Vala is a whole world, planet and sphere (“a sphere with the potential universe”), created or received by Lucifer: a young world of Mesopotamian architecture and inverted Gnostic theology, where the sun permanently sets in the east.
| Type | Place (world) |
| Calendar | Dynastic years (year 120); ten-day weeks |
| Spanish entry | Vala |
Description
Vala is not Earth, though it “has something of some old gods of Earth”. It is also named “the kingdom of the gem”, setting of earlier gestas. Its demiurge is evil, “but the serpent is not”. Cosmic forces exist, over “an infernal substratum”.
A river-furrowed continent holds an inner region called “the Mesopotamia of this world”. The seas, once of dust, are now salt water. There is a giant plain and a coliseum where names were acclaimed for defeating the Sphinx. The main territories are “related to colors”; a northern region has an Easter season matching spring. Ruins remain of earlier floods and of ancient races: the elves, the serpent being.
Dates read like “8 of 6”. Kings descend from the gods. Coins circulate at high figures: a noble outfit of the Black House costs 15,000 coins; a chest held 13,000. A lord of that House can aspire to “run the planet”.
History
Vala is a replacement world. After floods and destructions disturbed everyone’s memories, “even of dreams”, souls that “should really have died” came through the breach called Antiterra and filled it. It is “a renewal of a cycle of the world” that “had time to start from zero”, unlike Darksand, where magic caused “something like an atomic debacle”. Some call it a lost world; others, “the world of salvation, where those who were saved are”.
Threats
- Death comes for its inhabitants’ debt after four thousand years, counted from the first incarnation of Cakravartin.
- The dragons are returning and “will come to invade Vala”.
- Cosmic annihilation: “a world already given over to the void”.
Conflicting accounts
- The figures are 4,400 years of people in Vala; 4,004 years as the planet’s cycle, a “great road of perdition”; and 4,000 years since Cakravartin. Whether these are three reckonings or one rounded count is unresolved.
Open questions
- Which colors match which territories, and how many there are.
- The months of the year, and how year 120 fits the 4,400 years.
- The coins’ metal, denominations and everyday prices.
- Where the Antiterra breach is, whether it is open, and how Death collects.
- What lies beyond the salt seas, and the names of the old Earth gods.
- The world’s own title, and its relation to “the kingdom of the gem”.