The Travail is a special world in the universe, created by a group of individuals collectively referred to as the Heroes of the Travail. These impressive folks came from a multitude of backgrounds and disciplines and joined forces to create a world where they could not only live and work together, but have a central point in the universe where others could come to learn, request aid, and collaborate. The creation of the Travail was completed not long before the start of the IA and very few people, if any, had a chance to visit before travel between worlds was no longer possible.
The Travail possesses a number of extraordinary properties that its Heroes are able to take advantage of:
- The sharing of knowledge of combat and magical abilities (This explains the players' ability to change ability lists each event at their discretion)
- While on The Travail, people are recognized as members of one of a nubmer of categories: Visitor, Helper, or Hero
- The creation of documents based on what the Heroes have learned (this Wiki is a represeneation of this and a copy is available in the tavern during events)
- Monitoring the arrival and departure of people and creatures
- The Travail's Heroes and Helpers are able to return from death with little difficulty
- The Travail can dock itself with another world, creating an overlap between them that facilitates magical and mundane travel between the two
- The Travail can provide excess Source beyond what it needs to fuel itself to the Heroes so they can use it for their own purposes
The Travail requires Source in order to fuel some of these abilities. The world has shown the ability to navigate itself towards Source Storms in order for the Heroes to gather Source to fuel it with.
The Travail has a complex network of vaults below the surface.
The Travail has its own World Beasts:
- The Watcher of Thresholds - A tentacled humanoid tasked by the Old Heroes with protecting The Dark Waters. It is able to facilitate the Heroes making use of the Dark Waters. It is able to sense the boundaries of The Travail and worlds the Travail has docked at.
Other phenomena:
- The Dark Waters - A place in The Travail that can be used to become places that do not exist, such as dreams and Tesseracted events.