A setting that I often write stories in, and is also a role playing game setting. Hexgrove is a mid-magic, pastoral setting with anthropomorphic UK woodland animals and clockwork tech.
background
The Six Groves, by Ash the Druid
The Six Groves are a landscape of woods, swamps, heath, mountains and hills dotted with sources of magic called Hexgroves. In these clearings whose origins are unclear, strange six-petalled flowers bloom, providing a magic that causes animals of the Six Groves - mammals, many larger birds, some amphibians - sentience, the ability to speak to each other, hands and opposable thumbs to enable tool usage.
This process, known as the Primavera, also removes the need to eat - no animal need ever kill another for sustenance again.
The tumult of their early history - thousands of animals of different species suddenly sentient, conversant, without need for predation - is long behind these animals, who call themselves the kinfolk. A social, cultural and philosophical movement flourishes in the Six Groves, and kinfolk ever work toward it.
A peace, if they can keep it. Here are their stories.
Themes
post-scarcity
If these creatures no longer need to eat; what does that mean for their lives? Their jobs, their families, their society? There are no clear answers in the post-scarcity world of Hexgrove, but many kinfolk searching. Many stories are about this exploration.
Hexflowers, from the game Hexgrove Books, courtesy of Noble Steed Games
non violence
“
I pledge my house, my life, my every deed:
To the kinfolk of the groves in need
To divide the harvest; to each their due
To serve with faith and kindness true”
Many of the old warrior traditions from the tumultuous days of kinfolk-on-kinfolk war are long gone. Nearly every military tradition in the various historical factions of the Six Groves have transformed themselves into other uses - from the Rooks Errant (scouts, rangers, messengers) to the Redwood Guard (ceremonial custodians of tradition).
To be violent against other kinfolk is a deep taboo in the society of Hexgrove, though incidents do happen.
Mid-Magic
There are no flashy wizards throwing fireballs in Hexgrove; but there are quiet scholars and geomancers who understand enough about how Primavera works to influence it. They can often shape the ways through the landscape, protecting the Six Groves from humans that might enroach on it. Occasionally, some are masters of change and transmutation.
clockwork
The level of technology is such that moderately impossible - from a real-world physics/engineering standpoint - creations are possible from the works of the kinfolk. Their Engineering Corps is revered for their ability to build a myriad of amazing things from small useful tools such as pocket telescopes to huge things, like the Newdam.
pastoralism & community
“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”
Though kinfolk do not need to eat, they remain close to nature in a number of ways. Some are rangers and woodfolk; others are farmers, beekeepers, fishers - they eat for pleasure, to connect with each other.
Many settlements are founded as market villages, and kinfolk often choose to live together to nurture social lives.
Arts of every kind - painting, poetry, dance, song - are central in the lives of most kinfolk.
social anarchy & the wheatsheaf way
This is the predominant philosophy amongst the kinfolk; and has congnates in Taoism, especially where it concerns renewal and transmutation.
The original Hexgrove Map, by me
Many kinfolk practice a kind wu-wei - action through inaction, as they contemplate the best way to be at one with the self, one with society, and one with nature and the world. As this often involves change, kinfolk are nothing if not adaptable.
As with any society, the kinfolk are not a monolith - there are those who fear other species, who may assign specific roles to genders, even - those who return to what they believe are the true ways of kinfolk - the hunt and predation - violating many basic tenets of kinfolk society.