Everything has a place
Skazka lies upon the Prime Material plane, a realm shadowed by twin moons that wheel through its night skies like watchful sentinels. Lunica, the smaller of the two, glows a pale, ghostly white, while Mani looms larger, a sickly green orb that chills the marrow of those who gaze upon it. Their significance shifts with the eyes that behold them: dwarves curse their light, muttering of misfortune and ill portents, while certain Beast Races kneel in reverent worship, calling them gods. The Aeternian Calendar, the measure of all mortal time in Skazka, bends to their inexorable movements, marking the passage of fate itself.
Skazka is strange even among the stars. Over countless centuries, beings foreign to its lands have appeared without warning, their origins cloaked in mystery. Scholars long puzzled over these intrusions, but it was only during the era of the Magical Prohibition that attention turned to their cause. They discovered a perilous truth: Skazka’s borders with other realms are fragile, threadbare in places. Here, the substance of worlds thins, torn by unseen forces. These rifts—whispered of in dread tones as ‘The Veil’—open fleetingly, allowing passage to creatures and horrors from beyond, and leaving the land ever more haunted by the shadows of other realities.
Skazka sits where the multiverse thins: the Veil is fragile here, and in many places threadbare. Some realms press closer than others—most of all the Shadow Realm, forever within arm’s reach. From that near-dark, rifts are sometimes forced open by something—or someone—beyond the Veil. These Incursions tear into Skazka without warning, and they almost never herald peace: raids, hauntings, and other calamities spill through until the breach destabilises and shuts.
This was a time of great turmoil when agents of Kaos sought to recover the Shards of Uzume from Skazka. While those agents numbered few, they possessed the ability to open rifts to other realms and call forth servants of Kaos. After the Shadow War the Aeterian Empire banned the study and practice of trans-dimensional travel, because it feared the consequences such meddling may have on the world.
Centuries ago, Skazka was structure by a shower of meteors, triggering a cataclysmic event known as the Starfall. The impact plunged the world into a mini ice age, reshaping lands, civilizations, and trade routes. Ancient dragons awoke from long slumber, reclaiming their dominion, while a new humanoid race — the Dragonborn - emerged, carrying the essence of dragons into the mortal realm.
Skazka still wears the wounds of Starfall: dragons cut the skies, Dragonborn walk among mortals, and the heavens’ shatter seeded the world with tiny “Tears of Uzume”—spark-bright gems whose stray divinity can rouse simple enchantments into artifacts of legend.