There was not, as western religion tells us, a single creation, nor a series as other faiths have it. The single act of creation, the Big Bang, whatever you like, created not a single universe but many, overlapping but generally invisible and intangible and, therefore, unknown to one another. Ours is the Prime Universe, where the great and ultimate fate of all life would be decided in the epic battle of opposites, of good and evil, of powers of light and darkness.

In the backwash of this creation, the other worlds trail out, each occupying the same space but not the same space-time continuum. Because they were not fully formed, and the Ultimate Engineer was preoccupied with us, they were left for development to the Lesser Powers—let’s call them Angels. The universe closest to us is the universe of the Lesser Powers. Not quite as dynamic, shaped by Lesser Powers, it has developed differently.

At the start, both universes, theirs and ours, had as much magic as natural law, and creatures evolved that were like ours, even human, and partly human, and some intelligent races that were not human at all. On Earth, the humans became dominant to the point where they slew the others, out of fear, out of competition, or out of ignorance, driving the few remnants further and further underground even as physical law was locked into near immutability. Ultimately the others, the creatures of magic, of faerie, of centaurs and unicorns, pixies and leprechauns, passed into the realm of legends and stories, until there are none left here now who truly understand the magic or know its capabilities, and even fewer who truly believe. Without belief, the magic bends more to physics, so that even the powers of Darkness must battle through surrogates and hard technology in more hidden, mundane fashion.

In Husaquahr, which is the name of that other world, this did not happen.