CHESS QUEST ENCYCLOPEDIA · REALMS & ROADS
Middlespace
The white road between worlds in Chess Quest
Middlespace is the pale intermediary realm linking separate worlds. In Chess Quest it becomes a road, a training ground, a source of order energy, a place where thought can temporarily become matter, and eventually a waiting realm for fallen knights.
- Type: intermediary realm / road between worlds
- Appearance: overwhelmingly white and apparently roofless
- Primary energy: order
- Notable rule: thought can create temporary objects that cannot be carried out
- Later function: waiting place for fallen knights
A Gateway Between Worlds
Rich first understands Middlespace as a gateway between different worlds. Bruno describes ordinary worlds as islands in a vast sea and Middlespace as the white space travelers must enter if they know how to open the right doorways.
That makes Middlespace less like a destination and more like a road system—except that the road itself has rules, hazards, resources, and inhabitants.
White, Empty, but Not Simple
To Rich, the realm initially seems like almost nothing: white in every direction, with so little visible structure that Mallory can perceive pathways and portals he cannot easily see.
The apparent emptiness is deceptive. Routes cross it. Portals open from it. Travelers can be redirected into worlds they never intended to visit.
Thought Becomes Temporary Matter
Middlespace responds to imagination. Rich can think of rare baseball cards, equipment, walls, vehicles, and other objects and make them appear.
Those creations belong to the realm. They disappear when a traveler leaves. The rule later becomes especially important because Rich’s imagination-based powers interact naturally with a place where thought already has unusual substance.
A Realm of Order Energy
The Centerspace masters eventually explain why Middlespace behaves as it does. When worlds die, their released order energy normally flows back into Middlespace, saturating the realm.
That energy can slowly recharge the Sunstone, although far too slowly to solve the final crisis on its own.
Portals & Detours
Movement through Middlespace is not always under the traveler’s control. Rich is thrown through an unexpected portal into a lush green world, where he encounters Trezzlepeg and a dragon. Gian later reveals that the apparent accident was an intentional detour arranged from Centerspace.
The Waiting Place of Fallen Knights
After Angela dies, she awakens in the same white realm and finds Aaron waiting there. He explains that fallen knights can remain in Middlespace while the mortal struggle continues or until one of them is tapped back into the game.
This is a special knightly condition, not a complete description of the afterlife. Aaron explicitly refuses to define Middlespace as heaven or explain where non-knights go.
Shared Cosmology
Middlespace also appears in the Canticle Chronicles. This profile records the Chess Quest evidence specifically; the Canticle encyclopedia preserves that series’ perspective on the same larger realm.
Michael D. Young 