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<title>Phade</title>

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<h2>Table of Contents</h2>

<img align="right" src="SmallPhade.jpg"/>

<ul>
    <li><a href="Introduction">Introduction</a></li>
    <li><a href="Overview">Phade, Overall</a></li>
    <li><a href="Climate">Weather and Climate on Phade</a></li>
    <li><a href="Picture">A Picture of Phade</a></li>
    <li><a href="Personages">Notable Personages in Phade</a></li>
</ul>


<h2><a name="Introduction">Introduction</a></h2>

<blockquote>
   Order is Heaven's first law; and this confessed,<br/>
   Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,<br/>
   More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence<br/>
   That such are happier, shocks all common sense.<br/>
   Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;<br/>
   Bliss is the same in subject or in king.<br/>
</blockquote>
   
<caption>Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English satirical poet.  An Essay
On Man, Epistle 1.</caption>

<blockquote>
   There are two kinds of blood, the blood that flows in the veins and
   the blood that flows out of them.
</blockquote>

<caption>-Julian Tuwim <em>We, the Polish Jews</em></caption>

<p>Phade is a world of my own design.  I've been running campaigns and
adventures in it since high school (and I graduated from there in
1992), and so there's a not insignificant amount of work that's gone
into it.</p>

<p>Phade is a near-ideal &quot;default&quot; world for Magic Jar
content.  It's fairly generic itself, and big enough that Magic Jar
content can be plopped down somewhere without too much worrying about
consequences.  That is, if you're interested in having a world mapped
out for you, Phade can be it.</p>

<p>For people who haven't travelled Phade's expanses before, here's a
little overview.  For people who have, consider this just a little
refresher.  I'll try to make it entertaining.  Enjoy!</p>


<h2><a name="Overview">Phade, Overall</a></h2>


<p>Phade is really, really big.  That's probably the most significant
feature one can mention.</p>

<p>Phade is a cylindrical planet.  Oceans cap the ends, and a mottling
of ocean and land cover the side.  The cylinder is 150,000 miles in
diameter, and 100,000 miles in length.  The people who live on its
surface believe that their world is infinite.  One result of this size
is that nearly anything you can imagine is probably somewhere on
Phade's surface.</p>

<p>Note that gravity on Phade's surface is about 1G, just like Earth.
I hide behind fantasy physics here.</p>

<p>Phade is orbited by 11 moons, three of which are visible to the
naked eye.  The first, Senean, has an orbital period of 10 days, and
is a large, pale blue moon.  The second, Laron, is smaller and green,
and orbits every 20 days.  The third, Tersha, is large like Senean,
white, and orbits every 30 days.  Most nights, all three are
visible.</p>

<p>Phade and a number of other planets orbit a tetrahedron-shaped sun,
which is an intensely hot fire body encased in thick glass.  From the
planet's surface, if you're dumb and look at it, it seems to be a
single roundish bright spot in the sky (kindof like all suns, eh?)</p>


<h2><a name="Climate">Weather and Climate on Phade</a></h2>


<p>Phade's climates do not obey simple physical constraints.
According to science, the entire planet's surface should be an awful
baked lifeless desert.</p>

<p>According to ancient legends, that's exactly how it started out:
Primus, the world-creator (who is now dead), was foolish and placed
the planet too close to the sun.  After his defeat, and many miserable
generations later, a powerful Arch-Mage named Yendor created and cast
a spell called <em>Yendor's Sunny Sundeck</em>, which was supposed to
have changed the climate of the entire planet such that it resembled a
warm summer's afternoon, with no bugs.</p>

<p>The effect lasted about six weeks, if I recall correctly, and then
the spell broke down.  You see, Yendor forgot to take into account (or
perhaps, didn't know) the fact that the sun was encased in glass, and
so his calculations were off.  In any case, the energies from the
collapsing spell coursed back into his body, and he was mostly
vaporized, leaving behind bits of greasy hamburger.  </p>

<p>Other than being a horror story to warn young apprentice mages
about attention to detail, the history of Yendor and his spell explain
the existence of the <em>Climate Fields</em> today.  The residue of
his spell created huge belts of magical energy which creep slowly
across the planet's surface, and in their midst, control the weather.
Thus, there are Arctic Climate Fields, Subarctic Fields, Temperate
Fields, and so on.  This leads to some odd weather phenomenon,
especially where fields intersect and border one another.</p>

<p>Because of this immense amount of magical energy just kindof
hanging around, there are complications for mages who come to Phade
from other worlds.  Spells misfire, detect magic can drive a man
insane (depending on the variation), and other effects are not
uncommon.</p>

<p>Hm.  I wonder where Yendor got that much magic from? If somebody
else could match that trick, they'd be pretty powerful, eh?</p>


<h2><a name="Picture">A picture of Phade from space</a></h2>

<p>This image was rendered by <a
href="http://cec.wustl.edu/~grayson/">Grayson Squier Lang</a>, who's a
CS guy at Washington University in St Louis: graphics.  :) Anyway, I'd
like to thank him for this image.</p>

<div><img src="phade.jpg"/></div>

<caption>Phade from space, showing its 3 visible moons: Senean, Laron,
and Tersha.</caption>

<h2><a name="Personages">Notable Personages in Phade</a></h2>


<p>Because Phade is so big, nobody is really known over the entire
world.  Even the most powerful people are only known over a relatively
small area.</p>

<p>There is one exception, however: Vishus Wee-Zul, the Sage King of
Khalar.  He's also extremely old: in fact, nobody knows how old he is.
He's written huge numbers of books on nearly every subject, and knows
seemingly everything.  You'll undoubtedly hear about him sometime, and
if your character spends any significant amount of time adventuring in
Phade, he'll probably come up.  Perhaps you'll be lucky enough to meet
him.</p>

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