Cosmology

Most of us live in the Real World. It's an odd place, and we don't see all of it...but it's home. In addition to all the oddness, the Echos who call themselves the Quick dwell here in a state called "twilight" -- able to percieve, but only tangentially interact with, the world. It is said that, every now and then, the world ends and another like it takes its place, something having to do with problems of causality: the truth is stranger, but the fiction is close.

Home is "surrounded," in a way that doesn't make sense until you consider more spacial dimentions than ordinary people are comfortable with, by a proto-realm of twisting pathways and bizzare detrius called the Hedge. Winding pathways can take you across the world in less time than traversing true space would, but there are dangers -- forgotten or warped greatures, dangers related to Vices, and pocket Realms called Hollows or bardos dot the Hedge, and terrible creatures known as True Fae move through it not irregularly, searching for human captives to feed unknowable desires. The Echos who call themselves Spirits dwell here, close to but still distant from the real world, and create reflected Realms of their own.

A Realm is subject to two major problems: they decay and decline until they experience the end of the world, and turn into what a Royal would call a "dark realm," or they fall into pieces, shrinking until they're nothing but a few stray ideas drifting through the hedge, waiting to be scavanged. Most realms are breakaways from the Dreamlands, a tightly-knit cluster of realms close enough to each other to be thought of as one, woven together from the dreams of humanity: the radiant queens dwell there, as well as many true fae, and the echos known as the Shining Ones.

The Queen of Storms rages through the dark realms, destroying the still remnants and driving them into the Dark Sun, from which all existance has been crafted. Also down there is the Drawning Dark, a true fae of inestimable power, partially caught and consumed by the Dark Sun, who is constantly trying to escape to the Real World. Promethian souls, those not stolen from living humans, are drawn from these dark realms. Finally, the Kerboroi, Echos who style themselves as the lords and judges of the dead, preside here, and Pandorans come from these dredful places. When a location in the Real World is "darkened," is it because of too-close contact with these apocolyptic realms.

Finally, the spine of Tiamat, the Rift, runs through from the Dark Sun up into the Dreamlands. Leviathans are at home here, and the strange echoes who call themselves the Quasmalim gather here to seek signs. Where the rift nears the Dark Sun, the Endless Storm rages. Where it touches the world, Maniac Storms and Firestorms herald turmoil and change. Where it touches the dreamlands, it carries the Gales.

As mentioned before, Realms either turn tarnished or fall apart. Why doesn't the Real World? It's full of human souls. Human souls keep the place from falling to pieces, and keep it a certain distance away from the gravity of the Dark Sun. The Dreamlands would drift off into the hedge if not for the connection to human dreamers. Apocolypse worlds are full of the Twisted, who retail enough humanity that their worlds don't collapse right away. Bardos feed themselves on mania and glamour in order to remain real -- but the real world just needs to be full of human souls. Tiamat's greatest creation, and the one that destroyed her in the end.