A not-so-brief tour of my worlds

While the Heirs of the Mazzaroth series is an adventure series at its core, it relies heavily on the genre concept of portal fantasy. Here are a few of the worlds I've created.

Happy Wednesday, friends!

I’m trying to get back to a regular posting schedule. Life has been completely insane, and I am just now back on my feet after a brutal bout with Influenza A.

But I wanted to get a post out this week, so I thought maybe it would be fun to do a quick tour of the worlds that exist in the Heirs of the Mazzaroth series. There are several, however, so I’m only going to focus on the main ones. But before we even get to the tour, let’s lay the groundwork. While the Heirs of the Mazzaroth series is an adventure series at its core, it relies heavily on the genre concept of portal fantasy.

The Basic Groundwork

Because I’m a nerd of the highest order, I actually wrote myself a white paper on how interdimensional travel works in my universes. It’s horrific, but then, I’m not a scientist. It was just important that I had a baseline foundation of how the science works in my stories so that I can be consistent when I talk about traveling from world to world. (One day I’ll make that white paper available for anyone to read, but it is not this day.)

Within the Heirs of the Mazzaroth universe, there are a total of 2,000 different dimensions. Why 2,000? No idea. It was a nice even number, and I was in fifth grade. All of the different dimensions are layered on top of each other like a big onion, with each layer signifying a different world.

These are not alternate realities. They have nothing to do with string theory. Each of these worlds is unique, independent, and separate from the next. But not all of them contain life. Some of them used to, but environmental issues or meteors or any number of catastrophes wiped out whatever population had been there. Beyond that, some of the worlds are “traps,” in that you can enter them but you can’t get out of them. So it’s not a good idea to just hop from one world to the next willy-nilly; you might get in big trouble.

The most basic rule is that the more layers you bypass, the more energy you need. So traveling from Dimension 0001 to Dimension 0002 takes very minimal energy, while traveling from Dimension 0001 to Dimension 0525 takes a TON of energy. This causes problems later on and explains some other worldbuilding bits and pieces that show up, but for right now it’s just a basic rule to understand.

That being said, dimensions that are right up next to each other tend to accidentally cause some friction. If conditions are just right, portals (a.k.a. interdimensional rips) can open up organically from one world to its neighboring world. This is how most species have propagated from one world the to next and why you’ll find similar trees and animals across the interdimensional continuum.

So with all that in mind, here are the four primary worlds where the Heirs of the Mazzaroth Series take place:

Dimension 1907: Terran

This is the world as we know it, although in the context of the series everything takes place in the year 2010. Terran is honestly the anchor world of the whole series because it’s familiar. I take some liberties with it and have altered some of the modern history (country names, city names, government institutions, etc) in order to fit story needs, but for the most part it all looks very much like the world we know.

For both Reishosan: Samurai Defenders and The Dragons of the Diamond Throne, Terran is the primary location. It’s where the main characters live, and it’s also where a good majority of the fights and/or conflicts take place. It also serves as one of the main locations for the Legend of the Lightkeepers, although only some of those characters live and work in Terran.

Dimension 1908: Andaria

Here’s where things start getting funky. The Terran Dimension’s next door neighbor is Andaria. All the physics are the same. All the seasons are the same. Most fauna and flora are the same. Frankly just about everything is the same, except for the people who live there and the shape of the general land masses.

For Andaria I went with a world map based on Pangea, the theoretical supercontinent concept of what the world might have looked like originally. For Andaria, there is one main continent and one large distant island, and that constitutes the entirety of the world’s land masses. The rest is ocean.

There are several different cultures, some of which are humanoid and others which are not. Most cultures in Andaria are native to the world, with one notable exception: A people group called the Celticans. Their ancient ancestors came to Andaria from another world thousands of years previous.

The Legend of the Lightkeepers series is set primarily within Andaria, specifically a small peninsula that juts off the side of the primary supercontinent. It’s protected on all sides by dangerous coral reefs and cut off by a range of nearly impassable mountains.

The inhabits of this peninsula are the original indigenous race of Andaria, the Josharons. They are walking, talking fox people (think Disney’s Robin Hood). Living among them are three Celticans, who came to live there after a cataclysmic war that decimated the main continent. Also, since the year 2000, three humans have lived there as well, the Mitchell kids, who fell through one of those naturally occurring portals between worlds I was talking about earlier.

Dimension 1906: The Kayosen Realm of the Thallian Dimension

And now for something completely different. Not really. But this one is a bit unusual in comparison to the other dimensions I’m talking about. This world is primarily connected to Reishosan: Samurai Defenders, and I really haven’t talked about it very much.

What I can say without spoilers is that Kayos is home to a race of people called the Kiyoshi. The Kiyoshi people are the ones who forged the Reishosan Armors.

Originally their world was a beautiful green place where they lived pretty much in peace, with a few notable exceptions, but their world was conquered by Emperor Thallia. After that conquest, it was folded into his ever-growing list of dominated dimensions. It used to be called the Kayosen Dimension, but once Thallia conquered it, the world became part of Thallia’s dominion. And if the Reishosan fail to protect our world, the same fate awaits Terran.

After their world fell, Korin Sado, the leader of the Kiyoshi people, left Kayos and came to Terran in search of new wielders for the Reishosan Armors.

While Kayos plays an important role in the Mazzaroth series, it is primarily within the Reishosan storylines, and they don’t spend much time there because it belongs to Thallia, their “big bad” enemy.

Dimension 1984: Tashnin

I have written practically nothing about Tashnin yet, but eventually it will be a very important part of the Heirs of the Mazzaroth series. It is featured primarily in stories out of The Dragons of the Diamond Throne.

For now, the most important thing to know about this world, actually isn’t even connected to Earth. The way interdimensional travel works in my universes also includes different planets. So Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, all the other planets also have 2,000 dimensions just like Earth. That’s why we in Terran have never found life on the other planets. The Terran Dimension on all the other planets is uninhabited. But that’s not always the case for the other dimensions. In fact, within the Tashnin Dimension all the planets and most of the moons are inhabited.

Like I said, I haven’t really focused very much on this dimension yet, simply because there is only one Dragons book currently available (Reena Ellis and the Pink Panda Problem), but soon enough it’ll be an important factor in all Mazzaroth stories.

And that’s it.

A very quick overview of the four main worlds you’ll encounter as you read books from the Heirs of the Mazzaroth series. I’ve been developing these four worlds for 30+ years, and I have detailed atlas/encyclopedia-style information about all four of them. So if you’re interested, I’ll break them down a little further in subsequent posts.

I hope hearing about how I’ve designed my worlds and how I work with my rules is helpful for anyone else who is trying to do something similar. More coming next week.

Until then, take care of yourselves. Stay well!

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