User:ProphetPX/Xal'Anim (3.5e Campaign Setting)/About

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Xal'Anim

"Life and death, energy and peace. If I stop today, it was still worth it. Even the terrible mistakes that I made and would have unmade if I could. The pains that have burned me and scarred my soul, it was worth it, for having been allowed to walk where I've walked, which was to hell on earth, heaven on earth, back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it, and above." -- Gia Carangi (narrating from beyond the grave)

In A Nutshell...

The warped-reality of wild magic gone mad, the weird of the rift-ring which rotates the entire world. Elemental primordialism with a flipped food-chain, oddball-physics, truly dangerous weather, and strangely animated landscapes. An insane Mystic-Theurge Wizard once sought to become a god, but the world which he aspired to create, became only the eternal prison for his very soul. Deep in sorrow for eons, the suffering of the haunting deity provoked such profound energies to erupt within this new alien planet, that new alien life finally crept forth upon the face of the world, and started to conquer and master it.

Elaboration

The strange unique system of Xal'Anim is not so much your typical type of normative solar system (as is present in many galactic bodies), where a star or two may be routinely orbited by one or more satellite stars or planets (with or without moons of their own). No, it is far more than this! And yet, at the same time, far less...

UNIQUE CONCEPT

What we have here, is more of a unique, nebulous, mysteriously-created collection of statically-placed rings and "chains" (some might even call it a bizarre form of Moebius-strip like system of interdimensional honeycombs) of elemental energy, thrumming with godlike, portal-capacitant, extraplanar power.

Xal'Anim, the title or name more properly defined, comes from the otherworldly nature of the typical INVERSION of societal archetypes as is present in MANY of the worlds therein, and is the name for the entire encapsulated system. A musically rhythmic oscillation of elementally-formed structures which run, not so much in typical spherical or cubic fashion of "top to bottom" or "centerpoint via radius to surface", but more, rather "along a route" from source to destination. Somewhat in linear fashion at times, and at other times, spreading out geometrically in all directions, with various bearings of starting vectors and endpoints, all at once. This world does not have just 1 beginning, nor only 1 ending. It's FULL of possibilities. The only possible means of describing how to circumnavigate the various worlds within Xal'Anim via terms of 3D NAVIGATION, is only to throw out the entire preconception of anything "3D" altogether. Xal-Anim is NEVER merely a 5-D creature with only 4-D (height, width, length, time) realities, so much as it is a means of THOUGHT-EXISTENCE and the guaranteed interplay of many different dimensions, all completely in-play at any given time. Various outlines of dimensional structures of this system will follow in a later section or chapter.


The System

The SPACE SYSTEM of Xal'Anim is far more unique than what most deep space, star travelers might ordinarily encounter, in that it does NOT fit any standard typical model of your typical star system. Whereby the basically presumed and "normal" aspects of such systems might apply: circumferentially-timed orbits of planets around a central sun(s), cosmic background radiation from said solar furnaces, polar axial tilt of various planets, and whether or not they can support life based on degree or wavelength of sunlight, average seasonal warmth versus periodic distance from said life-giving nuclear furnace star(s), or other factors, etc... as would perfectly allow for life-fostering conditions on one more planets...

NONE OF THESE THINGS EXIST IN XAL'ANIM! NONE of these things are in-play, NOR are any similar dynamics in effect ANYWHERE within this space system!


"The Veil"

If a galactic explorer, finally having arrived at the EDGE of the system, was to begin to peer inward, in order to get a glimpse of what the system "looked like", the ENTIRE SYSTEM of Xal Anim appears to be nothing more than a GIANT, IMPENETRABLE NEBULA. This is called "The VEIL": An extremely dense, gaseous, enclosure surface of nebulous "Oort"-type cloud surrounds the entire system, and does not allow-through technological penetration of sensory perception of any kind.

The Havens

Beyond The Veil, lies quite an amazing, almost miraculous sight! After parting through and moving past the gaseous Oort-like clouds, a dim, tenebrous, lattice-like, inter-chained webbing of interdimensional, elemental pathways, can be somewhat seen. All of which deeply THRUM (yes this sound can be heard -- sound does travel via solid surfaces like ship hulls, as well as inside nebulae gas pockets) with praeternatural power.


Various Worlds

Beyond this, a central collection of various, other structures, exist. ALONG WITH other, more normative, standard-shaped, pear/spherical, polar-axial planetary worlds are present, IN clusters (again, with NO stars at their center) with worlds of other polyhedron-like celestial bodies. Not all "planetoids" here are made alike. Some are spherical, and yet, others are not. Not a few of the non-spherical worlds here exist as perfect dodecahedrons, and others, as imperfect other-vertexed polyhedrons.

System Order

TO THE NAKED EYE, or rather, to the OUTSIDE OBSERVER, there is no set, "exact" system or APPARENT order as to which worlds are of which design, or of which pattern, or of which order in the (what can only be thought of BUT IS NOT as) "orbital order".

Planetoids in this system, whether spherical or non-, seem to somewhat float amidst naked space, or erstwhile in their own demesnes with no obvious risk of collision with other worlds, and do NOT follow any ordinary, "circuitous" path around any so-called "stars" (being as typical stars (as like in other systems) do NOT really exist in THIS system).

Origins

Sister "planetoids", whether spherical (OR NOT), here, are entirely deduced from ancient divine plans, and are, what one might call, "artificially" contrived by "strange, foreign" gods ... of the Far Realm. Forged entirely by praeternatural dominions of WILD MAGIC, or better said: a not-quite "accident" of long-lost proportions, which those gods allowed to take place in order to form a system which was to exist ACCORDING TO THEIR NEEDS at the time. Neither this system, nor any world in it, is ever going to appear like any other world, anywhere else in the galaxy. Much less, the Universe.