Everway: Center of the Thousand Worlds

About Everway, much has been written, but rarely without the word "teeming." Master Birdsong has said that there are a thousand worlds within each neighborhood of the city to match the thousand spheres of the cosmos itself. Less fanciful commentators note that Everway, capital of the realm Roundwander on the sphere called Fourcorner, is unusually large, diverse and cosmopolitan. Probably half a million souls call the city home. The souls come in all shapes, sizes, colors and cultures. They do not always come in human form, nor can one say that all of them come bodied. Because Roundwander is unusually well-connected to other spheres, boasting dozens of gates of various kinds, Everway draws the curious, reverent, ambitious and desperate from, well, a thousand worlds.

The Walker and His Pyramid

Legend has it that the mysterious god known as the Walker built the massive pyramid that gives the city its center and dominates its skyline. The Walker, they say, has been seeking the capstone for the pyramid ever since. Prophecies regarding the time and consequences of his return are as conflicted as one might expect. No one knows what the Walker looks like. The renegade Amberite, Brand, claims in his journals to have been Everway's first King, Justice Eternity. But the relationship and possible identity of Justice Eternity and the Walker has not been established.

Spheres, Realms and Gates

Fourcorner is one of a myriad of spheres the gods have bestowed upon humankind. All the spheres are earthlike, all share the same sun and zodiac. The gods are merciful and just, therefore most spheres are well-suited to human life, with arable regions, seasons and plenty of water. They tend to have hot equators and cold poles.

Most spheres comprise many dozens of realms. A realm is nothing more than a region that it makes sense to think of as constituting a unity of some kind. A realm might be a kingdom, two kingdoms at war, a huge magical swamp, a trackless desert of a certain extent. A realm is a way of thinking about a region rather than some intrinsic property of it.

From realm to realm and sphere to sphere, people speak The Tongue, another gift of the gods. Thus those who travel from sphere to sphere, so-called spherewalkers, can be understood anywhere they go. These spherewalkers are a tiny portion of the population as a whole. (All of the Amberway campaign PCs are spherewalkers.) They travel from sphere to sphere by means of gates. The Rune Gates can be opened by those with a Water score of 5 or better. They are controlled by the Wizards' Convocation. The Moon Gates of the forest are accessible to those with a Fire score of at least 5. The Argent Knights hold sway over the moon gates. The Grand Tunnel, the purview of the Brotherhood of Rogues, opens only to those with an Earth score of 5-plus. The intricate Seaways of the Guild of Navigators work for those sailors with 5 or better Air.

The Thousand Worlds for Amber Players

You will note some important differences between the Thousand Worlds and the "shadow" with which you are familiar. There are no "fast-time" or "slow-time" spheres: the Thousand Worlds are synchronized. All spheres are "archaic" -- you might find the very occasional arquebus but no Tec-9s or spaceships. So far as is known, there are not infinite shadows of every sphere either -- there's the Fourcorner, or the Urth and that's that.

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