Creating A Whole New World: The Immortal Realm
Good Morning Readers! Welcome to a new post on the Dark Nursery Diaries. Today I thought I would touch upon my world that I created known as the Immortal Realm. Originally in the first drafts of Fallen Ribbon it was originally known as The Grey World, but it was later renamed Cinereo Mundi which was translated from Latin meaning, Ashen World or in this literal case, Grey World. When I first started working on the lore aspects of Fallen Ribbon, I remember doing a lot of research on Latin terms and came up with a whole glossary of terms that ultimately got nixed from the story, save a few. In the end, The Grey World or Cinereo Mundi, became the Immortal Realm.
The biggest reason I landed on that name was because I realized that with the name, “The Grey World” I meant it in the literal sense. This world was supposed to be the afterlife for mortal creatures where they go after death in the Mortal Realm and to mortal eyes, everything is grey. There is no color in this world as the angels don’t see terms of color like mortals do, so their world doesn’t need to adhere to the rules of light that mortal eyes adhere to. This was at least the case for the inner city, Cinereo Civitatum where the cookie cutter small buildings surrounding the great cathedral that was the Council of Angels.
Outside of Cinereo Civitatum there are the outlands that don’t play by the same rules as the city. It constantly changes its environment on a whim and is rich with bright and beautiful colors more vibrant than any hue seen in the Mortal Realm. Well, with an environment like this, I couldn’t very well keep the name “The Grey World”, so I renamed it to the Immortal Realm. This let it keep a level of ambiguity as the home of both the afterlife and the angels.
In the Immortal Realm, it’s treated as more of a plane of existence and less as a home which is why its layout is so simplistic. Because it’s the afterlife of those who’ve died, the souls that wander the world aren’t in any need of worldly possessions or culture or really anything intricate that ties us to our living world. And because the angels view themselves as elevated beings, they, also are beyond worldly possessions, so the only place of real residence is the Council of Angels. The only other building of significance is a simply designed prison meant to hold the creatures Ezra feels are the biggest threat to her and her world’s existence.
Where the Council of Angels building is an intricately designed cathedral building with castle-like features (imagine Notre Dame Basilica), the prison is a narrow and dark rectangular building with no windows or any discernible features aside from its overarching darkness. Its simple design is an ode to how much Ezra cares about it compared to how much she cares about her own people within the Council of Angels. She created the council building with many intricacies and as much effort as she could muster as she cares deeply about her angels. With the prison, she doesn’t care about her enemies, she only wishes to contain them or obliterate them, and therefore, they don’t deserve any amount of her attention, not even the building meant to imprison them.
The Immortal Realm is supposed to be a representation of how Ezra Daron views the world around her as she is able to shape it on a whim based on her personal thoughts and feelings at a given moment. A person who only sees life in black and white creates a world of black and white realities and that is the connection between the Immortal Realm and Ezra Daron. To learn more about them both, order your copy of Fallen Ribbon and read it August 15th!
