In the middle of the cold and swimming nothingness the Nine Realms sit atop the Antlers of the World Skull.
Each of them is a world unto itself, but at the center of the Skull rests like a bespoke crown the World Disk.
Here lies the home of all those ordinary mortal beings most alike to you and me, a colossal chain of mountains surrounding its rim protectively.
Here; ever-scorched by rays of Seven Hateful Suns the World Disk lies.
In elden days it was a verdant place with teeming life and flora, and diverse cultures dwelling on it.
Among them were the ones who thought themselves eternal; who called this world Andrastheia.
Now only three things still remain of them: Ruins; the ruin they brought upon the world and Seven Suns that scorch eternally, the height of all their hubris.
Since the cataclysm known as Estur ( “the Bright” ), the World Disk has not known night; only the brief respite of dusk which slightly cools the endless heat.
Now, none recall what once occurred. Now, most who dwell there call these realms the Scorched Lands.
Now, they scour ruins for ancient artefacts. Now, they erect monuments to theriomorphic Suns and to their Bright Emperor who blesses them with shade upon their skin and wasting death to all their enemies.
For his blessings alone they can subsist and roam and rule these realms of yellow sulphur-sand and rust-red ferrous-salt and scintillating deadly silt.
These lands are far from lifeless: with all their sprawling ruins of old and bustling trading posts, with ancient ports that once had sought to reach the stars, and dried out seas and endless galleries of husks of trees. But our story takes us far from here and deep, deep underground.
Within the Sunless Depths, we find caverns housing continents.
Here; there is no firmament. The skies are made of rock and compact sediment and crystal.
But carved into the bedrock of the World Disk by mysterious Antecessors in ancient times. Conditions of the surface realms before the cataclysm recreated nearly perfectly for their strange experiments, deep underground.
And there by mighty Serpent Rivers, lies Lake Aphon with its dark and gloomy waters. And cast on them reflections of the crystal Cavern-Sky in all its everchanging beauty.
And by that lake, there ever-fearful at the edge of the most dreadful Greatwood Leshivoi lies the City State of Styx in all its glory and disorder.