Life persists in this land like an ember raging against the cold night, like a torch burning against shadow. Let the theologians preach of the miracle of the light, I do not dispute the value of the spark—but the light does not linger because of the spark, it does not live on because of any miracle. It burns on because it is fed on the sacrifice of the ember itself. We burn so that the light may linger on another night.
The light survives because at the dim edges of its burning beacons, we live and die to hold against the creeping shadows. Make no mistake, the borders of our realm are not drawn in ink, they are drawn with the point of a spear, marked by the flight of an arrow, and staked by our toil, our steel, and blood.

— Veneration for the Martyrs of Light

The word "Tenembria" is an ancient construction, one that appears to have its roots in the Titanic tongue as "Land of Twilight" or "Where Fire and Shadow Meet," though little can truly be said of its origins beyond mere scholarly speculation. What is known is simply that this word has since the time of the first histories, in the Chronicles of the Wars between the Titans and the Dragons, it has been the word used for the entirety of the known world.

It is still used as such today. For to speak of Tenembria, in the minds of most still conjures the entirety of what they know between the Celestir above and Infernus below. Synonymous with what the learned now call the Mundir; the mortal world of the living.

But among scholars, explorers, and other learned folk, the world has grown beyond the name incorporating lands far beyond the seas. To the distant far away realms of Asharai, Nyoi Yam, and the Obsidian Court, and the unnamed and unseen places that lie yet further still beyond the Great Taliran.

So, what then is Tenembria? To learned men of this age, it comprises the lands of the twin continents, Boreias and Aurnan , from the far polar islands of the distant north, to the sun-drenched archipelagos of the Shattered Sea. The birthplace of the "Kindred Folk" born of Giantsblood and Godsbreath. The origin of the Holy Covenant of the Adopted Gods, and the perpetual battlefield of the Anathema, targeted ever by the Archfiends, whose Scourges pour out from the Great Eye to wreak bloody vengeance on those who overthrew them and cast down their tyrannies.

A land so vast that only a handful of sainted missionaries and hardy explorers can be said to have traveled its full breadth. A realm brimming with life, death; civilization, savagery; refuge and peril enough to be a world in itself.

In the famous words of the Damned Martyr Irascu of Edoros, "Our civilization lives cloistered beneath a torch light, holding its breath until the dawn, fearing this to be the day that the sun will not rise. But e'er the morning light comes." This is the eternal struggle of Tenembria, to live and die just to keep the fire light burning until the dawn.