Sfal has a surface equal to 1/3 of an Earth's, covered in a mosaic of bushland and swamps, with a few mountain ranges, some grasslands, and a few round seas, rich in tertium salts. Its sky is golden, fading to pink over the edges, with two triangular suns, spinning all around it, and one round moon. The length of days and nights vary, but the whole day-night cycle usually lasts around twenty-four hours. The climate is warm, with temperatures around 30ºC, and humid. The plant life is very rich, with thousands of species, usually with pink or bright violet leaves. They are all very fragile though—the leaves fall apart like candy flos when someone as much as brushes them. None of plants grow to more than 3m in height. They also have a strong, balsamic scent, often described as 'suffocating'. There are also many fungi and zoophytes, but no real animals.

Sfal was discovered by Dahlsian sorcerers twenty cycles (40 earthy years) ago. Before that it was uninhabited. On the plain between the highest mountain in the world—called The Red Mountains, from the red, translucent rock they're made of—and a salty sea, they made the main city of Sfal: Marka-na-Sfal. Sfal provided Dahlsi with a path to Meon cluster, the whole cluster of previously uninhabited worlds, ripe for the taking. Unfortunately, worlds in Meon only merge once, with one of the so-called junction worlds: Sfal, Kooine, Daesi, and Tydus. Sfal is the most important, as it connects Meon to Dahls and, therefore, the rest of the universe.

Sfal serves mostly as a transit station for people traveling to Meon. Marka-na-Sfal is an important trade center, but the world itself doesn't have many natural goods. Tertium is mined on a small scale and some local plants are grown for food in the areas around the city (most food is brought from Varokka, though, as it has a much more suitable climate and the merge is merely a few hours away from Marka-na-Sfal).

Human habitation hasn’t been kind to Sfal. Three separate species of pests turned large swaths of bushland into a desert. In a desperate attempt to save local flora, Dahlsi introduced six species of predators, which slowed the destruction but didn’t stop it. Part of the cleared land was later planted with Varpulian fruiting trees to provide for the inhabitants of the city. Meanwhile, the local plants evolved to produce toxic fumes to fight off the pests, which turned the atmosphere of the entire world slightly toxic.

Furthermore, the accumulation of waste (for Dahlsi the usual method of disposing of it was dumping it over the edge, but the nearest edge was too far from Marka-na-Sfal), caused the infestation of amorphous creatures known as sulkes. When they started attacking humans and clogging the life-support systems of the Dahlsian Inner City, Dahlsi had to bring over siplahs (creatures that look vaguely like naked mole rats with tentacled faces) to hunt them. So far siplahs, bred especially to hypoallergenic, are the only animals allowed in the Inner City.