The Mysts
The origin of all things. Both a fog-like presence and a passive deity, the Mysts exist between the planes and are understood by no one.
What Are the Mysts?
The Mysts are the origin of the Beyond Universe. They are not a god in any way most peoples would understand. They do not speak. They do not appear. They are not an entity in the truest sense. The Mysts are more like a presence, a vast and passive force that simply is. They exist as both a fog-like substance that fills the spaces between things and as the quiet will behind the structure of reality itself.
The In-Between
From the Mysts arise the two planes of existence: the Physical Realm and the Dream Realm. The Mysts do not belong to either plane. They occupy and govern the space between both, the thresholds, the edges, the places where one reality fades into another. Whether the Mysts created the planes intentionally or whether they simply emerged is a question no culture in the Beyond has been able to answer.
World Transporting
Perhaps the most unsettling quality of the Mysts is their ability to move entire worlds in and out of the Beyond at will. A planet, a civilization, an entire reality can exist within the Physical Realm one day and be gone the next, carried elsewhere or simply returned to wherever it came from. The Mysts offer no explanation for these comings and goings. Scholars have spent lifetimes trying to predict the pattern and have found none. The same is true for Dream Realms, which can appear and vanish just as suddenly.
Properties of the Mysts
The Mysts do not behave like ordinary fog. They are difficult to navigate, and their properties resist both scientific explanation and magical interpretation. Time seems to bend slightly inside them. People report dreams while passing through, and some claim to see glimpses of things that are not there, shapes of forgotten beings, voices from no source. Navigation through the Mysts requires skill, patience, and full reliance on wind and current. No vessel may pass through with mechanical propulsion, and any attempt to do so results in immediate failure: engines stall, systems burn out, and the vessel is dragged under.
Origin Stories
Most cultures who have encountered the Mysts grow up with stories about how they came to be. Some say they were placed to protect the land, to keep out forces that once threatened its balance. Others claim the Mysts are a punishment, sent after a time of greed and misuse. There are even tales that the Mysts were not made at all, that they arrived when something older and larger than the world itself simply stirred. Whatever the origin, they are accepted as fact, woven into the daily life of any world the Mysts touch.