SpoilerFew know about the nature of the twelve realms; the only place the Shape of the Universe is widely taught is in the great cities of Zhide's celestial empire. In most realms, their very existence is hidden away in obscure scholarship, shrouded in myth, or completely forgotten.
Of course, there are two realms that, while they know a little less than the celestial scholars of Zhide, have more practical experience with the realms. The subterranean Underworld and the realm of Faerie both occasionally intersect with some of the other realms, creating rifts that allow ordinary travel between them. The other realms also do occasionally intersect with each other, though much less frequently, and with a couple of exceptions.
The twelve realms are:
Aeos: A world with a bizarre topography: The world forms a bowl, with the sun a floating orb above the middle that fades in and out to bring day and night. Beyond the world, the slowly-rotating sphere of the heavenly firmanent is pocked by stars and tiny wandering planets. Gravity is always in one direction, making the edges of the bowl like mountainous walls. At the lowest point in the middle of the bowl is the great sea. Around that sea flourish ancient civilizations, who have mastered bronze and worship pantheons of violent and capricious gods.
Major races: Humans, wood elves, sea elves, dwarves, goblins, goliaths, orcs
Common Languages: Nisilaki, Emptor, Atekht
Zhide: A great disc, floating in astronomical space, upon which is a single colossal continent. The celestial empire dominates most of the landmass, though it has little actual authority over most of its participant settlements. The empire is ruled by bureaucrats and scholars, and is rich in magical knowledge and arcane tradition, as well as new advances in arcane technology and gunpowder. Out away from the great cities of the river-mouths and coastal islands, the inland settlements of the empire are part of vast provinces, far-flung and mostly filled with untamed wilderness. The celestial empire worships a pantheon of their own, from which their Emperor or Empress draws their mandate. Across the sea, feudal lords battle and scheme for lordship over the islands, and samurai pirates rule the waves.
Major races: Humans, high elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, dragonborn, all goblinoids, kobolds
Common Languages: Imperial Zhidean
The Underworld: This realm is a land of subterranean caves and caverns, of lightless rivers and echoing tunnels. Many of the great caverns and tunnels of the underworld are ruled by the illithids, or mind flayers, a race of tentacled brain-eaters who have psionically dominated many races. Some say the illithids came from the Forbidden Realm, while others say they came from outside the Twelve Realms altogether. Chief and most favoured among their slaves are the duergar, who are dwarves corrupted by the mind flayers' psionic powers. Still, the Underworld is far too vast for the illithids to entirely dominate, and many regions of it are home only to monsters and forgotten secrets, as well as the young empire of the drow. This world is one of the most connected – there is no “surface” here, but rifts do open in the rock, allowing exit to the caves of other dimensions. Most cave rifts remain open for long durations, creating some of the only permanent natural gateways between the realms.
Major races: Drow, duergar, svirfneblin, goblins, kobolds (and of course illithids)
Common Languages: Undercommon
Aetherium: A world that floats, this realm is held to be one of the largest, as it also has some of the least obstacles to travel. There is no land or sea here; islands float in the air, above an ocean of clouds below. To ascend towards the sun and stars brings weak air, while to descend into the roiling clouds beneath brings turbulence, pressure, and in the deeper layer of heavy gas, asphyxiation and toxicity. The weather here is ruled by rolling cloudfronts and wandering storms. A few civilizations stake their place amongst the floating islands, most notably the City of Chains, which is a major hub for airships and magitech and which dominates a region of islands known as the Constellation of Chains.
Major races: Humans, wood elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, dragonborn, tieflings, aarakocra, all goblinoids, kobolds
Common Languages: Aetherine
The Vaian Ocean: A dimension of endless water, the Vaian Ocean is pocked by thousands of unmapped little islands. There are no empires in the islands; most are uninhabited, while some are home to tribes of disparate races, who perhaps arrived countless generations ago from other realms. Far, far to the north, where the sun shines hottest, there is rumoured to be a continent ruled by empires of lizards. When a ship gets lost at sea, far from any well-travelled shipping routes, there's a chance it'll end up in the Vaian Ocean. And if a ship knows the Vaian Ocean well enough, it might find a way to sail to other realms.
Major races: Humans, high elves, wood elves, sea elves, halflings, dragonborn, all goblinoids, kobolds, lizardfolk, orcs, tritons
Common Languages: Vaian common, Triton
The Shadowlands: No sun shines in the sky of the Shadowlands, and the land is warped and uncertain. This dimension is ruled by shadows and the monstrosities that lurk within. Those that arrive bring a little of the place they left with them, and must always carry a light lest the darkness itself devour them. The land reshapes itself when nobody is near, connecting far places and pushing near places apart; as such, there can be no map of this place, and understanding the shape of the world is impossible. Despite the inhospitability, a few humans have made civilization here, and it is the home of the enigmatic and treacherous shadow elves.
Major races: Humans (spooky humans), shadow elves, halflings (ghostwise)
Common Languages: Umbran
The World of Iron: A difficlt to reach world, with a conventional planetary shape. Intercontinental travel has become rare, as the lands have become disconnected from each other by the world's vast, poisoned oceans. Technology had advanced to produce a world of steel and diesel, of massively overbuilt mega-cities with towers and trains surrounded by endless plains turned into farms and fields. This has all fallen into steep decline – the air and sea were poisoned by unchecked industry, turning the colours of the sky itself from pleasant blues to dirty yellows and oranges, and magic was secretly and recklessly harnessed to catastrophic effect. The great megalopolis, once the capital region of a colossal democratic empire and a beacon of wealth and power, has been reduced to a few scattered and flickering candle-flames in the face of the empire's collapse. Scavengers and raiders are set to inherit the world, but the light of civilization hasn't gone out yet.
Major races: Humans, wood elves
Common Languages: Metropolitan
Xast: This world is scoured by three suns, and is mostly an endless expanse of sand. Around clusters of oases and rivers, powerful civilizations flourish, but between the oases and out in the dunes, it is an unchecked wilderness and an utterly inhospitable land. In one region, great temples and pyramids of stone rise up from the dry and desolate sands, built by the ancestors of the dying kingdom that now huddles in their shadow. Those ancestors' tombs are said to hold treasure beyond imagining. In another region of the realm, where mountains collect and preserve a little more water, frontier towns have spread through the valleys from hidden cave cities, seeking wellsprings and mineral riches.
Major races: Humans, dwarves, halflings, dragonborn, tieflings, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs
Common Languages: Atek, Draconic
Entira: This fantastic realm is not home to the same races as the others, aside from the notable exception of it being the original home of the orcs. The natives, the plants, the animals, the very landforms of this realm are alien and unlike any of the others, and no natural rifts form here from other dimensions. Two suns and two moons patrol the skies in lockstep with one another, and the world itself is said to be vaguely diamond-shaped. The existence of the world is maintained by the power of four colossal magical crystals, which tie the souls of the native races to magic itself in various ways. The crystal of the west – the orcs' crystal – has become corrupted, however; a dark force is rising there, seeking to unbalance the world and claim dominion over it.
Major races: Gwyllion, kenku, tabaxi, tortles, orcs
Common Languages: Gwyllion
Special Note: Entira's Races
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SpoilerUnlike in most realms, the races of Entira are tied to the land in a specific way. The four great crystal pillars that maintain their world channel the flow of spiritual essence that makes up their souls, and provide the conduits for the reincarnation that all Entirans believe awaits them after death. When a creature from Entira is away from their home plane, they feel a sense of emptiness and loss. If an Entiran dies on another plane, their soul would struggle to find its way back to Entira to be reincarnated, so if an Entiran were to find out about the planes and wind up on a different one, they'd be even more afraid than other races of dying there. Entirans also cannot naturally reproduce on other planes.
Many Entiran races have bestial features. With races like kenku, tortles and tabaxi, the logic is obvious, but orcs are also native to Entira – in fact, they spread to other worlds from there at the behest of their mysterious dark overlords. Orcs in the Twelve Realms are porcine, with not just the tusks of boars, but their snouts, and ears, too. The orcs made a bargain with dark entities, facilitating the corruption of the western crystal of Entira. They have become more physically powerful and have embraced murderous cruelty, and despite their disorderly society and tendency to rampage in combat, they serve their dark masters with unwavering loyalty. They even freed themselves from the magic binding them to the realm by breaking shards off of their crystal and bringing them to other planes, and can now reproduce and reincarnate in other realms. Orcs have no intelligence penalty but are otherwise mechanically normal.
The gwyllion are a short forest race – about as tall as dwarves – with skin that runs from green to blue, and their large eyes, three fingers, and noses that are flat, rough and a different colour to their face (like a cat) accentuate the rest of their features, which are closer to that of a regular humanoid but still noticeably very different. They are the most common race in Entira – with communities tied to all four crystals, while each other race is tied only to one of the four. They use the same statistics as Kalashtar, but instead of having a link to a spirit of light and order, their souls are more directly tethered to their homeland's crystal than the other Entirans. The crystal lends them power, as well as mystically connecting them to the wisdom of other members of their tribe for guidance. Gwyllion lose most of these racial powers in other dimensions, unless they find some way to maintain them. Being cut off from their crystal in this way is a traumatic experience, like cutting away a part of yourself, which means few gwyllion would choose to travel the planes – if they even knew they existed.
The kenku, tortles and tabaxi function as normal, though they are tied to their respective crystals in the general way initially discussed. Entira is not a land of cities and towns, but of small villages and forests. There is little urban development or central government here, and most communities are self-sufficient.
Khazum: The realm of fire is home to colossal volcanic mountains, completely dwarfing in scope the mountains of any other dimension. A single mountain here can be up to the size of a small continent, and the realm is riven by lava flows and devastating eruptions. The sky is often blanketed by black clouds of ash, and from the ground, what pockets of sky can be seen appear a furious red. The surface of this world is violently inhospitable, but the dwarves first emerged here, forged in the volcanic caves beneath the ground. Here are their greatest cities, delved deep into stone and fuelled by magma. The dwarves who left Khazum in ages past, whether deliberately or by chance, do not have connections to this place any longer, but it features in all of their myths. The dragons and their smaller kin also emerged here first, but left for other dimensions. Up above the roiling ash clouds, in the light of the huge red sun where the sky is the colour of copper, a lost gnomish city that travelled here in its entirety from Aetherium has made this place a home.
Major races: Dwarves, orcs, dragonborn, goblins, kobolds
Common Languages: Dwarven
The Realm of Faerie: Said to be the world-between-worlds (though that label has also been applied to the Underworld), Faerie is a land of endless verdant forests, punctured by beautiful mountains. This is the home of the elves. Their original incarnation, the eladrin or “true elves”, can only be born in the wondrous glades of this place. Faerie, for all its beauty, is a wild place, and there can be no permanent paths through the trees. Aside from the position of mountains, bodies of water, and the White City of the high elves who returned from their adventures through the planes, nothing is ever firmly locked to one location, so travelling in the forest with no guide comes with great peril. And the wildness also comes in the form of beasts and monsters, particularly in the darker and more foreboding of the ancient woods, where creatures from the worst kinds of fairy tales lurk.
Major races: All elves except drow, gnomes, halflings, bugbears, changelings, firbolgs, goblins
Common Languages: Elven
The Forbidden Realm: A mysterious place that few have visited, sometimes known as the “walled world”. At times said to be a paradise, or a wasteland. Inaccessible from most of the other realms, even with magic. For whatever reason, no people can thrive here, and little is known for sure about the place – other than the fact that magic itself is incredibly weak there.
Major races: None
Common Languages: None
