The World Tree

The World Tree is a conceptual tool used to teach aspirant magicians and precocious civilians how to think of the many worlds that surround our own, home dimension.   Taking cues from, but not to be confused with, the Yggdrasil from Viking myth (also currently sprouting at the North and South Pole the world tree presents the universe as a massive tree. The thick trunk provides the spine, from which many branches sprout in every direction. On each of these branches resides a world like ours. They can vary in form, though their position on the tree does not affect them. Ours is lush and full of life, as is the world of the fairies, Elfaime, and the world of the Olympians.    Others are wildly different. Some of them are simply barren rock, while others are deep oceans or worlds of fire and magma. More wild worlds exist as well. One world I came upon a few decades ago was covered in a shin-deep ink-like fluid that stuck me in place as soon as I stepped out of the portal. Nothing rose above the surface of the fluid, nor disturbed its surface from where I and my expedition stood to the horizon. That is until that six-legged thing stood up. Had to have been as tall as three houses stacked on top of each other, and it was hurrying towards us. Got the portal open just in time, though we had to leave behind most of the equipment.    Don't know what the thing wanted, but I got the sense that its motives weren't so simple as to eat us. I prefer not to think about what it really wanted...   In any case, those branches that bear our worlds are not sedentary. Astral winds blow and cause them to shift and move, carrying them close to some, and farther from others. The cosmic movements of the branches also serve to explain our loss of contact with our neighbor worlds, as well as the disappearance of magic and species like the elves, vampires, gnomes, etc. Our world simply drifted too far from the others soon after our bronze age ended, and this separation caused the few elements that remained to slowly fade as they died off.