The World

The world of Midgard resembles a coin surrounded by a snake. The serpent is Veles, the Father of Serpents, who girds the edges of the earth. One face of the coin is the land most people know. The elves claim the obverse is the Bright Land, also called the Elflands, the Summer Lands, and the Fair Place. Here lies the homeland of the elves (and gnomes, and other fey), a land both more magical and wilder than the known world.   Between the two sides of this coin lies the Shadow Realm. It is a land of grays and darkness untouched by Khors’s lamp. It is a plane of long shadows and unending dusk. It is a land of nightmares, in which the unready and unprepared can be lost forever. And it is not empty.   This shaded desolation was pierced by the magic of the elves, which allowed them to arrive in Midgard among the savage races living in the wreckage of Ankeshel. They wove a web of passages between their world and this one. These were the fey roads, built using the power of ley lines and strengthened by that magic.