The World: the many lands and mythologies of one earth

The World was the whole of the earth as gods and mortals knew it, a single creation that somehow held many mythologies at once. Greece and its Olympian gods, the Norse domains bound to the branches of Yggdrasil, the animal-headed gods of Egypt, and pantheons further south, east, and west all coexisted upon it, each region a complete universe unto itself with its own creation, its own monsters, and its own afterlife. Kratos crossed from one of these worlds into another, leaving a ruined Greece behind him for the Scandinavian land of Midgard, and in doing so proved that the borders between mythologies could be walked.

One earth, many mythologies#

The defining truth of the World was that many mythologies coexisted upon it despite their contradictions. Greece and Scandinavia held completely different conceptions of the universe and of how it was created, and yet both were true and existed simultaneously. Within each geographical region there existed a version of the universe with its own dimensions and its own earth, based on the prevalent mythology and the belief system of the people who lived there. The gods of each region held dominion over their own cosmos, complete with its own magic, its own monsters, and its own afterlife, and no single account of creation or destruction governed the rest.

These worlds were nonetheless separated by geography like ordinary regions of the earth. Olympus and Midgard were distant from one another in the way that Greece and Scandinavia were distant, and yet the passage between them was more than a journey over land and sea. Mimir, who had seen more of the earth than most, spoke of "every corner of every land in every world," an acknowledgment that the World was larger than any one pantheon's claim upon it.

Passage between worlds#

Movement from one mythological world to another was possible, though the means differed and were not always clear. Kratos left Greece behind after destroying it, fleeing north to Midgard, and never told how he made the crossing. The land he abandoned did not die with its gods. Greece was later said to show signs of recovery without them, sustained by the power of Hope that Kratos had released to mankind when he ended his war on Olympus.

Mimir made a slower migration. He left his island homeland somewhere to the south of Midgard and served a succession of different masters further and further north, until he finally ended up in service under Odin himself. Tyr, the Norse god of war, traveled furthest of all, visiting the pantheons of other lands as a peaceful ambassador and returning with tributes and treasures from worlds his kin had never seen. His use of the Unity Stone to travel suggested that the different regions were not simply distant countries but worlds separated across time and space, though the truth of the matter was never settled.

The Nine Domains of the north#

The Norse world was comprised of the Nine Realms, and its structure set it apart from every other land. All nine occupied the same physical space as reflections of each other, existing on different planes and coexisting on the branches of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, separated only by the Bifrost light of Alfheim. Most of them were ruled by Odin from his seat in Asgard. The void outside Yggdrasil was known as the space between worlds, an in-between region that lay outside the nine.

The origin of the Norse world was still marked upon it. The place where the worlds of Muspelheim and Niflheim had met each other in Ginnungagap at the start of time became known as the Spark of the World, and it was from that meeting of fire and ice that the creation of the world originated. Midgard, the world of mankind at the center of the nine, was the Scandinavian land itself, the north country to which Kratos fled and where he raised his son Atreus.

Egypt, the River Empire#

South and east of the lands Kratos knew lay Egypt, a desert country and home to an ancient and advanced civilization known as "the River Empire." It was ruled by numerous gods, half human and half animal, who were said to rule with wisdom and humility, a reputation that set them apart from the jealous Olympians and the tyrannical Aesir. The land was possibly home to its own breed of Sphinxes, kin to or distinct from the riddling creatures of the Greek world. Of all the foreign lands, Egypt was among the best attested, for Mimir's long wanderings had carried him through it before he ever reached the north.

Persia, land of the eastern invasion#

Persia was a land to the east of Greece, and the only foreign land known to have marched against the Greek world in force. Its armies attempted an invasion of Greece when they attacked Attica, an assault that was broken and turned back. Whether Persia was a world of its own or simply a part of the Greek world was unclear, for its monsters and its armies moved into Greek lands without any recorded crossing between mythologies. The country was home to creatures such as Rocs, Manticores, Juggernauts, and Efreets, beasts of the desert and the burning air that served its warlords in battle.

Lands known only by rumor and relic#

The rest of the World was known mostly through travelers' accounts and the treasures Tyr brought home. Mimir's homeland was an island somewhere to the south of Midgard, and the water horses called Kelpies came from that country. Further still lay the Southern Lands, home to a southern empire and to the lands of the Mayan gods, who were said to possess exceptional wisdom and generosity. Their king, called the "ruler of the heavens," freely shared advanced knowledge with humanity, teaching writing, farming, the calendar, and the sciences, though their god of death was known to torture the souls of the dead with fire and water.

The East was a region alluded to only by relics among Tyr's treasures, and the name may have served as a catch-all for the lands of Arabian and Indian mythology, perhaps reaching as far as the Persian and Japanese worlds. The Western Lands were fainter still, attested by a single object: the Dream Charm, a tribute to Freyr whose magic Tyr had carried back from the west. Beyond these fragments the World kept its own counsel, its far pantheons unrecorded, waiting at the edges of every map that gods or mortals had yet drawn.