In the Cradle of the Cosmos
When the universe was still mostly material, before the Summoning of Ereshkanoi, Oshanal was a small planet at the heart of a great, old galaxy. The skies of Oshanal even today are thick with stars, and even the darkest of nights are bright with their glittering twilight. The heavens and the patterns of their drifting bodies have tremendous meaning to the typical Oshanalian. Every day, you awake to a starlight canopy replete with a complex and fascinating luminous design.
Many of the cosmic bodies of Oshanal have their own mythologies and roles in the pantheons of the monstrous divine. In some periods of the twilight world’s odd history, a few of those cosmic bodies gave proof to these myths by inexplicably and disastrously coming to life.
The Blackmoon
Easily the most identifiable of the cosmic bodies in the Oshanalian canopy, and marking polar north, the Blackmoon is a vast black hole that swallows nearly a tenth of the sky in its copious, brilliant white accretion disc.
Oshanal is tidally locked in a way that ensures that the inhabited parts of it always faces this ominous spectacle. This means that the further north on Oshanal, the more colossal the Blackmoon looms. Within its brilliant accretion disc, the bleak pupil of void at its heart peers out across the twilight world.
Strangely, most volumes recovered from before the breaking of the world do not mention the Blackmoon at all; a stunning omission, given its omnipresence.
The Knives
A criss-crossing of comets ever in orbit around Oshanal, with tails that wrap the majority of the planet, the Knives appeared a few centuries after the construction of the great Godspire. Glittering with the kaleidoscopic reflection of millions of icy shards, the tails of the dozen or so Knives twist like rivers of light across the soft indigo sky.
Oral lore of gentle but strange people known as the galactine suggests that the Knives are all that is left of their true home, a moon of Oshanal said to have been destroyed in a great celestial cataclysm.
The Celestial City
The chief source of much of the twilight of Oshanal, the celestial city is a nearby supercluster of stars. These stars spin, rise, and fall in daily cycles, seeming to take over primarily during the dusk, as the suns of the world begin to set.
The Celestial City is the foundation of many of the mythologies of Oshanal. It was once said that when a dreamer slept, they would walk there with the gods: in their distant but glimmering cosmic abode. This may be true today: certainly many people of the twilight world dream now of terrible, impossible vistas and amongst them, the incomprehensible terrors of the monstrous divine.
The Heart of Heaven & Twelve Towers
Books preserved from the last age mention the Heart of Heaven and the Twelve Towers. A great red giant and two smaller white stars rose every morning, and in the evening, their absence revealed a cluster of moons called the Twelve Towers. They were said to light the way home for weary travelers.
At some point, though, the books stop speaking of the Heart and the Towers. The Oshanal of today has only five remaining moons and no sun at all. In the place where the Heart of Heaven once gleamed, there remains only a great, furious cloud of light known as the Heavensblaze.
Heavensblaze
An undulating canopy of rich violets, roses, and indigos, the Heavensblaze roils in chaotic waves above the twilight world. It seems to have appeared at some point before the breaking of all eternities, it seems to sit where the Heart of Heaven once sat, and it seems to rise and fall, and warm the world as the lost suns otherwise would have.
Not much is known about the Heavensblaze, but all signs suggest that something broke the Heart of Heaven, and left behind this maddening nebula. How exactly that could happen is the topic of many myths, spoken in hushed mornings to children curious about the wonders of their world.
