'Pons and Wielders, a world of Battle!

The Manifesto games and their stories revolve around a central concept known as 'Pons, but what does this seemingly nonsensical term even mean?

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'Pons are historically recent to the world of Manifesto, as they are a phenomena brought on by The Breaking, and are an omnipresent form of life in the Manifesto Universe. 

 

The Breaking was the mysterious calamity which, over the course of 200 days, revoked all humanity from the earth and collapsed the higher planes of existence away into this one to take their place.  It caused the mundane and familiar world the humans occupied to be forever lost.  This twisted the laws of reality leaving behind a flawed image of both planes existing as one, not quite resembling either of the original two enough in one direction or another.  It was a painful mangle of two foreign worlds, and no mortal reborn into this world would retain much memory.

 

It was this circumstance of the planes of existence mis-matching one another that bore the 'Pons of Manifesto into existence. When the two planes fused the souls of every living thing on one plane were ripped from their bodies and thrust upon the lands of the other.  Orphaned souls had their own physical forms destroyed when their plane of existence collapsed and so every living thing from the higher planes had to find a human body to inhabit when the breaking began.  Tragically, the higher planes of existence actually had more total landmass than that of the humans and thusly, there were more mortal souls than there were bodies for them to inhabit.  When the realization hit and these lost souls were running out of time before the breaking had concluded they had no choice, and sequestered themselves into inanimate objects.  These "soulful items" were the first 'Pons.  

 

Without a mortal body to express themselves these 'Pons are forcibly dormant until acted upon by a soul with an actual body.  When a 'Pon is touched by such a mortal the two souls enter a conversation as if they were two whole beings seeing eye-to-eye.  'Pons are able to express themselves within mind and heart in this way, and so the two forms of life are able to communicate.  When a true mortal interacts with a 'Pon in this way they are capable of a process known as "wielding" in which they allow the soul of the 'Pon to inhabit their body, offering only guidance as they surrender complete control of their physical form so that it may express itself.  In giving up their body to the 'Pon the mortal is gifted in turn with the strength and life-force of the 'Pons soul made manifest, while wielding any harm that would befall the mortal body instead saps the energy from the 'Pon required to keep going.  What would be fatal to the wielder only causes the 'Pon to become damaged and eventually break, the objects that 'Pons inhabit are crucially able to be repaired where the body of a mortal is gone forever after suffering a fatal blow. When a 'Pon expresses itself once given a body the expressions are never vocal.  While they may speak within a mortal's thoughts before wielding, they truly yearn for the realm of the physical.  Each thought and wish of a 'Pon is assigned to the creation of certain energies or techniques of movement, a whole thought is hashed out in a coordinated show of force.  This means that if two 'Pons wish to talk with each other for any reason, or if a mortal being wishes to speak directly with a 'Pon that another person is holding, the two are forced to clash physical movements together for any information to be shared.  

 

This immediately changed the landscapes of both War and Peace in the Manifesto World.  While the denizens of this world were free as they ever were to take up the old arms of war and go on the attack the old fashioned way, why do this  when you could have a 'Pon protecting you from death?  Conversely, plenty of peaceful negotiation and laying out of laws was done vocally between two true mortals, but why exclude the 'Pons of a nation from such a conversation?

 

Gone are the days where the balance of safety and violence dictating the flow of history, now the world spoke in shades of gray between these ideals.  This nebulous concept of clashing forces whether in the best or worst of times became known simply as "Battle", the conversation between two 'Pons and their Wielders.  It wasn’t long before Battle became entwined with all the cultures of the Manifesto world, and it's Battle that lies at the heart of the Manifesto series of games! 

 

Thusly the Breaking bore forth the two forms of mortal life, the Wielders, and the 'Pons and it's their intermingling that informs every aspect of this new world, the world of MANIFESTO!