Introduction to the Multiverse

The multiverse - or even the part of its that's known to Mankind - is a vast place. About one thousand worlds have been annexed during the Great Multiversal War and became parts of the Dominion - most of them at least as large as Earth, while some of them much more than that. The last full census of the Dominion's population predates the Blackout, meaning that it's extremely outdated - today the Dominion has no idea how many people live in the worlds, nor how many settlements and even planets are out there.   What is known is that there are two main categories of worlds. The first one is the thirteen Throne Worlds, while the rest are the Vassal Worlds. The difference comes from the fact that the former ones are much more complicated and harder to comprehend realities operating on vastly different set of rules. Save for one, they are the former personal domains of the Dark Lords, orphaned after their defeated in the Great Multiversal War and later on colonized by Mankind.   The amount of magic infused into them is much superior to the one in the Vassal Worlds, making them the preferred domains of the more powerful entities - they feel significantly more comfortable and are much powerful when residing in a Throne World. Each one of them has an overarching theme that permeates them completely, with the Vassal Worlds being more of a mixture of said themes. The amount of magic is also responsible for the fact that not only humans as a species are extinct in the Throne Worlds, as the magic has long ago altered their inhabitants.   The degree of weirdness of the Throne Worlds depends highly on the length of the Dark Lord dominion over them. Furya, Abyss, Terminus and Nidavellir are believed to be the most recent acquisitions (especially Furya), because they appear to at least more or less resemble solar systems, with a start and a handful of planets. Chaos, Elysium and Loqua are among the most divergent, and thus are believed to be significantly older.

Elysium. It is an endless, three dimensional realm of floating palaces and small isles, with everlasting day and perfect weather to boot. There is no surface to speak off, forcing the inhabitants to live in said palaces and isles (which is less of a problem than it sounds as, as they can fly, and the palaces and cities are a legion). There is no sun, yet there is a always a day, and the light permeating Elysium appears to be highly beneficial - it not only nourishes all forms of life, but also makes them heal from most wounds and diseases if given enough time. Coincidentally, this also means that there are no shadows in this realm.   Its Dark Lord was Metatron, winged deity of kindness gone horribly wrong (and that no one is sure how exactly they were slain). Today this realm is home to the celestials, natural empaths with a tendency for light, ability to fly and kindness (that doesn't stop them from punching evildoers in the face if needed, though). It is also the seat of power of the Church of the Highmost that has practical control over the entire world.   Gehenna is a hellish realm of fiery pits and lava rivers that appears to actually be a form of a cavern - though one that continues on endlessly in all directions. To make things crazier, the ceiling and floor are completely relative - both have their own gravity and both are inhabited. However it is hard to 'see' the other side of Gehenna - just like the Elysium is a realm of everpresent light, Gehenna is a realm of everpresent darkness, to the point were all light sources are dimmed to a various degree. It used to be a prison colony, but was long abandoned by the Dominion.   Its Dark Lord was Lucifer, the sapient illusion of light in the world of darkness. Today this realm is home to demons, naturally amoral species associated with darkness and (sometimes) fire. They are prone to backstabbing - or just forcing everyone around them to do their bidding - and are ruled by a regularly changing collection of the strongest and most cunning of their kind, the demon lords.   Alfheim is a world of untamed nature, almost entirely covered in forest made of truly massive trees - with the highest one recorded reaching one hundred kilometres. This makes the world almost three dimensional in form, at least for its inhabitants. Entire cities are build upon the branches of the local trees - and you can easily travel for ten thousand kilometers without having to descend to the surface, thanks to vines and intertwined branches of the local trees.   Its Dark Lord was Yggdrasil, the multiversal parasite devouring life from other worlds to nourish its eternal growth. Today this realm is home to the sylvans, numerous species of nature (and especially plant) aligned creatures, who tend to be long-living, sometimes deadly even without the malicious intent, and at least some of them appear to be rather tricksterish in nature.   Nidavellir's surfaces is one of neverending mountains divided by small (and highly uneven) forested valleys sculpted by rivers - that tend to at some point descend underground, into the massive cave systems that seem to go on forever. And they do - Nidavellir is a rare case of spherical Throne World circling around an actual star, but that's where normalcy ends. it is a world filled with caverns that go all the way to the still alive core of the planet, where the Dark Lord of Svartalheim erected his insane fortress of molten metal.   Its Dark Lord was Vulcan, the sentient planetary core (which makes him a sentient planet, in a way). Today this realm is home to the dvergars, numerous species with a tendency for being skillful artisans (in a variety of trades), most of whom feels at home underground   Navira is a world of truly endless plains (occasionally dotted with small forests and hills). While many Throne Worlds appear to have rather impossible dimensions, Navira is unique in that, as it actually appears to be a form of a natural grown Alderson Disk, with the most successful Dominion's probe estimating the Navira's size to be approximately 300 billion kilometers in diameter - the details of how exactly its edge looks like appeared to make no sense at all, and the attempts to dig down failed to reach the end. Unfortunately, while Navira could easily house entirety of the Dominion, it was never going to happen due to ragestorms - slowly moving weather phenomena during which the blood rains from the skies, driving all living creatures into homicidal rage and eroding manmade materials.   Its Dark Lord was Susanoo, a sapient stormfront carrying madness and murder with it. Today its inhabitants are the irans, species of (mostly) rather barbaric nomads, influenced by the ragestorms that they spend their life avoiding. They tend to be warlike and militant, typically refusing to back down from challenges, and often disliking to be tied down by things and groups that aren't their family and clan.   Abyss is a world of materialized wrongness. Surface is composed of dark rocks and shallow seas, all under the eternal night and the sky that's simply wrong. If one descends deeper, he will find a whole new world, one of breathing mountains, flesh-trees, and seas filled with liquids that range from molten lead to human cerebro-spinal fluid. There are also fortresses where the armies of the local Dark Lord made their last stand, although they are rarely abandoned. Some claim that this entire realm is in fact a grotesquely alien entity of an unfathomable mind.   Its Dark Lord was the Nyarlathotep, Thousand Tongued Prophet whose every word brought madness and death. Today its inhabitants are the aberrants, beings radically divergent from baseline posthumanity, enough for the stronger of them to be threats to sanity of those vulnerable - and even the weakest of them is still alien in the extreme.   Chaos is the domain of the elements. A world in perpetual flux, with firestorms, glaciers and permanent earthquakes and tornadoes marking the domains of its overlords. Its inhabitants tend to follow the shifts, occasionally battling with each other on the edges between the areas controled by their elements. The most mindboggling feature is the fact that this realm is entirely three-dimensional, being more of a void where all stable balls of matter (resembling small planets) are in fact dominions of the earth or rock elementals.   Its Dark Lord was the Demiurge, false creator who dreamed of becoming a true God. Its inhabitants are the elementals, one of the most alien subtypes of the posthumanity, beings of pure elements - and no biology (that in the world of Chaos is a liability).   Terminus is the world of the dead, and of an eternal night. Irradiated wasteland of pale white deserts, grey rocks and poisonous rains, circling around a black star whose light is incarnated death, slowly killing all that lives and turning it into undead. It's hard to find more inhospitable place, which doesn't stop from it housing a civilization (although one of the undead). The star is said to have once been something 'else' until the Dark Lord - after defiling the very concept of death in his world - tainted it into its current form, driving it insane, and imprisoned it in the alien skies of Terminus.   Its Dark Lord was Ahriman, a mad god of undeath that seeked nothing but the end of both life and death. Today it is inhabited by the undead, animated corpses of the sapient posthumans - who despite all, have managed to establish a relatively thriving civilization. If only many of them didn't want to spread the 'blessing' of their undead state...   Loqua. World that's on some level a reverse Gehenna. On the surface, it is an ocean with but a few small archipelagoes (most of them tropical, but some not at all). But if one descends beyond a number of crevices in the bottom of it, they will pass the point where gravity effectively reverses and will find themselves emerging from the bottom of another ocean entirely. One significantly wilder, and much less hospitable - yet still inhabited. It is the realm of some truly terrifying creatures, and one that - once you reach the surface - will turn out to exist under completely different stars.   Its Dark Lord was the Leviathan, a massive sea serpent that could swim through water and dreams alike. Today it is inhabited by the merfolk, posthumans that evolved with living underwater in mind. While among the most mentally human of the posthumans, they tend to be rather alien to humans due to how alien their environment is.   Drakhrun. World that resembles the Old Earth - with pleasant climate, vibrant but not particularly murderous ecosystems, and a mix of plains, forests and mountain rages. It's most notable feature are the bones - the entire world is dotted with skeletons of sometimes grotesquely large dragons, sometimes dwarfing the mountains. Entire cities are carved in the ribs of particularly massive dragons. What makes this place truly alien is the fact that if one digs deep enough, they will discover that the entire 'planet' is merely a thin sedimentary layer of rocks and dirt slapped over a 'ball' made of closely intertwined corpses of dragons, the largest of which appears to approximately 50 000 kilometers long.   Its Dark Lord was the Ancalagon, a dragon the size of a continent and an endless appetite for conquest. Today it is inhabited by the drakons, a variety of dragon-inspired species that have a tendency for greed and ambition.   Furya. World of untamed wilds. Endless maze of mountains, jungles, forests, underground caverns and some open plains, discerned from those in other worlds with their savageness. The local predators are numerous and powerful, with the apex predators capable of defeating deities of other worlds. Local colonies collapsed after the Blackout, with those that failed to flee from this place becoming increasingly feral (and savage) parts of the ecosystem, preyed on by many local animals. Ironically, it is the least insane of the Throne Worlds, but also arguably the deadliest.   Its Dark Lord was the Taotie, an apex predator of the world were nature went mad, who left entire divisions butchered in its wake - with no one ever seeing how it looked. Today it is inhabited by the bestials, posthumans that mix their humanity with something much more primal and animalistic.   Void. A universe of nothingness. No one knows what Mankind did to the local Dark Lord, but its death caused a retroactive cessation of existence of the entire realm. The world ceased to be - leaving only an endless void without even a speck of matter - and the memories concerning its overlord, servants of said overlord and even their past interactions with Mankind vanished as well. With the Blackout failing to disable techmaturgy here (for reason unknown), Dominion established a number of self-sufficient 'space stations', that have now mostly fell into the hands of various interuniversal crime syndicates, evil cults or - in some cases - non-evil groups that have nothind to do with the Dominion.   Its Dark Lord was the Unmade One, the one Dark Lord that nobody knows anything about. Today it is inhabited by outcasts, criminals, and some actually officially-existing groups.   Ferra is the cradle of Mankind. During its peak the Dominion decided to rearrange the entire Solar System, using metaengineering magic to rewrite Reality, changing the system into one composed of a Dyson Sphere surrounding the Sun and a Ringworld circling around it (with the controlled transparency of the segments of the Sphere allowing Mankind to control the lighting of their massive world). The Dyson Sphere harvests the sun into a unique form of magic, acting as an artificial Dark Lord (which happened to cause the Blackout). Unfortunately, today it is a decaying place, where the entire population moved into self-sufficient arcologies and has long ago given in to the pleasures and comfort offered by legions of machine servants.   There was never any Dark Lord here, except the artificial equivalent that Mankind changed the Sun into (alternatively, the High Overseer, the prime AI that oversees the entire civilization of Ferra). This is - and always was - the realm inhabited by the machine descendants of Man.

The official designations of the Vassal Worlds are based on their state following the Great Multiversal War. The three main designations are as follows: Paradise (for worlds significantly better and nicer (and generally very pleasant to live than Earth), Earth (for worlds habitable in comfort, but without being sculpted to almost perfection) and Hell (for worlds who were deemed very, very hard to inhabit permanently (due to the world being a desolate wasteland, having very, very murderous fauna, etc.).   There is also an additional designation, known as Ruin, for worlds who were very, very decimated by the war. There are unconfirmed speculations of one more category of worlds, that's however top secret and hidden from the population at large. What warrants such a treatment is unknown.   Examples of Vassal Worlds include:   Ruin-53, world that was rendered uninhabitable by hell unleashed during an apocalyptic battle waged here during the last days of the Great Multiversal War. Only 10% of it was terraformed and is now inhabited by a thriving civilization... on the verge of many, many wars.