Antiterra is the twin world of Terra: a closed, freezing capsule, in doctrine an angel imprisoned by the demon Graz’zt, falling toward the Band of Dissolution until its end in 1901.
This name refers to different figures in 2 worlds; the versions are not merged.
| Type | World |
| Spanish entry | Antiterra |
In Antiterra
It is “a part of the cosmos”, seen from the Hall of Speakers of Sigil as one of two “crystal spheres” or “golden vessels” above the planes. Inside: a red sky, a permanent comet, portents blamed on the dual planet that “exploded and left its orbit”. Arian gave Graz’zt the True Name with which it was created.
Form and geography
- It grows in crystal layers, a thin new skin with time. It is frozen, atoms dense, vibration near zero, coldest at the center.
- All land rests on ten platforms, separated by temporal barriers and reachable by dual magic to those with divine essence; crossing takes a ship or the Lighthouse of Bilixin. Their order is not zodiacal.
- The land copies Earth: the black-ice region repeats Central Asia of Marco Polo and the 13th-century Mongols, same names included. It also holds Italy, the Mediterranean, Giza and a Mexican coast where the apocalyptic stone fell through a hole; from there a link to Terra runs beneath the Band.
- Desert, irrigated fields and, despite the northern latitude, a semi-tropical riverside zone. Northward, darkness acts as an “entropic nail”; the temperate belt (like southern Canada) is “almost impossible”, more warning than road. Many “tend their garden” knowing nothing.
Closure
No one enters or leaves; like a black hole, it kept the gods and strong creatures who came in. Yog-Sothoth and other forces cannot get in; the platforms are “the shield”. No one has left in a very long time. The prison repeats at three scales: the whole world is a prison, each platform a cell, and time itself, stopping, closes the lid. Nine years on Terra are “almost an instant” here.
Dual law
Antiterra must invoke an opposite: a celestial force entering brings an equal demonic one. Everything has a counterpart: shared geography, doubles of people, offset dates. Terra and Antiterra unfolded from Abyssinia over millennia, “twin planets that desired each other”, a double pearl with the Band between and one point of contact, now “as if it were the etheric”. Pablo accepted the counterpart as the only way out of the contract.
Knowledge, religion, inhabitants
- Science includes magic. Gunpowder is only magical; electricity is forbidden, just being discovered.
- Accepted magic: theology, alchemy, astrology (including judicial), natural magic. Black magic and necromancy are persecuted; inquisitors burn true witches. Sorcerers and kings outlive humans and often rule.
- No gods; religions are not monotheistic; wars, above all religious, over a holy land. A divine power exists, usable only past the prismatic barrier.
- Inhabitants are mortals of flesh with souls. Unlike Terrans, they do not dream: dreams were permeated for centuries so devils could not fulfill a pact. They carry “diabolical atoms”; on celestial planes they were classed as demons and washed “with the trillas, with the manitas”. Their old name, artageses (of Demonia), has unfixed spelling. Devils abound. Their ideal: “to vibrate like the Earth”.
Annals
- 1300: the dual writings joined Dante’s poem; the door opened and devils entered. Terra’s annals say 1519; reckonings disagree.
- Elizabeth, the Lich Queen, reigned a hundred years.
- 1889: part of the English dominion of Infernal London, under a viceroy; an event occurred that Christmas.
- 1901: the guardians died; the instruction between Terra and Antiterra closed part of the earlier game.
- The Lord of the Devils no longer controls it; Heredet claims it if the devils leave; Lucifer joined a pact to “send all beings into the air” and escape.
- Per Uchronic Paris, twelve years ago the world was called Antiterra. The era matches Earth’s 18th century, at most the 19th.
End and meaning
The end came in late 1901, in “less than two months” (at one point, “nine days”), yet brings saved souls and rebirth: transcendence, evolution, synthesis. Antiterra is “a point of darkness” yet ontologically central, “the secret of Graz’zt’s dual magic” and with Terra a focus of his power, disputed by devils, Heredet and the outer powers.
Conflicting accounts
- Dragons have slept three hundred years; or “in their world dragons do not exist”, only asleep for 300 years.
- Destroying Antiterra destroys Terra; or Antiterra falls toward the Band because Terra is gone and its counterweight missing.
- “There is no salvation at all in Antiterra”; or 144,000 souls were saved at random, by being “deemed worthy of salvation”.
- “Once Terra and Antiterra collapsed into one”, a claim the doctrine of irreducible duality rejects.
Open questions
- Population (and how many ignore their imprisonment), the platforms’ names, order and edges, and what the trillas and manitas are, are unrecorded.
- Who the third beyond the duality is, and how a godless world holds a divine power, is unanswered.
In Vala
A place, by some accounts a whole world, of mortals, distinct from the “Pocket Paradise”, of dual nature, with guardians (of what, unstated). Lucifer is said to have saved people who were to die in its destruction; whether that destruction is past, future or recurring is unstated.