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Kthonia
A world of two worlds.
Kthonia · χθόνια · chthónia — "of the earth"
Kthonia is not one world but two — a smaller, elder planet driven into a greater one and frozen at the instant of collision. It should have collapsed into a single sphere. It did not. The Mirelands, and every kingdom of the saga, lives upon the surface of that impossible, lopsided world.
The Shape of the World
Two worlds, one body
Long before the first kingdom, two planets met and did not part. The greater holds the living lands; the smaller, elder world is buried half-inside it; and between them lies a third place that is no world at all — the dark roads where the two crusts grind together.
Epikthonia
επιχθόνια · epichthónia — "upon the earth"The great surface world of the living lands, washed by the lighter Sunlit Sea. It holds Hesperia, the Mirelands, and the empire-continent Aurethia.
Katakthonia
καταχθόνια · katachthónia — "beneath the earth"The smaller, older, volcanic world fused beneath, its oceans the dark Ashen Sea, riding far higher than the seas above. The continent Erebia lies here.
Ypokthonia
υποχθόνια · hypochthónia — "under the earth"Neither sphere, but the dark between the two — the caves, throats and drowned passages in the seam. Here the elder Sleepers lie.
Where the Worlds Meet
The Sundering
The seam where the two worlds touch is called the Sundering. The Ashen Sea of the elder world rides thousands of feet higher than the Sunlit Sea — and where the two oceans meet over open water, the higher sea pours forever over the rim: the Great Cataract, a roaring, kilometre-tall wall of falling ocean that no ship has ever crossed.
Where land crosses the seam instead of sea, there is no waterfall — the ground heaves up into a colossal range, the Spine of the Worlds. It is here, and only here, that a single realm touches both worlds at once.
Lands & Seas
The face of Kthonia
The saga has charted only part of the world — the lands of the upper world along the Sundering. The far reaches are still unwritten.
The Mirelands
Home, and the saga's stage — set directly upon the Sundering, the thinnest land above the dark between. Its waters drown, its forests hunger, its sleepers stir.
Aurethia
The gold land-bridge that crosses the seam by the Spine of the Worlds, belonging to both worlds — the empire-continent the Aurethian Empire is named for. (The land; the Empire is its power.)
Hesperia
ἕσπερος · hésperos — "the evening land"The far western land of the upper world. Named on the map; its story is yet to be told.
Erebia
ἔρεβος · érebos — "deep darkness"The volcanic elder continent of the lower world, beyond the Ashen Sea. Unwritten as yet.
The Dark Islands
The witch-haunted northern isles, where no crown has ever held the Shadow Witches.
The Seroqui Islands
The volcanic, broken-tooth archipelago of smugglers and pirates — its main harbour Blackwake, and the outlaw Black Tern Anchorage beyond it.
Powers & Crowns
The kingdoms of the known world
The Aurethian Empire is the great human imperial order — many kingdoms, each ruled by its own king, owing dues and allegiance to a single Emperor. Aeloria is one such kingdom, ruled locally by King Aldric; it pays its dues to the Empire and otherwise half-forgets it. The Emperor, Caeloran IV, rules from Aureth, the imperial seat, and the empire-wide order of mages — the Argent Concord, its supreme seat the High Argent — answers within the empire's bounds. Not all the world bows to Aureth.
Aeloria
A northern border kingdom of the Empire — a walled harbour city of white stone and old gold under King Aldric.
Carthis
A wealthy southern port-realm of old merchant houses and sealed ledgers, across the southern water.
Lornessa
The northern free-port of the southern continent, lying across the water south of the Mirelands — a place of changed names, bought silence, and ships that leave without questions.
The Highlands & Kharzug
The orc homeland of the northern dark mountains — and Kharzug, the Obsidian City, climbing the throat of the peaks among a hundred furnaces.
Lythrean
The wood-elven forest realm of Queen Lythra and the Verdant Throne — closed to all outsiders.
The Northern Isles
The witch-isles of Queen Lamia, home of the Shadow Witches — sailors say no ship returns.
The Old Powers
The Engine & the Sleepers
Beneath everything, in the dark of Ypokthonia, three Sleepers lie — powers older than the meeting of the worlds. The Ancient Observatory, a pale dome half-grown into a drowned hilltop, is no observatory at all but an Engine, raised by builders whose names are lost, to hold the Sleepers down. Every road in the saga bends, in the end, toward the Drowned Reach where it stands.
And over all of it hang the three moons. When the Red Moon rises, the old powers stir.
— The Fourfold Insignia of the Mirelands
Still being charted
The saga is still being told, and the world is still being charted. So far the story is set in the Mirelands — and not even all of it yet. The far west of Hesperia, the volcanic depths of Erebia, the elder world of Katakthonia, and the imperial heart of Aurethia all wait their turn. As each new book of the saga is written, more of Kthonia will take its place here — kingdom by kingdom, sea by sea — until the whole world is mapped. Every word is drawn from the books and the saga's canon.