Alicornutopia

If Rescue is around it's not necessarily all that hard to get that to happen; she's liable to be getting a little closer to working with the heroes than she usually would in an attempt to get rid of the nine, which in this case translates to 'lead them to where he's being tortured, without letting them see her', anonymous tip or something. Nine clear out because heroes, she hangs around, he says something to the effect of 'I want to die', boom, he's got her attention 'cause she knows what happens to him if the authorities hear that.

It's called Proximal. The reasons are somewhat spoilery.

There are various different species of humanoid creature – Rhune(s), which have weird cat-eyes coming in amber, vibrant blue or purple, and have better hearing but worse eyesight and worse color-changing lumen than others; Luna (singular and plural), who have vibrant hair colors (e.g. purple or electric blue), are better at luming (lume-ing), and are typically bisexual and androgynous; Thamar(i), which are more physical, less skilled at lumen stuff, bulky, and have stripes on their arms and upper body.

They can make “lumen” (‘to lume’, ‘luming’, pronounced ‘loom’ and ‘looming’). It seems like magic, basically, and they can create glowing blobs of 'lumen' which is a mostly-intangible substance. They can color them and shape them and it's easier to do it near them and it gets easier to do with practice. It’s not considered magic by them, but rather a very explicable (if not necessarily explained) feature of sapient creatures. People’s abilities at luming vary, with species and between the individual.

With quite a bit of practice, you can do nice illusions and things, and they're typically a couple of degrees warmer than the surroundings. With more practice, you can control the temperature somewhat.

The society itself is nicer than average. Cities are taller, more compact, people are happier, buildings have a more common aesthetic, it's a nice (socialist-ish) government made of people who actually try to make stuff better, and (at least seemingly?) transparent. Has socialist healthcare, free education (up to and including university, if you meet certain requirements), and a social security net for those who would otherwise become homeless or something to try to get them back on their feet. Low crime rates, and people like them. They are a little bit over-steppy and maybe involve themselves in things that could otherwise be resolved without them, for reasons of efficiency and efficacy and setting precedent. They apparently sound scarily totalitarian, after I explained them on the IRC, though some of that was due to a joke.

However, they had a history of witch-hunts and persecution against people who were infected with a weird madness disease, so that's kinda sad, but oh well. It was fixed before the government properly came into power, and fortunately hasn’t happened since (because now people are more tolerant of things like that).