BROKEN

One side is our world: no magic, normal worries about marriage,  kids, job security, normal every-day issues.  Since there is no magic in our world, it’s called the Broken.

People in the Broken mostly don’t believe in magic.  Oh, they like to watch shows about hauntings and ghost searches on TV, but mostly so they can poke fun at the knuckleheads with bizarre equipment blundering about in the dark, spooked by random noises.

If you start going on about dimensions and other worlds, people won’t exactly try to commit you to a facility for mentally unstable, but it’s bound to land you into kooky idiot category and make lunches on the job a very lonely experience.

WEIRD

The other side of the dimension sandwich is the Weird: lots of magic, normal worries about marriage, kids, job security, normal every-day issues.

People in the Weird use magic every day, as casually as we use technology.  We flip on a light switch and so do they, but their light is generated by magical means.  We use computers and so do they.  Most of the time neither of us bother to pry open the box containing the computer’s guts and find out how it really ticks.

The one thing that does separate the Weird from the Broken are the nobles.  The Weird never slaughtered their nobility.  Instead they changed the definition of a noble.  The Weird’s noble is a well educated, competent, and extremely dangerous person, who volunteered a good chunk of his or her life to either military or civil service.  Anyone can become a noble, provided the serve their time and pass all of the tests, and the offspring of nobles isn’t automatically guaranteed nobility.  Although more often than not, children of nobles tend to continue in their parents’ footsteps.  The nobles of the Weird lead armies into battle and fulfill the same roles that elected officials have in the Broken.  They wield hellish magic and you don’t want to mess with them if you can at all help it.

EDGE

The Weird and the Broken sit side by side, but there are places where they intersect.  That neutral territory that belongs to both worlds is called the Edge.  It’s the meat in our dimension sandwich.  Some places the Edge is only a few hundred feet wide, and in some it stretches for miles and miles.

People of the Edge are mongrels.  They have some magic but not much.  Most are poor.  They distrust outsiders and keep to their own families. They aren’t above swindling strangers, either.

In places where the boundary separating the Edge from the Broken is thinner, the Edgers cross into our world.  They shop at Wal-Mart, stop for a drink at a bar, and attend county fairs.  Some hold jobs, just like any normal Broken person.  Your coworker might be an Edger and you’d never know it.  You’ll see him driving his car down a country lane, and then he’ll make a turn you’d swear was never there before.  His car would blink out of sight, and you would convince yourself you imagined it.  Funny thing, human mind.

In places where boundary between the Weird and the Edge is thinner, the same process takes place: the Edgers travel into the Weird.  It’s a hard life – they can cross into either world, but they are illegal aliens in both and aren’t welcome.

But just because you were born poor and both worlds look down on you, doesn’t mean you have to lay down and take it, does it?