Wuld is a world shattered and gnarled by the winds of magic. The planes of existence lie tangled and melded together, and passing from one place to another has the chance to push you into a completely different plane. One can cross a field in broad daylight, and reach the forest on the other side in ten minutes, but attempt the same journey on a misty midnight and the tree line you reach could be in the Feywild, or worse places. Or you may arrive at the forest you intended to reach. This effect can occur in Wuld at any threshold. The mouth of a cave. The crossing of a river. The sailing of the sea. Even the passing of midnight to early morning. Anywhere where one steps from a place they can see to a place they cannot.
These gaps in the world are far from common, and while they may work once it may be centuries before another person stumbles across the same eddy in space time. Through them come other races, Elves, Orcs, Goblins and far, far worse monsters. Some say that magic itself only leaks into Wuld through these cracks, as the material realm of Wuld is very normal.
The laws of physics and nature follow many of the same rules as the various other inhabited planets throughout the multiverse, and while gods and monsters walk the wilds, none are native to Wuld save for men, dwarves, goliaths and common beasts, though perhaps more beasts than in some boring worlds. Great lizards, mega fauna and strange subterranean things cling on in Wuld beyond their proper time, but are not by and large magical.
About 200 million people live in Wuld at this time, some spread out across it’s vast land masses and small islands, while many are concentrated in a few centres of emerging civilization. On top of that approximately 50 million dwarfs still dwell in the world, though mostly they live deep underground and seldom mix with humans on the surface creating a fairly normal human culture.
In fact there are striking similarities between the early cultures of Wuld, and a far away and highly unlikely world in the multiverse known to antiquity as Terra. This is because they have many of the same challenges to face. Farming began in fertile areas amidst infertile ones as the population concentrated. It spread across seas, down coasts and rivers, dragging with it trade and civilization. The easier trade became the more complicated cultures grew, until some cultures began to colonize distant shores forming new cities far from home, while those that traded less frequently remained more warlike and less complex.
Wuld may have more effective magic than jumping up and down scaring people, and may have to deal with monsters of flesh rather than imagination, but as both are quite rare the majority vote of the democracy of reason minimizes their effects. Warriors remain the same whether they are dealing with invading pirates or marauding trolls, though sometimes they have to use specialized tactics on the trolls.
Wuld is also similar to distant Terra when talking in the astrological sense. It has two moons, a yellow sun which it is a good distance from, and a day that lasts 366 days, with days that are split by custom and practice into 24 identical hours because 24 is a nice number to divide, each hour dividing into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds, though a Wuld second is 1.0012 of a Terran second. In fact a wuld day is one minute and 44 seconds longer than a Terran day, but the people on Wuld have no idea of this fact and never will.
