The Realms
The world as we know it is made up of five Realms. There are many ways to visualize these Realms and many competing interpretations exist, but everyone agrees on their number and arrangement.
The Realm of Life
The central Realm, known as the Realm of Life is where most people are born, live, and die. This is the realm of mortals, be they humans, animals, elementals, or fey. Spirits tend not to linger here unless under dire circumstances, and even then their powers are few and limited. Most beings living in this Realm never experience any other within their life, besides brief visits to the Realm of Dreams, though these are mostly forgotten by the time they return.
The Realm of Dreams
The Realm of Dreams surrounds the Realm of Life. Some see it as an ocean surrounding a lone mountain, some as a great field stretching beneath a great ivory tower, and some see it as a giant marketplace sprawling beneath a mighty castle. There are as many ways in which this Realm reveals itself as there are humans in our world, and perhaps even more. Regardless of the form they take, the Realm of Dreams is home to billions of microcosms, called Panoramas.
When a mortal sleeps and dreams, their mind wanders to the Realm of Dreams, and a brief moment later a Panorama forms around it. The Panorama contains the dreamer and their dream, though those strong of will are sometimes able to leave their Panorama to enter others’ dreams.
Many Gateways are dotted around this Realm - locations of concentrated Essence, much like Places of Power in the Realm of Life. These Gateways are locations where the boundaries between the Realms are thinner, enabling a traveler to cross from the Realm of Dreams to another Realm or vice versa.
The Realm of Memory
Beyond the Realm of Dreams lies the Realm of Memory. This is the largest Realm, and is home to all the knowledge and memories that have ever belonged to mortal beings. This Realm does not contain individual, subjective memories stored in the minds of mortals, but a melding of all memories of an entity or an event. A dedicated individual could be able to pry a single strand of truth from the memory, but merely observing a memory within this Realm adds viewer to the memories owners, and thus to the people who can alter it.
The Realm of Memory also contains many other things beyond memory and knowledge. Most spirits make their home in this Realm, feeding safely off the ambient Essence shed by the fresh memories of the living.
In the outer reaches of this Realm lies the knowledge too primal to be remembered, too abstract to be known. Despite being part of the Realm of Memory, this region is often called the Realm of Ideas. Few humans have ventured to the Realm of Ideas and returned with both their lives and their minds intact. One never knows what they might run into in this endless expanse, but the fact remains that most spirits fear to enter this Realm, yet humans seek to explore it.
The Realm of Light
Towering over the other Realms lies the Realm of Light, just above the Realm of Life and the Realm of Dreams. It’s believed that this is where a mortal’s soul goes after their death, to live out eternity in paradise, or to seek reincarnation back on the Realm of Life. No living being has ever experienced the Realm of Light, despite many Sorcerers, Seers, and Mediums spending years and decades of their lives attempting to reach it. One of the few things that all accounts of such attempts agree on is that whenever a Gifted individual Projects and tries to ascend to this Realm, it grows further and further the more they go on.
The Realm of Darkness
Beneath it all is the Realm of Darkness. This void looms beneath the Realms of Dreams and Memories. It is where memories go to be forgotten, where dreams go to waste, and where many evil spirits emerge from to torment the living. When wandering through this Realm, travelers report encountering many hostile spirits and horrors, souls of the dead who never found eternal rest, and lost secrets that never wanted to be found.
At the heart of the Realm of Darkness, hidden at the bottom of the world, lies a barren field that even the foulest of spirits dare not approach. Dubbed The Wasteland, this area is filled with Taint so strong that most Essence based spirits are quickly destroyed- or worse, upon approaching. In the center of The Wasteland lies a Gate. About two meters tall and half a meter wide, this jagged tear in the fabric of reality looks like a sheet of blackness strung above the ground. Few people are foolish enough to attempt to cross this threshold, and fewer still are powerful enough to make their way back through. Some of them report seeing nothing but inky blackness, but feeling a primordial dread within their hearts. Some saw massive horrors of the beyond, too great and terrible to put into words. Others yet came back insane, unable to return to their normal lives after experiencing what lies beyond. Either way, something lies beyond the Gate. And some say they saw the Gate grow.