Sam, Micah, and Limbo (Four Realms)

[Content note for mention of anti-genderfluid bigotry]
[Sam appeared in my first Four Realms fragment, the arc of Sam and Micah (and Nia, the succubus) is outlined in a post where I complained about having trouble writing it.]
[This is positively the most in depth I've gone about what it means for secondary dimensions like Limbo to different from the Four Realms of the setting name.]

"You ok?" Sam asked as soon as he could see the kid again.

"Yeah," the kid said in a way that made Sam think the kid wasn't sure, "thanks."

"This is my home," Sam said, gesturing to the grimy alley with a spinning flourish; "who would I be if I didn't take care of guests?"

"You live here?" the kid asked, looking around.

"Here, there," Sam said, "wherever."

"Does . . . do . . ." the kid asked uncertainly, "is it always that dangerous?"

"Muggers come, and muggers go," Sam said, "but usually no.  You just picked a bad day to be here with fresh clothes in bright colors."

The kid didn't seem to understand.

"You look like you've probably got something worth stealing," Sam explained.

"I've got nothing," the kid said.  A moment later the kid added, "And I didn't choose to be here today," defensively.

"There are a lot who don't choose," Sam said, "always sucks.  You got a place to stay?"

"If I had a home I'd be there," the kid said, a hint of anger.

Apparently Sam still hadn't attained the strange and esoteric skill of being a "people person".

"Ok, this is going badly," Sam said.  "Let me try again.  I'm Sam."

"Micah," the kid said.

"So, Micah," Sam said, "would you care to tell me what brings you here, or is that something you'd rather not share?"

Micah shifted uneasily.

"It's totally ok not to tell me," Sam said.  "Also--" he didn't get to say, 'lying is always an option.'

"My dad couldn't stand a 'son' who was a 'sissy'," Micah said with associated air-quotes, "and my mother was pissed off at me because 'being a woman isn't a part time job'."

"You're gender fluid?" Sam asked.

"What?" Micah responded with the same kind of bafflement a Heaven-fresh Angel responded upon learning that someone who broke bread with gods, Angels, and Demons could call themselves an atheist.

"It means that sometimes you're one gender and sometimes you're not," Sam said.

"There's a word for that?" Micah asked as if it were some minor revelation.

"Yeah," Sam said, "There's a word for that.  No need to restrict it to just the favored two, either."

"What other genders are there?" Micah asked.

"I am totally not the person to ask that question," Sam said.  Besides there was a need to deal with the problem that Micah didn't have a place to stay.  "You had to run away from home?"

"They kicked me out," Micah said.  Defensive, angry, sad, annoyed, dejected, resigned, and a few other things all at once.

"I might know a place you can stay," Sam said.  "You human?"

"Of course I'm human," Micah said.  Just like those people who didn't think the sky could be colors other than blue and didn't understand why you asked.  Why couldn't people sent into Sam's territory all get informative pamphlets or something?

"The place I know of," Sam began, "it doesn't come with an 'of course' on that statement."

"Are you crazy?" Micah asked.  Not condescending, a sincere question.

"Not that I know of," Sam said.  Sometimes honest answers were the easiest.  "You can decide for yourself what you think of the place.  It's this way if you're coming," Sam said as he walked passed Micah.

Sam heard Micah following.  Micah couldn't have gone more than five steps before asking, "Where are we going?"

"Ever hear of Limbo?" Sam asked.

"Isn't that some Catholic thing?" was Micah's response.

"It's not part of official doctrine, or wasn't the last time I had cause to know," Sam said.  When was the last time he'd gone to a library and checked up on such things?  Too long.  Libraries were nice.

"So what is it?" Micah asked.

"They say it's the edge of Hell," Sam said.  "The name comes from the Latin for 'edge'.  It's not a true realm in itself but rather the meeting of our world and Hell.  Think of it like a seashore or tide pools or some such, it's not a fixed place but rather the result of two places --the metaphorical land and water-- meeting."

"Uh-huh," Micah said, "and how sure are you that you're not crazy?"

"I make no claims to not be crazy," Sam said.  "I just said that I'm not aware of being crazy."

"And I'm thinking of Limbo as being like a seashore why?"

"Because the place I know where you might be able to stay," Sam said, "that's in Limbo."

"The cosmic tidepool," Micah said.  Disbelief was to be expected from someone who said, 'Of course I'm human.'

"It's just an analogy," Sam said.  "Limbo takes form from both Earth and Hell, but it's important to remember that it's not a thing in itself.  We're here, you can have a look in a moment."

Sam looked at a blank wall and said, "I can never remember exactly where it is."  He took out the pouch that had a mix of iron filings and ground-up Demon keratin in it.  He thought for a second over how much to use, decided that it was best if Micah saw some nice results, got twice the normal amount of the mixed powder, and threw it at the wall.

"What was-- is that?" Micah asked with shades of disbelief.

"Oh, you mean the the hidden sigil made of various arcane symbols inscribed within a magical circle?" Sam asked playfully.  The powder suspended in the sigil, which hovered about an inch off of the wall, would only remain for a few moments before succumbing to gravity like the rest of the powder had, but for the moment it made a nice visual representation of things that probably lay outside of Micah's worldview.

Micah made an "uh" sound.

"Still think I'm crazy?" Sam asked.

"I think I might be," Micah said.

"That's probably healthy," Sam admitted.  Then he indicated a spot on the wall, "you put your hand here, and I'll put mine here," he lay his right hand on another spot on the wall, "and I'll mumble some syllables with strong assonance and medium alliteration.  That's if you're still following me."

"And then what happens?" Micha asked.

"Then I show you Limbo," Sam said.

Micah lay nir hand against the wall.

Sam mumbled the syllables.

The world seemed to change around them.  Ground and buildings ripped apart and reconfigured, objects crunched, elongated, just plain got bendy, or otherwise changed their shapes, the sky took on an orange hue, smoke with no source dimmed the air and created patterns as it moved in eddies that hadn't been there moments before.

Heatless sparks danced.  The temperature increased by three degrees.

"How is this possible?" Micah asked.

Awe.  Awe was better than disbelief.  Awe was appropriate when traversing worlds, disbelief could lead to nervous breakdowns.

"There are more things on Heaven and Earth than . . . something or other," Sam said.  "I know that you're supposed to learn Shakespeare if you want to get English language culture, but I've never found it that engaging."

"Me neither," Micah said as ne looked around in wonder.

Sam smiled.

Micah got on nir hands and and knees and peered into the void beneath the floating island of ground and wall they were on.

"It seems to go down forever," Micah said.

"It may," Sam said.  "I've always felt that the surface is roughly spherical, just like Earth, but the thing you have to understand about Limbo is that it isn't solid the way Earth, or Hell for that matter, is.  Distance, size, and even time can change here.  Sometimes at random, sometimes following the whims of it's stronger inhabitants.

"You can never count on the distance from here to there, top to bottom, or now to then to remain consistent.  What's under our feet could very well be bigger than the surface we're walking on could contain in any true realm."

"Is any of that supposed to make sense?" Micah asked while looking around more.

"Just remember that it takes on the appearance of Earth, not the substance," Sam said.  "On the more passive side of things, you could try to pull what looks like an ordinary brick from a thin wall and find that it's a mile long.  On the active side of things, a Demon might stretch a simple doorway into the longest hall you've ever seen in an attempt to slow down your entry into some room or other."

"If things can change like that," Micah asked, "doesn't that mean the walls can snap together and crush us?"

"Yes," Sam said slowly, "but it's not as bad as that sounds," he said more quickly.  "Human beings don't usually exert and conscious control over Limbo, but there is a degree of subconscious influence and that little bit of survival instinct that says, 'Please don't kill me,' is just enough to make it so something like that will never happen in such a way that you can't avoid it.

"Provided you're willing to run as fast as you personally can go --or whatever-- if someone wants to kill you they'll have to do it themselves, not use their control over the architecture."

"That's very comforting," Micah said in a way that was clearly not intended to be taken seriously.

"Other general rules are that it's possible for things to use their influence to keep you in, but never to keep you out.  Slow you down, yes; keep you out, no.  So if someone traps you they always have to be within the trap themselves, meaning that you can reach them, and dealing with them --say beating them senseless-- springs the trap."

"Ray of sunshine, you are," Micah said.

Sam liked that turn of phrase.  Didn't comment on it though, just a slight smile, then he said, "Not that I recommend getting into fights.  I prefer to run away."

"But if they can keep you trapped with them. . ." Micah said.

"To do that they have to know where you are generally and be willing to stay in the trap however long it takes to find you specifically.  Proper run and hide technique can really do a lot to keep that trick from forcing you into a fight."

There was silence, a bit awkward, for a time.

"Right, general rules," Sam said, remembering where they'd been.  "Walls trying to crush you are really the exception, usually if dimensions are different in limbo they'll be larger.  Yards instead of feet, gallons instead of quarts, minutes instead of seconds.  The surface is like Earth, something to do with the effect of Earth life all knowing what Earth looks, feels, and smells like, I think.  That's the influence Earth has instead of being able to change it like the creatures of Hell.

"But the thing about Earth is that if you go deep enough, then there's really not much in the way of Earth life there.  So if you want to get some spelunking gear and see if that really does go down forever," Sam looked over the edge, it did seem to go down forever, "you're going to find it less and less Earth-like as you go.

"Unless you have some pressing business with the Dark Elves then I really recommend sticking to the surface."

"Dark Elves?" Micah asked.  "Like Drow?"

"Less Dungeons and Dragons, more Norse Mythology," Sam said.  "I prefer calling them 'Dark Elves' over calling them 'Dwarfs' because if you use the latter people think they're the size of human dwarfs and with the exception of Dark Elves with dwarfism, they're really not.  The average Dark Elf is shorter than the average human, sure, but it's not nearly so big a difference as people would have you believe."

"And they live underground in Limbo," Micah said.

"Exactly," Sam said, "and they do metal working like you wouldn't believe.  But, like I said, it's best to stick to the surface unless you've got a good reason to do otherwise.  Your humanity confers the most benefit up here."

"And your humanity?" Micah asked.

"So you've gone from thinking I'm crazy for talking about things beyond mainstream human thought to wondering if I'm not even human myself?" Sam asked.

"I wasn't trying to--"

"It's fine," Sam said.  "And, for the record, I'm almost entirely human."

Another pause, this one not awkward.

"Now we keep getting sidetracked and we haven't even started moving," Sam said.  "Which rules and guidelines and such have I already given you?"

Micah counted off on nir fingers, "Not a static place; things can change.  Stick to the surface unless have a good reason to see the Dark Elves who are not Drow and do not have dwarfism as a species-universal trait.  When things are different they tend to be bigger here than Earth.  Demons can change the landscape just by willing it but can't trap you without trapping themselves and can't kill you with the landscape if you actively try to stay alive.  Don't fight; run and hide.  The edge of Hell.  If you're crazy you're not aware of it.  And I think that's it."

"Ok, then. . ." Sam had to think about it; what else was there?  "As time has gone on Demons --also Angels, and the various types of god-- have become less able to fully manifest on Earth itself.  That means that they tend to come to Limbo instead.  From here they can use vessels on Earth and blah."

"Blah?"

"Great Cold War between Heaven and Hell, social engineering, fight for the souls of humanity, oppression of the already oppressed, class warfare, just lots of blah," Sam said.  "I don't get involved.  The point is that since they have an interest in Earth but usually can't go the whole way there anymore, Limbo is where you'll find the largest Demon population outside of Hell."

"That's nice," Micah said.

"Not as bad as it sounds," Sam said.  "The place I'm taking you?  Mostly Demons living there.  They're good people.  Now, if you're coming, let's get going."

"You do remember the whole 'looks like it goes down forever' thing, right?" Micah asked.

"Yup," Sam said.  "This is the fun part.  Running, jumping, climbing trees."  Sam broke into a sprint and jumped over the gap between the island they were on and the next piece of ground on their way.

"Putting on makeup while you're up there?" Micah asked.

Sam noted that Micah recognized the quote, looked back to see Micah following, and said, "You can, I'm not into that."

Sam had never actually heard Eddie Izzard's routine, but his friend Julie talked about Izzard often.

My mental image of a toadstool person

Ok, so, context:

Ana Mardoll has been reposting her original Narnia posts for reasons, reasons which are good but I am not good at summarizing so we'll just leave it at the fact she's been doing it.

The most recent one gave me opportunity to repost my fic fragment "Work Against the Emperor's Magic?" which is in a too close to call tie with another fic in the "What if Aslan took Susan seriously?" genre (Susan, Aslan, Peter, and the leaving of Narnia at the end of Prince Caspian) as my most popular Narnia fic by far.  Those two leave all the others in the dust.  Which means that getting an opportunity to repost one of them is sort of like a ticket to free praise and validation.

Praise and validation is always important, but it's extra important when I'm feeling useless.

So initially that's exactly what I did, I posted in the new thread a popular fic that I'd originally written in the old thread.  (You'll have to excuse the mess of the comments in the old thread if you read it; disqus is evil.  It was totally legible before things were "improved".  Mind you, as I recall, attempts to cope with the "improvement" made things even worse.)

But something else happened both times I read the actual post, and this time I decided to write about that as well.  You see there's a reference to "the people of the Toadstools" and, well ...

Context over, time for actual text (copied word for word from the original because: who needs editing?)

⁂

This post has once again sent me searching for an image that I swear I've seen but may have just been the result of deja vuing a description.

See, toadstool people.

The image is drawn from a low height so that an ordinary toadstool looks taller than a human being. This will be important because the toadstool person, when we get there next paragraph, looks as tall as a person until you take into account that they're shorter than the toadstool. Before we get to them, the toadstool is on a forest floor and that kind of plays into the lighting that's doing that thing with light through leaves that I'm told is called "komorebi" in Japanese but has no English word to describe it.

A human-esque creature is partially obscured by the previously mentioned ordinary toadstool. Its skin is smooth, so smooth it has a sheen, almost like, say, an orange mushroom* though if memory serves the skin was grayish. Its left hand is on the toadstool as it steps out around it, its right hand really shows you why the thing is scary. Its whole body is thin or elongated (depending on how you want to look at it) but it really, really shows with the long outstretched fingers of the right hand which end in sharp looking points.

I don't think it had any hair.

And that is what a toadstool person is to me. They live firmly in the uncanny valley, they have skin that seems not like skin, and their proportions, while suggesting humanity, are all wrong. If you base your assessment on their height then all of their parts are too thin. If you base your assessment on their girth, then all of their parts are too long/high/whatever you call that.

And thus when I read this:

Although I am not, generally a particularly visual person, particularly when I read, the toadstool people are one thing that I do have a longstanding image of.

This is of a gender-unknown humanoid peering around a toadstool in a dark forest - the toadstool is oddly undefined, but I don't think it's red with white spots.

This creature is lithe and sort of stretched, with long pointed fingernails that look quite threatening. It has skin a bit darker than olive, and dark dark eyes, and is about ten/fifteen centimetres tall, although this image is seen as if the viewer is that height as well, or maybe a little taller. I always imagined it as sort of "sleazing", if that counts as a verb, from place to place, and of having very, very smooth skin - almost as if it is slimy, although it is not wet. Maybe a little damp. It watches. Always watches, with those big, dark blank eyes peering around things.

I suppose "The Toadstool People" got very associated with mold and decay in my head, in a way that "The Mushroom People" certainly wouldn't.

in the original thread my reaction was, "I've seen that picture," and then I tried to find said picture.

But like I said, that reaction might well have been deja vu, so the picture I've described may not even exist.

[Added:] Oh, for fuck's sake disqus. If I wanted you to imbed the image I wouldn't have fucking linked to it. Fine. It'll be a footnote:

*an orange mushroom:

⁂

Hardly the most inspiring thing in the history of the world, but now you know my visual image of a toadstool person.  When they show up in Life After, assuming I ever get that far, that's the image I'll be drawing on.  Though in Life After they're really human sized, and go nicely with the giant mushrooms that dominate the landscape.

Monthly Financial Post

A big part of why I didn't do this yesterday was that I really wanted to get a fiction post up before I did a "Hey look, my finances still suck," post.  That didn't work out.

So:

The good: I just barely managed to pay off most of my debt servicing bills for the month.  The SSA will keep giving me SSI (but there's no word if they'll restore the amount of SSI I get to the previous amount that doesn't leave me constantly facing disaster and getting deeper in debt.)

The bad: First, something went wrong with the above (possibly something got double payed by mistake), and now my bank account is negative again.  Specifically -$56.75, $35 of which is overdraft fee.

Second, that was entirely debt servicing,  Fucking debt is high enough that it ends up being my biggest expense and while I can use it to pay off other expenses (big part of how it got that high) that just adds to the damned debt.  Actually things have been going badly lately, forcing me to use the "get deeper in debt option" and two accounts that are supposed to have zero balance (because I paid them off as part of the "get out of debt" plan) now have $670.83 dollars worth of debt between then.

Also, as a part of the second, that was entirely debt servicing meaning it didn't pay for water, electricity, or my phone.  None of that has been paid for this month.

The ugly: I owe insurance on the house I never do remember exactly what it is, I can look it up later and put it in here but I think it's $290 something.  I don't owe it to the insurance company so no late fees and whatnot, but I do owe it to the person who was nice enough to pay it for me until I could get the funds together.

Next month taxes are due.  That I do know.  $657.72

And that covers it.

I feel useless

When was the last time I wrote fiction?  Susan and Lucy vs. the Wolf, probably.  Disqus tells me that that was 22 days ago.

Does that mean that I've been making progress in non-fiction related areas?  No.

I do nothing.  I am month.  I feel useless.

When things are going right, writing isn't work.  Editing, sure.  Keeping things consistent, definitely.  Research is a black hole from which you might never return.  But the actual creativity?  It just flows.

I haven't flowed lately.  I feel so useless lately.

Accidentally overstating my time-travel abilities

Originally this had no caption --oops-- so this
time-traveling caption from July 1016 is here to
say: this is Subaru and Silver Knight in Venice

So for some reason I ended up at .hack//Sign: The story so far (with images) and noticed that blogger had apparently messed up the formatting.

Blogger does that a lot; in part because the font size it shows in composition isn't the font size used in the actual post because . . . Jasper?

I noted a caption-needing picture while I was trying to fix other things and originally added the caption you see off to the side.

Admittedly 1016 is probably a more interesting time for a caption to be traveling from than 2016, but obviously that wasn't what I meant to type (and not is it what's in the actual edit) but I had a bit of a giggle when I noticed what I'd done.

* * *

And . . . then I actually did put that error online in the original post.  For maybe ten minutes or so.  (Not completely sure on how long.)

The origin of the realms, Norse view (Four Realms)

[This is on pantheon's view of existence in the setting described here.]
[Do note that this takes a more traditional approach to what the nine worlds of Norse cosmology are than what I did here.  Also note that this is in no way an accurate description of Norse cosmology.]

The Beginning

In the beginning there were but two realms: Muspelheim and Niflheim.

Muspelheim was home to great heat, a realm of fire, melted rock, and light.  Nifelheim was a place of cold, home to ice, frigid air, and darkness.

Besides them there was nothing, but over time that changed.  The empty space of Ginnungagap became heated by Muspelheim and cooled by Niflheim and in its center spark met frost.  From this meeting the first life was born.

The First Life

Ymir and Audumbla, the first jotun and the first cow, were born.  The great cow Audumbla licked the salty ice and from her udders ran four streams of milk that nourished Ymir.

The heat of Muspelheim caused Ymir to sweat, and from the sweat were three jotuns born.  Of his armpits' sweat came two jotuns, male and female, of unremarkable form.  As his legs rubbed together they produced a sweat that brought forth the third jotun, a male with six heads.

Meanwhile Audumbla's licking of the ice warmed it, and from the melting ice Buri, the first god, was born.

For two generations of there was peace.

Buri's son Borr wed the Jotun Bestla, daughter of, Bolþorn.

Bestla bore three sons: Odin, Vili, and Ve.

Þrúdgelmir, one of the sweat-produced, had a son named Bergelmir.

The Pieces of Ymir

The sons of Borr slew Ymir, and Ymir's blood drowned all the Jotuns save Bergelmir and his wife.

Ymir's corpse was brought to the middle of Ginnungagap and from it a new world was formed.  The sons of Borr formed land from his flesh and sea from his blood.  They made mountains of his bones and ground his teeth into sand and gravel the sky they formed from his skull, from his brain they made clouds.

The maggots that grew within his corpse were transformed into the elves, who at that time were neither dark nor light.

Into Ymir's skull, the sky, the sons of Borr fixed many of the sparks of Muspelheim, while beneath the skull but above the clouds they set more of Muspelheim's lights, giving each a fixed path to trace.

In this time gods, elves, and jotuns multiplied, but the sons of Borr were not finished with the world they'd created yet.

Desiring to give a world to a new race of their own creation, they used the eyebrows of Ymir to create walls between worlds.  With one eyebrow they blocked off the land the jotuns had taken, creating Jotunheim.  With the other they cordoned off the elves, forcing them all back underground.

Of Elves and Humans

The elves who remained underground became the dark elves, or dwarfs, and so their home is known as Svartalfheim [home of the black elves], but some elves missed the sky and the lights of Muspelheim that had been set in and beneath it.  They longed for the trees and plants that had grown on the world in Ginnungagap.

These elves did not oppose the sons of Borr by attempting to return to the world in the center of Ginnungagap, instead the journeyed far and wide looking for a world like the one they had known.  They never found such a world, and finally they decided to make one themselves, bringing together the frost of Niflheim and the sparks of Muspelheim in a new place.

These elves called their new home Alfheim, though some call it Ljosalfheim [home of light elves] to distinguish it from the home of the elves that had remained where the sons of Borr had set them.

Meanwhile the sons of Borr created the race of humans from trees they had found on the world in the center of Ginnungagap.  Of the trees they formed two beings, Ask and Embla, Odin gave humans life and soul, Vili gave them intelligence and emotion, Ve gave them form and senses.  The humans were also gifted clothing, names, and the world itself.

It was then that the sons of Borr separated their own dwellings from those of humanity.  The world in Ginnungagap was split a final time, the sons of Borr living in what became Asgard (the sons of Borr named themselves and their families "Aesir), while humanity inherited Midgard, which still lay at the center of Ginnungagap.  As a bridge between Midgard and Asgard the Bifrost was constructed, so that gods would never be cut off from men.

Other Gods, Other Jotuns, and Other Creations

It was then that the sons of Borr relaxed and noticed changes to the universe they had not made.

Gods beyond themselves had formed a world of their own, Vanaheim, and the sons of Borr did not know how this had come to be.  Were these gods, the Vanir, forgotten descendants of their own from when god, jotun, and elf had lived together and multiplied on the world in Ginnungagap?

The sons of Borr couldn't believe that, but if the gods didn't descend from Borr, where had they come from?  If Vanaheim hadn't been created from the remains of Ymir like Asgard, Midgard, Svartalfheim, and Jotunheim, what had it been made of?

Vanaheim didn't seem to be at a crossroad between Muspelheim and Niflheim like Ljosalfheim, so it didn't seem possible it was created in the same way.

Had Audumbla given rise to a god other than Buri?  Had there existed siblings of Borr they were never told about?

The sons of Borr uneasily appraised the Vanir, while noting still more things that had previously escaped their notice.

While they'd been aware of the migration of the elves and the creation of Ljosalfheim, they were not prepared to see jotuns outside of Jotunheim (apart from those they or their descendants had taken as spouses.)  They certainly didn't expect to find any in Muspelheim.

Yet there they were.  When had they settled there?  Had they, like the light elves, migrated after the world in Ginnungagap was divided by the sons of Borr?  Or had they settled there much earlier?  Perhaps some jotuns had never been satisfied living on a world created from the corpse of Ymir, a fellow jotun, and they'd parted with the other jotuns soon after the world in Ginnungagap was created.

More disturbing than the question of their origin was their form.  Muspelheim was a harsh and unforgiving home and those who had settled there had grown unlike the jotuns the sons of Borr had known before.  They became the Eldjotuns.

Even the space between worlds was unlike what had been expected.  Instead of empty remnants of Ginnungagap, there was now a structure binding the eight realms together: the great tree Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil, in fact, now seemed so central to the worlds that without it they would all be destroyed.

The Youngest Realm

Each of the sons of Borr reacted in his own way to the realization that forces, previously unnoticed, were changing the universe around them.

Odin wandered for a time, seeking knowledge.  It was in these wanderings that he met Loki.

Ages passed, Odin became Allfather.  The Aesir and Vanir went to war, then reconciled.  Loki became a mother and a father.

It was one of children that Loki fathered by his jotun wife, Angrboda, that created the final realm.

It had been noticed that inhabitants of all realms went to Niflheim when they died, and the question of what to do with the dead had never been answered.  Odin and Freyja, a Vanir who lived in Asgard after the war, had worked to divert those who died in battle to their own halls, but for those in Niflheim there was no order, oversight, or structure of any kind.

When Hel, Loki's daughter, was abducted (along with her siblings) by the Aesir under order of Odin, Odin sent her to the part of Niflheim those who died outside of battle resided in, and gave her authority over those dead.

Hel built her kingdom with great walls and dwellings, and made it unlike Niflheim through her efforts.  Eventually it became so different that it split from Niflheim and became a world unto itself.

The Evolution of the Realms

As time wore on many new gods were born, some forming their own communities outside of Asgard's walls.

A group of these gods claimed to be messengers of a greater god, one more powerful than and older than the Aesir and the Vanir and more knowledgeable than the Allfather.  They claimed that neither they nor other gods were really gods, and this caused great friction between themselves and the other communities.

Eventually they exiled themselves to Niflheim, the one place none yet lived, and their subsequent isolationist policies allowed them to convince themselves that there were no other gods.

They were able to pull an ever growing portion of the dying away from Helheim and back to Niflheim, which they renamed "Heaven".

More ages passed and the inhabitants of Niflheim went to war with themselves.  The battles spilled out of Niflheim, over Alfheim, and finally ended with the losing side being banished to Muspelheim, where they vie for dominance with the Eldjotuns to this day.  The winning side of the war in Niflheim were somehow able to redirect dead they considered undesirable to Muspelheim.

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Ok, so, how this fits into the wider setting.

Using the terminology from the post where Sam described the setting, we have this mapping:

Primary (stable) worlds:
Midgard = Earth
Asgard = The God's Domain* (this includes outside of the walls of Asgard)
Muspelheim = Hell
Niflheim = Heaven

What Sam calls "ancillary dimensions" rather than "true realms":
Ljosalfheim = The Battle Plains
Svartalfheim = Limbo
Jotunheim = Purgatory
Vanaheim = Omen
Helheim = Revelation
The Bifrost = Dreamscape

Yes, The Battle Plains does have a large elf population.  Yes, Limbo does too.  Sam's terminology doesn't distinguish between Vanir, Aesir, and jotun.  They'd all be classified as "god".

The Eldjotuns here, though, are pure outsider and as such Sam would be a hell of a lot more comfortable with a story that explicitly said, "No, they'd not related to the other jotuns in a meaningful way.  Don't even try to make a connection sons of Borr.  You can't connect Surtr and his ilk to people like Loki and Skaldi.  These are very different species."

Sam has no problem with the Vanir appearing in Vanaheim/Omen without explanation.  As far as Sam is concerned no one knows how the Aesir got in Asgard either.  Sam doesn't do origin stories.

If you tell this story to Sam he'll be quick to point out that you never explained where figments and elementals come from.

Sam does not rule out the possibility of a cosmic cow, but will wait on confirmation.

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* Needs a new name but given that it houses the vast majority of pantheons, it's hard to come up with just one name for the whole place.

There's a new about trans* people and bathroom access at the Slacktiverse

So, I was the editor for an anonymous post that I spent years not actually getting posted.  It's obviously become extremely relevant given current legislation though the real reason that I actually, finally, got the damned thing up is actually that the topic came up at my grandfather's burrial and made me think that it was about time I finally posted the thing.

I think it's well worth reading, and thus advise you to go there and look at it.