The Celestial Navigation of the Tallowlands

In common with many pocket planes, the Tallowlands are not bound to a particular realm. Occupying, as it does, a fold in realmspace, the world drifts on the ether-currents in the vast sky-ocean between the realms.

It is unknown how the world came to exist detached from the Great Spheres, but travellers through the realmgates occasionally bring rumours of other such worlds floating in their own autonomous pouch of existence.

Scholars have devoted years - lifetimes, even - of study to codifying the exact nature of the world's relationship with the surrounding cosmos. The most widely-accepted theory was first proposed by the great cosmochronologician von Marrison in his seminal treatise Astralle Weekes:

"That the realms are mighty cannot be questioned. But none sits so far above the rest that it can capture this world of ours for its own. Instead we travel an infinite circuit between the realms, sharing in the powers of each as we pass near.

Seasons hinge on our proximity and facing; indeed, as one side of the world turns away from a realm, another side shows itself to the sphere. Thus, as we face, say, Ghyran, do our forests bloom and our orchards blossom. Then, as our attention turns to Hysh we find our days stretch on in unbroken hours."

In short, it appears that the world's position between the realms directly causes its seasons and climates. This idea was expanded by the lizardman philosopher Tinkenhat in his sandstone carvings - now fully eroded but quoted at length by de Robilant in his Histories: 

"To us they seem so near as to be moons yet to them we are but a distant speck, a tiny fly in a barrel of ointment*"

The notion that the moons of the Tallowlands are in fact other realms is intriguing and explains why the normally-inert realmgates thrum with vitality when particular moons are in the ascendency and the magical forces fluctuate with the lunar tides.

As a side note, a small handful of goblin tribes are known to chase the various moons across the Tallowlands in the belief that, were they to catch one of them, they would achieve immeasurable power. This theory does suggest that these excessively insane greenskins are, rather disconcertingly, right.

*This last metaphor is likely de Robilant's own addition - flies in Tinkenhat's home jungle are rarely less than fist-sized, and lizardmen have no known concept of ointment.