Creation comprises all realms within the Wall of Night. It is thought that gods (one or many) Created the realms, and the Wall, by imposing order on the Elemental Chaos. Multiple Universes were created, but only one--The Prime--remains intact, the others shattered and ever drifting beyond the wall, into the Void.

One view of Creation is that it is a closed cell, bordered on all sides by the Wall, and filled with the Astral Sea. Floating within that sea is the Prime, at its center, with the realms of the Spirit World clustering around it in a spinning disc. At the edges of the spinning disc, shattered realms flake away from Creation, disintegrating as they contact the Wall, and vanishing forever into the Void.

All realms of Creation, regardless of local laws, obey the following laws:

• All things are Energy.
• Energy is not created or destroyed, only transformed.
  • Exception: Energy that fades behind the Wall is lost forever.

The Prime is the physical universe: three dimensions of space, one of time. It is thought to be infinite, but consistent--the laws of physics unchanging at any point within it. Scholars debate if it is centered upon the known world, on some other, grander source of life, or lacks a center of any kind. Still others debate if the stars bear worlds of their own--if perhaps there are countless other worlds, with other peoples. The possibilities boggle the mind.

In a cosmological sense, the Prime obeys the following laws, in addition to those governing all realms:

• That which is, is. That which is not, is not.
  • This law seems simple, but forms the basis for the Prime's powerful resistance to incursion by outsiders. Beings not native to the Prime find it very difficult to enter it, while its own natives have much trouble leaving it behind. This is in contrast to other realms, where one might journey from realm to realm with a simple step.
• All things change in time. All that lives, dies.
  • This law says that energies (and matter, thus people, worlds, etc) cannot last forever. They must change, and, in the process of mortal life, die. Again, a stark contrast to other realms, where most energies remain constant, resetting to their initial state after whatever will changed them subsides.
• Cause precedes effect.
  • This simple tenet requires and therefore creates linear time. Other realms lack this law, and that is why they cannot see permanent change. Change requires objective time; the very definition of change is "A was like so, but later it was like so". Without "later" the statement is meaningless.
  • This law is thought to necessitate and therefore create the second law. Time proceeds, and causes occur--therefore, effects occur, thus all things change. Sadly, due to the second law of Creation, some energies are forever lost, and thus the Prime itself is doomed eventually to die. Of course, just when this apocalypse shall occur remains a question for the sages.

The spirit world is so named because its denizens--creatures, objects, and places all--are not made of physical matter, but of spiritual substance. It is an infinite realm (scholars debate that point) dwarfing the physical realm in size and scope. It is a place where reality is subjective, where things might change from moment to moment, per the will of the strongest spirit in residence. It is a timeless realm, where past does not precede present, thus beings native to the realm find it difficult to change themselves, nor permanently affect anything. Still, on a timescale beyond the physical universe, the spirit world is gradually collapsing, disintegrating into insubstantial energy and drifting beyond the Wall of Night.

The Spirit World is, in truth, not a realm of its own. It is an older term, preserved from the days before the Great Races had an enlightened understanding of cosmology. The term now refers to the union of the Astral Sea, the Outlands, and other realms of Creation besides the Prime.

The Astral Sea

The Astral Sea is a realm of pure thought and will. Etc etc....

Laws:

• The realm is mutable to will. The strongest will prevails.
• All that wills is a being.
  • Beings cannot be destroyed.
  • Beings can be absorbed, with their consent.

The Outlands

A collective of fragments of realms, infinite in number and scale, but all sharing the same trait: they are prior Universes, now shattered and slowly spinning into the void.

Each may have its own local laws of physics.

The Feywild is the largest realm within the Outlands, although it is dwarfed by the remainder.

A realm before Creation, that threatens to unmake Creation. It is a place of infinite fury, infinite destruction, infinite will against any kind of order.

It is not a realm one visits. It is quite impossible to visit, because it no longer exists. At least, from the perspective of the Prime; its entire existence predates the beginning of time in that realm, so even with the far-fetched ability to travel backward in time, one could never reach it.

And yet, in the Outlands, time is a more variable thing. The Elemental Chaos edges against realms of the Outlands, gaining a chance at invading the Prime; although, this generally results in said realms being ejected from Creation, into the Void. It is generally believed that this force is what caused the realms of the Outlands to shatter in the first place, and it is a danger that could affect the Prime.

Beings of the Elemental Chaos are not rational--they are agents of pure destruction, unreasoning fury, irrational hatred. But there are many mortals and immortals of every realm who, for whatever reason, favor the Elemental Chaos, and act with cold rationality to allow its agents entrance into the Prime and the Outer Realms. These dangerous cultists threaten the very stability of Creation.

Once the home of the elves, and yet never. As the elves explain it, the Feywild is a world of imagination and possibility, containing all the things that never were, but could someday be. In this way, it is both wonderful and terrible. It is the origin of the elves, and yet not; now that they exist in the real world, they were never in Feywild. Most people can%u2019t quite wrap their heads around it.

In the universe where elves are from the Feywild, they are part of a race of Faeries ruled by a court, in an interesting parallel of the elven way. This court has a dark mirror, and its people are the goblins and goblinoids, hated enemies of the elves.

The belief in a Fey origin for the elves is apocryphal to the High Elven faith, though they acknowledge the existence of the Faerie Court.

Some Dark Elves follow a religion in which they are the %u201Ctrue%u201D descendants of the Faerie Court, having been enslaved by a false people, pretenders to the throne, who were exiled to this world, taking a few slaves along with them. They endeavor to return to Faerie and reclaim their rightful place by the Queen%u2019s side.

The Gloaming

The Planar Threshold of the Feywild is known as the Gloaming. This is always a region of forest or other wild environment, where fey creatures are in abundance, and the laws of nature begin to break down.

It is always twilight in the Gloaming, though there are points of light and zones of darkness; it is through these that one reaches the Summer or Winter, respectively.

To reach the Gloaming, one must visit an area attuned to the Feywild at the right time, such as a crossroads at twilight.

The Shadowfell is the realm that lies beyond death. While one can enter the Astral Sea in one%u2019s dreams, one can only enter the Shadowfell in death. The few spells that allow such travel actually kill the caster, or near enough, only to revive him if and when he returns to the Prime.

According to most religious doctrine, the Shadowfell is a realm of infinite darkness, so vast it cannot be seen by the souls of Man, Elf, or Dwarf. Any who die, unaided by the light of the gods, falls into the void, and into oblivion. Only by devoting one%u2019s life to the gods, and begging their mercy, will one be taken into the Kingdom of Light beyond the void, a realm of eternal bliss.

The Dragons are the undisputed experts on the Shadowfell. They can see in the dark, and they know the terrible truths that lesser beings are spared. The darkness is a blessing, for it hides something far darker.

These are the kinds of things dragons say when they%u2019re being cryptic. Which is always.

Sometimes, that which falls into Oblivion can return. The souls of the damned often return to the Prime, called back by the echoes of a painful death, or a grave injustice, or because of a terrible curse. These are the undead, the sworn enemy of all dragons.

A churning sea of primal elemental forces. According to elven lore, the Elemental Chaos is not a concurrent plane, but the past. Spells which take you to the Elemental Chaos actually take you back in time. The plane has its own time stream, so events can occur in the normal order (first cause, then effect), but it is situated such that all events in the elemental timestream occur before all events in the prime time stream. Should the Primals ever escape their temporal prison and destroy the world, they won%u2019t just be destroying it%u2026they will be undoing its entire existence since the beginning.

By the same token as the Elemental Chaos, the Astral Sea is seen as the future, an existence wherein all beings have shed their mortal shells. The divine realms in which the dead sleep are temporally coterminous with the prime, but the astral as a whole is not.

The Far Realm is another world, parallel to the Prime but very distant. It can be reached through magic of the Astral or Shadow