The World Before
The Old World is the unnamed universe where the backstory takes place — the world of Remedy, Legacy of Steel, the Nameless God, and the The Nameless Tundra. It remains unnamed by design.
Why It Is Unnamed
The Old World is not unnamed because its name has been lost. It is unnamed because Uaellaen refuses to give it one. A name is a claim. To name the Old World is to claim it — to say it was real, it was home, it was something. Uaellaen will not say that. The Old World is a place that happened, and what happened there is a story, and stories do not get names. They get told.
"You want the name of the world? There is no name. There was never a name. I was there. I do not remember a name. That is not amnesia. That is the world telling you it does not want to be found." — Uaellaen
What Is Known
- It had races, guilds, gods, and dragons.
- It had a Nameless God, worshipped by Remedy.
- It had an icy tundra where Uaellaen was found by Tigole.
- It had a Threshold — a place where the Veil between universes was thin.
- It had a demi-god who could send people through the Threshold.
- It is no longer accessible. Or it is, and Uaellaen does not know yet.
Known Places
The old world is no longer accessible — or it is, and Uaellaen does not know yet — so its known places are few, and the fewness is the point. This is the whole of the map, and the map is short on purpose.
- The Nameless Tundra — the frozen expanse of the old world where Tigole found Uaellaen. Snow, ice, and the first lesson: the world is bigger than the person in it. The only place of the old world with a page, and the only one tagged old-world.
- The Threshold — the boundary between universes, where the Veil is thin enough to step through — if you know how, or if something lets you. The six were sent through it in The Drop, and it is the last thing of the old world the story keeps a handle on.
Everything else that happened there — the guilds, the gods, the dragons, the ice — is remembered but not located. The old world does not have a gazetteer. It has a wound, and the wound has two edges: the place where the story began, and the place where it was sent away.
In the Story
The Old World is backstory — the world before the Drop. Everything in this wiki tagged "old-world" or "backstory" takes place there. The current story takes place in the The Unknown Universe. The Old World is the wound. The Unknown Universe is the scar. The story is the healing — or the failing to heal.
"I do not miss the Old World. Missing implies it was mine. It was not mine. I was there. Those are different things. I was there, and it happened, and I am here now, and that is the whole of it. The rest is a story I tell because someone has to, and I am the only one left who remembers enough to get it wrong on purpose." — Uaellaen