Yggdrasil World System

Athenaeum standing collection. Correspondent of record: Vel Asharen. This volume is current as of the most recent verified entry. It is not finished. It will not be.

The world commonly called Yggy is a high-fantasy realm in which magic functions, lineage matters, and the borders between the mortal and the divine are unusually thin. The Common Plane holds twenty-five sovereign realms across two continents and their islands — but the world is larger than its surface. Yggy is, properly speaking, a plane-spanning tree, threading through multiple realms with the same valley entrance and the same sleeping dragon at every gate.

This volume is the Athenaeum's standing reference. It is maintained by ongoing correspondence rather than singular publication. The first compilation was prepared in 2023 by local reckoning; the current revision conforms to the 2024 ruleset under which the realm presently operates.

The World

• The World Tree (Yggdrasil) — the world's primary deity; the anchor; the bridge
• _Planes Index — the three realms currently confirmed
• Canon Rules — how the record accumulates

The Pantheon

This world is observed by ten gods of a recognized pantheon, a small number of divine creatures who orbit them, and at least one planar deity who is worshipped only within his own realm and considers himself the better for it. The three categories are not interchangeable. The distinction is consequential for both worship and mechanics.

• _Pantheon Index — the ten gods of Yggy
• _Divine Creatures Index — individuals operating above the mortal scale who receive no worship
• _Planar Deities Index — gods whose reach does not extend past a single plane

Species

_Species Index — 11 species are currently playable in this world. Ten conform to the local published ruleset; one is locally distinctive.

Nations

_Nations Index — 25 sovereign realms on the Common Plane, spanning kingdoms, theocracies, empires, and arrangements that do not translate cleanly into any of those categories.

Backgrounds

_Backgrounds Index — character backgrounds rooted in the setting's specific lore. Recommended for characters whose past requires this world to make sense.

History

_Events Index — the recorded timeline. It grows as campaigns conclude.

Campaigns

_Campaigns Index — active, completed, and planned campaigns operating in this world.

Correspondent's Note

The setting blends classic high fantasy — true elves in branch-built capitals, dwarves who carve cities from molten rock, goliaths in cloud-piercing peaks — with stranger threads: shadling realms in perpetual twilight, vampire dynasties married into other royal lines, and a council of beast-blooded tribes who answer to no crown.

Beyond the Common Plane lie other realms entirely. Heofon drifts above its own ground, ruled by an isolationist elf-aristocracy who have collectively decided to pretend the gate to other worlds isn't there. Earth has no magic at all — and the gods of this pantheon can hear prayers from there but cannot answer with spellwork. The valley at the base of the World Tree is the only confirmed passage between them, and the dragon who guards it sleeps for twenty-eight days out of every lunar cycle.

In this correspondent's assessment, the most striking feature of Yggy is not the dragon or the tree or the gods themselves. It is the institutional vagueness of the gates between realms — how thin they are, how few mortals know they exist, how completely most populations would prefer not to think about them.

The borders between worlds are thinner than they look, for those who know where to look. Most do not. Most are content.

— Vel Asharen, Senior Correspondent, The Interplanar Athenaeum