Alvez
"There is but One World, created by One God. It is the world of the Bediz, pure and made in His image. The False World is but an illusion, created by smoke and fire by the wicked Angra Mainyu to pull the Faithful away from the True Path of righteousness. Reject the promises of the False World."
- From the Tenets of Faith, Kasra Zarolia, 230 SI
"There were once two worlds. Faerie, the realm of magic was once a paradise of beauty and peace, free of death and disease. After the tear, the grim world of the Bediz made itself known, working it corrupting tendrils into our pure world, spreading its madness and violence throughout our lands. The light and the dark, the good and the evil, Faerie and Bedouar. This is the way of things."
- From the "Wisdom of the tri dee Donand"
"Is Faerie an illusion, created by a malevolent force? A perfect world in opposition to an imperfect one, corrupted by a cataclysm? Perhaps neither the dogma of the Bediz nor the stories of the Fae tell the whole truth as both stare into the still water of the surface of a pond. There is much that remains to be seen."
- Vivien of the Nathair
Geography
For most of known history, the earthly realm of Bedouar and the magikal realm of Faerie existed as wholly separate realities, glimpsed but never touched, in the shadows at the corners of conscious thought. Stories of "the Other World" were relegated to folklore and superstition. These two realities, overlapping in "space" were separated by a metaphysical division known as "The Veil". When this division was torn, the worlds began to spill into each other, warping and twisting as the tides of magic and reality rushed into each other.
The mortal realm of Bedouar is a world of established physical laws, constant and measurable Time and discrete entities. Compared to Faerie, Bedouar is a "solid" realm, its laws of reality keeping things largely intact and self-consistent. As a result, the makeup of Bedouar is largely stable in the short-term, but also capable of great change both to its landscape and to its inhabitants over time. Mountains and continents rise and fall, species appear or vanish to extinction, and geopolitical boundaries shift, with even the ageless Empire falling away in a constant march forward through time replaced by new nations and peoples.
On the opposite side of the coin is Faerie, the most notable of the Otherworlds, and holding the most direct and constant influence on Bedouar. It is a world of pure magik and Kairos rejecting discrete measurements, logical causality and established physical laws. Entropy and the measurable passage of time have little meaning here, instead following an infinite cycle of birth, death and renewal. Faerie is often a land of violent and chaotic extremes in the short-term, but largely unchanging on a grand scale. Winterrule follows Summerrule, and Summerrule follows Winterrule, and the great battles to establish the change of power arrive at a forgone conclusion.
The worlds collided with each other following the Great Tear, a cataclysmic event that left the Veil weakened and semi-permeable. The realities poured into each other along weaknesses in the Veil, creating localities called "Bleed". These areas of "thinness" often manifest in liminal spaces between larger conceptual regions (e.g. Islands, existing between sea and land, mountains, between earth and sky or even smaller "in-between" spaces, such as tight city alleyways or crawlspaces in houses.) Significant Bleeds can cover larger areas, such as the Goat Broceliande, the Bro Bagan and the Kingdom of Arle. With each major Bleed, the Veil grows weaker and more areas of Bedoaur are subsumed into Faerie.
To a Bediz observer, Bleed is where the laws of reality cease to function. Impossible geographies of extreme terrain not found in a region, such as jagged mountains, floating islands and endless hallways spring into being. The passage of Chronos is distorted and incredible feats of Arkane can be performed. Mortal creatures within the Bleed can warp and change as they are infused with vast amounts of magikal power, literally ripped from the rules of their reality. Areas subsumed by Faerie typically remain as Bleed, leading directly into locations in Faerie itself such as the Forest of the Erlking and the Shifting Sands both regions of Faewylde, rather than a warped location originally in Bedouar. It is unclear what happened to the regions dominated by these spaces of Faerie. For the most part, locations in Faerie are an exaggerated mirror of the geography of Bedouar.
Conversely, to a Fae observer, Bleed forces the world to be thrown into sharp contrast, the airy, vague quality of Faerie suddenly taking on discrete qualities and relatively logical consistency within an area. Physical metamorphosis of Fae creatures is rare within Bleed, but conditions such as Time Madness, a sudden, intense flash of existential consciousness are often triggered within these areas, violently pulling a Fae out of blissful, lotus-eater like vagueness into terrifyingly clear sentience and individualism.
Bedouar, Faerie and the Bleed mark the most notable concepts of Alvez, but not the entire situation. Other worlds have had brief collisions with Bedouar, although few or none have had the same lasting entanglement as Faerie. Several locations, such as Iram of the Pillars or the Sea of Wine, were either established or heavily influenced by these sudden impacts, depositing artifacts, creatures, beliefs and locations into Bedouar. These periods of Bleed are relatively fleeting, but their effects can be lasting. It is unclear how many other realities Faerie has collided or crossed with, as the nature of that world makes small impacts difficult to notice, but the presence of people or artifacts foreign to Faerie and Bedouar appearing in the latter out of the former give credence to this theory.
Beyond these noted or hypothetical worlds in the concept of the Void, the empty space that these worlds are thought to be traveling through in order to have such collisions. It is considered that the Void lies within the imperceptible gap within the Veil, and that the tears portend a greater threat than Faerie. Some argue that the Sluagh, are created not from Faerie, but from this conceptual nothingness. However, the Void is by no means a universally accepted concept, with many arguing that Faerie itself, with its notably "softer" geographical reality, may serve this conceptual purpose.
Fauna & Flora
Faerie and Bedoaur both possess a vast variety of flora and fauna, spread over a diverse array of climes and geographical regions.
History
Among the peoples of Bedouar, Alvez existed as a metaphysical belief before it became accepted as an increasingly discrete concept. Prior to the tearing of the tearing of the the Veil, there was widespread belief in many cultures of realities beyond the material world, be they underworlds for the dead, the havens of the gods or something else entirely. There was little direct and widespread proof of the existence of these "other worlds" beyond small shimmers, mirages and other distortions in areas where the veil was thin, but acceptance of them on a spiritual level was widespread.
This changed with the Tearing of the Great Veil. The worldwide cataclysm tore reality asunder, flooding Bedouar with Magik and impossible creatures. Vast swatches of lands were cut off and entire regions were subsumed by the Otherworld as the realities crashed into each other. The resultant chaos destroyed the Empire of Remus and sent the Western Realms into a period of technological regression and tribalism.
Following the Tear, Bedouar and Faerie have had three (with a fourth beginning) periods of major reality upheavals, marked by major bleeds and new ruptures opening as the realities are pressed together. With each Bleed, more and more locations in Bedouar are subsumed by Faerie. Despite their significance, the 2nd and 3rd Bleeds were more like a tide than an earthquake, marked by noteworthy and consistent spread of Faerie Magik, but not the cataclysmic destruction that engulfed the Worlds at the Tearing. While Bedouar has records of periods before the Tear, Faerie does not, the establishment of recorded history and even the concept of temporal progression itself both entirely new concepts to the Fae. (See Note). With each Bleed, the two worlds grow to influence each other more and more, both physically, metaphysically and culturally.
Tourism
Wanderers from both Faerie and Bedouar find themselves in the other world under a variety of different circumstances, both intentional and accidental, with notable travel from both realities with the Bleed. The appearance of beings and objects from outside of the two main realms is very rare, but not altogether unheard of. These entities typically arrive into known regions through the Faewylde, rather than directly. Many kinds of "alien" materials and technology deteriorate quickly upon entry into Faerie, leaving only remnants to be studied. The reason for the metaphysical deterioration is not known, as materials from Faerie and Bedouar do not experience this when brought into the other world. Similarly, knowledge of these purported "Third Worlds" gradually fades over time, a trend which is especially accelerated in the Faewylde. As a result, very little is known of these worlds and they are dismissed as myth by most people in either realm.
Type
Multiverse
Included Locations
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