Glittering Plain

From Glen Cook Wiki

An enormous artificial plateau, nearly 80 miles across, constructed in ages past to facilitate travel between sixteen worlds. The worlds are physically similar if not identical, although they seem to have different sets of constellations and even moons. The Plain is circular, smooth flat stone, crisscrossed by roads which are of a slightly different color. Every six miles along these roads is a large circle the same color as the road, used as camping grounds by travelers. It is otherwise as flat and featureless as a table, marked only by standing stones bearing glittering, shifting inscriptions, and a great Fortress in the exact middle of the Plain, where the golem Shivetya guards the sleeping form of the demon goddess Kina.

The Plain is capable of healing damage, small holes immediately; large fissures (such as the one created by an earthquake) in several years. Likewise, it slowly absorbs detritus and waste.

History

In the beginning the Plain was completely unadorned, containing only the roads which needed to be walked a certain way (all travellers must cross the circle at the center to reach other worlds). Travel was freely possible; there were no Shadowgates, no Shadows, no fortress. Eventually armies warred across the Plain. To put an end to the fighting, powerful sorcerers from a dozen worlds erected the standing stones and the Fortress, staffing it with immortal guardians to halt the armies. All of this occurs before any recorded history or legend, and is only gleaned by Murgen ghostwalking the Plain for fifteen years.

In the next age, dimly reflected in Gunni myth, Kina began her murderous career. She was imprisoned and Shivetya was appointed to guard her prison.

Afterwards, a race of sorcerers from one world stole the souls of millions of prisoners of war to create the Shadows. Other races built the Shadowgates and protective fields over the roads in response. The standing stones were one of the last additions to the Plain.