The Wide, Wide World

The wide, wide world is a broken place, a shattered land of spires and shards of earth which hang suspended, each with the remnants clinging to their surfaces. It is a large world, but the communities that remain too it are small and insular - it is a place of communities which remain, thought they are shattered.   The wide, wide world of course, was once whole. Now it is split apart and set adrift. Colossal spires, each of which was once a proud nation, float in the ethereal sea. They are held in place, these seven spires, so that they never drift, or rock. The water on each spire is turned back at the edge, by the magic of the ethereal sea, and thus life goes on, now, as it did before the shattering.   Within these spires, where one delves deep, past bedmetal and underground streams, are the boneyards. This place is the graveyard of the gods, and it links each spire, so that a man navigating the boneyards on the spire of Wilting Spire, might emerge from the ground beneath the floating cities of Mizu Spire.   It is by luck that most civilizations remain somewhat intact after the shattering, but of course some were lost. Of nine nations which once populated the lands, only eight remain. Seven of these lay claim to a single spire, more or less; and the eighth is split across three such spires, at their northernmost poles. The unlucky ninth was plunged into the void during the shattering, and those people who remember it, and who remain, are few.