Shiva Winters
The World of the Salak'patan
The Society of the Halls
​​​ The current civilization to inhabit the halls is in fact one of many to exist inside the Salak'patan over the course of history, many billions of years of history in fact. But the current civilization has held dominion for between 100,000~113,000 years, the exact number of years is not known, even among historians. This is because in the time before this indistinct line a war, a terrible war, a war that cost trillions of lives, extinguished the light of entire races, and destroyed entire planets. How long the war lasted isn't known, and knowledge of the war's events and knowledge of what existed before the civilization of the survivors began, was lost and destroyed by the war.
This conflict is called, rather uncreatively, the Mage War. Though the exact reasons the war began are unclear, the cause however is known. In the vast spans of forgotten history long before the current time-line, there lived the mysterious race known only as the Ancients. They were the creators of the Halls, the first to explore all the worlds found within those halls, and many believe they were the masters of both magic and technology. Their knowledge and wisdom was vast, but their time within the Salak'patan was finite. The war began when the smallest pieces of that vast sum of knowledge was unlocked by the greedy and unscrupulous souls of the previous society. These morally bankrupt and deeply corrupted people, realizing their newly found abilities came to believe that they were the inheritors of that Ancient legacy and tried to use those skills and knowledge to rule the Universe.
During the war, terrible and terrifying weapons were brought into being, things capable of wiping planets clean of all life, things capable of destroying the magical essence of a world, and weapons capable of simply detonating a planet. Millions, perhaps billions of worlds suffered such terrible fates, civilizations fell, races were annihilated root and branch, and everything was consumed by complete and utter chaos. Terrible devastation was brought to every corner of the Halls, and the very fabric of reality might well have ripped apart if the war had continued. But in their arrogance the Great Mages who fed and supplied the war, destroyed themselves taking with them the knowledge of the Ancients and leaving behind only the tattered remains and the scattered survivors.
In the many thousands of years have passed since to the abrupt end of the Mage War, the descendants of those who survived that far reaching darkness have endeavored to make a peaceful society. To do this they have outlawed all weapons of mass destruction, from guns, to bombs, to planet killers. They have created a democracy of many voices, including all the races, worlds, and societies large and small to be discovered, called the Great Council. And they have created a policing force meant to end conflicts before they can begin again, called the Center. With the Center agents at the forefront of their efforts to achieve peace, the scars of the war have begun to fade, and a new modern society has risen from the ashes of that terrible plague of death and destruction.
But not everything is peaceful, and the legacy of the Ancients lingers still out past the Rim of the explored Halls..
The Books of the Salak'patan Series

​​​Book One: Once Upon Another World
Book Two: Of Forgotten Days and Lost Worlds
Book Three: At the Gates of the Worlds' Rim
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Book Four: The Twisted Strands of Time
Book 4.5: The Gossamer Strands of Fate
Book Five: The Shifting Tides of History
Book 5.5: The Tangled Path of Destiny
​Mathematics of the Halls
​​​ Long ago I sat down and tried to figure just how big the 'World' I was trying to create might potentially be. The Halls are a vast series of ringed hallways, each of which contains many thousands of doorways. These doorways lead to either a habitable world or to other ringed hallways. At the heart of the Salak'patan there exists a world around which all worlds orbit, called the Center. Around the Center there is the central hallway, an exceptionally large hallway from which all other hallways connect.
The actual numbers/logic, I originally used to create a number are lengthy and less than important. But I took the central hallway, estimated how many of the 10 million doorways lead to planets and how many lead to other hallways. I then took the number of doors in an average normal hallway, 100,000, and did the same. By use of an over-abused calculator I then began to multiple and add up those numbers until I reached the answer. Which in scientific notation was 1.12 x 10 to the 32 power.
So how many worlds does the Salak'patan contain. Well...
11,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Give or take a few 100 trillion or so..
~S.W.
The Ancients
​​​ The 'Ancients' is that vague title given to those ancient races now lost to history. They are the ones who created the Halls, and were the first to explore the universe through them. Their legacy is one of great knowledge and wisdom, and remains something for the current civilization to aspire towards. But there is also fear that knowledge will tear the Halls and the civilizations within it to shreds as no one holds out hope of surviving a second Mage war.
The Tribes
​​​ Though there are rumors there was once seven tribes, only six were said to have been present at the beginning of the Mage war. And none were claimed to have survived the war and the conflicts that followed that darkness. Five of the tribes were associated with the elemental forces that are the underpinnings of all things, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Energy. The sixth tribe were called the Children of the Light, and were have said to have been the chosen of the last Ancients, those people who would one day inherit all their knowledge and power.
The five elemental tribes while honored by the last of the Ancients, were not however tasked with unlocking the legacy of their faded civilization, instead they were charged with the protection of the Children of the Light. But in the closing days of the Mage war, when the focused might of all the Great Mages was turned against the Tribes, it was in this solemn duty that the Tribes failed. The Children of the Light were taken or killed outright by those dark forces as the Great Mages sought out a means to unlock the ultimate power of the Universe.
In their quest for that power the Great Mages destroyed themselves, taking with them the stolen knowledge that had ravaged the worlds and peoples of the Halls. And for their failure to protect the last legacy of the Ancients from the greed of the Mages, the five tribes were exterminated by the survivors of the war, and their names were forever stricken from future history.
The Spirit Children
​​​ The Spirit children are, or rather were, a collection of other races. Though they appear to be little more that animals, that appearance is deeply
deceptive. Inside those undersized bodies were intelligent minds and magical abilities the equal of any bipedal race.
Of all the races, the spirit children were second only to the Children of the Light in how closely they were associated with the Ancients and that faded legacy. Though some historians cast doubt over the claims, the spirit children themselves proudly claimed that their races were created by the Ancients at the height of the their civilization. And they were in fact the eldest race to still live their lives in the Halls.
In the current civilization the legacy of the Spirit children is mostly forgotten, of their once many different races, only the Fire cats are still remembered. But even they have faded from memory, having gone quietly extinct somewhere in within the borders of the Deken Empire.
The Technology of the Halls
​​​ Inside the Halls modern technology has not been neglected because of the powerful forces capable of being harnessed and controlled by magic. Rather the opposite, in the Halls technology and modern civilization has been fostered by the power of magic, not the opposite. Everything is powered by electrical energy created by using magical energies to spin electrical turbines.
The Governments
​​​ Just as there are countless worlds inside the Salak'patan, so too are there many governments and many types of government. At the very peak of that mountain of politics and intrigue is the Great Council. Established as a means to never again allow a war to spread to every world and threaten the Halls with utter destruction. The Great Council is meant to combined all the voices of all the governments and races into a single voice to guide the halls into the next golden age.
Of the other governments, there are a cornucopia of sizes, ideologies, philosophies, and levels of influence or interference. While the largest are all numbered among the Empires and Kingdoms ruled by a heredity rulers, which can oversee matters for many tens of thousands of worlds, and some of which are successful and some which are not. The smallest are tribal leaders caring for the people on a few small islands in the middle of a vast ocean on a single world. There are democracies, republics, dictatorships, oligarchies, religious states, councils, and even places given over to the rule of anarchy. With governments of all kinds and with guiding principles of endless variety, these vast differences often enough cause political strife and in-fighting, but with the guidance of the Great Council, wars are rare and often sort lived.
The Rim
​​​ The Rim as it is often called is the title given to the hard to define border within the Halls, beyond which nothing but empty and forgotten worlds are found. Experts argue that the current civilization of the Halls has spread so much that what might be found beyond the Rim is little more than 25% of all the worlds in the Halls. But there are others who believe strongly that the Rim is only the beginning of all that might be discovered. However there is little effort to explore beyond the Rim, and what exploration is conducted is often not organized. The scars left by the Mage war penetrate deep, and will continue to linger for a long time ago. Fear of all that might have been left by the Ancients keeps many from their hidden desires to leave behind what is known to discover all that remains still forgotten.
The Seven Legendary Blades
​​​ Also known as the swords of the Ancients, they are weapons crafted only through the total mastery of magic, and forged by forces no one fully understands. The Blades themselves are indestructible and unbeatable in combat. Carried by those who are said to be the chosen of the gods, the blades themselves are a mystery, though they are featured in many of the legends of a great many civilizations and the folklore of many races.