So over the years, people ask me again and again. "Just what is the world where Thetral comes from like? What races does it have? What is its setting?" And for the longest time, I had never really given it any thought...

However over the last year, as I have more Art done, and especially more stories created. I find it more and more necessary it seems to introduce a world for myself to inhabit. To that regard I offer the following. A short glimpse, into what I am hoping shall be an on going series of myself spinning up a new world. Hopefully I shall continue, especially if there is sufficient feed back and support.

SO now for your enjoyment. Chapter One:
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Chapter One: A discworld, but not THE ‘Discworld’

In the spaces of the Infinity of Universe, it is said there is room for all eventualities to take place.

For anyone who is familiar with “The Discworld” series of books, you will see how this plays out. For those that are NOT familiar with the “Discworld”…

Firstly, I DEEPLY recommend reading them.

Second, they are a marvelous ‘setting’ for story telling.

A world that lends itself to tales as timeless as the universe. For it is not just a “world” but a mirror of worlds. Concepts and stories from other universes constantly float through the ether across its flat surface. In short, the concept of it and how ‘it functions’ is an ideal environment for anyone who wishes a fantasy based world of their own.

Now of course, I do not wish to simply copy it, I wish to make more of homage to it in a newer fantasy setting.

The ‘real’ “Discworld” is a flat disc, held on the back of four giant Elephants, who in turn stand upon the shell of a Turtle some 10,000 miles long. What does the Turtle stand on? Don’t be silly, Turtles don’t stand on anything, they swim. And so, this Great Turtle swims endlessly through the void of space carrying its precious cargo.

This new world, my own disc world, after much thinking and planning is similar, but should be sufficiently different.
To begin with, it is carried, not upon Four Elephants, but one single “World Snake” a mighty Serpent that encircles the world fully and provides a good stable foundation for it. What does the snake lie upon? Well not a turtle that has been done already… Instead, it lies upon a mighty ‘Star Ray’ or a Manta ray some 10,000 miles long.

A Manta Ray is a good substitute for a turtle. They are slow moving gentle creatures, they ‘fly’ through the water in much the same way a turtle does, in a lazy unhurried manor. Also they have a nice broad flat back perfect for a snake to coil up upon.

Chapter Two: The Mechanics of the new world
The “Star Ray” or “Gigas Piscis venal Sidus” (Giant Fish of the Stars), does differs from the Discworld’s turtle in that it “swims”, not through the endless void of space, but around a single ‘normal’ Star like that of earth.

Solar Cycle and Years:

It swims in slow loops, turning over and over as it’s vast maw feeds off stellar radiation and filters out various energies.
Each ‘loop’ takes almost exactly 28 hours, thus creating a ‘Day Night’ cycle on the Disc. As it turns slowly, the disc comes into view of the sun, and as it keeps turning on it’s loop, it eventually will move the Disc so it receives light in a way similar to Earth before turning away from the sun and moving the disc into ‘Night’.

Swimming ‘around’ the Sun takes it nearly 400 days, which also allows for the creations of “Seasons” on the disc, moving the world along a traditional summer and winter path.

Physical Size:

The original Discworld was always stated as being ’10,000’ miles across. Which at first glance, seems to be a nice convenient size for a fantasy world.
However looking into that particular number brings up something interesting, if you put the Earth and Moon together, their combined lengths equal approximately 10,086 miles.

Creating a Disc of the combined sizes seems to be a reasonable shape, as a Disc made from this length comes out to be a bit bigger than a flat Earth, giving one a nice amount of surface area to world with to make a world and it’s landmasses.

In the interest of trying to keep things ‘Different’ for the world I wanted to come up with a similar, but not exactly same unit of measurement. Additionally, I wanted to come up with a reason why a world (even a fantasy one) should be such an exact number as ‘10000’.

For my own purposes I figured at some point, various Scientists of the world would come up with a standard unit of measure, similar to the Meter. One of the original ideas for creating Earth’s meter, was to define the metre as one ten-millionth (1/10 000 000) of the length of a quadrant along the Earth's meridian.

I imagined at some point, Scientists of this world would come together and do something similar and say “Our measurement will be 1/10000 of our Worlds length” And come up with a standard based upon that.

Weather and Climate:

The disc itself, unlike the Discworld, is encircled in a vast unending mountain range.

This encircling wall provides two key functions. Firstly it ensures the Oceans of this disc do not spill away into the void of Space
(the Discworld does have oceans that spill away, but, it makes ‘arrangements’ to refill it’s oceans through various magical means).

Because of the ‘bowl’ shape to this Disc, as it faces the sun, heat is focused in the middle. So the “climates” of the world radiate outward from the middle. From hot dry desert climates, and then as you approach the Mountain wall, you get colder and colder till you approach the Arctic like climate of the mountain range itself.

What this means is that water is kept in a very efficient cycle.
It will evaporate in the middle, and spread upwards and out due to the radiating heat. The huge clouds of vapor are then pushed to the Rim, where they cool, and crash back down first as rain, then as snow and ice against the mountains along the very edge.

The snow eventually flows down and melts into water, which fills the oceans, and repeats the cycle.

This disc, like Earth and The Discworld, has a small moon orbiting around it (The gravity from the mass of the Star Ray is more then enough to keep a moon in orbit around it.) Aside from a large amount of other important things, the Moon ensures a smooth and steady Tidal cycle. However…
Unlike the Discworld Great A’Tuin, this disc does NOT ‘spin’ or rotate and as such there are no centrifugal forces being applied outward.

Because of this, the world will NOT have two tides, but only a single and much slower ‘High and Low’ tide each orbit of the moon.

As far as the Geography and ‘map’ of this disc world… That is something that is yet to be created. A world is shaped by the stories created for it, and not the other way around. For now however as a rough idea of what one possibility MAY look like, has been illustrated purely for conceptual purposes at the end of the image above..