Ages of Autumn

This is the central hub for a collection of one-shots and branches set in a single fictional world, Autumn. These tales can be read in effectively any order, and require no introduction. If you want to leap right in, go ahead.

Otherwise, a short primer is printed below.

Table of Contents
I - (Male God) walking out of the endless wilderness.
I - A (very bottomheavy) adventuring party sets out to investigate.
I - An (Alpha Stamen Goddess) arrives to enjoy herself!
III - (Shy Stamen) takes command as an (Imperial) admiral!
III - (Cute Male) superweapon helps start the post-war baby boom.
IV - (Alpha Stamen) meets a cute nerdy girl on the beach.
IV - (Lazy Alpha Stamen Student) seeks meaning and mating.
IV - Tuning in to a thrilling and sexy (wrestling) promotion!
V - (Lesbian Couple) goes to their (Cute Male) friend for help.
V - (Powerful, roguish Stamen) saves a (girly, gyaru cat-boy) from imprisonment and ransom!
V - A (menagerie of bar regulars) discuss old mysteries over a card game.
VI - A (cute space captain), his sister, and their robot get stuck together.

Our world gave us life, and we called it Autumn.

Most places cannot support life. Most life doesn't develop intelligence. Few intelligent races reach the stars. Of these elect, none came up together the way we did, upon the same homeworld. In a galaxy of four hundred billion suns, we are, to the best of our knowledge, unique.

That the Ten Tribes of Autumn did not wipe each other out, but learned to work together, fight together, and love each other, is a miracle unequaled in the heavens. Here is something to believe in. We are a beacon to show the other races the way forward.

Our advance is the result of an unbroken chain stretching back to the creation of the universe. Our potential is limitless while we are united, and nothing can stand in our way. In time, even itself will fall by the wayside, forgotten. We will be, each of us, a nation.

Together, towards the stars!

The Ten Tribes of Autumn once lived together in the cities, in the time of legends.

After casting out the gods, we mortals focused on our differences, living apart, settling the world, and competing for resources. Yet compared to all life, the Tribes are strikingly similar. We are all what one may call humanoid, following a form optimized for surviving and thriving on this temperate terrestrial world.

Some survived longer than others. Shorter-lived races experienced each second of their flicker lives more vividly, and drove to invent and explore. The flickers, namely nekomata, usagi, humans, naga, and infernals, trailblazed. Another way to say it is whenever there was a dangerous job, the flickers went first. Less to lose, right? Elder races, the light and dark elves, celestials, kitsune, and drakken, conversely rose to leadership in Autumnal society. Their longer lifespans allowed for vast knowledge and skillsets within a single person.

They lived so much of history, and kept it alive, but their families accumulated many powerful branches and hoarded great ancestral wealth. The differences in lifespan and class have driven conflict since time immemorial.

It’s not so simple, though. Even before we ascended our physical forms to live in the cloud, the miracle of being able to have children showed even the earliest peoples that we could live together. These offspring can inherit traits of both parents, though typically one predominates.

Even so, this capability has long suggested that we are all one species, scientifically speaking.

The knowledge that we are not alone in the universe, and that other, alien races have also manifested largely humanoid forms, compatible with ours in every sense, only fuels suspicion that this is some kind of grand design...

You can rise high in the social sciences just by pointing out that our gender ratios make no sense.

Women, colloquially pistils, outnumbered men, designated archers, by at least five to one. Even accounting for stamen, women with dicks, far outnumbering bowmen, men without them. Some individuals never fit the Quaternary, but it remains a useful starting point even now, when gender is a voluntary condition.

Even a tactical intervention worldship can find love, if they try hard enough.

In any case. If the numbers were reversed, perhaps it would have produced chaos in savage times. However, our races were well able to reproduce themselves and spread across Autumn, even if that meant willing dick owners were working double shifts. There don’t seem to have been many complaints on that front.

Societies formed to protect and worship ‘prime breeders’, especially alpha-class individuals of any gender who manifested strength and virility. Stamen tended to have more testosterone and physical muscle mass then pistils, and the confluence of an alpha stamen was rare, important, and unspeakably powerful.

Religious orders believed that alphas were descended from the living gods, but who can really say? All we know is that alpha traits aren’t heritable. It just happened to some, and they made the best of their circumstances.

Liberators and conquerors, heroes and villains. Alphas have often played pivotal roles in Autumnal history.

There's seven continents on this world, though two are the polar ice caps of Zenith in the north, and Nadir in the south. Life is concentrated in the five middle continents, each a vast world unto itself with climates ranging from scorching to freezing, and affording plentiful temperate land between to support life. Each race has their own climate tolerance and preferences, although this hasn't stopped plenty of warfare over prime life-bearing lands.

From left to right: Taiyeris, Aclend, Crekane, Meislohn, and Auzapari.

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Stories and branches will be added as I feel like making them, sky's the limit with a format like this.

Feedback is an excellent way to reward authors, it really increases motivation. Especially helps to know if you want me to continue a particular branch. If you love Autumn, want to talk about the stories, share inspiration, any of that, feel free to swing by the official Autumnal discord server.

All credit for the cover image goes to the brilliant KEN on pixiv.

Thanks for reading!