Anything you possibly wanted to know about The Second Realms, and a whole lot more besides!
The nations
For all nation information, check the list of nations.
Timeline
For the complete Second Realms timeline, click the timeline link.
Famous People of the Second Realms
This is a list of every natural law The Second Realms have. Natural laws in the First, or Normal Realms include falling downwards when you jump off a cliff, dying when a bullet blows your head off and so on. In The Second Realms they are slightly different. Well, REALLY different.
Law 1: The Creator has a sense of humour. This has been proven many times, mainly by the fact that most deaths occur from pianos being dropped on people's heads. Also, the Creator has left on a short holiday and never returned, but left in place these and some other, more obscure, laws, to govern the planet in his stead.
Law 2: Whenever a human being says the words "The Second Realms" anywhere with the borders of the aforesaid region, they are immediately followed by loud noises, usually involving drums and trumpets. This law is constant and unchangeable, however the music may vary from a toot to the complete performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
Law 3: Gravity is subjective. All living creature decide how it affects them. Therefore if you WANT to go up, or someone is controlling your mind and makes you want to go up, gravity will change around you and you will fall upwards. Most animals can't think thoughts of such complexity and gravity either affects them normally, or at it's own discretion (flying elephants are common, as are burrowing eagles). Gravity also affects nonliving objects at it's own discretion.
Law 4: Everything is happening everywhere at the same time. This makes tourists very confused or usually dead. This law is very useful if you want to travel: if place A is also place B (and places C - Ö inclusive), and a train at place B is also a train at place A (and places C - ß inclusive), then you will automatically be at all places from A to Ç inclusive. It's getting OFF the train at the right place that is the difficult bit. Most people seem to get off at place Ý.
Law 5: No matter where and when you entered The Second Realms, upon exiting you will appear 4.7293473 km to the south-south-west of where you entered, and at 9:00 in the morning of last Thursday.
Law 6: This brings up the question of HOW to get to The Second Realms. Just go somewhere that is not within 4.7293473 km to the south-south-west of any dangers (like seas, volcanos, herds of enraged elephants), and squint until you see a fuzzy line to the left of you. Throw yourself at it. If you miss, you will look very stupid. If you succeed, you will vanish, and anyone talking to you at the time will look very stupid. This method is used by politicians when they have to get away from the media. It is interesting to note that the politicians then can't get OUT and form their own nations in the Realms. Most of these are dictatorships, utopian societies or both at the same time.
Law 7: There are special laws for death in The Second Realms:
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If a usually fatal thing happens to you, and you don't notice it, you will not die.
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If you do notice, or someone else notices and tells you, you will automatically die.
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If you decide that you want to die, you will die.
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If a thing that is impossible NOT to die from (such as old age or getting your head ripped off) happens to you, you will die but continue living. Don't get me wrong here: you will stop breathing, your heart will stop beating, your brain will stop working. It's just you'll be alive. Not undead, simply alive like the rest of us. It is easier to understand this concept if you can think on 2 planes of consciousness at the same time (humans are limited to 0.7), or even better on 8.
The Creator was the being who created the Second Realms, 0-42 years SRT or 3293 years ago. There is actual proof he existed, firstly because he left a long string of laws that would govern the Realms in his absence, and secondly because he left a huge "Gone on holiday" notice (made up of 13 islands) in the middle of the ocean. So far he has not returned, or if he has he has been very quiet and unobtrusive. In any case, no-one has seen him as he left shortly before the first people arrived on the Second Realms, around the middle of year 0 SRT.
Time in The Second Realms is a very complex thing indeed. Time was created when the Realms were created, 3251 years SRT (Second Realms Time) ago. However at the start of the year 3001 SRT Time started flowing backwards because of some rather unwise actions by Great Jongo II. Therefore the year is currently 3000-251 SRT. For every second going forward Time goes two seconds back. For every minute going forward Time goes 15 minutes back, then corrects itself to 2. The fact that Time goes backwards goes not actually seem to influence anything happening on The Second Realms, apart from clocks and the rotation of The Second Pyramid (Very Loud Silence) around the Sun.
The whole of the Second Realms consist of 9 light-years SRT (yes, they go backwards) of space so empty that it is devoid even of emptiness, a small, pink and rather lost poodle, and the Second Solar System. This consists of The Second Pyramid (Very Loud Silence), the Sun, which is made of very very hot pie, and the artificial sun created by Pharoh Mobius, which is actually made out of gas.
(Very Loud Silence). All of the known countries of The Second Realms are located on the Second Pyramid (Very Loud Silence), a planet-sized triangular-based pyramid. It's tip points towards the sun, and rotates around it in a circle. Also the pyramid rotates around it's own axis, which passes through the tip. This motion means that the base of the pyramid never had daytime, but this flaw was corrected by Mobius, Pharaoh of The Empire of Pharoh Mobius. He used his knowledge of 'weird science', and built a giant artificial sun that lights the whole base of the pyramid during the 'day'.
We are creating an actual 3-D map of the pyramid, and photos of it will appear on the Geography page.
The Second Realms have a population problem. It is not a problem of too much population, rather one of lack thereof. It started when the Second Realms were created by the Creator. He then made a bunch of natural laws (see above) so the Realms could govern themselves in his absence. The main ones are written above, however there are some more obscure ones as well. Then the Creator left on holiday and has not returned since, but his laws are still in place.
One of these goes thus: "Any group of humans or another dominant or superior life-form that proclaims itself as a nation instantly gains a population equal to the amount of people that proclaimed themselves as such." Sounds simple? Well, it isn't. No-one has actually figured out so far how to proclaim themselves as a nation. Therefore even though there are nations and countries on the Second Realms, they do not technically exist and therefore neither do their inhabitants. This means that the population of the Second Realms is 0. Anyone you meet is a figment of your imagination and might mean you need a check-up with your psychiatrist.
Note: We have had to remove the last sentence from the Second Realms version of this site (this is the First Realms version), as the whole 'population' went to their nearest psychiatrists, resulting in the crash of the stock market. Twice.
When the Second Realms were created, 0-42 years SRT, the Creator, for reasons known only to himself, created a small pink poodle in the space between the edge of the universe and the Second Pyramid. This poodle was caught in the Sun's gravitational field and orbits around it like a comet. It's closest to the pyramid is barely a few hundred kilometres, and this event happens only once every 2142 years. The last time it happened was in 2100, and it will happen again in the magical year 4242, in 991 years. Coincidence? Maybe. Or we've just been reading too much Douglas Adams.
The poodle is the size of a normal poodle, therefore visible only through telescopes even at it's closest. It's fur is rose-pink, and fluffy. It seems to be alive, but possibly the Creator forgot to give it lungs, and therefore the need to breathe. In any case, it seems to be alive for a lot longer than anyone on the Pyramid.
2065 SRT was famously known as the Year of Darkness. The real Sun, made out of very hot pie (beef, at that point), suddenly went out on the 5th of February, as its filling was completely burnt up. All 3 sides of the Pyramid were plunged into chaos. Famine and plagues were widespread, and by December of that year the stock market had crashed (but it was doing that every few hours or so anyway, so no-one took any notice), rivers started flowing backwards (not technically connected with the Sun dying, but dramatic all the same), and there was not a single block of firewood left anywhere. The only side with light was the base, thanks to the artificial sun of Pharaoh Mobius, and it (grudgingly) offered aid to the rest of the planet.
Most dramatic of all was the sudden sinking of the islands of Flossia. They had apparently become waterlogged as there was no sun to evaporate the water from them, and with a pink fluffy gurgle all three fairy floss islands sunk. However another fairy floss archipelago bobbed up some distance to the north, so the inhabitants were saved.
Luckily, however, some brilliant scientists from the country of Unchecked Pyromaniacs (the only place with fires not needing fuel) came up with a solution. A huge pump and hose was built on the very tip of the forested island of Uult, now a snowy wasteland. The hose was attached to the cold sun (it was lifted up using the force of subjective gravity, see Law 3 above), and from a huge container pie filling created by all the kitchens of the Realms was pumped up into the sun. The filling this time was chicken and corn, laced with petrol. As soon as the deflated pie was filled again, a match was flown up, and the Sun shone once more. Conservative estimates say the next Year of Darkness will happen in 3000-1565 SRT, as chicken and corn is more energy-efficient than beef and the petrol was a higher octane than the previously used kerosene.
This article contains information about everything not covered in specific articles above. When specific articles are written, they are removed here.
Climate: Anything between atomic winter and the surface of the sun. And that's on a good day.
Terrain: So far we have seen oceans, deserts, tropical rainforests and something resembling fairy floss. A good rule of thumb is that it changes with the climate.
Natural resources: Most of the surviving mines mine Improbability and Randomness.
Natural hazards: We won't even start. I mean, how much more hazardous can you get than suddenly dissapearing landmasses?
Religion: Everyone prays to whatever diety they prefer that they don't suddenly stop existing or, even worse, turn into a peanut.
Communications: Extremley difficult. Some bright guy decided to experiment with phone lines floating above the surface of the region. It worked for a while. Then the sky fell down.
Travel warnings: Highest possible level. Getting into the region itself is a major problem. The population of penguins has almost doubled due to tourists entering.