Atlas
Guide to the Imarel Multiverse - by T.A. Saunders ©2014 v1.0
Qinah exists alongside all planes and parallel iterations of Imarel’s multiverse, weaving like a gauze over and around each plane. Not a true plane of existence it is instead an anomaly that serves as a rift that spans between each plane, including Adanum itself, and encapsulates all. For this reason, Qinah has become a sort of cosmic ‘junk drawer’ that is in receipt of most objects (and the occasional person) lost during interdimensional travel. More common names for Qinah are ‘the Rift,’ ‘the Betwixt,’ and ‘the Span.’ Due to its vast nature, its existence as something both less and more than Imarel’s planar composition, and relatively unstudied nature and form, it is commonly believed that Qinah is one of the possible reliable means of getting to worlds that lie beyond the multiverse.
Though few have much, if any understanding of Qinah, a few daring exploration or research parties have ventured into Qinah to describe it. Though accounts vary, it is accepted that the void of Qinah is an unfathomably vast span of seemingly ever-distant nebulae - brilliant red, pink, violet, and aubergine clouds of ever-shifting dusts and gases that virtually none have ever seen from anything less than an immense distance. Unlike the crisp, clear stars of Adanum’s sky, Qinah’s stars appear rough around the edge; they are almost twice as bright, less uniform in shape, and possess almost a violent pulsing as opposed to the gentle twinkle of the skies most are accustomed to. There is some breathable air, but it is thin and impossibly void of moisture; transitions into this environment without proper protective equipment or magical protections can wreak havoc on the body of even the most resilient mortal beings. In addition to the barely breathable air, the temperatures in Qinah are cold well beyond freezing, and when they are not the area is typically being saturated in cosmic radiation.
Items lost to Qinah have little chance of being relocated, as objects float aimlessly about the empty space. Though some things might be preserved for a time, eventually most things experience some degree of degradation over time. Humanoid bodies - whether alive or dead - rapidly dehydrate and effectively become flash mummified in a manner that preserves them indefinitely. In places such as the Ruins of Old D`Mir, where the fabric of reality is especially thinned, items sometimes ‘fall out’ of Qinah through these rifts, however, this is extremely rare. More common are objects from D`Mir falling into the Rift, and as such it is not unexpected to encounter drifting D`Mirian architecture in Qinah.
Though there are few landmarks in Qinah, one of note is a peculiar, free-floating pillar that is anchored to a singular location within the Rift though spins and rolls slowly in place. This pillar, known as the Nexus of the Krondhirdottir, bears ever-shifting golden glyphs on the smooth edges of its grey-blue stone surface, a variant dialect of celestial that is unique to the Crossroads. This text adjusts itself to the rotation of the Nexus, so that the ‘map’ of this guiding stone is always properly oriented. Little is known about the Nexus otherwise, save that the text can only be read by the Valkyrie and it serves as a guiding point for the Valkyries’ movement between planes. How they precisely use it is unknown, however it has been documented that the stone needs to be touched to function, and that no matter where they are in the multiverse, the Valkyrie are capable of finding this peculiar stone pillar.
Perhaps the most widely known thing about Qinah, even more than its name, is the existence of The Neverending. The Horror of The Rift is a terrifying entity that aimlessly wanders the span of Qinah, its only fixation the ruin of anything with the spark of Life that it comes across. Roughly the size of a moon or a planetoid, the primordial being is akin to a great void, so unfathomably black that its outline can be made out even in the lightless abyss of the Rift as it drifts. It has engendered worship, study, and interest, but answers only the ruinous wishes of the darkest minds, leaving its forgotten history to conjecture Although it was previously believed to freely traverse the Rift, eyewitness accounts by the occasional Dimensionalist, and Occultists traveling via the Valkyries' good graces have observed that it either refuses to or cannot approach the mysterious lodestone which the winged women use for navigation. Some scholars posit that if the nexus could be studied in-depth, more might be learned about the nature of The Neverending, but none of the Krondhirdottir have ever allowed questioning about it, much less direct access. After the unfortunate mouth sewing incident of a scholar from Zoda, the question has never been posed to them again.