The world of my story can be broken down to three layers,
some medival interpretations used to do. Like the 13. Century's medival organic
worldview, where the universe was thought to be made of the
spiritual(archangels, seraphs,...), celestial(firnaments, planets) and material
(humans, plants, animals, the four elements) planes. Or like in old hungarian
shamanism where the world tree relegated the good spirits, the humans and the
evil spirits to the branches, the trunk and the roots respecively. ( I could
list off more examples but these are the ones closest to me, who is hungarian
and went to a religious elementary school)
My world is a bit of a mix between the ones above. While in
the organic worldview God and the underworld exist beyond the levels, here
those are a part of the world too, like in the shamanism.
My first level is simply Heaven, where all the creatures from the medival spirit world can
be found, and also God. This world is made up of tons of flying islands wich
are green, very fertile and are full of life. In its center is the biggest
island of them all, on wich the Tree of life with all its might and beuty
stands. From here the travel to the lower world happens through the waterfall
of one of the islands wich falls down into a portal. Whenever someone goes
trough it, rain falls onto the lower world.
I just call the world on the middle the World of Steam, wich is the material world where we live. The
nations of the world are the same as ours but their technology isn't. Here
technology used the first industrial revolution's steam engines and upgraded
them to incredibly high degree over the course of a few centuries. With this
kind of technology they somewhat avoided our enviormental problems, however
smoke, coal and wood are still unsolved problems for them. Through the
refinement of steam technology they have been able to purify salt water and are
able to generate electricity for street and home lighting.
This world's vehicles have been inspired by and modelled after
individual animals.
Travel to the higher dimension happens trough a statue in
the middle of a forest, while the way down goes tbrough a worn down and broken
well in the depths of a forest.
The third level is plain and simply Hell. Upon arriving we can, through a cave look down onto the dark
landscape. Everywhere the eye can see is covered in dead trees in which the
holes look like faces. In these holes live the souls of the damned, who
generate a slight orange fog around themselves. In the distance, at the center
of hell stands a huge castle, this is where the Clock of Death resides, also
the lord of the underworld lives here with his best men. In front of the castle
is a little pond where water from heaven falls. In the middle of the pond
stands a little island, on it lives a little tree, which is not like the
others. It has pink flowers and is almost shining, this is the Tree of
Knowledge.