So the new campaign world...

I'm building a new campaign world. I don't know that I'll be able to fully describe this without pics, but here goes:

(Note, this isn't a final description, even of the parts I'm describing. Things are subject to change.)

Premise: The material plane is formed by the intersection of several other planes. The intersection is caused by a loop of (something) that acts somewhat like a gravitational field in a multidimensional space, drawing all the planes together, with the strongest point of intersection following the ring. (Not the interior of the ring, but the ring edge itself.) The ring itself is deep underground. (How deep? I dunno. Deep enough for dwarves to get at it, anyway.)

Whenever I talk about the ring, I'm talking about the actual torus itself, not the entire region it encompasses. Also, N, for now, is 20. I may scale it up or down. I don't know. "I" needs to be calculated based on the concept of the inverse cube law mentioned below, but I don't feel like doing the calcs right now.

There are six primary zones, relating to the ring:
* A2 -- Region 0-I miles from the ring.
* A1 -- Region I-2I miles from the ring.
* B -- Region 2I-(N-2I) miles from the ring.
* C1 -- Region (N-2I)-(N-I) miles from the ring.
* C2 -- Region N-(N-I) miles from the ring.
* D -- Region greater than N miles from the ring. There are two of these, one on the outer side of the ring, and one circular region on the inside of the ring, a sort of interior dead zone.

Notable artifacts of this:

* Magic is strengthened in proximity to the ring, though the strengthening effect fades according to an inverse-cubed law. (See "inverse square law", and bump it up a dimension)

Region D: magic has faded to uselessness, and the material plane has faded to void. Not space, not vacuum, just void. No rules of physics apply there. Some who've touched it are said to have ascended, while most are never heard from again.

Region C2: the material plane takes on a strong form of the chaos property. (It's been a while since I read the old 3.0 D&D splatbooks, but I remember there being a chaos plane or some such.) These are known as the "outer strangelands."

Region C1: the material plane takes on a weak form of the chaos property. These are known as the "inner strangelands."

Region A2: the material plane takes on the strong form of the "wild magic" property.

Region A1: the material plane takes on the weak form of the "wild magic" property.

Region B: the material plane behaves normally.

* Climate varies greatly near the ring

Region A1: Small, adjacent regions have very, very different climates. Storms are common as these incompatible climates mix at their boundaries.
Region A2: As with A1, but the climate regions are much larger.


Other notable things about the ring:

There are two tall mountains on the "south east" corner. One of them I've nicknamed "nattie" for the time being. Deep in the core of Nattie is an area where the hypermagic ring is twisted into a Gordian knot, leading to stronger localized effects. Closer to the ring's center is another mountain, which I've nicknamed "Everest." At an altitude fairly close to Nattie's peak, the "sun" (some bright light source; I haven't figured out exactly how hot it is) follows the hypermagic ring as something like a track. Day and night in the world are simply the sweeping of Everest's shadow as one, large sundial. The "dead zone" region at the center of the ring also casts a shadow; the lack of remotely consistent physics prevents light from traversing it. As a result, most of the world has two periods of darkness for every cycle of the sun.

There is one small anomaly at the "north west" corner. Dwarves dug deep under the surface of the world, and managed to intentionally create a loop twist of their own in one spot on the hypermagic ring. The hypermagic ring would very much prefer to remain circular, and so it will untwist itself eventually, given the chance. When that happens, all sorts of things will happen. That's not a key specified plot point, by the way; it's just a fact of the world. You make your own plots; I'm just defining the world at a static point.

There is one ocean covering the "south west" quadrant of the world, lined with a short region of hills followed by a mountain range. (The same mountain range that contains Nattie, Everest and the Dwarven magic project. The ocean extends from the outer C2 through the outer C1, B, A2, A1, inner A1, inner A2 and into the inner B regions.

The oceanic section of the A2 and A1 regions are considered perilous, and almost nobody crosses it except in times of emergency. Think of it like the dead region of wind flow near the equator as feared by wind-powered sailors hundreds of years ago, except that instead of a lack of motive energy, magic just goes wonky there.

Instead, trade between the south and west edges of the ocean follows two primary routes. One that sticks to the outer B region, and one that sticks to the inner B region. The Inner Sea is relatively crowded, with privateers and pirates, but also a large number of coastal trade points. The Outer Sea is fairly empty, but there's no room for error; if you have problems, or if you run low on supplies, you're either going to have to cross the A1/A2 regions to get to the Inner sea where you might find help, or you're going to be lucky enough to be near shore or "Atlantis" (nickname, natch) the island city that spans from the outer B region to the outer A2, used as a nigh-lawless research, trade and pirate stronghold.

At the border of outer B and outer A1, on the ocean shores, are the two largest port cities. The Inner Sea has ports that are far more numerous and dispersed.

...and that's all I have figured out for now.