The world known as the Hourglass is a perfect sphere, dominated by a huge, mostly unexplored and untraversable ocean. It has two caps, which modern cartographers estimate are the exact same size. In between these caps lies the World Tide, the ocean which would make travel between the caps impossible.
However, this is broken by the Mountain Corridor, to which the Free Republic lays claim. It is a mixed land, featuring vast pastures, expansive fields, quarries, mines, and more.
At one end lies the Violet cap, known as such due to the gentle purple shading to the rock which covers the disc in large mountain ranges and stone formations. It is rare to find soil in most of this cap, with the powerfully built races that traditionally lived here burrowing underground to make their shelter and their wealth. Following the bridging and the resultant drought (which made the only major areas of soil available unarable) many of these cave systems were repurposed to grow what fungi or animals could grow in the Underdark. The new trade connections and recent refugee waves have had a huge impact on society here - homesteads (and increasingly settlements) are being constructed from the strong hardwoods found in the corridor, and cuisines are re-adopting the fruits from the Jade disc which were luxuries when the dragon ruled the corridor.
At the (exact) opposite end of the planet lies the Jade disc. This disc is covered in all the things that grow - from temperate forests to humid rainforests and swamps, or even vast savannas with scant outposts of civilisation. This disc has traditionally been wrought by conflict between the orcs and the “civilised” races (elves and dragonborn) over an area forested with great trees towards the centre of the disc, which hold huge magical power. Rumours of a new leader among the orcish tribes point to turbulent times ahead. These are not helped by the tension the growing tiefling and human populations, with the successor state to the Kingdom of Tyranel claiming more land both outside the Mountain Corridor as well as within. The elves especially, with their stagnant population, find themselves constricted.
Not much is known about the World Tide. The extremely powerful waves mean that much of it would destroy any vessel in instants, while the powerful ripcurrents will pull ships into said distruction within no more than a few days from anywhere along the ocean. Therefore, only the most coastal areas (<15km from mainland) on the calmside of each disc have been explored (with a few small islands inhabited only by those who do not wish to live among more people) and while locals may fish in some of these waters, naval trade is not a major factor in the world.
There are two main systems of mapmaking and wayfinding in the Hourglass. Cartographers who seek to create a more complete map of the world often use a system of 2 linearly independant axi - “Jadeside” and “Violetside” which refer to the direction one would go to find the centre of the respective discs. The other directions are “waveside” and “calmside”, which represent the direction that, if one were within the corridor, you would go to reach either the tempestous waves or the deceptive calm of the World Tide.
Travellers can use a simple magic detecting device, which are relatively cheap near to the corridor, to detect the flows of magical energy which rush straight through the Mountain corridor to infer these directions, but even given the wide availability of these tools many of those who would travel only the Corridor choose not to rely on any aides; the huge mountains which crowd both sides are visible from nearly every point in the land - allowing for easy orientation.
However, these directions are usually of much less practical worth for those travellers who wander the discs. Most maps of the discs are simple flat circles (often physical models rather than diagrams on parchment), and travellers orient themselves by whether they are “inheading” or “outheading”, and “tidefollowing” or “countertide”.
There are no devices in widespread use for identifying these properties. Travellers rely on the quality of their map, their knowledge of the land, help from those around them, and tricks relating to certain celestial patterns.
There are no celestial bodies in proximity to the Hourglass. Light fades into being worldwide at the same time each morning and evening, which reasearchers theorise is due to the diffusion of magical energy into the atmosphere. Even at “night”, there is enough light to carefully travel in wilderness, though major settlements are still lit.
During the day, there are occasional streaks of a magical “lightning” between arbitrary points in the sky, and extremely rarely these may hit structures or people. During the night, the lower amounts of light allow those with even poor eyesight to see strange, shifting shapes of many colours far in the sky. No one is certain what these are, and they travel around the sky seemingly randomly. Some people claim they feel a “connection” to some of these patterns, and believe they “know” where exactly in the sky they are placed, using them to navigate. Ones position on the planet affects which of these patterns you see and where.
Rainfall, storms, high winds and other such weather events do happen, though not with any major predictability.
The major concentrations of magical power throughout the whole system make planar travel much more complicated than might be expected, so summonings from them are very rare, and travel is profoundly uncommon, with even the wisest wizards choosing not to make such journeys. The only exception is the Feywild, to which there are natural connections within the world, and is rather well explored. However, it is only stable within the Jade disc. The other known planes are the astral and ethereal planes, but some researchers theorise the existence of others.
Before The Rise, most societies were atheistic, with the Orms never mentioning the existance of higher beings. Some societies do have forms of non-theistic worship though. For example, most elves follow “The Revered Ones” - historical figures who performed notable deeds. They use them as examples to base themselves upon.
Humans brought with themselves a religion that centred upon “Kallessin” - an abstract figure that was said to have regularly interfered in Human affairs, from their very moment of creation. However, after The Rise they have not been heard from again, so few people believe anymore.