Though parts of The Dark Wars do take place on Earth (specifically in Parsons, West Virginia – a fictional town modeled off the author’s hometown), the vast majority of it occurs in the Tri-System, specifically on the planet called Lavana.
The Tri-System itself is the solar system in which Lavana resides; it consists of three planets (hence the name), two moons, and an aging yellow star much like Earth’s own sun. The Tri-System is very unusual in the fact that the planets do not orbit the sun separately, and the moons do not orbit any one planet. As lore goes, a highly advanced race of beings called the Creators are responsible for making not only all life on the worlds, but also the solar system itself. So, it’s their ‘fault’ that the planets wound up too close to each other to resist one another’s gravitational pulls: all three planets, with the two moons in the middle of the mess, orbit each other in one massive battle of gravity, even as they swing elliptically around the sun. So, even at night, even when the moons aren’t visible, one planet or another is usually seen hanging heavily in the darkened sky.
The star is called Ghrayu, the name given by Nila ages ago and adopted by nearly all other races; it appears orange and huge in the skies. The larger of the two moons is Veron, a silvery-blue orb that hangs very close to Lavana’s surface; the smaller of the two is Xerachin, which appears copper-colored and, being farther from Lavana than Veron, is often partially eclipsed by the larger moon. The largest of the planets is Lavana, which we’ll discuss more in a moment; the other two are Terole – the smallest planet – and Shakala. Terole is the planet that stays closest to Ghrayu; it appears rust-colored or tawny and is a barren desert on the surface, only capable of supporting unprotected life in a strip along the Tropic of Nankampi. Shakala is the planet farthest from Ghrayu; it appears pearly-white and is a snowy wasteland, though a small handful of creatures do live in the midst of blizzards and glaciers.
Featured in the banner of this site, Lavana is a beautiful world whose surface appeal belies a vicious and deadly ecology. With pale violet skies and rosy clouds that darken to greyed red-purples when heavy with rainstorms and deep violets when filled with snow, Lavana seems like a child’s fantasy world. While most of the trees have grey, grey-brown, or brown trunks like those of Earth, leaves are most commonly shades of blue, although purple and green are also very common. Lavana’s two main types of grass are also interesting in hue: short blades of pale blue grass shaped like stiff strings of beads (appropriately called beadgrass) often intermingle with long, wheat-like strands of golden grasses. Water is tinted slightly teal-violet, and oceans especially display this rich, vibrant color.
Lavana has two large continents: Handak and Penyns. Penyns is the largest continent: two massive, irregular blocks of land (one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern) connected by a thick landbridge on the far left (west), a sea invading from the right. Penyns’ northernmost and southernmost points are frosted and covered in snowy tundra, while the rest of the continent has climate appropriate to its distance from the equator, which crosses the lower half of the landbridge. On the opposite side of the world is Handak, second-largest continent and rather ambiguously shaped. While not as east-to-west wide as Penyns, Handak has the same range north-to-south and thus much the same variety of climates, though its terrain is far less mountainous and thickly forested. The few Lavanian deserts are all on Handak, scattered to the north or south of the equator.
While Lavana has virtually no small continents, it is fairly riddled with islands and island chains. Most chains are near or on the equator, and one of the most famous ones – the Stepping Stones – provides a bridge from Handak’s eastern shore to Penyns’ western, with the largest water-gap between islands only twenty-three miles across. Some of the Stones are a foot or two underwater, but they still provide a way across for Lavanians who, well, have never made boats.
Lavana’s bodies of water don’t attract as much attention as they should, likely because most saltwater is filled with vicious sea monsters that are bigger than many islands. The ocean that stretches from Handak’s eastern shore to Penyns’ western one (which contains the Stepping Stones as well as park of Honshane) is called Vyolit, “Beauty” to those living on its shores. The ocean separating Penyns’ eastern shore from Handak’s western one, a place largely devoid of large islands or even island chains, is called Tiuna, “Fierce” to any who have ever glimpsed the saltwater behemoths beneath its calm surface. The arctic seas (which freeze into glaciers at the poles) are simply called North Sea and South Sea, although they’re large enough to be considered oceans, and the last body of saltwater worth mentioning is the long, narrow sea sandwiched between the two halves of Penyns — Morning Sea, as the sun touches its waters first. While Lavana has no major rivers (comparable to the Mississippi or the Amazon), it does have one delta-marsh-swamp area north of the land bridge on the northern half of Penyns called the Falls. The Falls encompass several thousand acres of land and fill these areas with thick, warm mist that never completely clears and often becomes so dense that one cannot see their nose in front of their face. The Falls are also the birthplace (technically Creation-place) of many of the older but odder species, and rumor holds it to be a strange, mysterious, dangerous area that few voluntarily enter.
**SPOILER ALERT!**
The third and hitherto-unknown continent is southwest of Penyns and southeast of Handak; Honshane (“Refuge” or “Sanctuary”) is discovered during the Dark Wars. Honshane is perhaps the most interesting of the three, for its surface area is likely equal to that of Penyns due to so many huge cave systems networked under rolling mountains, although its amoeba-like shape is only the size of the northern half of Penyns. There are also strange floating islands that drift with the cross-currents of air over Honshane; these can be reached by a Minmon standing on its hind legs, so low they fly, yet none of them ever seem to brush against a mountaintop. Honshane holds untold mysteries and very, very few native inhabitants – but here are a few new species never before seen on the rest of Lavana.
**END SPOILER**