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If you’re standing in Middara, you already know about the Advancement. There’s no way to escape it—no secret portal waiting to help you, no tricks or schemes or magic spells. To come here is to sacrifice your humanity. For some the changes are dramatic, leaving them looking like totally different people. If that’s you, don’t panic!
To step through the portal to Middara is to change forever. Whether in your room or shortly after emerging on the other side, anyone who abandons the shelter of the earthly veil will be scarred by that decision forever.
The Advancement is the catch-all term used to describe physical, mental, and spiritual changes to any creature born on Earth that leaves through a portal. It is why Middarans are physically recognizable, and must take careful steps when returning to Earth to reproduce.
Some changes are universal. Every human who steps through experiences a mental shift, allowing them to wield the magical Disciplines common to Middarans. Likewise, every soul is spiritually marked, and will be an enemy to the Angels of Earth forever. Once it begins, the physical transformation of the Advancement cannot be stopped.
For some, these changes are so minor as to be undetectable at first—a subtle shift in eye or hair color, maybe a change to their ears. On the opposite end, the physical transfiguration is so radical that no one would even recognize them when the transformation is complete.
Classification of the Advancement’s effects can be challenging, as they are as varied as the individuals who travel to Middara. There do seem to be a few universal rules, however.
Sickness, no matter how debilitating, will be instantly and permanently cured. This does not mean a simple end to being contagious—the damage caused by disease is also repaired. So long as the individual survives the healing process, they will be restored to full health, regardless of the significance of their illness or how incurable it may be. Any illness inflicted by outside organisms, viruses, cancer, and contagion will be removed.
Humans are fragile. We bruise, and we break. Those wounds don’t always heal cleanly—the course of ordinary life doesn’t let us regenerate limbs. The Advancement offers a single opportunity to repair the damage earth life has inflicted. Lost limbs, damaged organs, missing mobility—all can be restored.
Unlike with illness, there are exceptions. The infirmity of age is not restored by the Advancement, though incidental damage that occurs as a result might be. The Advancement is particularly difficult for older people, so much so that many do not survive.
This last category is much more variable, making definite lines difficult to draw. Scholars who attempt to do so are sure to smack into exceptions, spoiling their carefully-crafted classification. Even on Earth, human understanding of mental illness and its treatment is still a developing field.
The Advancement cares nothing for human classification of what is “normal.” Schizophrenia, depression, and similar conditions are almost universally cured. Behavioral diagnoses like ADHD and Autism may not be, depending on the individual.
If forced to give an answer, experts in the field would likely summarize mental repair of the Advancement in the following way: differences in personality and behavior from “normal” would not be “corrected” by the Advancement. At the same time, conditions which are external to a person’s identity are most likely to be repaired.
The same power that causes healing also inflicts its physical and mental transformation upon every human who braves the portals.
On one end, the physical transformation alters minor details. These humans may become more muscular, slightly taller or shorter, or perhaps develop an unusual hair color. Mental improvements might also occur: perhaps they gain a photographic memory, or a potent new talent for mathematics.
This group represents the plurality of immigrants to Middara. Though the Advancement will be dramatic, they will recognize their reflection when the process is over.
The next-largest group are the ones with radical but limited alterations. This often takes the form of a new limb, or limbs. These people grow a tail, a set of horns, or maybe some wings. Perhaps their hands develop claws, or another thumb.
These changes are fully integrated into the individual’s body, rather than seeming hastily grafted or unnatural. When the Advancement is complete, they will always appear to have been part of the person since birth.
These additions often impart inherent abilities, granted by whatever biology is added. A person who grows gills from their neck will be able to breathe in water, while unseen organs beneath the skin might emit electricity. Cat’s eyes are far better at seeing in the dark, and motile animal ears might grant better hearing. Wings might be purely vestigial, or they might come with associated changes to bone structure and musculature to let you fly.
In the rarest cases, individuals may be totally transfigured by their Advancement, such that they aren’t clearly indefinable as the same person they were before—or even the same species. There are too many possibilities to name—perhaps someone might experience a change in physical sex. Maybe they grow so many animal features they’re easy to mistake for a large cat. A truly unfortunate individual might melt into a human-shaped blob of cellular slime, or grow leaves all over their body.
These individuals often change so radically that a return to Earth for having children won’t be possible, as their presence would be impossible to conceal from Angels and their agents. They may lose the ability to survive in normal conditions, such as those rare few whose gills replace their lungs altogether. This outcome is vanishingly rare, but still happens often enough that nations with portals often maintain support infrastructure for immigrants with unique or debilitating advancements.
The time required to complete the transformation varies. Minor changes may be completed in a few minutes, while radical Advancements might require up to three days spent in excruciating pain. No matter how extreme, every Advancement will eventually end.
If you’re like most people, your first step through the portal were overwhelming. Even small changes are painful, and leave you changed without your consent. It probably feels like this was completely outside your control. Good news is, Advancements can’t do literally anything. We’ve figured out some basic rules over the years that the Advancement seems to follow.
No matter how dramatic, otherworldly, or impossible an Advancement may seem, no transformation will ever create an individual that is not biologically possible. Advancements will not create exotic low-temperature biochemistries, melt someone into sparkling energy, or turn their body to mist. It will not create detached limbs, or individuals who levitate without visible means of locomotion.
That said, these transformations are not limited by conventional human imagination. Hard mineral shells, plant or fungal composition, unexpected new senses and limbs unseen anywhere else in the animal world are all possible. So long as the biology we know could create the changes, then it is possible for the Advancement to manifest those changes.
The Advancements do not spontaneously appear with a poof of smoke and flash of light. These changes grow. Bones crack and reform, skin bursts and heals over, and shed limbs detach and fall wetly to the floor.
The greater the change, the more pain the Advancement causes, and the longer it will take. Simpler things like a few feathers in the hair might feel like a brief tingling on the scalp, while total reconfiguration into new biology might involve literal days of crippling pain. It’s quite common for the best hospital in a nation to be located at or near its Portal, facilitating care for anyone with a difficult Advancement.
From the most dramatic to the simplest change, every Advancement will become a natural part of your body. New senses are accessible, new limbs are within your control, and your immune system will adapt.
Humans who emerge from the process can still reproduce and have children, though obviously not while living on Middara. Any damage inflicted by the transformation, such as torn skin or broken bones, will heal without a trace of scars or lasting damage before the Advancement is complete.
This does not mean the new limbs are easy to control. Growing a pair of wings does not mean you know how to fly, even if you’re biologically capable. It may take weeks before that long tail stops throwing you off-balance with every step. Those with radical new abilities may find it takes even longer before they’re able to keep them under control.
Even so, it is always possible to adapt, even if it requires many months and a lot of physical therapy. All the proper nerves are connected. It is only the conscious mind that must learn.
Most who immigrate to Middara experience only minor changes. If that isn’t you, I’m sorry to say you’ve got a difficult road ahead. Good news is, you’ve got plenty of time to figure things out. You can spend the time you need in therapy to master your new body. You wouldn’t be the first to wonder why you changed the way you did. It doesn’t seem fair that your best friend walked out of that portal as a muscular badass and all you got was an express ticket to the freakshow.
Middarans have come to two opposite conclusions about why it works the way it does. Which theory you accept tends to depend on whether you like the outcome of your Advancement.
In the Faulkist view, the Advancement is not a transformation from one thing to another, but a way for the true nature of someone to be revealed. In this perspective, the Advancement corresponds directly to personality, nature, and desire. When we change, it is into exactly what we really were all along.
This explanation rings true for many, who find the body they develop feels more natural than the one they were born with. If they changed radically, it was because they always should have had fur, or gills, or glowed in the dark. Other times, these changes might be hated, but acknowledged nevertheless.
Someone who is always bitter and standoffish might feel that growing sharp quills was inevitable, even if they hate living with them and are constantly in pain when they stick in things. In other cases, the transformation might be totally unexpected yet reveal something a person had deeply repressed about their identity.
A growing number of Middarans find the nature explanation wanting. Advancements sometimes result in horrifying outcomes—a nurturing mother develops deadly venom and sharp claws, someone terrified of the ocean loses their legs to a fishy tail, etc.
Many complete the Advancement with no idea why they changed the way they did. The truth may be that there is no reason.
In this view, the magical energy of Middara exerts a powerful pressure on the human genome when first exposed.
Incomprehensible differences in ancestry, epigenetics, and other physical factors all combine to develop a new creature at the time of exposure. Technically speaking, this means the Advancement isn’t random in a mechanistic sense, and that advanced enough technology could identify the outcome of a person’s Advancement before they step through a portal.
Practically, the factors interacting to produce an Advanced human are so complex as to escape analysis. In that sense, your Advancement isn’t based on who you were deep inside, or some other esoteric idea of the soul. No one willed you to have hooves instead of feet, that was just the luck of the genetic lottery. Hopefully you like the way you rolled.
