they reluctantly hope to make their fortunes in service of the Mister.

The [In]’vasion

An incursion of otherworldly, supernatural entities onto earth. Absolutely standard syspocalyptic fare. It was bad, bad in all the obvious ways, and bad in a lot of ways which are confusing and impossible.

Most national governments have collapsed. The planet is bigger than it used to be, and the stars are closer than they ought to be. Meanwhile, the continental United States have been divided into a patchwork of competing and isolated cultures, not all of which are human.

Since the breakdowns in communication, the Freeholds don’t know how the war ended, only that the invasion appears to have failed, but at great cost. Even worse, the foot-soldiers of the conquest appear to have been left stranded on Earth.

Human Magic: The Twelve-that-were

The Laws of Science were not as incontrovertible as we though they were. There’s still a great deal of confusion about what happened, but as humankind understands it, there were twelve very real(?) people(?) who led the fight against the invaders. Respect for these figures has turned into a cult, though it has yet to formalize into a structured religion, and is more a collection of superstitions.

At this time in the story, Ghost Perch does not actually know who all the Twelve are or were. They are identified instead by the unusual events which seem to occur with their deaths: referred to globally as The Calamities.

The Lady: Identified by the name of the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana is the patron of the Freeholds. One of the few of the Twelve to be seen in the flesh by a global audience, she fought a dragon in the city of St Louis early in the invasion (to the point of mutual destruction). Her death caused a chain reaction which reversed the domestication of farm animals and pets, and is referred to as the Second Calamity. She left behind an arsenal of guns, which possess the power to tame animals again.

Forge: Unknown at this time of the story. But Forge’s death is understood to be the First Calamity: a breakdown in the physical laws which allow for the internal combustion engine to work. The breakdown of fuel motors brought 21st century civilization to the edge of collapse, and left the world vulnerable to the invaders.

The Witch: Still not well known. But deeply important to Todd and Ashli. Briefly governed human reproduction and childbirth until her death. Her Calamity is referred to as “The Witch’s Cry”, but its effects continue to be uncertain as the event occurred in the later part of the invasion. At this point in the story, Ashli has accepted the Witch as a patron, and is developing her early [anti-skills].

Minerva: Todd has chosen to turn away from Diana and devote himself to a very different figure of the Twelve. Learning about Minerva, who she used to be, and who she is capable of becoming, is a central part of Todd’s story. Source of The Fourth Calamity.

The Mother: Worshiped at Ghost Perch as the patron of pregnancy, birth, and child-rearing. Juno's death resulted in the Stillbirth Tide. The Third Calamity is understood to have been one of the few which was briefly reversed: by intervention of The Witch, and then a suspected unknown third figure afterwards. Todd harbors suspicions that she may have a connection to the horned-men: one of the factions of the invaders.

Commerce: We only know him so far from his appearance in Osberh’s account of the invasion. One of the oldest and most powerful of the twelve. Unknown which calamity he is associated with, but generally believed to be the last.

The Tyrant: Hated, feared. The Tyrant appeared on television and the internet to inspire hope during the invasion, until a particular event changed her reputation for the worse. Loathed by the Freeholds, and apparently by Diana.

Eulogy: The musician of the underworld. Little is know about him, except that his (Fifth) Calamity coincides with the end of The Dirge, and the opening of Hell.

Mutation: Unknown. Proposed to have briefly supplanted The Witch. Associated with The Stilling, the global end of natural human fertility. Yes. The Earth is currently in "Children of Men" territory. Calamity number uncertain. One of the last.

Hell: Wait, this isn't an overly florid Todd metaphor?

Nope. We haven't talked about this yet. Ashli's "I've seen a dude 300 years dead" offhand remark? Yea. We'll meet him eventually.

Human Magic: Blessings of Natural Law

Each of the Twelve left behind relics: physical items which appear to restore the scientific principles which broke in the Calamities. As such, they’re to be understood almost as anti-magic. But since the Twelve are broken, none of the anti-magic works quite right. This leads to the bizarre effects of The Blessings.

See: The guns of the freeholds. The motors of the Chromañeros. The weaving of the Covens of St Lawrence. The secrets of the Burbans.

Juice: The colors of the invaders

The invaders are full-on magic. It’s not a secret. The issue is that magic doesn’t quite work the way we expect it to operate, and this has made it difficult for humankind to categorize and understand.

The pure elements of invader magic are: Refraction of Heaven, Reflection of Marshes, Illumination of Fire, Incitement of Thunder, Vitality of Wind, Depth of Water, Purity of Mountain, Fertility of Earth. Is that a ripoff of the bagua? Yes. Absolutely.

While these categories sound like simple analogues of familiar elements, they have resisted human categorization for years because they absolutely do not function the way we expect them to (we haven’t gotten there yet). So far, we see that the Freeholds identify the eight elements by colors. These color associations come from the photo-electric distortions which appeared when invader magic was recorded by pre-invasion video equipment.

At this point in the story, and depending on the speaker, they may be referred to as: Colorless/White, Red/Cinnabar, Orange/Fire, Yellow/[E]’lectric, Green, Cyan/Teal/Water/Wet, Blue, Indigo/Purple

The Argument: Voices from beyond.

Human beings do not have a “System”. But that’s because the System broke. Instead of blue boxes, people are getting dumped on with raw data into their subconscious. Unformatted, incomplete, unfiltered, psychoactive data are flowing through the ambient magic.

The kids are learning to read System data the way that characters from The Matrix learn to intuit the iconic green code text we see in the films.

Mana: It’s Maw-na, not Man-uh

Unlike its video game homonym, mana does not deplete and regenerate. It is not a disposable resource, but a discrete quantity which is more akin to its Polynesian origin. However, it is also fragile. Your mana is a part of yourself, and though we haven’t scratched the surface of what it can do yet, we have already seen that it can break when pushed too far.

Nothing’s Happened Yet: What is the plot here?

The world ended, a critical employee got into a swordfight with a dingo and then quit, a guy in a business suit got into a briefcase fight with a super-villain, unknown factions are spying on the ranch from the sky, the MC picked a custom class and received his level 1 skill, the Mister murdered a dude, and the understaffed Ranch has been strained to the breaking point. Now it’s under attack in its moment of weakness.

What’s Todd’s goal?

Todd is trapped in the powerless space that every young man goes through. He’s old enough to want to take control of his own life, but he’s too young to do so. He’s caught in between childhood and adulthood, with his future ahead of him, but unable to grasp it yet.