World of Æor

Æor is a world we would classify as largely medieval. It's populated by many humanoid races. The known world is a single, large continent with islands and archipelagos. It is unclear if Æor is the name of just this continent or if this should refer to the entire world. There are no known distant continents, though ancient stories tell unbelievable tales of other far-off lands.

The world has evolved slowly, over the course of hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. There are ancient animals, trees, and artifacts known to have existed for hundreds of millennia.

Æor is teeming with magic and creatures that wield it naturally, or through teachings. The vim of magic flows through most things living and non-living–rivers of energy that can be harvested by the adept.

Objects are weighed, measured, and filled in metric quantities.

These are the common measures, but the metric system has many other prefixes which are less-commonly used. If the base measure is understood, it's common to hear just the multiplier (such as “k” instead of “kilometer”.)

The lands of Æor are divided into four geographic regions for the four compass directions. The borders don't follow geography, but run in straight lines right through the middle of mountains, lakes, rivers, and other geographic features. It is generally believed that the divisions are political in nature, being set by wizards in ancient ages. Inside the four regions you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of individual kingdoms and independent city-states. These entities are not of equal power or size and there is little consistency in makeup from one to the next.

The kings would have you believe that the mightiest fight is between good and evil, right and wrong, one ruler against another. Others would argue there are three opposing forces–Order, Chaos, and The Balance.

• Order - Conservatism and laws create order. While some argue that it is this Order that separates us from the chaotic elements that surround us, others believe that it is this very Order that creates and maintains the stagnation that keeps us from realizing our full potential.

• Chaos - Chaos fuels change. Followers of Chaos point out that Chaos is the only force that drives innovation, progress, and true thought. Supporters of Order remind us that Chaos is what causes instability and lack of security. Chaos is the reason laws are needed in the first place.

• The Balance - The Balance has no extremes. True believers in the Balance find both Order and Chaos to be beautiful and deadly–the end of any society when left to their own devices. Everything around us seems to conform to a very delicate balance. By stopping both Order and Chaos from becoming too powerful, believers in the Balance hope to maintain what would appear to be the natural state of all things.

The religions of Æor vary greatly from region to region. In the Eastern Domain, for example, the dominant religion is of The Nine gods who created everything in the world according to their own special gifts. You will still find worshipers of The Nine all over the Eastern Domain who generally call worship to Belcron. It's a pagan religion based on gods of animals, land, and other items.

Æor has two suns, one many hundreds of times larger than the other. Periodically, one can see flares from the larger sun swirling into the smaller sun. The ancient solar philosophers theorized that these are firestorms caused by the great sun gods as one fed the other. The smaller sun, Restaphar, travels around the larger sun, Zhynfar, in a complex but close and calculable orbit. Zhynfar rises in the west and sets in the every twenty-four hours.

There is no official counting of the moons that circle Æor. Lunar philosophers have charted the paths of twenty that cross the sky on a regular schedule, but there are many, many more which can be seen on dark nights or with the aid of glass. The moons aren't of any great general interest outside of the lunar philosophers. During the average day, two can usually be seen in the sky. At night one could see more than eight when the sky is clear.

Firestorms are often an indicator of a large rainstorm to follow. Magical fire bursts from the ground and disperses into the atmosphere in an explosion of light. This fire is not hot and does not burn–it just happens to LOOK like fire. Firestorms will only happen in a location with a clear path to the sky (between buildings, in clearings, etc.) They will bend around large objects and travel straight through smaller ones. There are no known cases of people or property being damaged by these bursts of light from the ground. Legend has it that firestorms appear where great works of magic have been taking place. If this is true, the storms may be the release of this magic from the ground back into the world.

The scholars of Æor measure time from the year 0 to the year 9999 and classify this as an 'age,' Most commoners would never think in terms of an 'age' as life for a human extends to possibly 200 years for only the luckiest and/or healthiest. For example, Jairin was born in 3421 and would know the year by this number–though it was 3421 of the 53rd age. The proper label for this year would be 53-3421, but the ages are tracked only by the longest-lived of Æor's sentient populous.

A year on Æor lasts for 364 days. This is divided into seven-day weeks with four weeks to each month and thirteen months to a year. The new year begins on the first day of spring (Neuvari 1st) and the year ends on the last day of winter (Envana 28th.) Our primary continent on Æor lies in the northern hemisphere and only the very northern reaches see regular accumulation of snow.