Player Handbook

Heroes stride the world like Colossi, slaying monsters, saving cities, building empires. Above all, imposing their will of what should be. Think Gilgamesh, Hatsume no Tsubone, Lü Bu, Hercules, Princess Bari, Beowulf or Nimue.

A creation groaning under the Ten Thousand Dooms cried out for champions, and the Unconquered Sun responded by empowering Solar Exalted as he has not done in a millenium.

In a moment of need you attempted the impossible and achieved it, granted power by the greatest of the gods to save the world in his name.

Hunted by the crumbling but still puissant empire of the Realm, condemned as the Anathema a hundred generations have been taught to fear you may be all that stands between Creation and the Deathlords; corrupt gods; creatures from the shapeless Wyld beyond the world; mad tyrants and Demon Princes that look set to destroy it

The flat world stretches for thousands of leagues out from the central Pole of Earth to the other four poles. Surrounding Creation is the Wyld, starting with the Bordermarches that reflect the real world in increasingly distorted ways all the way out to the Deep Wyld where shape is a fleeting thought but hunger is eternal. That hunger has also been turned on Creation, Fair Folk invasions from the Wyld have not only taken people they have dissolved the very fabric of the world as what was shrinks and is replaced by the unreal. The Scarlet Empress draws legitimacy from the fact she turned back the last great invasion 800 years ago, and the Guild excuses the excesses and evils of their world spanning trade by claiming the interactions of that trade and the flows of silver strengthen creation against the wyld.

Of the five directions, in the Centre is the Imperial Mountain standing hundreds of miles tall and surrounded by the Blessed Isle, core of the empire of the Realm controlled by the Scarlet Dynasty. Beyond is the Inner Sea, and on the outer shores of that is the cornucopia of kingdoms, city states and petty fiefdoms sometimes called the Threshold, much of which is controlled by the Realm or defined by their opposition to it.
Far to the North are the frigid temperatures and howling winds of the Pole of Air.
To the East are the endless forests of the Pole of Wood.
Southwards are the high temperatures and deserts of the Pole of Fire, while in the West the Inner Sea opens into the great ocean dotted by islands defined by the Pole of water.