The Void Manual

Welcome to The Void, John, an infinite universe of my own creation to be used in upcoming stories.

The premise is simple, The Void is the name of an infinite expanse of open air in which float individual islands ranging in size from small rocks to continents hundreds of kilometers wide. On these islands exist various races of humanoids and creatures that constantly challenge their ability to survive and adapt, some which bear resemblances to others in fantasy some you may never have heard of before.

Now your asking yourself how does and infinite expanse of open air sustain itself? Through magic of course (this is a fantasy setting after all). All the islands (those capable of supporting life anyway) have a number of powerful guardian spirits that act as agents of the Elemental Deities, these spirits control the winds, water, fertility, mineral richness and temperature of the islands. Depending on the attitude of the spirit the island can end up with many variations such as frozen, volcanic, desert, swamp, etc. This allows for nearly unlimited creative license.

Now then being its own separate and unique cosmic entity there is no outer space or heavens with other stars and planets and moons and what have you in The Void, this creates the problem of where is the day night cycle and seasons and where does light come from? Again the seasons are controlled by the elemental spirits based on orders from their individual Deities, as time passes they change the temperature weather and other conditions at their whimsy. If they are happy everything is good, if not then the land may start to become barren, the summers may get colder, rivers and wells dry up and storms ravage the land. Day and night however are controlled directly by the Elemental Deities, The Deity for light creates light similar to the sun being at noon on the earths equator but without the heat and the Deity of darkness exists at all times where the light cannot penetrate. Night and day themselves are divided evenly between twelve hours each with three hours twilight in between for a 30 hour day, within the day time measurement is more or less the same but minutes are a little longer at the 60 of our world being stretched to 50 so a minute in The Void is 72sec in our world there is no measurement of time smaller than a minute in The Void. Complicated I know but it gets simpler from here on. There are 5 days to a week 15 weeks to a quarter and, naturally, 4 quarters to a year.

All the measurement information was implemented and kept regulated in The Void by the Merchants Guild and most major nations in which they operate keep to that standard but there are islands with idiosyncratic measurements of time that make even less sense than what I just came up with. Speaking of which there is the topic of distance measurement to cover, sorry it'll get more interesting in a bit just please follow me here. So the measurements for distance are as follows the standard equals three feet, there are 100stds in a league and within a standard is a mark which is 1/50th a standard which is approximately 3/4 and inch more accurately 0.72 inches but I bet your brain is starting to hurt, this took me hours to come up with because I wanted it to differentiate as much as possible from our world or other worlds based off of ours. Currency is derived from copper, silver and gold in varying weights which are: the mark, standard and crown, the approximate value of a silver standard is one days wage for unskilled labor and will buy food for a single person for a day, a Standard weighs at 5 ounces, with a mark being 1 and a crown being ten. Marks and standards are rounds while a Crown is a wafer. The conversion between copper, silver and gold is: eight copper marks to a silver standard and nine silver marks to a gold standard. Marks are one fifth a standard and the standard is half of a crown.

Okay onto something more fun I promise.