[2025-06-16]
Here is the true shape of the world. Imagine an enormous funnel-spider's web, woven by an entire colony of mad arachnids. A twisting, three-dimensional expanse of organic, anti-symmetric parabolae. There are no sharp corners, no straight lines, no perfect arches. It winds around itself in gentle, layered curves, held in tension by linkages, supported by catenaries, shot through with hyperboloids.
Now imagine it goes on forever.
This structure is only semi-literal. It cannot strictly speaking be traveled through, as an insect might leap through the air from one side of a tunnel to the other. The hyperstructure simply exists in a dimension we are unable to access. We may only travel across its surface. We cannot go "up". Locally, it may be flat, or spherical, or potentially other more exotic configurations. But across a long enough span, to travel towards the same point from two separate starting locations will result in arriving at two different destinations. Somewhere along the line, space has curved away from the local topography, and you have begun to walk away from the world.
These divergences vary greatly. It may matter if you walk around a certain tree clockwise or counterclockwise. It may not matter which side of a mountain range you are on. The lines and contours which allow one to reliably travel from point A to point B are determined through a combination of extraspatial cartography, carefully recorded expedition, and risky trial and error. It is quite easy to get lost.
The hyperstructure is also known to shift. Most of the time this is geologically slow, operating over spans of millions of years imperceptible to human lifetimes. However, there are instances where it may be more sudden, occurring in centuries or even decades. These shifts are usually only noticed by their secondary effects. A new pinhole opens in space, and as it gradually widens, the weather unpredictably shifts as current drift through from another place. Strange creatures may be sighted, having migrated across the bridge between planes. A certain trade route may now lead far beyond its established length, until desperate caravaneers are forced to turn back and meticulously retrace their steps, hoping that they are still able to follow the path back from where they came.
Some scholars claim that the hyperstructure does not actually shift. It remains static, and the shifts we experience are simply another layer of contortions, in time as well as space. The implications of this are concerning. However, it is likely that it is still impossible to do this with any real accuracy. Even if a static path could be found and plotted, it would most likely lead to either a distant past or a far future, different enough to effectively be another world regardless. And indeed, there have been certain anomalies found. Unique geological formations found tens of thousands of miles apart, identical but for the wear of erosion or lack thereof. Lost travelers, who wear strange clothes and speak in a language which sounds oddly familiar, but which no living person can understand. Creatures previously thought to be extinct and horrors of ancient legend, reappearing in unexpected places.
However, certain locations are more stable, and therefore more habitable than others. Mountains, specifically large ones which exist independent of any range, seem to anchor reality to some degree. Rivers and their valleys are usually a fairly safe bet. The same can be said for lakes, ponds, and even small seas. Oceanic coastlines can even be considered fairly static, as long as the transition between the two is well defined, and land is not lost sight of over the horizon. As a general rule, any large, distinctive natural feature will provide some degree of consistent local topography. The inverse is true for interstitial spaces and liminal zones, as well as large, contiguous expanses of similar terrain. These are where the divergences and the forking paths of existence often lie.
But deep in the pandimensional wilderness, far from any built or manmade thing, are the endless places. Most known paths skirt these cautiously, although in any wild place, their influence is never entirely absent. There is often no clear delineation. It can be difficult to know if you have wandered off course and into one of these cursed biomes. The land looks largely the same as the rest of the land around it. It starts as an inkling, then a suspicion, then a sickening dread, the feeling that some point of no return has already been crossed. Then it is unmistakable. It happens slowly, and then all at once.
There are infinite prairies. There are vast and unending deserts. There are tree-choked mountain ranges, recursive crenelations of ridge and stream. There are fathomless swamps, flooded mazes of spanish moss and mangrove. There are mandelbrot fjords, coastlines splintering into sourceless eternity. There are endless polar wastes, warmed by the light of no sun.
There has been some discussion that perhaps these locations are predatory, or at least malevolent, luring in their victims like a pitcher plant. Those who disappear into the endless places are usually simply never seen again. Their assumed fate is starvation. Sometimes people do return, glancing and fevered, emaciated and shaken. Many are irrevocably mad. The ones who are not speak of wandering for weeks through endless stands of birch, each tree identical, watched by a panoply of infinite wooden eyes, or of being pursued by intangible rings of canine teeth, which pass through wood and stone like water, but cut through flesh like knives, hot slavering breath from behind lipless jaws. These people generally have difficulty readjusting to life back in civilization, though whether this is simply the result of extreme trauma or the lingering influence of those places is not known. They suffer from paranoid delusions, night terrors, and often an extreme agoraphobia. Some are more functional, but experience a claustrophobia which is equally intense. They speak of a overwhelming desire to go back, though they cannot explain why. Some become trackers, trappers, traders, pathfinders and guides. They spend the remainder of their lives far from any heavily populated place, living underneath an endless sky. Some are able to find peace there.
Sometimes people go missing, gone from their beds in the middle of the night, curtains blowing through the open window.