Every faith agrees there is more than Nor'Ova. No two agree on what, or where, or how one might get there - and those who have been are rarely asked.
Attributed to a Solist cartographer, name unrecorded
Nor'Ova is not the only realm that exists. On this, if on little else, nearly every faith is agreed. What lies beyond it is another matter entirely. No living scholar has walked those realms in body and returned to write of it. What is known comes secondhand: from scripture, from the testimony of the dead who were brought back, from the Awakened who spent their lives in another world's dreams, and from priests whose gods reach across the boundaries that mortals cannot. Every account is partial. Most are contradictory. All of them are, to someone, sacred.
What follows is not a map of what lies beyond, only a gathering of what is believed.
Xodod
The prison of the Soul of Zodo, built by El Anon with the aid of Zodo's own son Xeno, and conquered from within by the very being it was made to hold. Xodod (xodian for "spiritual death") is a realm of countless pits, each a hell of its own, divided into principalities ruled by the three high demon princes. It is where the claimed are taken, and where most faiths warn the unrepentant will end. Only Kymara is known to open its door from the outside.1
See Xodod.
The Spirit Realm and the Veil
Where souls go when they leave the body - or at least where they are meant to go. The Veil is the boundary between the living world and what lies beyond it, and it is Spector who stands at that boundary, receiving what passes through. Beyond the Veil, accounts diverge completely. The Church of Sol Anon teaches that the faithful pass into El Anon's grace. The Temple of Arameas teaches that each soul goes wherever the law of time determines. The Church of the Holy Body teaches that the spirit wanders blind until its fragments are called to create new life. Spector has not publicly corrected any of them.
See The Spirit Realm. (Page to come.)
The Dream
The realm of sleep and the subconscious, and the domain of Taal. Every dreamer on Nor'Ova touches its edge each night, and priests of Taal can walk within it. It is also, by most accounts, a prison. Somewhere within it, Taal holds what most believe to be the Power of Zodo. And during the long centuries of the Dark Paralysis, countless sleepers were drawn so deeply into it that they lived whole lives there. The Awakened who returned speak of a world where Zodo was the only god, and where Taal and Zodo were one.
See The Dream. (Page to come.)
Xenodelphia
Perhaps a realm, perhaps a mistranslation. Xenodelphia was among the first words translated from ancient xodian, found inscribed at the Chalcedon impact craters during the mid First Era. It has since become the name of a fairytale world of origin for races believed not to be native to Nor'Ova, and the claimed forge of Haen Legeous, the Sword of Legend. Most scholars regard it as myth. Its believers point to scattered ruins that no one has satisfactorily explained.
See Xenodelphia. (Page to come.)
Between the Realms
The boundaries between the realms are not, it seems, absolute. Kymara opens a door out of Xodod. Spector stands at the Veil. The dead have been called back across it, sometimes after a month, sometimes after centuries. Dreamers have been drawn in and never returned. And old stories, never confirmed, speak of places where the boundaries have worn thin: places where the living have gone somewhere they should not, and found something waiting.2
- 1. What is known of Xodod's layout comes almost entirely from the accounts of souls Kymara has freed. That they agree as closely as they do is considered either strong evidence of their truth, or deeply unsettling. Frequently both.
- 2. Most such stories are dismissed as folklore. Priests of Taal, Spector, and Kymara tend to dismiss them less quickly than everyone else.