PANOPTICAT

PANOPTICAT follows Aurelie Spellmire, adult catskin and closeted mage, as she strives to make meaning of her life and her abilities in a socialist-lite society where magic is feared and prohibited. But the long specter of history haunts the present unseen, a catalyst of rebirth for ages thought dead. Aurelie and her friends must soon manifest their potential, be it magical, sexual, professional, or something wholly new…

Content is: furry, sexually explicit, extremely LGBTQ, and mostly nonviolent

Creative inspirations: Star Trek, Mob Psycho 100, Tuca and Bertie, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

World

The dragons were the first to develop magic, millennia ago. To the era's feudal nation-states, they sold their services: the application of transformational magic to the entire land's populace, a -skin gifting humans the qualities of a regionally-specific group of animals. The gift was more valuable than the dragons realized—around the continent, newly anthropomorphic citizens developed magic of their own, and over the course of several centuries they formed schools of wizardry and covens of witches, guilds and armies to rival mundane governments. The dragons demanded tithes, and the feudal order demanded an end to magic; soon, the Final Wizard War ravaged the continent, on a scale previously unimaginable.

When the dust settled, a raging field of chaotic geist, the spiritual fuel for magic, had left the draconic homeland uninhabitable, and magic use was severely curtailed anywhere it wasn't banned outright. Rumors abounded of secret inquisitors stamping out the remnants of the world's mages in those dark days.

The High Magic Era gave way to the Era of Reason. Nations rebuilt and, in time, developed scientific methods to replicate the comforts and conveniences that only a small, privileged minority had previously enjoyed. Almost a millennium into the current Era, in the country to which a certain catskin would soon be born, a workers' revolution defeated the hegemonic forces of free-marketism, replacing a network of plutocrats with worker-led democratic coalitions, and replacing austerity with radical social programs. The world stands in wait to see what becomes of this new approach, unsuspecting of the relevance this history would yet hold…

Characters

Aurelie Spellmire is a tall tabby catskin, bicolor and bisexual, with a fascination for magic, wizard era history, and little else. She grew up in a then-new social nursery, earned a Mechanical Engineering degree, and now lives in public housing, subsisting on basic income. She has a hedonistic impulse and a mercurial attitude, but cares deeply for her friends, especially those she met through tabletop games at Cleome's. Her geistzauber is Fenestra, a rare and nuanced spell that opens a window between two locations.

Olivia Conigliais a scrappy rabbitskin, Aurelie’s best and earliest friend from their social nursery days. They bonded when Olivia’s desire to transition met Aurelie’s budding attraction to the arcane. Olivia attended trade school to become an auto mechanic, and now makes up the bulk of the rent for the public housing flat she shares with Aurelie. Though their friends understand them as a package deal, their relationship remains (regrettably, to Olivia) platonic. She also likes to hit the gym with Lucas.

Cleome Sharpis an antlionskin using he/they. After breaking into the big leagues as a fantasy author, their federal stipend increased, permitting a more lavish lifestyle by the new era’s standards. Around two years ago, they put out an anonymous offer to host a tabletop RPG campaign. Aurelie brought along Olivia (who she felt needed more social outlets), Naomi allocated time from her busy schedule, Art and Lucas were already enthusiasts of the hobby, and Elaine found it a nice reprieve from stifling home life. Cleome is a loquacious ideologue of the communist persuasion, with a refined aesthetic taste and a penchant for cooking.

More characters to come...