Is the pale a reference to the pale of settlement in the Russian empire.
I was reading about Jews in Russia when a thought struck me. That the pale of course shares a name with this region. Growing up in former Soviet territories I assumed it’s not likely for the authors to be familiar with it. And so I dug a little deeper. As a term referring to jurisdictions a pale (meaning fence) refers to an area bound by specific rules.
The pale in game acts very similar to this, being effectively a fence around the known world inside of which the rules of the game world apply. However we also now that there are certain people able to interact with or through the pale such that they are able to break those rules of the world.
It’s still not necessarily a fully baked thought but the similarity in name and purpose seemed striking enough to garner a second look in my mind.