Sent

Sent is a world on the plane of Uren, notable for its immense size and for the fact that its surface is mostly covered by a patchwork of different liquids, called halms. Islands in the halms provide a home for Sent's terrestrial life, and if the individual islands are small, they are numerous enough to collectively make up a very large area. Moreover, many of them are artificially connected, both by sea and air travel and by pim tunnels beneath the surface.

Geography

The name "Sent" originally meant "thousand islands", which is a severe understatement. In fact, even counting only large islands more than a kilometer in diameter, there are several hundred thousand islands scattered across Sent's surface. Not all of them, however, are surrounded by water. Most of Sent is indeed covered by liquid, but not necessary that particular liquid—parts of it bear lava, parts condensate, and parts blood, among others. The different liquids are in discrete but adjacent patches called monals of constant size and shape. Currents keep them constantly in motion, and any quantity of halm passing over the boundary of its monal is changed into the appropriate liquid for the new monal it enters, unless it is within some closed container.

The world of Sent is much larger than Earth, about fifty billion square kilometers in surface area. However, it contains no large landmasses; the largest islands are only some five hundred kilometers along their largest dimension, and most are much smaller. Because of Sent's vast size and the isolation of many of its islands, it is conventionally divided into a number of eders, some composing a single monal or a few neighboring monals, others including a large number of smaller monals.

The surface of Sent is synammatal, which means that it's entirely possible for someone to essentially turn himself into his own mirror reflection by circumnavigating the world. Since the world is so enormous, however, this rarely actually comes into play.

Inhabitants

Sent has a great variety of species living on it to match its size, with many unique life forms confined to a single island, or a small collection of nearby islands. The radical differences between the various monals heighten the diversity, with, for example, thermophilic beings living in the seas of lava that couldn't survive in more temperate climes, and similarly cryophilic entities inhabiting the seas of condensate. It has been estimated that Sent is home to, at the least, several billion species.

There are, however, some species that are widespread enough to be found over large parts of the world, indigenous to many different eders. These include a number of ellogous races. Humans are found across most of the world, as are many varieties of hanji. Among the most widespread hanji varieties are the quulur, the rew, the swese, the doran, the geka, and the gontama. Aside from humans and hanji, other widespread and reasonably common ellogous species include the diminutive coto and yindle; the hulking, stony ungan; and the ambatic misj.

Given the proportion of its surface covered by seas, it's to be expected that many of aquatic species exist in Sent as well. Some of these are confined to particular monals, but others, such as the sinuous gorel, exist across monals of widely different halms, either encompassing various varieties, able to withstand the diverse environments, or transforming on passing through the monal boundaries. There are also some aquatic or amphibious types of hanji, including the togan, the coth, the strique, the candry, and the xix. Among the other ellogous beings of Sent's seas are the brubani, the tossrock, and the arapita.

Society

The fact that Sent's land surface is divided into so many small islands, isolated from each other not only by water but in many cases by liquids more difficult to traverse, has made trade and cultural exchange difficult and slowed the development of its inhabitants. Many of them, indeed, still live in a tribal hunter/gatherer lifestyle, with little in the way of technology and only a subtle, rudimentary use of magic. However, Sent has existed for long enough that some of its inhabitants have managed to progress considerably despite their handicap, and many of its islands now have regular commerce between them, their residents having reached a fairly high level of magical or (to a lesser degree) technological development. Even the differing halms are not an absolute barrier; vessels have been designed capable of withstanding the conditions of very different monals, or even changing to adapt to different surroundings. Many of the more advanced societies have developed airships of various sorts, the better to travel above the monals without having to adapt to passage through the various halms.

One ancient civilization, the Gehembi, apparently started a different method of travel between the islands, excavating tunnels deep beneath the surface to connect them, and placing enchantments on them to make the effective distance traveled in traversing them much less than the actual distance. Though the Gehembi themselves only connected a few of these tunnels, now called bores, they left in place some of the enchantments and devices used to create them, and the inhabitants of the islands they opened out to subsequently expanded the network, until now thousands of islands are connected by bores. Not only that, but, for easier access to the bores, many civilizations delved large subterranean networks of chambers and channels near the bore entrance as dwellingplaces. However, the enchantments on the bores were imperfect and somewhat erratic, and many of the bores had fatal instabilities and collapsed or imploded, leaving many parts of what would otherwise have been a continuous network disconnected. This volatility affected the surrounding areas as well, such that the extensive underground networks near the bores are notorious for their odd spatial distortions.

The ready availability of so many different substances has made alchemy very popular on Sent, Sento alchemists having access to many different exotic materials to mix and experiment with. Given the size of the world, naturally alchemy is not at all equally developed over all parts of Sent, but it does play an important role over most of it, and in some places reaches high levels of advancement that touch every parts of society. Potions of various sorts are common in shops almost throughout Sent, with healing potions being particularly common.

Magic

Many different varieties of magic are in use over the vastness of Sent, but there are a few that are particularly widespread. Low magic is used in many eders, and dark magic is likewise popular. Apparently unique to Sent is satura, a form of magic that draws apparently not on a particular kind of makin but on the interaction and tension between the different kinds of makin inhabiting the different monals.