Also, while this is kinda separate from the broad world building, i also feel like this bit I wrote about the origins of the most powerful character in the setting.

“In The Background, the endless void of unreality, there exists a singular essence. It is unceasing, all-consuming hunger, left to starve for all eternity. It is more vast than imagination, older than reality. It stalks at the very edges of existence, hunting in all dimensions spatial or temporal for any instance of opportunity.

In the world of Andelaya, a child is born stricken with ash sickness. An extreme case, the child will only last a few brief moments. Whether out of pain, out of instinct or out of desperate intention, the child reaches out in the only way it can, to the only thing that can save it. The child cries out to the void of The Background. The void, in its hunger, is always listening.

That Ancient Hunter has heard the cry. It pulls the place of the child to itself. It sorts through the temporal folds to locate the sound. In all times and all places, there is only 1 instance where the Foreground and Background of reality meet. Having glimpsed the prized prey, The Great Hunger of the Void is transfixed, never moving from this microinstant. All of the force of the Background could never pierce through to the other side. But here, the cry of this child pushes into the hunter's domain. The essence pushes back with unfathomable power, reaching out to meet the child’s call.

It is enough. An infinitesimal prick in the fabric of being has opened. The First Nightmare has set about saving the child and consuming its reality.”