Ecology

Note: Where the word year is used, it represents one 365 day block of time

General Information

One peculiar thing about the realms is that where there is a planet it follows the same orbit around it’s sun, and is kept in lockstep with the planets below them. Why this is isn’t known, but a side effect of it is that they all follow the same solar year. Given the level of time dilation they are affected by many of them don’t use a solar calendar, instead marking time by planet bound objects such as moons.

Note: For story reasons, the planets travel in an even ellipse around the sun where they are at their closest points during the solstices, and at the furthest at the equinoxes. I freely admit that this is because I made a mistake in my head about when these events occurred so it's poor planning on my part.  In reality the earth is closest in January and furthest away in July, in both cases it's around 10 days after the solstice. This is because the sun isn't in the exact centre of the earths orbit, rather it's closer to one end than the other.

Time Dilation and magical density table

The table below shows how the ambient magical density changes between worlds, it is represented as a percentage rather than more workable value for ease of comprehension. Note that nothing with enough magic to form a magical body can survive in the first realm as the density is too low to support magical life. On the first realm of the next group, the density is only just high enough to support a magical body, indeed species that are native to the 4^th group often find it difficult or impossible to survive in such a low magic environment. Exceptions generally come from either spending a lot of time training to reduce the magical pressure they naturally produce in a world with higher magical density, or magically linking up with a native so that their magic is stabilised.

While viewing the table, each of the groups has a qualitative change in the levels of magic between them. For example, between groups 2 and 3, visualisation of one's magic changes from a simple representation, such as a single flower, rune, or other thing; to a location, like a valley, glade in a forest, forest, plain, etc. Or between groups 3 and 4 the location gains wildlife. 

As can be seen from the progression, the speed that magical density goes up increases before it starts to slow again in the sea of magic. As a result of these larger increases, people with magical bodies need to allow their body to acclimate before moving onto another magical world or risk causing an injury to their magical bodies that will prevent them from moving forward again due to the persistent risk of dying.

Magic and Science

Where science relies on knowing that given a specific action the same thing will happen every single time no matter who performs it or the current state of mind of the observer. Magic is pure change, and so affects the way that these things happen. This has a couple of important effects on science, and things that use scientific knowledge to function such as microchips. The most important thing is the scale of quantum uncertainty increases in higher magic areas/realms. This makes some very precise measurements impossible, and also means that effects like quantum tunnelling happen on larger scales. In applications like chemistry, this isn’t such an apparent problem until much later, but for electronics that use integrated circuits, this can cause rapid cascade failure of the internal transistors as current is allowed through when it shouldn’t be.

Magic, like the other forms of energy can be converted directly into matter. However, it needs some matter or directed will in order to do so. Stars provide this in appropriate densities, and so iron is not only the death knell of stars, but also magic. This is because breaking it down takes more magic than is produced. A side effect of this is that in sufficient purities iron will disrupt any magic that it comes in contact with, by forcing the magic to conform to lines of force, much like magnetism does with iron filings.

Realm details where known

On worlds where access to the dream is limited, the amount of time that the dream is open during the equivalent of one earth day is listed. For example, on the world of the Urisk, out of every 81 days that pass during an earth day, 60 of those are open to the dream. This is not to say that the other worlds are always accessible to the dream, just that when they’re inaccessible tends to be due to a solar event. For example on the Sidhe home world, travel through the dream is impossible during the triple light, which happens twice a solar year when the planet is closest to the sun.

First world – 15 minutes

The first world is theorised to exist beyond our world.  It is a world where there isn’t enough magic to even support squibs.  It is theorised that witches or wizards would succumb to fatal magical exhaustion within an hour if they were to travel there.

Second world – 1 hour

We live in the second world

Third World – 3 hours

Much like our world, the majority of inhabitants are non-magical, though enough people are magical that it’s impossible to hide magic.  Because of this, they development has reached the renaissance period with the odd expansion into Steam power and electricity.  Advanced electronics (anything that relies on transistors) can not function here.

Fourth World – 9 hours

Almost all inhabitants are magical, with the occasional person born without the ability to use magic Due to the availability of magic they’ve never advanced technologically past Roman era advances due to the ability to replace so many functions with magic.

Fifth World – 24 hours

This is the first of the outer worlds, and is also the first world where magic permeates everything.  All mundane people that are brought here will become squibs at the very least.  It is also the first world that the Fae actively hunt without fear, as the local people don’t use pure iron due to something they call Iron Sickness.  The world is currently undergoing an ice age, and so civilization can only really be found in the lower latitudes near the equator.

Sixth World – 3 days

Seventh World – 9 days

Eighth World – 18 days

Ninth World – 60 days

This is the last of the outer worlds in the Dream. It is also where house-elves [Urisk] come from, where they sleep in small crevices and caves to hide from predators.  They are the only intelligent native species left as the others were wiped out by the Greater Fae. 

Apart from a few outposts built by the courts of the Aes Sidhe, this world is essentially a giant safari park where the Urisk are allowed to live and breed in relative safety.  Predators, such as the spinewolf are taken care of if they get a taste of Urisk flesh, but other than that they are left to roam.  The Urisk are also kept artificially retarded in social and technical development so that the risk of them developing the tools needed to mount an uprising are minimised.

Tenth World

Lesser Fae are found natively in this world, they can convert their physical forms to magic for brief periods of time and are the source of Legends of will’o’wisps.

Eleventh World

Twelfth World

This is the home world of the Aes Sidhe. Time moves at 3 1/3 years per earth day. Rather than counting solar years, they instead count the rotations of the Largest Moon and the Smallest moon.

The largest moon Bethnes takes 60 years to change from full moon to full moon.

During that time Ghealach has gone through 8 cycles.

Each cycle consists of 7.5 years which are split up into 342 day segments

• Full
• Waning Gibbous
• Waning half
• Waning Crescent
• New
• Waxing Crescent
• Waxing half
• Waxing Gibbous

The New, Full and Half cycles mark the turn of the seasons.

A Solar cycle takes approximately 1216 years, and has 4 distinct phases, Rising to light and Falling to Darkness repeated as the planet follows the same elliptical path as the earth. During the end of the rising to light and the beginning of falling to darkness, the Sun’s light can be enough to cut off some areas from the dream for a few hours each day.

During the time of the triple dark, the dark hunt runs wild across the world as the increased magic filtering in from the sea causes new Slaugh to form and hoarfrost to cover every inch of the world.  No Sidhe are ever abroad during this time as it is considered a death sentence. Those that join the hunt are considered dead even if they survive.

The only other time they all remain inside is during the triple light, as the constant bombardment can strip the magic away from the unwary. For those that avoid that fate, ravenous flames race across the world consuming all in their path and leaving magic rich ash in their wake from which new growth will sprout with the passing of the height of the light.  The only places safe from the fires are deep in the mountains, and those places that the Sidhe have protected from the fire.

Due to the amount of magic permeating the world, it is considerably larger than earth, though has approximately the same mass.  This means that while there are nearly 3 times as many Sidhe as there are humans, they are far more spread out and ruled over by the courts.

Thirteenth world– This is essentially the Centre of The Dream and time and days no longer have a meaning.

This is the world that Nixie came from.  Iron also no longer exists as it is broken down into it’s magical components.

Fourteenth world

            Leylines are now visible in the sky.

Fifteenth World

Sixteenth World

There are no longer any creatures with a physical form, matter is instead used as a shell to cover parts of a creature if it’s used at all. Life is rich and varied less restricted to any particular form to fit an ecological niche, instead categories by power and intelligence.  Not even the Fae can live here, though the leader of each nation is required to prove their worth by spending 24 hours here and then returning.

According to one visitor to the realm, this world is the shore of the sea of magic, and the only things that live deeper are gods and The Sleepers.  Creatures that survive a visit here are irrevocably changed due to the necessity of becoming more magical than physical needed to even exist.  Without sufficient control or the assistance of someone that has that control, no creatures from the outer worlds can live for more than a few minutes, while those from the middle realms can last longer, even they will succumb if they stay for too long.