A (spoiler-free) visual and textual reference for the cultures, peoples, and languages of the Tidecaller world. All text is canon; all images are just for reference--trust your own imagination! All images created with MidJourney, under common use license. Read on to explore the Jeian Theracants, Ujeian Monks, Daraa, Bamani, and Seilam Deul peoples.

Jeian Theracants

Ujeian Monks

Seilam Deul

Daraa People

Bamani

Maps

Cover Illustrations

First three books by Mateusz Michalski; fourth by J Caleb Designs.

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A (spoiler-free) visual and textual reference for the cultures, peoples, and languages of the Academy of Cards world. All text is canon; all images are just for reference--trust your own imagination! Images created with Wonderdraft and MidJourney, under common use license.

Maps

Religion

Like the seven nations and islands of the known world, the commonly held worship of Ula is, at its heart, a blend of many beliefs and practices. Often referred to as the Nine Faces of Ula, it is founded around the idea that God—named here for the traditional Enkaji deity Ula—is multi-faceted, and individual people need their own relationships to divinity to have an authentic relationship to it. Many historians posit that Ganjin, during the time of unification after his defeat of the dragons, intentionally included the main deities of each island to further unite what had been distinct and warring islands under one religion as well as government and academic system.

Potential Covers

As the book isn't out yet, I've had some fun mocking up covers that have something to do with the story. None are final, or likely will any even be part of the final cover--but they're kind of fun. 

1

Lito flowed through the stances of novice form, bare feet crunching black sand.

“Breathe the wave like it’s your breath,” he chanted, arms swinging in arcs. “Feel the wave like it’s your skin.”

To his right the ocean roared, a massive wave breaking against hidden shoals. “Hear the wave like it’s your voice,” he recited, trying to call his uncle’s stern voice into his mind. “Taste it like it’s your tongue.”

He held a card in one hand as he moved. It was blank, but that was the whole point. He needed to fill it with one of these waves. With the essence of the waves.

“See it like it’s your eyes,” he said, pulling a worn paintbrush from his leather kit, footsteps in perfect rhythm. He dipped it in the surf, then rubbed it against his inkstone. “Bond it like it’s your blood.”

Lito put ink to page, novice form complete, letting his hands take over. This was the easy part—painting had always come naturally.

It was getting the painting to come alive part that felt hard.

He exhaled, seeing the wave take shape on the card. Not today. Feel the water like it’s your skin. His brush cut across the rough paper, bluish-black strokes tracing the curl of the incoming breaker, ink bleeding down the crest.

Something tingled, like a moth brushing his wrist, and Lito caught his breath. This was it. Finally. He painted faster, quick lines tracing energy roiling up the long spine of the wave, shading in the swelling trough as the actual wave broke and the next formed behind the shoals. That was okay—he wasn’t here to paint a singular wave. He was here to catch the essence of every wave that broke on this beach. To become their mage. Their master.

Sparks tingled up his arm, like blood through a numb limb. Taste it like it’s your tongue. See it like it’s your eyes. Yes. It was happening.

He ran his brush once over the horizon, tying the illustration together, hardly seeing what he was doing as he grasped for that connection inside.

“Bond it,” he whispered, sparks curling up his neck, “like it is your blood.”

He dropped the brush and looked up, pulling through the bond. Demanding the wave become his own.

The tingle faded. The wave broke. And whatever that spark had been, that touch of the power he so desperately needed, it disappeared.

Like it always did.

“Fuck,” Lito muttered, scowling at the card in his hand. Still just a painting, even after everything he’d done. A beautiful, useless painting, like he’d been making since his youth in the palace. If he could just bond something, bond one tiny wave, he would secure his place as a mage at this academy.

If he couldn’t, he’d lose the last three years of work, not to mention the political amnesty that kept him alive.

And with it, his last chance to go home.

“No,” he whispered, rejecting the fears like he had so many times. Centering his breath. Renewing his intention. He let the card fall to the sand, the fifth in a string behind him on the beach. Uncle Bazho—Master Bazho, technically—had recommended this exercise, to focus him internally. His limbs were exhausted from practicing all morning in the deep sand, but he set his feet again, not ready to give up. Never ready. “Hear the wave like it’s your voice,” he said, replacing his brush and checking the cardstock in his kit. “Taste it like it’s—”

Tinkling laughter cut through the roar of surf, and he slowed. It wasn’t unusual for other students to be out here—a lot of cardsmiths tried to capture the island’s famous breakers—but he knew that laugh.

His stomach twisted. Saika.

He turned and saw her stumble past the edge of the forest, dark hair a cloud around her face, pulling someone along by the wrist. One of her girl-friends, maybe? Some had come as modesty chaperones on his string of dates with Saika, though she ran through friends so quickly he wouldn’t be surprised if—

A grinning boy stumbled out after her, face oiled and handsome, hand caught in hers.

Nope. Not a friend. The knot in his stomach tightened. It’d been two months since Saika had been anything more than a friend to him, either—two months since they’d even talked, really. But still.

Saika saw him a moment later. “Lito,” she said, some of the humor dropping from her voice. “What are you doing out here?”

The boy’s grin just widened. “Painting his pretty pictures, probably. Bond anything yet, Lito?” he called, as if Lito were too far away to hear the first part. As if he didn’t already know the whole school laughed at him because, for all his skill at painting, he couldn’t do what most students managed in their first semester.

So much potential, they had said in the beginning. So little skill, they added now.

“Close,” he said, owning the insult like he had learned to, living under five older brothers. “Saika. Good to see you.”

“Totally,” she said. “You know Jiime?” She flashed a half-smile as if to say you knew this was coming, right? And he had, it just—wasn’t going to make concentrating any easier.

“Jiime. We had Nomenclature together last year, right?” He was being polite. Lito never forgot a face.

“Think so. With your master, Bazho? Heard from him lately?”

“He’s at the front.” Easier to say than no, that his sponsoring professor—and last connection to his family, though that was secret—was gone, with no word in three months.

Jiime smirked, as if that said it all. “C’mon, Saika. Want to do another one?”

Lito bit back jealous words. A lot of cardsmiths used their bonds to boost their mood, or outright get high, by consuming the bonded creature’s vital energy. It was one of the only fun things to do on an island that was all jungle, save for the academy and a small village.

Fun if you had cards, anyway.

“Sure,” she said, and glanced his way. “See you round, Li—”

Her voice trailed off. Lito frowned. Say what you would about Saika, she wasn’t one to lose her train of thought. He turned, following her eyes to the water, where a wave was breaking into white surf.

Something broke through the surf—a black stone, where none had been before. A stone that was getting bigger—

“What the fuck?” Jiime said.

No, not a stone—a black cowl, over a face streaming seawater. Two more figures emerged from the waves behind it, bodies lean under wet robes.

Lito’s stomach clenched. Mages. Sealembs fell from the first one’s mouth and nose, revealing thin lips and an angry red scar. Mages powerful enough to bond the oxygen-filtering creatures to their will.

What did they want here? His gut twisted. Had his brother finally sent assassins, despite the academy amnesty?

A massive head rose from the waves behind the lead man, a boulder to their stones, shoulders as wide as a man was tall. Lito stared as muzzle and maw emerged, sheeting seawater from dark fur. A direbear—

created by magic, bred for battle. Whatever these men wanted, it wasn’t peaceful. And there was also no point in running, if they had direbeasts. Especially if they were here to kill him.

“Fuck,” Jiime repeated behind him, like a mantra. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“It’s all right,” Lito called, holding up a hand, all rivalry forgotten. He had been trained in talking down people who intended violence. He’d been trained in countering it too, if it came to that. Though he’d be no match for mages wielding direbears. Archmage level, at the least.

He set his feet in the sand. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

The mage in front looked up, and Lito felt his gaze despite the cowl’s shadow. The man didn’t slow, nor did the other figures rising from the waves behind him—five in all, a ten-foot high wave breaking around them like a cup of bathwater. High level archmages. Grandmages?

The scarred man didn’t answer, striding from the waves.

“What do you want with us?” he called again, as the lead mage stepped onto wet sand. Behind him, Jiime’s curses had gotten faster and higher, and he could hear Saika’s quick, shallow breathing.

That’s right—she didn’t do well in duels, because her nerves always got to her. My attacks, she called them.

But Jiime! He was a swarmcast, able to summon bees. Not a full mage yet, and certainly not a match for direbeasts, but a swarm could be a deadly force indeed. What was Master Bazho always saying? It’s not about what you control, but how you control it.

“Jiime!” he called, glancing to his right. “Call your bees! Maybe we can distract them!”

Jiime didn’t seem to hear—he was staring at the direbear looming above the mages, lips moving soundlessly, face pale as a novice who’d taken his first punch. He wasn’t going to be any help.

Lito exhaled deeply, slipping the heavy stone bracelets from his wrists and catching them in his hands. Fine. There was more than one way to stop a mage, even without direbeasts at your call.

“What do you want with this island?” Lito tried one last time, tightening the black stones around his fists in a practiced motion. Moving his weight to the balls of his feet like he had so many times, when it had been frosty granite instead of sand beneath them. “We mean you no harm, but I am sworn to protect this island.”

Jiime goggled at him, the words seeming to break through his panic. He grabbed Saika and ran for the trees.

Good. He was a coward, but good. Maybe Lito could buy them enough time to get away. And if his brother had sent these men, maybe running meant Jiime and Saika wouldn’t die too.

The scarred mage held up a hand to the men behind him, and Lito allowed himself a moment of hope. Maybe this wouldn’t come to blows. The mage gestured to one of the men behind, who swept his head from left to right, like he was searching the beach for something.

The sunlight caught in his cowl as he did, and Lito sucked in a breath. He knew that face.

“Uncle Bazho?” he breathed.

The man ignored him, shaking his head at the lead mage, who scowled. “You said it was here. Keep looking. And get rid of him,” he said, nodding at Lito.

So much for talking them down. Lito took a breath and ran, but not toward the trees. This too had been drilled into him over long years: do not wait for the enemy to engage. Meet them on your own terms.

And if you’re going to die, do it on your feet.

The direbear roared and lunged out of the waves, black claws as long as a man’s arm. Lito dodged under its strike, planting one heel in the wet sand and pivoting, channeling his momentum into a backhand at the scarred mage’s skull.

It was like punching solid rock. He connected, but his fist stopped on impact, one of the stones shattering. The sudden lurch made him stumble in the surf.

The mage brushed at him casually, like one would shoo a bug.

Lito tumbled backward, breath exploding from his lungs, as though struck by a hundred fists. His face scraped sand, then momentum flipped him to land painfully on his back.

He struggled up, vision blurry. This too he had trained for a thousand times. To embrace the pain. To get up, even if you felt broken. To find what advantages you had and use them, even if you were losing. Even if the next breath might bring your death. Face it on your feet.

He got his legs under him, clutching his weighted bracelets despite a spear of pain in his left hand, ready to fend off bear or mage or whatever else they brought. Instead, he found the lead mage sniffing, surf rushing around his ankles, for all the world like he was the beast instead of its master.

“Miasmacist,” he growled. “Let’s go! It’s not here. Quickly!” He waved at the men behind him. A card glowed in his hand and sealembs rose from the waves, shimmering with vital energy.

Lito tensed, sure this was the moment they killed him.

Instead the mage spun, grabbed a sealemb and followed the other men down. The direbeast did the same, moving with the unnatural grace of an animal bonded to a human mind. In a few seconds they were gone, a breaking wave swallowing their cowls and leaving nothing but white foam.

2

Lito stared at the waves, chest heaving, waiting for them to come back. His fist throbbed from striking the mage and his chest ached from the blow he’d taken in return.

He barely felt it through the churn of questions in his mind. Who were they? What had the man meant about a miasmacist? And what were they looking for on this beach, if not for him?

With a start, he realized they hadn’t killed him. Hadn’t even cared who he was. In spite of everything, a laugh burst from his chest, shaky and loud on the empty beach. He was safe. Safe from his brother, at least, whoever those mages had been.

Safety made him think of Saika and Jiime. He spun, half expecting to see them still on the edge of the trees, but they were gone. Good. Good, even though Jiime had run when it had been his place, as the most advanced practitioner, to stay and defend the weaker. Good, because the mages hadn’t seemed to care about them either. Whoever those men were, whatever they wanted, it wasn’t about him, or Jiime, or Saika.

Lito relaxed his fists, right hand throbbing as he did. So what had it been about? They were looking for something. The mage in the back had been scanning the beach…

His stomach twisted. The mage with Uncle Bazho’s face—but that was impossible. Lito looked back toward the waves, as if the man might surface again. He had never understood how his uncle, a full master at the academy, could just leave in the night, but he wouldn’t have left to join whatever this was. A mercenary attack? Deserters? Thieves?

Lito bent and scooped his brush from the sand. He didn’t know what this had been about. And more than anything, that was the part that bothered him. Especially since they hadn’t found what they were looking for.

If your opponent wants something, he could hear his father’s grave voice saying, and you don’t offer them more harm than it’s worth, they will be back.

Lito grimaced. He certainly hadn’t offered much harm. And if the scarred men did come back, the academy’s masters would be hard-pressed to stop them. There may have been some strong enough in the past—Master Bazho among them—but Heaven’s Legion had no archmages left. The war in the south had drawn most of them away.

The war his father had started. Lito frowned. Was this connected somehow? Despite the men not targeting him?

He pulled the bracelets back onto his wrists, one of the thick black stones now broken in half. It was the stone his older brother Kazurale had given him on his nameday, a marbled hematite his people believed offered psychic protection.

His right hand throbbed again. Some protection. The skin was unbroken, but early swelling told him a bone was broken inside.

Shit. That was his painting hand. How was he going to be a cardsmith with a broken hand?

Sunlight glinted off something as he examined the swelling, spinning on the surface of the tide. He narrowed his eyes—a sealemb?

No. A card.

Lito dropped his kit and ran for it, chasing the receding surf, and grabbed the card in a fresh flash of pain from his hand. It was a card, and undamaged. Still linked to its beast, then, even if no one but the owner could use it right now. Like all bonded cards, it was heavier than it looked, and dry despite having been in the waves—part of the vital energy of the bonded beast, plant, or mineral. This one was bordered in silver filigree, marking it of uncommon rarity, swirling in to a stark central illustration of black wings against a gray mountain.

Lito shook his head, trying to interpret it as he’d been taught. A bird in the corvid family, mostly black with a pale face and sharp beak. A rook, maybe? The birds only lived on Ryuzan and Souchi, but the background was nondescript, and the sparse illustration wasn’t particularly of one style or another. No clues there. But a corvid card? The birds were notoriously hard to capture, having a high level of intelligence as well as a disposition that was difficult for humans to understand. It was the work of an advanced mage.

The part of him that was sure it had been Master Bazho wanted to believe his uncle had left this for him, as some sort of message. Lito exhaled, the tide washing around his shins. That didn’t make sense, either. His uncle wasn’t a lexcast, and there was nothing else obvious about the card that would explain why Bazho would be here, with those men, sneaking onto the shores of his own academy.

What was obvious was the card’s value. No one would believe he had made this, as his first crafting, but if he could find a buyer, it would fund a few more weeks of his tuition at least. A month, maybe. Long enough for his hand to heal, and for him to finally craft something of his own. Then he’d have some power the next time he faced an attack like this.

Better yet, he could solidify his place as a mage, and earn the status that would let him return home, as a neutral advisor rather than a rival heir.

Lito tucked the card into his leather pouch, next to his blank stock. His hand throbbed more insistently. He needed to get back to the academy and get it treated. He didn’t mind the pain—pain he could deal with—but it was already swollen to double its size. If it didn’t heal fast, even another month’s tuition wouldn’t keep him at the academy.

And then his brother would come for him.

3

Obaa clucked her tongue, bent over his swollen finger. “Snapped it right in half, you have. Could have run, you know.”

Lito shifted on his stool in the middle of her cramped cottage, hanging herbs pungent in the humid air. “And leave Saika and Jiime to get killed?”

“No, you run with them, instead of protecting them like a fool. You were the least advanced one there, right? And none of you even eighteen years yet?” She took a roll of muslin from the hearth shelf, next to her statuette of Ula the Mother, round with fertility and worn with age.

He thought Jiime was eighteen now, but there was no sense defending himself with Obaa. Lito nodded. “Can you splint it?”

“I can. Going to hurt, Lito-uji.”

He grinned at her use of the affectionate “-uji.” It felt good to speak Ryuzani dialect, rather than the local one he’d affected to hide his origins. Obaa didn’t have to mask hers—no one paid attention to servants. If word got out of his real identity, though, his brother was sure to hear.

“I can handle that.” Lito watched her tear the muslin strips. “Will I still be able to paint?”

She sniffed. “Being a cardsmith is not the only way to get on in this world. You know that.”

“Not without living the rest of my life in hiding. Assuming Tokuro doesn’t—agh!—hunt me down here anyway. Ula’s Teeth! You could have warned me.”

“And have you tense up?” she asked, holding the finger straight and reaching for a length of muslin. “Toku’s a good boy. He won’t come for you, if you don’t make trouble.”

“You don’t know that,” Lito gritted, finger still screaming, as she wrapped it to the finger next to it, a length of balsa between. Obaa had nannied for all of them, after their mother died. She would hear no ill of any of his brothers, even Kazurale. “Father…trained him well.”

Obaa cleared her throat, her sign for having nothing good to say. “Here—dommar root. Eat one stalk now, and chew the rest of these throughout the day.”

Lito took the proffered herb and chewed. “It’s disgusting.”

“Good. Maybe it’ll teach you not to attack archmages. You don’t have the royal guard anymore to let you—”

“Is that Nata?” Lito interrupted, partially because he saw a bob of coppery hair out the window. Mostly because he didn’t want to hear this particular speech again. He knew things had changed. It was no reason to stop being a decent person.

“Nata,” the portly woman snapped when her son appeared in the doorway. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“Office sent me.” Nata nodded at him, leaning his wiry body against the doorframe. “Lito. They want you in Head Wing.”

Shit. “Jiime and Saika are there, I take it?” It was the only way the professors would have found out this fast.

“Yup.”

Of course they were. And if they’d had time to spin their version of the story, it wouldn’t be good. Jiime would need a good reason for running, and Lito was pretty sure what it was.

Or who it was, more like. Nothing says thank you like a little scapegoating.

Nata nodded at the splint, where Obaa was tying off the wrap. “You and Jiime get in a fight?”

Lito exhaled and stood. “Something like that. Thanks, Obaa. I should go.”

The round woman stepped back, rewinding the muslin spool. “You want to thank me, then don’t go using that for a week. Longer if you can’t get the medic on it. You hear me, Lito?”

He smiled. She was the only one who would talk to him like that, in his previous life or this one. Like family.

“I hear you, Baa-ji. Nata, be my second?” It was a dueling term, but he felt like he was going into a duel. Him versus Jiime, and probably versus the professors, too.

“Always. Though it better not cut into tournaments this afternoon. I got cards to win.” He patted his shirt, where a pocket bulged with cards.

Right. Nothing could keep Nata from the tournament grounds on a Fifthday. He wasn’t great at crafting cards—just enough to graduate from novice—but he was an expert at using them, especially in duels. And so his wealth in cards grew, while Lito sold everything he had to make tuition.

The son of a cleaning woman, richer than a prince. Things really had changed.

“So what happened?” Nata asked, falling in beside him as they took the path out of the servant’s grounds. He was a full head shorter than Lito, but that was more from Lito’s height than Nata being unusually small. He had the Ryuzani royal height, like his father.

Lito told him about the attack as they passed manicured gardens, full of different plant and animal species to facilitate card crafting.

“And your uncle was with them?”

“Yes. I mean, it looked like him anyway. And somebody left that card in the surf.”

Nata frowned, scratching absently at the familiar he’d earned on rising to cardsmith, a scorpion he called Nip. “Bazho’s a volcast, though, and that card’s a lexcast all day long. Sure you didn’t just imagine it, with everything else going on right then?”

“I know what I saw. Even if I have no idea what he was doing. Or why he was with those guys.”

“Maybe he was trying to finally get to grandmage. Or maybe it wasn’t him at all.”

“Isn’t it weird, though, that Bazho would just disappear in the night, without telling me, or anyone? And wouldn’t send word this whole time?”

Nata sighed. “Yes, it’s weird. But it’s been three months, man. You need to start thinking about how you’re going to get ahead, now that he’s gone.”

“I am, it’s just—he’s family, Nata. The last one I have who’s not trying to kill me. I can’t just give up on him.”

“Hey. We’re your family. Me and Obaa.”

“I know, and thank Ula you guys took me in. But my other family is out there ruining the world, Nata. Drawing the nations into this fight over Soutan Island, and you know it won’t stop there. If I can just get through the academy, and go back to them as an advisor, they would listen to me. I’m probably the only one they would listen to.”

“Fine, man. But you don’t need Bazho to do that.”

Lito exhaled, trying to sort thoughts from feelings. “True. But he was the last master here who believed in me. Without his sponsorship…”

“You just need to craft a card, man. All this bullshit about seeing Bazho is just a distraction.”

“From what?” Even though he knew the answer.

“Your advancement. Make initiate. Make mage. Make a place for yourself in the world. You don’t need your family to do that. Everyone knows you’re talented as hell. Something’s just keeping you from crafting. That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”

Lito kicked a rock as they left the servants’ garden. “I know, I just… I can’t give up on him, you know? Like, even if all this fails, I still had him. But to see him with those men today…”

“Stubborn like the rest of your family. And don’t get me wrong, that’s awesome. I just wish you’d use it to take care of yourself, instead of a brother that literally tried to kill you. Or a couple of assholes on the beach, for that matter.”

Lito laughed. “Saika and Jiime? They are assholes, if they went straight to the headmasters and then got me called in.”

“Want me to fuck him up for you in a duel?

“As much as I want to say yes, that’d probably just cause me more problems at this point.”

They lapsed into an amiable silence, Lito’s mind on the meeting ahead as he cut through the sprawling main lawn, air fragrant with cut grass and jasmine flowers. The main building curled like a giant teakwood dragon at the center of the cleared space, three-tiered and ancient, its scales the gleaming roof tiles, its wings the twin pagodas, its claws the moss-patinaed stones, digging into the earth.

Lito steered for Head Wing, where professors and adjuncts kept their offices, his stomach curdling with the same dread he used to feel on the way to his father’s throne room. As if he were about to be judged, and he already knew the verdict: not good enough.

It made him angry, like it always had. The same anger that had saved his life when his family descended into blood three years ago.

Their judgment was their problem. Water on a dragon’s skin, Bazho would say. Let it wash off.

The problem was that the ones who judged always had power over him. That would change once he was a full mage and part of the Conclave—whether they were professors or kings. The Conclave was above it all. Neutral, because if they ever decided to become a political force, their wars would destroy the world.

Students passed in knots, headed to outer halls or dormitories, many of them with familiars about them—flowers vining around the ear of a floracast, a luna moth clinging to the braids of a reflexcast, a cloud of bees humming behind a swarmcast. They glanced over as they passed, some whispering or bursting into laughter once they were gone.

Water on his skin. Lito kept his eyes forward.

There were few people who crafted beasts more complex than reflex-driven insects and snakes on campus, especially among the students. Heaven’s Legion focused on summoning large amounts of lower-level beasts rather than calling powerful and intelligent upper-level creatures. Strength in numbers, the school motto read. It wasn’t the most powerful or famous of the seven academies, most of its students destined for low-level military positions or crafting cards for agricultural use, but that was why he’d chosen to escape here. It was the last place Tokuro would think to look.

They climbed the weathered stone steps and stepped into the professor’s wing, its air heavy with burned incense and the peculiar tang that came with using vital energy, like fresh tomato leaves. He strode down the dark-paneled hallway, finding a rhythm between the sound of his feet and the draw of his breath, letting it clear his mind. Conversations hummed behind some of the rice-paper screens, sharp gazes following him from the open doors of others, but he let them all slide off. Water.

Uncle Bazho’s shuttered chambers passed to his left, dark now where once it had been a haven for him, then the head office was before him, its polished wood curled into impossible shapes with floracism. Lito took a moment to bind his black hair in a knot.

“This is where I stop,” Nata said, giving him a rogueish grin. “I’d wish you good luck, but...”

“Luck is for people who need it,” Lito said, finishing their old joke.

“Enter,” a voice snapped from beyond.

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