Earth
Athenaeum field report. Correspondent of record: Vel Asharen. Field period: limited — see entry.
| Title | The Magicless Plane |
| Magic | Absent — spells fail; enchantments unwind on entry |
| Yggy Gate | Closed (one-way in) |
| Native Population | Humans — billions, hundreds of nations |
| Resident Gods | None reside here; all hear prayers from here |
| Notable Use | The most secure prison in existence |
Overview
Earth is a plane physically and historically almost identical to the Common Plane, with one fundamental difference: magic does not exist here. No arcane, divine, primal, or innate magic functions within its borders. Spells fail. Enchantments unwind on arrival. No mortal of Earth has ever cast a working spell.
In this correspondent's personal experience, Earth is a place that should feel familiar to a Common Plane visitor and instead feels disturbingly hollow. I have visited Earth twice. I do not intend to visit a third time.
Magic
Absent. There is no exception. There is no fringe case. The arcane is not weakened or constrained — it is gone. A Common Plane mage who steps through the gate finds their power simply does not arrive with them. The phenomenon is one of the most thoroughly tested in the Athenaeum's records, and one of the least understood.
The Gods Still Hear
Despite the magic-dead state, the gods of Yggy can still hear prayers from Earth. Worship reaches them. Faith reaches them. They simply cannot return divine power as spellwork. What they can do — subtly, providentially — is intervene through coincidence: a miraculous recovery, a near miss that becomes a near hit, an answer that arrives in a dream.
Earth's many religions are, almost without exception, the same Yggy gods under different names. Aerith Soln is worshipped under at least a dozen sun-deity names across the plane. Meni appears as half the world's death gods. Thurim Ironwake is woven through every smith-god myth this correspondent has been able to identify.
Earthers do not realize this. The gods have never bothered to correct anyone. The correspondent's standing inquiry to the pantheon on this point has been answered, when answered at all, with versions of "they got close enough" and "it would be unkind."
Technology
In the absence of magic, Earth developed material technology of a sophistication that this correspondent finds genuinely difficult to describe in the Athenaeum's standard vocabulary. Precision engineering. Electricity at scale. Computation. Advanced medicine. Gunpowder, refined and varied. Flight, both atmospheric and orbital — they have placed working devices in the sky and continue to add more. Networks of self-propelled vehicles thread the inhabited surface in patterns visible from above. At night, a nearly continuous low canopy of artificial light covers much of the developed land. Most inhabitants can no longer see the stars and have largely stopped noticing.
Instantaneous communication is universal. Most adults carry a small glass-faced device on their person at all times and use it constantly. Through it they speak with one another across any distance, transact for goods, and access — at no apparent friction — what appears to be a meaningful portion of their species' accumulated written record. The Athenaeum has, on three occasions, attempted to characterize the device's full social function. All three attempts were considered incomplete by their authors.
Common Plane wizards who have studied Earth's achievements have, in the correspondent's records, come away genuinely disturbed. The disturbance is consistent enough that the Athenaeum now warns visiting scholars before granting access to Earth-derived materials.
Cultural Footnotes
A complete cultural survey of Earth is outside the scope of this entry. The following observations are offered as illustrative of the difficulty:
- The aforementioned glass-faced device shows its bearer, among other things, brief curated accounts of other people's lives. This appears to make them measurably sadder. They continue to look at it voluntarily.
- Cash has been largely eliminated from daily transactions in favor of the same device. A quiet revolution in commerce that no one this correspondent has interviewed seems to find remarkable.
- There is a widespread leisure interest in detailed audio accounts of violent crime, consumed while performing menial domestic tasks. The correspondent has not determined the combinatorial logic.
- A vast commercial sector exists to deliver prepared food from one establishment to one's home by a third party. The arrangement is markedly more expensive than preparing food oneself and is, by every available metric, popular.
- Considerable sums are paid for bottled water functionally identical, by Common Plane standards, to what flows from their working taps. The bottles are then discarded.
- A small but visible counter-current of mystics, astrologers, and self-described energy practitioners maintains a robust commercial presence. They are, of course, mostly correct on the central point that something larger exists. They are mostly wrong about the rest. None of them have the device-bearing public's attention for more than a few moments at a time.
The Athenaeum's standing position is that Earth's cultural practices should be observed without judgment. The correspondent's standing position is that the institutional position is professionally appropriate.
Yggy on Earth
The valley entrance is in the same place as on the Common Plane. Hjarn is coiled at the base, sleeping. He even wakes on the full moon. But the gate does not open from Earth's side. Hjarn cannot grant passage out. He has explained this only once, to a correspondent whose name is not on public record:
"This door does not open from this side. It never has. It is not for me to say why."
Athenaeum policy is to treat that statement as the entire answer.
The Exile Trap
Beings from other planes can be sent into Earth but cannot leave under their own power. Only direct divine intervention extracts an exile — exhausting for the god, almost never granted.
The Empire and other powers exploit this. Earth is used as the most secure prison in existence. Korin Soln is known to send personal enemies here and rarely pulls them back. The arrangement amuses her: an exiled enemy arrives in a familiar-looking world they cannot leave, surrounded by people who do not believe in magic and would not believe their stories if they did.
Native Population
Humans — billions, organized into hundreds of nations and several dozen languages of significant reach. Physically identical to Common Plane humans. The overwhelming majority consider magic to be superstition. The minority who do not are addressed under Cultural Footnotes above.
Yggy Status
Closed. Hjarn cannot grant passage out. The gate exists. It does not open from this side.
Correspondent's Note: On the United World Institution of Abnormal Entities and Events
I am, as standing Athenaeum policy permits, including a personal note on this entry. The reader may wish to skip it. I would not, if I were the reader. I am no longer the reader.
I have been attempting, for the better part of three field cycles now, to locate and correspond with members of an Earth-side organization referred to in their own internal documents as the United World Institution of Abnormal Entities and Events — abbreviated UWIAEE, or, more familiarly in the few of their materials I have managed to acquire, U-ie.
References to the institution surface, intermittently, in margins, on letterhead, in the occasional payroll fragment recovered from a discarded ledger. Members are reported to exist. Offices are reported to exist. One such office, in a moderately sized city in their continental interior has appeared on two separate property records I have personally examined.
I cannot find anyone to ask.
I have addressed formal correspondence to three locations associated with the institution. None has returned a reply. I have, on visits, attempted to inquire at the Joplin address in person. The building is there. The signage is not. The neighboring businesses report no recollection of the institution, though one has been operating beside the address for what its proprietor described as "longer than I've been alive." I have left calling cards. I have left forwarding inquiries. I have left a small sealed envelope at the front door with my Athenaeum credentials enclosed. Nothing has come of any of it.
The mundane explanations are several and I have considered all of them. The institution may be small and underfunded. It may have undergone a reorganization. Its records-keeping may simply be poor — Earth's records-keeping is, in general, poor by Athenaeum standards. It may operate primarily through unaffiliated contractors who do not carry the name. It may have rebranded under another name I have not yet identified.
Nevertheless. The consistency of the absence is striking. In my tenure I have not encountered an organization that produces this volume of paper while producing no available person to speak for it. I would consider the possibility that the institution does not, in any practical sense, exist — except that I have, in my own collection, a copy of one of their employee handbooks. It is one hundred and forty-three pages long. It includes a section on dress code. It includes a section on lunch reimbursement. It includes, on page sixty-one, an organizational chart.
Someone wrote those pages. Someone printed them. Someone enforces the dress code. I would like, very much, to speak with them.
Inquiry continues.
— V.A.