Is this thing on? It is? Oh good. Ahem. Welcome dear readers and viewers, to the much awaited, and long delayed Part 3 of the interludes explaining the world Kahari and his friends are living in. Due to a breakdown in Divine communications, this entry had been delayed for quite some time. I know not how long for you, but for me it has been three hundred years since I recorded our last lesson.
So let’s not dally. Part 3 today is, as the title says, covering The World of Nisteria, which has had some hints and tidbits in previous parts. We are going to be covering three things in today's lesson. The world as a whole, the regions, and details on the current setting, Region 001.
So let us start at the top. Nisteria is technically not the official name of the physical planet, it has none. Instead it is the name of the god that lives at it’s heart, controlling and regulating it’s aspects to ensure it’s people can thrive. In many ways it isn’t all that different from standard terrestrial worlds. It has a magnetosphere, stratosphere, thermosphere, and all of those wonderful little scientific concepts some of you ignore for simplicity.
It’s physical layers are much the same as other worlds. A crust, a mantle, outer core, and inner core. Inside the Inner Core is the Divine Realm of Nisteria, and one of the few places a Divine Realm physically intersects with physical worlds. It has mountains, rivers, oceans, plains, and steppes. More fantastical, it also has great magma seas, floating islands, and barren wastelands populated solely by undead.
The surface of the world is separated into 140 regions, numbered simply based on when they joined the world, each of which has it’s own rules, culture, peoples, and everything is. For instance, Region 29 is currently without magic of any form, while Region 45 is so heavy with magic that people sneezing has caused spells to trigger. Both of these Regions are extreme variations, but all the regions fall somewhere between the two.
Region 001 is what was the first world, and once it’s own planet, but as the Universe of Nisteria grew, it butted up against lesser universes, eventually absorbing them. Rather than destroying them, they were merged together, and as many of them were too small to have more than one or two inhabited worlds, they were simply added to the planet of Nisteria, and the regional barriers constructed.
Region 001 is the one we will give some details on, as most others mirror or mimic it to some degree, though not all. It is divided into four main continents, split along the equator and defined as East and West. The largest of the continents, called Jepera in the current cycle, is roughly the size of Eurasia on Earth, including the Indian sub-continent.
The smallest of these four is Ishen of the South and East, Jepera being North and West, as it was shattered long ago in the first war between the Dragon Emperor, and the Ryujin Empress, leaving most of it either sunken beneath the waves or as scattered floating islands, many of which currently drift above or near to Jepera.
Beneath the surface, there are many layers of their own ecosystems and worlds, some of which are bound to the continents, some of which go beneath the oceans and connect the whole of the world. Broadly speaking there are five main layers. The Near-Dark, which is mostly inhabited by monsters and races from the surface moving underground beneath surface caves and mines. It is made of large tunnels and caverns that can be like someone carved an entire mountain from the earth, leaving the emptiness behind. Much of it’s light comes from fungi, or glowing ores embedded in the roofs, and has abundant vegetation and ecosystems of cave adapted peoples and beasts.
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Beneath that is the Crimson Layer, defined as across all four continents, it is mostly made of Crimson stone that resembles sandstone, but is more similar to granite in all other ways. This layer is mostly twisting tunnels and small caverns, none much larger than a few miles across, and is inhabited mostly by races and monsters from deeper layers moving up, and supports no large settlements, being mostly nomadic due to scarce food sources. It has no unique light sources, being solely lit either by artificial sources, or the occasional magma flow.
The Third Layer is the Great Magma Sea, and this is where most of the unique people and beasts of the underground hail. Caverns hundreds of miles across, dotted with seas of magma more often than water, where molten rock flows, and light is generated by the stone itself. Here on this layer vast, unique civilizations that generally can’t or don’t visit or contact the surface live and die. Wars fought here have had vast armies that could topple empires die in one or two clashes. Very little of the surface can survive here without magic, and fewer still finds any reason to travel the weeks or months it takes to get down here. Tunnels that connect the caverns can more resemble twisting rivers, or game trails, and run beneath the water oceans of the surface.
The Fourth layer is called the Crystal Plane, and is made nearly of pure gemstones. From miles of diamond to caverns of peridot, it is a wondrous sight filled with alien life, and eldritch gods that the surface could scarce understand. It has little contact with the final layer, but it’s cities and nations have clashed with those of the Magma Sea over resources many times in the past, and is the birthplace of the slimes now so well known on the surface. Few mortals know how slimes birthed of these crystal halls make it through literal hundreds or thousands of miles of rock to the world of the sun far above.
The final layer is known only as the Utterdark. No light, no life, is known to hail from it’s upper layers, but abominations that tear apart minds simply by being near them have come from the depths of the Utterdark, and one of them rising and moving can result in a Cataclysm not even designed by the gods above. Below this is just miles of rock till you reach the actual mantle of the world, then it’s cores, and Nisteria’s home.
Most regions have similar, if more or less abundant layers, and some even have layers ABOVE the surface on the clouds themselves. Weather patterns are isolated to each region, but the day night cycle is equal across them all. If it is sunset at the western most point of Region 001, it is sunset at the western most point of them all. Some have multiple suns in their sky, variable moons, and more, but time passes at an equal rate.
When two regions merge, all it’s rules, and weather merge with them. Thus if Region 29 and 45 were to merge. You would have two separate ‘new’ and ‘old’ worlds separated by a vast ocean where the rules of reality seem to invert, from one continent where magic is so common that to not have it is like being born without a brain yet somehow living, to a world where being able to conjure a candle flame from thin air is a miracle of only the gods work.
At no point in history have more than four regions merged, but an ancient law of unknown origin details what to do if all regions were to merge, though it is unreadable until such an event becomes possible. The Gods and Goddesses are charged with maintaining this world, and Nisteria is the one that ensures it all doesn’t collapse into a Brown Dwarf because of the sheer mass of so many terrestrial worlds forced together into a package usually enjoyed by Ice or Gas Giants. More details on Region 001 will be revealed in other parts, but this is the gist of the basics, as bizarre as they may be.