QUEYUEDA, Queyan (34 Aeyr, Tae 3500), The Realms of Fawyrn

Narrow stone steps spiraled around the walls of a deep funnel. Robed men carrying spell books stumbled in panic as BOOM! -- an explosion outside rattled sand and dust onto them and into the abyss down below.

Two of the men, Tyracuse, a forty-year-old heavyset man with a black beard, and Septimus, his seventeen-year-old freckle-nosed son, moved past the rest as they hurried up towards a ledge at the highest level. Sunlight streamed through the archway and the noise of chaos was the loudest there. Tyracuse and Septimus were panting and supporting each other as they clambered up, their voluminous spell books clutched tightly under their arms.

Just as they reached the ledge, another BOOM! rattled the walls of the funnel, sending Septimus' left foot slipping over the edge of the stairs. Luckily, Tyracuse had foreseen it and grabbed his son's robes just in time to pull him back.

"Be careful Septimus!" Tyracuse warned, just as Septimus clung to his father's arm for safety.

"They have finally come father," Septimus said.

Magic in Mortalissar does not occur to anyone. To become someone with the ability to cast magic, one needs to first become attuned to it. In general, there are four stages in a wizard's lifecycle: Awakening, Apprenticeship, Mastery and Succession.

To become a wizard, one must first undergo the Awakening. This normally happens when the wizard is young (no more than 15 years of age at least in human terms). As the wizard gets older, his or her mind will be filled with a different kind of knowledge of the world, romance, relationships, etc. that may impede realizing his or her fullest magical potential (sometimes to a detrimental end). So the choice to become a wizard solely rests on the individual and the sacrifices he has to make once he chooses the magic path.

Most of the nations in Mortalissar follow a calendar system introduced by Verathgar the First Wizard sometime in Mer 100s. Together with the Gods and Goddesses of the time, and the leaders of mortal creatures, he came up with an annual calendar consisting of 20 months, each month having 40 days. So a week in Mortalissar is about 10 days, half a year is 400 days and one day has 20 hours. Each hour is about 40 minutes and each minute is about 40 seconds. You can guess Verathgar has an obsession with the numbers 20 and 40. By the way, Verathgar was a mortal but he wasn't human. The old folk songs mentioned him to be a Hill Giant who became a little too wise after accompanying the Gods and Goddesses for some time. It's pretty hard to imagine if the giant's still alive today (that's more than 12,829 years ago) so...probably dead.

There are many different ways to introduce the world of Mortalissar, so naturally, I had to ask - where exactly do I begin? I can choose to start with her history, from the very first recorded history (the first Mer 100 years), her written and spoken language systems, the different wars and peace-times she had, the different kings, queens, princes and princesses each nation had through time, the Gods and Goddesses each region and country worship, the calendaring system they follow (what on earth is a Mer and Tae?), or even the magic system each region uses (the concept of Cores, free movement, voices and imbued stones).

But to start off easy, I've decided to do it geographically first, by introducing Mortallisar in the year Tae 4329 as a world with 11 great continents or regions, and three main island systems. So, let's break them down, shall we?