The Astra is everything there ever was, is, and will be. Thousands of localities host trillions of lives; all spiraling from a chaotic font of pure energy.
The Astra is commonly depicted by astergraphers as a two-dimensional plane of dots coiled in on itself. While this representation is incorrect, it is a convenient framing for newly advanced individuals. In reality, the Astra is a nine-dimensional field as discussed in YuDaan’s Nine-fold Treatise. Housed within this multi-dimensional matrix are points of matter, called localities. Between localities is mostly empty space — just massive voids of nothingness pocked with small outcroppings of life and matter.
The Astra is most commonly split into three sections: the core, the arms, and the rim. The core is the center of mass of the system, a hyperdense cluster of high energy and exotic lifeforms. Due to the high concentration of the aetheric field at the core, magic tends to be both easier to wield and more common across a locality. The arms are the offshoots of localities that have been pushed out of the core into a few distinct streams. Most life within the Astra is located within the arms, as the region strikes a balance between the turbulence of the core and the space of the rim. The rim is the most population and energy sparse section of the Astra, as the aetheric field has yet to properly diffuse into the outer reaches of the system.
The Astra is constantly expanding. The high energy density at the core pushes all of the localities in the system inexorably outward. Each year the core grows a little dimmer as the arms grow slightly longer and the rim withdraws even further out. It’s hypothesized that eventually, the system will reach a point of equilibrium, where the aetheric field and the localities will all be uniformly distributed.
