Manix Settings Basics

Sun, Sky, Moon & Stars

The sun is a warm, golden orb with red, white and blue rings called Var-Ra'nos and many believe it to be a manifestation of the god Ra's eye, though many believe it's actually his throne. Scholars know that it is in fact a very large ball of fire, having been well documented long ago during an era of space exploration before the secrets of building spelljammer ships had been lost to the world.
Note: Said scholars also know that our world is not the only one spinning around Var-Ra'nos. In fact, there are three planets; Volso, Tiaga and Adriana (of which Calador is actually a moon) and a system spanning asteroid belt called the Uthar Belt.
Our world is known as Calador. It's a flat world, known to the very educated to be a remnant of a much larger ancient world called Raan that had been destroyed by its native demigods, called the Arch-Hagen. Calador would have been a lifeless husk of rock if it had not been fitted with vast physical, astral, ethereal and manifest theoretical mechanisms called the Maje Tanrilar (more commonly called the Great Machine). These systems work together to sustain and maintain the world, drawing energy and materials from the primordial planes and performing myriad functions to make the world a habitable place for life.
Manix is a cluster of continents on the side of Calador called Andoz. This is where you live. Somewhere across the sea to the west of Manix is Darshiniath. Depending on how expertly educated you are, you may or may not be aware that there ARE other continents and land masses on Andoz, but you likely know very little about them if anything at all.

• As a side note, the word Malixian references things of Manix. But it also refers to the people of the nation of Malixia. This is believed to have been born of an old belief that Malixia was the "first place" on Manix. While this can easily be prove not to be true, the region of Malixia was certainly one of the first locations to have been repopulated by the Arch-Hagen after they had destroyed and rebuilt this fragment of their old world.
  

The flipside of Calador is known as Corcarisan, which is where the legendary and exotic realms known as the Summer Kingdoms and the Empire of Zhan exist, a relative oasis of life surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of lifeless mountain ranges.
Corcarisan has an ever present moonlet called Dyga that hangs stationary in the sky, very near to the surface of the Corcarisan, casting a never-ending shadow across much of the land. Within these shadow lands resides the Empire of Zhan.
Back to your perspective in Andoz.
In the evening, the "Green Sky" (proper name: Adriana) begins to rise on the horizon until it dominates the night sky, then slowly slides down beyond the horizon in the morning to vanish by day. With the ever changing stars (see Zya below) only visible for brief moments each day, the myriad of features upon the expansive face of the Green Sky is what travelers use for navigation.

Andoz has three moons, but you can only see two of them in Manix.

• Lyst - Lyst is a small blue moon that is visible at night as a bright blue circle when it is full, silhouetted by the verdant backdrop of the Green Sky. As Ra is associated with the sun, so is the goddess Lyst associated with this moon. A full lunar phase cycle for Lyst takes approximately 32 days, but due to the alignment of Calador and Lyst, the moon is never fully eclipsed, and is thus always visible to some degree in the sky (see the diagram below). Lyst itself has a tiny moonlet named Pira that is only visible when Lyst is a full moon, as a tiny white speck beside it.
• Sarist - Sarist, the second moon is a tiny black triangle in a fixed position directly over Kovannah Lake. While present during the day, it is rendered invisible to the naked eye due to the sun, but at night it can be seen as a small black blemish upon the Green Sky. Sarist is an artificial moon with a largely unknown purpose, created many millennia ago by the Archmage Saren Moonsinger. It houses the nexus for the shissar spire network, the city of Haven and the great library of the Council of Sages. Sarist is what most modern enchanted compasses use to determine direction.
• Serria - The third moon is Serria Island, a moonlet fragment of ancient Raan that orbits the circumference of Calador and is only visible to those living near the rim of the world.

Nights are slightly longer in Andoz than the day, though the balance of night vs. day varies over the year, with longer days matching the nights during the Summer months and much longer nights during the Winter. Since the Celestial Realignment three centuries ago, the world has once again known scheduled seasons and Manix tracks by twelve 30 day months (three tenday) in a year.

Zya and the Stars and Constellations of Calador

The solar system that Calador inhabits is called Arrenthra. It is an anomaly in the multiverse and does not exist in a set point. For a very long time, it had existed cut off and outside of creation, hidden from the multiverse and only reachable by ancient, secret pathways that exist behind or beneath reality. With the Great Machine once again humming away and doing its job, the solar system once again exists out within the stars.
Regarding stars, with the Green Sky dominating the night sky, stars are only ever visible on the horizon opposite the massive green planet at dusk and dawn, when the sun his set but the Green Sky has not yet covered the sky. Scholars have recorded these stars and how they change over the year.
Then Zya happens and all of those stars vanish and are replaced by entirely new constellations. This occurs every year on Zya, which marks the first day of the year. The entire solar system of Arrenthra, for reasons unknown, teleports to different locations in the multiverse every year on Zya, cycling through the same nine galaxies over nine years and then back to the first one.
Thus Calador has nine different sets of stars and constellations depending on what year it happens to be.
The years and associated starscapes are named after a prominent constellation from each system long ago named by the Council of Sages after the nine Archmages of Manix: Saren, Kira, Wraith, Raullis, Tiffany, Sirra, Katrina, Sorsha and Vce.
It is theorized that the movement of Arrenthra was designed by the Arch-Hagen or a later addition by the Archmages as a defensive measure to keep them elusive and hidden from their many enemies across Creation.

The Layers & Planar Bleed

Calador is a flat world with a number of honeycombed layers of earth with a vast open, weightless space at its center where the gravity plane bisects the world. Imagine Calador as a delicious layered cake…

• Note that the Fallen Kingdoms isn't so much its own layer, but shares locales with both layers of the Shallows and the Ulddas Underdark, but has distinctly unique qualities that causes it to stand out.
• A little known fact is that two of the fallen Twenty Kingdoms had been pushed all the way through Calador to the other side, which were the seeds that the Summer Kingdoms and Zhan were to grow from.

Planar Bleed Planar bleeding is where some realms literally and suddenly open up to other planes, often the primordial elemental planes. These transitions are often invisible. The deep places of the world and the depths of the oceans are the most common, where portals and transitions to the planes of earth and water are not uncommon.
The "Umbral Bleed" created when the High Tower of Katrica had been destroyed in Arris by Sarist shares a particularly thin veil between the physical and spirit realms. Deep forests, especially those where one of the sidhe resides share boundaries with Faerie. Places where the Great Machine physically manifests often have very thin boundaries between the planes. As Calador lacks active planetary tectonics, all geothermal and volcanic activity is due to the presence of portals and planar bleeding to other planes.
Some of these, most notably the more distinct portals that link Calador with the elemental planes, are controlled by the Machine as a means to supply the world with elements it would otherwise lack on its own - water for example, as anyone who sails the distant outer seas can tell you, there are places where the sea quite literally flows over the side of the world to vanish into the void. The Machine replenishes this lost commodity by opening portals to the Plane of Water, inevitably absconding with natives from those planes who find their new material world home less than suitable to their liking.
Nezumi is the weightless, center layer of the world and is vast and open - and said to be endless. It is not clear where this empty space within Manix actually end and a cosmos of stars somewhere beyond the world begins, but if you travel far enough into the darkness of that realm, you will eventually find stars and discover that you have left the world and your stars far, far behind.

Seasons & Climates

Night and day and the seasons themselves are controlled part by the celestial rotation and alignment of the world in relation to Adriana and the sun, but largely in part to the mechanisms of the Great Machine and the relatively newborn deities, Anoran and Rokkur that are somehow bound into the balancing act of these machinations.
Climate regions are dictated via four mysterious "pillars" that run the length of the world interior. Two of the pillars are the heart of the colder regions on the surface and the other two are the heart of the warmest regions. Wind and weather is managed (and often fought over) by the gods that control these spheres of influence.

The Calendar

Since the collapse of the Church of the Dominion, the use of their calendar has faded and been replaced by a slightly revised version of the old Threxantran calendar.
Where the old calendar had 14 months of varying lengths, the new calendar consists of 12 months of 30 days (three tendays). This is in part a legacy of the Dominion Church as well as necessary adjustments made to compensate for celestial changes that occurred when the Great Machine had begun the world spinning once more, though not necessarily in the same cycle as it had in ancient times.
Tenday (week)
Most Malixians recognize the new twelve month calendar, each divided into three tenday weeks.

Modern Threxantra Calendar

#	Seasons	Calendar Months Major Holidays
1	Summer	Enoru • Zya (new year) • Muutos (change, transition)
2	Fall	Seteru • Skya (harvest festival, Fall equinox)
3	Fall	Newinar
4	Fall	Ionur • Ultar R’algo (ancestors & the dead)
5	Winter	Ilmigir • Ilmaka (midwinter)
6	Winter	Namoras
7	Winter	Talokur • Alfe’im (quickening of the year)
8	Spring	Selisur • Keva (Spring equinox, “hat day”)
9	Spring	Sisiru
10	Spring	Aldinur • Hadelmir (fertility) • Festival of Lliira (freedom, free will)
11	Summer	Disur • Lyas (midsummer)
12	Summer	Lethu

Coin & Commerce

Long ago, well before the rise and fall of the high magical era, the old kingdom of Katrica had established and shared a universal scale of coin, called the Katrican Banking Standard. While coins may be minted in different regions, have different names and appearances, they all adhere to this old banking system standard of weight and dimensions, insuring that all coins contain an identical quality and measure of the precious metal they are forged from. Thus you can spend two gold coins the same in Daltes as you can in Nycandria, Krive Del or Estland. Any attempts at forgery or tampering with this agreed upon coinage measure is punishable by the local government and the punishments vary from nation to nation, but they are always harsh.
Some nations also deal in promissory notes, drafted by counting houses or banks, both privately operated or controlled by guilds or government depending on what region one finds themselves in.
The following is the standard coinage exchange rate: Ten copper coins is the equivalence of one silver coin. Ten silver coins is the equivalence of one gold coin. Ten gold coins is the equivalence of one platinum coin.
Electrum coinage is recognized by the Katrica Banking Standard, though they are uncommon in modern commerce. One electrum coin is the equivalence of five silver coins.

Katrica Banking System (KBS) - KBS got its start on Manix long ago when the Archmage Katrina created the currency standard that is still used today. KBS had established branches throughout Manix and Darshiniath and later had devised various magical means to instantly travel between these branches, allowing someone access to their wealth and possessions from any branch. Eventually with the aid of the now dead order of Rose Wizards, the bank extended into the plane of Limbo, establishing their headquarters and banking hub upon a massive island of calm within the tumultuous chaos. For a few centuries after the Folly, Manix had lost its connection to the bank, but contact with the bank was restored through the actions of the Champions of Ravenholt three centuries ago and is again a common aspect of trade and commerce today.

Transportation

Mounts There are numerous types of mounts used throughout Manix. Many varieties of horses can be found throughout Threxantra and are considered the norm in most human dominated regions. In Darshiniath they ride upon long lizards that run and leap across the terrain. The inhabitants of Salista Hoventesh prefer horses, worgs and the goblins ride lynx. The ogres and minotaurs of Krive Del ride massive, horned reptiles. The people of Zalcoryn breed chocobos, avian mounts created centuries ago through arcane science. They say that the nothgar ride giant yaks and goats. Nakaltian dwarves ride upon small brown bears and their slyth neighbors ride upon giant rats that they are able to communicate with. The worthy of Nycandrian ride small, stout ponies. Malixian dwarves would ride stout, silver coated elk. Hobbits and illian often train dogs as mounts. The elves of Misanta ride sleek, pale deer. Camels are often used in Tranzconox, with gnomes often building elaborate platform saddles installed with many comforts. The gnomes of Striker and Victoria also zip around upon large, intelligent desert foxes that they treat as members of their family. The kyanna caravan roamers in Valexys breed highly intelligent horses that are said to be able to understand multiple languages and are treated as part of their communities. Small raptors and other dinosaurs are used as mounts by some from Kythennia. And possibly the strangest mounts of all, inhabitants of Dontholl Mex strap themselves to the bellies of large bats and fly. There are tales of ancient orders of knights that rode upon pegasi, drakes, griffons and other fantastic mounts, but you have never seen one, much less someone astride the creature.

Vehicles You've got your wagons, covered or uncovered, carts, coaches, chariots and other sundry of conveyances that you attach to one or more animals that you motivate to move forward. In Nakaltia they have massive steam spewing, iron carriages that travel upon metal tracks that run between cities. And while much more rare, there are airships. The Nakaltia dwarves power theirs by alchemy and artifice, the small ships used by the Rose Magi are powered purely by magic and in Darshiniath mephits of fire and air dance upon metal plates to inflate massive balloons that lift baskets and entire ships into the sky.

Warden/Shissar Spires Four massive, towering spires that arch towards one another to nearly touch at the center of a square plot of land often large enough for a village to exist. Plane white stone worked with a tall serpentine figure etched upon each facing. The spires are said to have originally been created by ancient shissar from another world, used by them to dominate entire worlds. Now they are constructed by the Wardens, an organization that oversees the construction and operation of the spire network from a nexus that joins all of the spires together within the moon of Sarist.
A Warden operator may activate a set of spires to transport all those that stand within the four arching pylons to another set of spires anywhere in the world that is connected to the nexus.

Cosmology of the Planes

Layers, layers, far more layers than a delicious cake. :( The material plane is one of several layers of this reality that actually share the same space. Academics claim that there are five commonly accepted layers that share the same space: Material, Shadow, Faerie, Ethereal and Spirit. The names may vary; material plane or mortal realm, spirit realm or near umbra, etc.

But if you go "deeper" into these realms, you may transition to realms of creation far more vast and very different from our world and its layers.

• The Material Plane transitions to the Primordial Elemental Planes and beyond that is the cradle or foundation that Creation itself is built upon, a region known as The Rift.
  • Elemental Planes: Earth, Fire, Air and Water
  • Quasi-Elemental Planes: Lightning, Minerals, Radiance, Steam, Vacuum, Dust, Ash and Salt.
  • Para-Elemental Planes: Ice, Magma, Ooze, Smoke
  • Scholarly note: the elemental planes ARE themselves the Primordials that had betrayed their kind and aided in the creation of, well, Creation - and then became a willing part of it. They each retain their names as given to them by the Tianne way back when, though most people don't know them by those. It's considerably easier to say "Plane of Fire" than call it Felvikor Ishlikyrias Akisis. If it minds at all, it's never expressed it in a manner that anyone has understood.
• The realm of Shadow, also known as the Shadowfel or the Demiplane of Shadow, leaves the inky likeness of our world behind and opens up to the endless Dark Infinity.
  • The Plane of Negative Energy, if an actual "place" is strongly associated with the Dark Infinity and is often envisioned more of a powerful series of leylines that exist throughout the realm.
• The Faerie Mirror is the reflection of the world that most consider to be the realm of the fae is in truth a delicately thin realm where the deeper Faerie realms touch the world and it is frightfully easy to step far beyond what is familiar in the Fae Manix to eternal and alien realms beyond.
  • The powerful sidhe live in the Faerie "shallows", while the godlike Lords & Ladies of Faerie live in "deep" Faerie.
  • The Plane of Positive Energy, if an actual "place" is strongly associated with Faerie and is often envisioned more of a powerful series of leylines that exist throughout the realm.
• The Ethereal Plane begets the Astral, which is where the Outer Planes exist or adjoin in a very insubstantial and everchanging manner. And beyond those are places that are not part of this creation at all - the remnants of Abenlore, the space that existed before Creation, where the Primordials existed before Abochia was built.
  • Note: all of known Creation, with a capitol C, sometimes called the "multiverse" is called Abochia. Only very well read folks with access to very smart, old books would possibly know this.
  • Many of the gods, infernal, abyssal, celestial and other such entities live primarily in the Outer Planes, though they can be found all over every layer of Creation.
  • While there potentially infinite Outer Planes, a recognized "geography" is often given to them in order to name them. This believed cosmology is has actually influenced many of these realms, shaping them or at least the perspectives of those that live in and travel them.
• Then there is the terribly vague Spirit Realm or "Near Umbra" that is inhabited by nature spirits and "awakened" or "sleeping" reflections of aspects of the material world is distinct from the Ethereal, though as you go deeper into the even more vague Deep Umbra that seems to somewhat share elements and realms with the Dark Infinity, Faerie and the Astral Plane, including access to the Outer Planes and then Abenlore beyond.