The known world is enormous. Distance remains one of the forces that shapes politics, culture, trade, and war.
Aldara
Aldara is the great western continent: an old world of separate kingdoms, clan lands, mountain holds, old roads, rivers, temples, forests, and inherited rivalries. Crossing a kingdom can take weeks by horse and longer on foot. Crossing much of the continent can take months.
At its center lies the Elderwood, or Aelthirien, an ancient elven homeland that cannot be treated as an ordinary mapped territory.
Caelora
Caelora is the continent-sized eastern Steward Monarchy. It contains many climates, peoples, and regional cultures but is tied together by national institutions, public education, the Common Standard, roads, shipping, communications, and especially the saltstone-powered Arcrail.
Comparable journeys that take weeks or months in Aldara may take days along developed Caeloran rail routes.
Tsukara
South and southwest of Caelora lies the island empire of Tsukara, the principal homeland of the Demonkin and one of Veyra's great maritime civilizations.
Tsukaran ships travel widely, but foreign travel within Tsukara is regulated. Foreign merchants are welcome in approved ports, while sacred, military, protected, or dangerous areas may require permission or remain closed.
A common description captures the difference:
The sea is open. Home is not.
The Shattered Sea
The Shattered Sea lies between Aldara and Caelora. It was created by the Sundering.
Its waters contain the politically fragmented Shattered Isles, ancient ruins, salvage grounds, fishing settlements, trade ports, research stations, military outposts, and dangerous waters.
The Uncrossed Mists
At the eastern and western limits of the known world lie the Uncrossed Mists.
Near them:
- saltstone devices can dim, overload, or fail;
- engines and wards become unreliable;
- compasses can spin;
- clocks may drift;
- communications can break;
- ordinary magic may behave unpredictably;
- distance itself can become difficult to judge.
Straightforward mechanical tools, fire, sail, rope, muscle, paper records, and redundant instruments may remain more dependable.
No publicly verified expedition is known to have crossed the Mists and returned with a reliable account of what lies beyond.