Sculpt “matter” from “wishes,” and a new life is imagenated into being: From the trembling of the first biological macromolecule to the bellowing of industrial-scale synthesized life clusters, artificial life ceased to be a problem long before the First Great Propsperity. Yet the art of imagenesis in Planarcadia has left an open question mark on the very frontier of life sciences.
If you're a first-time visitor to Planarcadia, prepare to have your mind blown. It feels like a story come to life, where wispae bounce around, mechatrons march by, and thundercoils coil atop sky-high towers. Here, on soil blessed by the Elation, the collective consciousness of joy, sorrow, folklore, pop culture, and all our deepest fears and desires congeals into “Wishpower,” giving birth to creations known as “imagenae.”
If you're surprised enough, it might even manifest as an imagenae to greet you. Will it be a Sneezebug, a Funhouse Mirror, or a Nosewalker? Who knows!
Throughout its long history, a social system coexisting with imagenesis was established in Planarcadia, giving rise to the profession of “artists,” those who use their brushes to give form to the imagenae and specialize in creation. Artists trace the art of imagenesis back to the artist “Graphia,” but the history of imagenesis itself stretches back much further. As far back as the era when Aha raised Phantasmoon over Ahatopia, the earliest imagenated lifeforoms wandered the lands touched by its moonlight.
Unlike genetic editing or inorganic algorithms, imagenesis is akin to Yaoshi sprinkling mud with willow branches to create life out of thin air, a phenomenon that leaves countless scholars baffled. The Intelligentsia Guild chalks it up as “a localized anomaly caused by the Path energy of Elation,” but the residents of Planarcadia prefer a more down-to-earth explanation: Planarcadia has long learned to coexist with fantasy. In other words, this was a city built on stories from the very beginning.