The Material Realm

The Material Realm is not one world. It is infinite worlds - each governed by physics, each separated from the others by vast stretches of Ethereal between them. The blacksmith in your homebrew setting and the desert pharaoh in an Egyptian-mythos campaign exist in the same Material Realm. They are simply unfathomably far apart.

This is the playground. Every setting you have ever used, borrowed, or invented. Every campaign world that has ever hosted an Open Dungeons session. All of them exist here, in the central dense fabric of the oblong where physics holds court and mortality has weight.

The Material Realm is where mortals live. It is also the only realm where reality feels most certain, which makes it the easiest place to forget that certainty is only another kind of faith.

Physics and Mortality

This is what makes the Material Realm distinct: consequences are real. A wound closes or doesn't based on biology. Magic functions here mechanically - there is a framework, spells have shapes, magical effects have logic. Even the most reality-bending working has rules it must respect.

And mortality. In the Material Realm, every living thing dies. This is not a tragedy - it is the fundamental organizing principle. Mortal life has weight because it ends. Every moment costs something. This is why the Material Realm produces the kinds of heroes it does - fierce, determined, burning with purpose, because the clock is always running.

Your World's Position

Every Material world - every campaign world - has a position in the infinite oblong defined by proximity to various divine and lower domains. A world with deep Egyptian mythological roots will have formed near the domain of the Egyptian gods. A world built on Norse mythology is near the Norse pantheon. The DN does not need to map this explicitly. The framework simply provides an explanation for why certain divine flavors feel more natural in a given setting.

Regions

Demirealms

Where the Material meets the Ethereal, the boundary is often blurry - places where the Ethereal has seeped in and the Material has been shaped by it. These are demirealms. Not quite Material and not quite Ethereal. A demirealm might be a haunted forest where the trees remember things they shouldn't, or a desert fortress that drifts through mist because a god died there once. Time might pass differently. Distances might not be trustworthy. A door that opens one way from inside may open somewhere else from outside. Demirealms are not dangerous by nature. They are simply places where the rules acknowledge that they exist.