Rew (Charos)
Rews are the primary type of world found in the universe of Charos. Like rews elsewhere, the rews of Charos are shaped like thin, flat disks. It is on and in the rews that most of the plane's life is found. The typical Charotian rew is separated from its nearest neighbors by millions of kilometers, and is in most ways a self-contained world, although it may have some connection to other rews through the skyfalls that plummet from one to another, as well as possibly through magical portals and other more esoteric links.
While the rews' distribution in Charos is not regular, nor is it apparently completely random. While rews do sometimes occur within a few thousand kilometers of each other, this happens much more rarely than a purely random distribution would suggest; conversely, rews with no neighbors within ten million kilometers are also rarer than would be expected were their positions randomly selected. More obviously, their orientations are not evenly distributed among any possible solid angle, but weighted very heavily toward three particular axes, known as the canonical axes. Rews not aligned with the canonical axes do exist, but these "diagonal rews" are a tiny minority, making up less than one percent of the total. The surfaces of rews of the same orientation are collectively called conspects; the three canonical axes therefore are each orthogonal to two major conspects of opposite orientation. Each conspect has a standard name used by cosmologists, and each canonical axis is referred to by the initial letter of one of the two associated conspects. The canonical axis corresponding to the conspect of Qabede is called the Q axis, that corresponding to the conspect of Gaden the G axis, and that corresponding to the conspect of Heqhasta the H axis. The obverse conspects of Qabede, Gaden, and Heqhasta are Mriddiom, Ckapir, and Gaiua, respectively.
Each surface of a rew generally has a name by which cosmologists refer to it, which for inhabited rews is usually a name used by some of its inhabitants. The rew as a whole is not usually given a separate name, but is generally referred to by the name of the surface of the same conspect as the speaker, if applicable; if not, it is referred to by the name of whichever surface is more prominent or more relevant to the current discussion. When it is absolutely necessary to make it clear that the speaker is referring to the entire rew, it can be called by both names, separated by a hyphen. For example, Dadauar is the name of a rew of Qabede—that is, it is the name of one surface of a rew aligned perpendicular to the Q axis, the surface that pertains to the conspect of Qabede. Dadauar's obverse, a world of Mriddiom, is called Eldi. If a cosmologist native to another world of Qabede wishes to refer to this rew, they would most likely call it Dadauar—while a cosmologist on a world of Mriddiom would be likely to call it Eldi. If the cosmologist wished to avoid all ambiguity about whether they were referring to the entire rew or just one surface, they could call it Dadauar-Eldi or Eldi-Dadauar (a cosmologist in Qabede would more likely use the former order, a cosmologist of Eldi the latter).
Shape and size
While their edges of Charotian rews may not be perfectly circular, they are very nearly so, with the radius—the distance to the edge from the surface's centroid—typically varying by angle by less than one tenth of a percent. There are, however, exceptions, defective rews that are mostly round but have either large concavities in the edge, or large projections or semiwolks extending from them—or in some cases both; and obround rews that are noticeably elliptical or ovate. Rare rews may deviate even farther from circular shapes, including irregular rews that may be as informous as inkblots. A few rews have been discovered of polygonal outline, but they have all proven to have been of artificial origin; such shapes, apparently, do not form naturally. There does seem to be some correlation between a rew's regularity of shape and regularity of orientation; the more a rew's form abludes from the circular, the more likely it is not to be oriented along the canonical axes.
The most mysterious rews are the so-called brotoids, rews shaped like the outlines of living creatures, most commonly humans. Brotoids vary in the detail of their shape, from perfect brotoids shaped exactly like human (or other) silhouettes to marginal brotoids that are mostly circular but with subtle irregularities that suggest a human (or other) form. There is some inconclusive evidence that these differences in shape represent stages in a temporal progression, that brotoids evolve over time from perfect silhouettes to regular circular rews—or, much less likely, the reverse. In any case, no well-supported theory has been advanced to explain the existence of brotoid rews, but among those civilizations that are aware of them they may play a large role in myths and culture.
The rews vary in size, with a mean diameter of roughly twenty thousand kilometers and a standard deviation of around four thousand kilometers. A rew's thickness is usually about two or three percent of its diameter. There seems to be no significant connection between a rew's shape and size; the areas of irregular, defective, and even brotoid rews follow similar distributions to those of the more common circular rews.
Geography
Just as the outlines of the rews are not perfectly circular, the surfaces of the rews are not perfectly flat. The differences in thickness give rise to terrain features like mountains and valleys as on most geotic worlds. Commonly, the two obverse surfaces of a given rew will roughly mirror each other, the mountain ranges and depressions on one side being in roughly the same locations and in roughly the same shapes as those on the opposite. The landforms may slowly shift over time due to a combination of processes including erosion, deposition, directive forces, and the influence of buried components of different gravitational orientations.
Again like other geotic worlds, it's common for rews to have large quantities of water—or, more rarely, other liquids—on their surfaces. These fluids fill the low areas in the surface, giving rise to oceans, seas, and other bodies of water, and to rivers when the evaporating water turns into precipitation in the highlands. On some worlds, the water is confined to the inner areas of the surface, an elevated rim holding it in, but on others, the water extends all the way to the edge of the rew, and plummets off that edge in a gigantic cascade known as a skyfall. On such worlds, the water is usually replenished by other skyfalls impinging upon them from other rews far above. A skyfall in the opposite direction, from the obverse conspect, is known as a skyrise, and, because it would otherwise fall upon the rew's obverse, is only visible at the edge of a rew—or, rarely, through a hole in the rew's interior. It is possible to have both a skyfall and a skyrise at the same edge; in this case, the water wavelets of opposite orientation tend to mingle and spread out before once again separating and falling in their respective directions, possibly leading to a body of water extending beyond the edge of the disk called an outwick.
Most of the rews of Charos have extensive underfolds, vast networks of subterranean chambers and passages permeating most of the worlddisk. Just as the surfaces of each orientation are given collective names, there are also names for the underfolds of the disks oriented along each of the three canonical axes: the underfolds of the disk of the Q axis are collectively called Bathk, those of the G axis Ruden, and those of the H axis Zarafach.
Surroundings
While most of Charos is filled with colorful spacemists, in the vicinity of most rews the mists change their consistency. Usually the mist around the rew becomes an invisible gas called air, although near some rews it takes on a different appearance and makeup. While the reasons for the change in the spacemist near the rews is not entirely certain, the leading theory is that it comes about due to the ambient magic emanated by the life forms on the rew. Because magic in Charos comes from dreams and therefore from living creatures, it has a greater presence where such creatures exist in greater numbers, and it is on and in rews where the highest concentrations of life in Charos exist. The best evidence in favor of this theory is that the few uninhabited rews tend not to exhibit such an alteration in the surrounding mists—the spacemists retaining the same panchromatic nature they show elsewhere all the way to the rew's surface—although this observation does have other possible explanations.
In any case, the allogeneous extent of the mist in the vicinity of a rew is known as its atmosphere; the part of Charos outside the atmosphere of any rew is called dreamspace—or just space when that doesn't lead to confusion. Typically the atmosphere at the center of the rew extends to an altitude of about a tenth the rew's thickness—some fifty kilometers for an average rew. The ceiling of the atmosphere lowers toward the rew's edges, at the rim of the rew perhaps reaching only some ten or twenty percent its altitude at the center. On some rews, the atmosphere gradually transitions into the surrounding spacemist over a distance of a few kilometers or more, but much more commonly the delineation between the atmosphere and dreamspace is sharp and sudden, with an obvious boundary between them. This boundary is called the dreamsea, and its resemblance to a sea is more than merely visual; the differences between the air and the mists of the dreamspace allow certain materials and objects to float on their interplane as on the surface of a body of water. There are whole biosystems of creatures collectively called oneiroplankton adapted to this strange environment, and it has not gone unused either by ellogous explorers: dreamships have been fashioned that voyage across the dreamseas, some closely resembling ships of a more traditional nautical nature and others unlike any vessels found on liquid strands.
Life
Most known rews are inhabited, though the exact nature of the inhabitants varies. Each of the six major conspects, however, has a different panaster complex of life forms and phenomena found on many if not most of the worlds of that orientation.
- The conspect of Qabede is home to the anthropic complex; here the most prominent ellogous folk is the human, and other organisms often found where humans are found, such as cats, wolves, and ants, are found here as well.
- The most salient folk of Gaden is the codman, which closely resembles a human except for the addition of a prehensile tail. Many worlds of Gaden are covered with treelike branching flora and sessile fauna, and the other creatures of its complex also are disproportionately blessed with prehensile limbs and arboreal adaptations.
- Heqhasta is home to the grazraith, toothy leicutes with six limbs, four eyes, and three mouths. As outlandish as the grazraith may seem by human standards, many other Heqhastan creatures are even stranger, with multiple appendages in baroque arrangements.
- Mriddiom is populated by a variety of folks collectively called skarns, who despite their diverse features all have in common a short, squat form and a singular walking pad like the foot of a mollusc instead of legs. The latter appurtenance is common to many creatures of Mriddiom, where legs seem to be a relative rarity.
- The fauna of Ckapir tends toward long stalks, tentacles, and elongated or globose bodies or segments. No single type of folk predominates, although there are several that are found there, some worlds bearing only one and on some several coexisting.
- Gaiua sports a surprising variety of intangible or semitangible creatures with glowing forms. As on Ckapir, no single folk particularly stands out, but a number of folks exist there.
A few types of creature are found on multiple conspects. In some cases, like that of the mistling and the lave, this is because they originate from the surrounding dreammists or from the transient dreamscapes that can appear on or near any conspect. The presence of the spiderlike narigat on all conspects can perhaps be explained by its ability to shift its gravitational direction, which allows it to walk on the surface of any orientation. A similar circumstance holds for the bubble tree, the seeds of which experiments have shown can adapt their gravitational direction to their surroundings; the fragile fruit of the bubble tree are as light as air, and can actually float through dreamspace to other worlds. The long-bodied chathel was once believed to be related to the narigat and to owe its pollasterony to the same ancestral ability which it later lost, but no one advanced a convincing explanation for how it lost that ability on every world, and in any case later investigations have shown that it is not closely related to the narigat after all, leaving the explanation for its distribution unresolved. Likewise currently an enigma is the gobbon, an amorphous creature that bears some features reflecting fauna from all six major conspects.
Some pollasterones are thought to possibly owe their ubiquity to poorly understood universal darks or other hapantics. Every conspect sports paques, anekani that combine the features of two different life forms and that are strangely affected by certain numbers—though the paques of each conspect take their features from creatures of that conspect, so each conspect has different kinds of paque. Found on both Qabede and Heqhasta, though curiously not with any frequency on any of the four other major conspects, are strange beings known as Accursed, which resemble other known creatures but are transparent and intangible.
The three underfold conspects, too, each have their own panaster complexes—here creatures with the gravitational orientations of both surfaces intermingle, as well as a few of different orientation entirely. The fauna of Bathk are notable for their frequent asymmetry, and include many furry, burrowing creatures. Ruden's best known denizens are hard-shelled, multijointed things with extra mouths and sensory organs in strange places. Among Zarafach's most notorious life forms are a variety of strange shapeless things with long, sharp beaks.
The rare diagonal disks are sometimes home to creatures of the nearest major conspect, or in some cases of the two closest conspects. More often, however, if a diagonal disk is inhabited, it has life unlike anywhere else, populated by its own endemic life forms and ecosystems.
Motion
For a long time, the worlddisks were—and they on many worlds still are—believed to be completely stationary, remaining in fixed positions in dreamspace. This was more based on observational considerations than theoretical; in principle, in fact, there was no a priori reason why the disks should be stationary; this would seem to necessitate an improbably exact equilibrium between the weights of the two sides. Each side after all bore objects and materials of opposite gravitational orientation, and if there was an even slightly greater weight on one side than the other, that would give the disk as a whole a nonzero weight and a subsequent acceleration. The only way the rew could remain motionless was if the weight of the two sides was perfectly balanced. Yet this seemed nevertheless to be the case; there was no discernible change in the rews' positions relative to other, distant rews and other faraway astronomical objects.
More precise observations eventually showed that while there was very little long-term change in their position, over the shorter term the worlddisks do in fact tend to oscillation slightly back and forth parallel to their perpendicular axes. The period of the oscillation is a matter of days or months, and its amplitude of the same order as the disk's thickness, too subtle for the inhabitants to notice without sensitive measuring apparati. This did not resolve the mystery of the rews' immobility; if anything, it added to it—as strange as it would be for the weights of the two sides to be exactly the same, it seemed stranger still that the difference in weight would fluctuate.
The mystery was solved on several rews by expeditions into the disk's interior and discovery of a remarkable material now known as antite. Antite has the property that its gravitational orientation tends to change to oppose any forces acting on it. Whenever the overall weight of the disk would tend toward one side or the other, therefore, the weight of the antite would alter in the opposite direction—and the antite within a rew is sufficiently dense and plentiful to counteract the change in the rew's weight. A slight change in the weight of either side of a disk, such as by objects falling onto it or otherwise arriving on the surface from dreamspace, would likewise be cancelled by the antite, leaving the disk as a whole effectively weightless. It is the fact that the antite's weight does not change immediately that leads to the disk's oscillation—though this delay also means that the zeroing of the rew's weight is not immediate and perfect and that the rews can and do in fact move through dreamspace over time, but they do so in a random walk and their long-term motion, while not zero, is extremely slow.
Interaction
Most of the worlddisks are too far apart to have much direct interaction. Certainly the skyfalls can and do bring material from one rew to another, obviously including water but not excluding some living things; and there are some few creatures that are able to cross the vastness of dreamspace between worlds, and may bring phoronts and parasites with them. And some ellogous folks—and perhaps a few alogous beasts with magical powers—have found ways to travel between worlddisks, through portals and translocation. Aside from that, however, there is little commerce between distant rews; each rew is mostly an island in space.
However, while most of the rews are spaced far apart from their nearest neighbors, not all rews are. While rare, it sometimes happens that rews occur near enough that their atmospheres overlap, and it's possible to fly from one to the other. When such rews have the same orientation, they are called layer disks; when they do not, they are called skew disks. Even more rarely, gears may actually be in physical contact. A particularly interesting case is that of disks which touch each other at the edges, called gear disks. For reasons that cosmologists still cannot fully explain, gear disks, without known exception, rotate, turning in tandem like the gears they are named after. The rotational velocity of the gear disks varies widely, but for a given disk seems to be constant, or nearly so; in no case has any significant rotational acceleration been detected.