Tuesday, August 10, 2021

The Four Worlds

An excerpt from The Principles of Hidden Truth:

The canons of the Ancients speak of four worlds:

  • The True World, called sha-Arthan in the Exalted Speech of the Makers.
  • The Old World, the Lost World, out of which the Makers first called Man.
  • The False World, sometimes called the Mirror World, a spectral reflection of the True World.
  • The World Between, commonly called the Void.
The Old World is forever barred to Man by the will of the Makers and the maledictions of the Eternal Gods. The False World is the domain of ghosts and, though attainable through sorcery, to be shunned by the living. The Demon Races claim the World Between and jealously guard their realms against intruders from other worlds.

10 comments:

  1. Doesn't Dwimmermount also have 4 worlds as it's background cosmology? I'll have to dig out my copy and see how they compare.

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    1. Yes, it does. The similarity is genuinely coincidental. I didn't intend, at least consciously, to posit Four Worlds again, but there it is. At any rate, those in the sha-Arthan setting are quite different from those of Telluria (Dwimmermount).

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    2. So is the Old World Telluria, or would connecting the two undesirable?

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  2. In this cosmology does the word "World" refer to a planet or a complete cosmos, including; Sun, Wanderers (planets), Moons, Stars, etc.?

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    1. Likely a complete cosmos, but I reserve the right to change my mind as I run the campaign.

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  3. I'm guessing the world the characters commonly live in (ie what in some games might be called the prime material plane or just "earth") is either the True or the False World in this scheme. But it might be cool to have it be the World Between, existing in the space between the other 3.

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    1. The True World is the home of the campaign. You're quite right to guess that the World Between literally exists between the others. Travel magic makes use of the Void for its effects.

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  4. Will sha-Arthán ever be "published"? I'm aware it's on Advanced Grognardia but alas my purse can't take it.

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    1. Probably. I have very vague of publishing it in some fashion, perhaps a series of 'zines, but nothing definite yet.

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