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Mahoukai is a planet in the Great Simulation, found in time trunk HNK12785-3.  It is featured in the second half of ''The Lion and the Darkness.''
[[File:Mahoukai.png|alt=A map of parts of the planet Mahoukai.|thumb|A map of parts of the planet Mahoukai.]]
The name Mahoukai (or Mahōkai) is Japanese for "World of Magic" or "Magic Planet".  The kanji are 魔法界.<blockquote>Ariela facepalmed, and sighed.  "It's an anime world."

"What?"

"An anime world. The kind of world Japanese authors love to write.  Holy crap. I should get Mei out here.  She's Chinese, but they like the same kind of stuff."  She stared at the holo, which showed the dragon, of course, but also a five-member adventuring party (for lack of a better term) consisting of what appeared to be a mage, a cleric, a paladin, an archer, and a really big guy in armor carrying a gigantic hammer or mace – "Probably their tank," she mused.

"Ah?  You recognize the team composition?"

"Hell yes, Beam, it's a party straight out of just about any PnP dungeon game.  The hell does this timeline do, roll dice to decide outcomes?"</blockquote>

=== Inhabitants ===

==== Goddess-adjacent ====
The planet is inhabited by humans and elves, at first glance.  '''Elves''' are few and far between in the human areas; they tend to keep to themselves in the northern forests, but the four [[The Great Mages of Antiquity|Great Mages of Antiquity]] are all elves, and there are occasional elves in adventuring parties; they tend to be archers.  There are also '''dwarves,''' mostly miners, metalworkers, and stoneworkers, who remain in the mountains but do trade with humans and elves.  All of these species generally acknowledge the Goddess [[Eireala]] as their divine creator.

==== Demon Lord-adjacent ====
In the [[The Demon Lord|Demon Lord]]'s territories, there are various types of '''demons''' beholden to him.  Typically the Demon Lord's minions and the rest of the beings on the planet don't bother each other and don't inhabit the same areas anyway.  The Demon Lord is not a devil or god, but simply a very strong person of indeterminate species to whom the demon species swear fealty.  The Goddess has little or no recognition among these species.

==== Dragons ====
A third major group of beings are the '''dragons.'''  Dragons don't ally with either of the other sides, nor are they particularly fond of them (and the feeling is mutual).  There are red dragons (largest and most dangerous), blue and green dragons (somewhat smaller and still dangerous dragons which act as the red dragons' "foot soldiers"), and gold dragons.  There are very few gold dragons compared to the rest, but they are the most intelligent, are the only ones that know human language, and are like Mafia bosses or ''yakuza oyabun'' (family bosses).  Red dragons are the bosses' lieutenants.  The whole dragon ''yakuza'' organization is set up to grow the gold dragon bosses' hoards.  Part of the job of human and elven adventurers is to fight back against the depredations of the dragon ''yakuza'', who don't care who you are, they'll fight you, kill you, and take your stuff.  The Demon Lord's minions also have this as a task from their side of things.  Basically, if you see a dragon, you're going to have a fight on your hands, no matter who you are.

== Geography ==
Most of the various beings are found on the main continent, which is in the Northern Hemisphere, and extends all the way from the ice and tundra at the pole, through the Great Forests where the vast majority of elves live, then through a great Northern Range of mountains that rival the Himalayas.  

In the southern piedmont of the Northern Range is the capital city, called Eireala-to (which is Japanese for "Eireala's Capital").  The [[Church of the Blessed Goddess Eireala]] is headquartered here.

Rivers and roads meander south from Eireala-to through more or less flat lands (with mountain ranges on both sides) where there are many productive farms and a number of towns and small cities.  About 125 miles south of Eireala-to, a road branches to the west and fetches up at the foot of the Western Range, where the [[The Great Mage of the South|Great Mage of the South]] has a tower.

The roads and rivers continue south to the city of Mahoumachi (or Mahōmachi, "Magic City") where the University of Magic is located.  Mahoumachi is on the southern coast and is almost in the tropics, but not quite.  (Think Tennessee or Georgia for climate.)

There is a Great Eastern Range of mountains which separates the east coast of the continent from the rest.  The east coast is the Demon Lord's territory.  It has one port, called Toubukou (imaginatively enough, "Eastern Port").  From Toubukou there is a badly-maintained road going west to the foothills of the Great Eastern Range, where the Demon Lord's castle is located.

== Language ==
The truth is, the language of Mahoukai ''isn't'' Japanese.  However, when Ariela goes there to prepare the world to be realized into the True Universe, one minor problem she has to overcome in becoming the Goddess Eireala is the instantaneous two-way language translation the Simulation normally does for her ''defaults'' to Japanese and can't be changed.  It's later discovered this is due Ariela's long-time anime fandom.  As Beam tells her, ''"It has to do with how your subconscious mind perceived this world originally, and how it continues to perceive it.  You believe this world is an anime fantasy, and you spent many years watching anime in Japanese, did you not?"''

Luckily, Ariela is quite proficient in Japanese, and the Simulation only needs step in a few times to manually translate a word or phrase for her.  Otherwise, names and places and everything else are translated from the vernacular into Japanese, so for instance, "Akane" (a mage) actually has a human Mahoukaian name that means "deep red" or close to it.

Naturally, there is more than one language on Mahoukai.  There is a "standard" language spoken by the humans, and by just about everyone else on the planet who wants to trade or otherwise deal with them.  There are regional dialects of that standard language, but in general the dialects are mutually understandable -- much like American English is made up of multiple regional dialects, but that doesn't stop us from understanding each other...unless it does, but that's another story.  The elves have a language, the dwarves have a language, the dragons generally don't talk unless they're the minority golds who run the dragon ''yakuzas'' (and while they have a dragon language among themselves, they speak human language very well).  The demons have various profane tongues, and the Demon Lord, like the Goddess, speaks and understands all languages.
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