Basic Setting + Background Info
Setting
This universe consists of hundreds of thousands of worlds floating in a magical void, called the ether. Well, not exactly floating. Think of those cross section soil diagrams. Reality is much like that, except in more than three dimensions, so you can't really visualize it. The world you see is the topmost layer, the 'grass' and the ether is on a second level beneath it like a second skin. But at the same time, the ether surrounds the worlds, like an ocean. Again, more than three dimensions so apologies if that doesn't make too much sense on a map. It is possible (but very difficult) to fall into the ether, and none that have done so have ever been seen again. And no, it's not as simple as falling off the edge of a world - after all, we're talking about another layer of reality here, and it's unsurprisingly difficult to move between layers of reality xD
There are species that are found in multiple worlds and species that are unique to one world. The worlds aren't nice and round like Earth, they look something like this. Worlds come in all shapes and sizes. Some volcanic islands as small as a room, others huge and beyond beautiful. Some don't sustain life at all, although most do.
Of course, you can see the sun and stars, and there's weather and stuff (although it's not consistent from world to world. Like some could have three moons and others none at all, or stuck in perpetual winter). But it's not caused by rotation of the world or the same things that cause it on Earth, because such things don't exist here. The explanation here is a lot simpler - just magic. Of course, people have different theories, such as the fact that stars are all dead people or whatever. If you were to fly into the sky, you wouldn't end up in space. You'd just get farther and father up in the sky, but you'd never be able to reach the moon.
Another reason why the worlds are so cut off from each other is because it's notoriously difficult and unreliable to travel between them. In the larger worlds, not a lot of people ever travel outside their world, which isn't actually that big of a deal. Most intelligent creatures know that there are other places out there, but once again, people have literally just begun to live a peaceful life - they aren't exactly going to charge off to explore right away. There is no reliable way to get from one world to another. Sure, there's contact between worlds, but it's... complicated.
You see, the worlds aren't connected like places on a map. Distance between them is fluid, and even so, you can't really drive between them in a car. Each world is separate from the others, yet they're continuously drifting around in the ether, and occasionally bump into each other. You could run around the entirety of one world and without accidentally ending up in another (which is what most people would expect to happen), but you could also, say, turn a corner in one world and end up in another, or be sailing in an ocean in one but somehow float into another world's ocean. And yes, it is very possible to walk into a different world and be unable to return to the previous one. But don't worry, it doesn't happen too often.
I take that back, there is a slightly more reliable way to travel between worlds, called gating (I won't yet explain how it works in detail, but it involves a great deal of magic, jumping into the ether and coming out at the destination of your choice). However, the preparation to create a gate can take months and is incredibly difficult. Some of the richer worlds have so-called "gateports" - like airports, basically, but with gates instead of planes. Of course, it's incredibly expensive, and even with all the safety precautions and stuff, there's an unfortunately large chance it could go wrong. You're hopping into a deadly void, what could possibly go wrong? Thus, it's not very popular for common people, mostly merchants, messengers, etc. use it regularly.
Some worlds bump into each other more than others, so there are some well-known worlds (I won't list them until you actually end up in them, but I will let you know some basic info on them if you happen to need it in the game) and probably some that no one but the inhabitants know about. No one can really count how many worlds there are, but there's certainly a lot, likely other communities that are totally disconnected. No one's sure how big the ether is.
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Background History Stuff
In the grand scheme of things, this universe has only recently begun its first real 'golden' age. Before this was a lot of war and chaos and trying to stay alive, and only in the last hundred years have people actually settled down and begun turning to non-essential things, figuring out how stuff works rather than just learning that it works (if that makes any sense). Therefore, much of the universe has yet to be explored, and many things have yet to be discovered. The textbooks are barely past a blank canvas, and most people know surprisingly little beyond the world they were born in. Imagine the period in the history of Earth when Mesopotamia or whatever had just started. There are, however, more technologically advanced worlds (in the way of mechanical things and weapons rather than communication), but a good bit of them are not like this.
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