The Pocket
The Elsewhere's landmasses all share similar traits due to the nature of their creation when the remains of The Quartet fled Namix. The first aspect that many would notice is that they all float in a sea of inky material that defies all attempt to explain it. A sea that surrounds all else, the sky, the undercroft, the horizons, some have equated it the umbral stages of stem cells. A material that has the potential to become anything and everything, a quantum position of existing and nonexistent. The sole entity capable to handling this material is the Queen of the Fae herself, as this is the primordial material that Vilorlith birthed into existence with her Songs.
That being said, to call them floating Islands would be a disservice. These are massive landmasses that could rival planets should gravity function consistently. As with all elements in the Elsewhere there is nothing natural here. Every last aspect of the Elsewhere is a constructed environment whose sole purpose is to perpetuate the existence of the Children and their "last" surviving Goddess. Ten continents exists inside the The Outer Dark, the name the Children gave this Inky Sea.
Geography
The Ten Continents of the Elsewhere are a wide variety of environments that all function to do one of three things: Sustain, Repair, and Domicile. The three largest Floating Continents are: Aleglsia, Vyra, and Nylec, these serve as the main crop production and meat production centers for the Elsewhere takes their food from. The entire continents are devoted to remaining as productive as possible, though no in any way that Humanity would see it as. Wide swathes of these flat continents are massive old and new growth forests purpose built to all natural orders to thrive.
Much of what grows here are less staple foods but are bountiful. Clearings filled with flowering herbs and edible plants, the undergrowth of the forests from horizon to horizon covered in root bearing plants. While much of these forests are made of fruit and nut bearing species. The only wood producing species are those of the old growth, and are very selectively harvested. Though the magic utilized by the Children have rendered some cycles irrelevant. Old Growth forests having centuries long lifecycles now only take years. All these measures taken by the Children was to ease Alnya's burden of sustaining the Dimension.
The next three largest continents exist as massive waste treatment centers. Everything from Atmospheric cleansing, water treatment, maintence, mining and processing. These are the industrial heartlands that pump the proverbial lifeblood back through the Elsewhere. Pollutants are not tolerated, anything that comes from these manufactories serves the purpose of perpetuation. Wythr, Erica, and Tel-merdas, are collectively known as the Operations. The Great Filters, the Osmosis Chapel, as the Fae call it. Continent wide structures that connect the webwork of pipes and cables to the other Continents. Overseeing the day to day needs of the Children to allow them to survive. In the decade it took to build these colossal plants, once completed, Alnya was free to interact with the Children once more. As she needn't focus all her attention to stabilizing every aspect of the Elsewhere. After which, she spent a long period of time in a more or less dormant state, where only the Fledgling gods saw to her needs.
Isly Villy is an outlier in the entire Elsewhere. As Vilorlith nor any of her Children survived The War of the Shadows, the Legion of Syn calls the continent their base of operations. The Military of Syn chose not to base themselves in Isly Syn as an act of remembrance, the Mother lost. The brothers and sisters fallen, never to be forgotten. Vilorlith is the only Goddess with a singularly devoted shrine where no other gods have any presence, her shrine is small chapel in the heart of the continent, and is considered one of the few holy sites in the entirety of the Elsewhere. The Military had a few factories that are in a constant challenge with itself. To innovate their existing technologies is to introduces waste and failures, to manufacture countermeasures to the Shadow Touched Children is a resource intense process. Though any failures are salvaged to the best of their abilities, the Children put every proposal to create and innovate through an extreme vetting process.
Isly Syn, Isly Kyln, and the Quartet's Cathedral are the cosmopolitan heartlands of the Children. Where the Cathedral is the home to Alnya herself, when she is not inside the Tower. These sprawling metropolis are echoes of what these cultures would have built on their various home worlds, yet even in their diminished states, eclipse anything that has ever been built by the Gnomes, Dwarves and Humanity. Centers for the arts, the mind, and freedom, they are vibrant places that dazzle the mind. The Children have no room for animosity, for there is no where to run. Necessity demands a unified effort to sustain their last Sanctuary, thus, they choose to create as their Divine Spark drives them to, rather than divide.
History
The "Pocket" is was a euphemism made by the Children of Alnya, as the Elsewhere exists inside Namix in a sense. A separate reality, a dimension inside another, an idea inside a mind unknowable. Hidden in plain sight, it endures. The landmasses were created in the moment of it's creation as Alnya forced open a rift in reality as she fled with the Children as she Shattered the framework of Namix. They had no where to run past this point, only like a child hiding in the dark from the war around them. The outer dark filled this planar dimension as she first entered here, immediately releasing the Children on the first landmass she was able to birth into creation.
The Fledgling Gods: Y'vitol, Taneth, and Anlyth, initially confused, saw what was transpiring. They gave their being to aid their grief stricken Goddess in stabilizing this now incredibly unstable realm. Anlyth gave nearly all his strength, as well a sizeable portion of the Faerie population, to create the Sun that now hangs in the oddity of the Sky. Taneth, knowing his Mother would be struggling to stabilize the laws and metaphysics of the Elsewhere, spent much of his accumulated might into writing the physics and natural laws that govern the realm. While Y'vitol set about channeling the errant power flowing from the Goddess like a dam breaking, into creating the continents. While the Goddess ultimately determined the purpose and structure of all this, she was grateful.
She was never meant to create without the aid of the others of the Quartet. Having the Children of two of her siblings aid her was a gift she would never be able to put into words. Only the sad reality that this dimension is static, there is no chance of new material, new energy, new growth. Without Vilorlith, nothing new could truly be created. Thus, this creation process was built entirely around sustainability. Self-sufficiency and renewal. A homeostasis on a grand scale, where entropy would not be tolerated, where order and logic would need to the pinnacle.
The Goddess Alnya
The Queen of the Fae
by Thereasonwhy
The Lost Family
Alternative Name(s)
The Elsewhere
Type
Dimensional, Pocket
Owner/Ruler
Additional Rulers/Owners
Owning Organization
Contested By
Characters in Location
Related Traditions
Moment of Creation by Thereasonwhy
The Goddess Vilorlith
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