Setting (AKA the weird snarky sign that shows up everywhere.)
[Placed at random intervals in Thav̱máto̱n are variations of this sign, all of them bearing the same words (although not always in the same language), and most of them looking as if they've been there for ages:]
WHAT THIS IS, WHY YOU'RE HERE, AND WHY YOU'RE SCREWED
- What This Is
As far as anyone's ever been able to tell, this place has no set size. It changes depending on how many poor bastards get stuck here. At one point we thought it depended on the weather, but apparently not. So the best estimate we have is just that it's really big. We were tempted to name our new home The Really Big Place for a while, but that idea sort of fell through.
Anyway.
Seeing as it's really big, it's got some stuff in it that you should probably know about. There's a city, for starters. Chances are you're in it right now, but if not, let's talk about that for a second. When we say city, we don't mean city. We mean CITY. It takes up two thirds of all the space here, no matter how much space there is, and there's usually a lot of space. Are there people in it? Oh yes. Now, in order to explain this, we're going to ask you to think for a minute. Don't worry, it'll be over soon.
People aren't the only things that get pulled here from their respective universes. There's animals, technologies, locations, ideas, traditions, materials... sometimes even huge chunks of buildings that get unceremoniously dropped into the middle of nowhere. So you have this giant city, and you put all of that into it. Yeah. Imagine that, and then make it a hundred times weirder. That's what we mean. (You can stop thinking now.)
There's also some natural bits of this world hanging around somewhere. We can't tell you exactly where they are, because they move around a lot, but we can tell you about them. There's an ocean, only one, and there are beaches. The ocean's not very important, and the beaches are useless for sunbathing, but there you are. There's a few forests, and a fairly sizable desert that always seems to be located slightly to the left of all those forests.
Just be aware that if it can exist, it probably does exist here.
- Why You're Here
Yes, there's a reason. Sort of. Probably none of this is going to make any sense to you, so we'd advise just skipping ahead unless you're really feeling masochistic.
...
Once upon a time, there were these gods. They inhabited their own world in some dimension or another, and got along okay until all of the sudden they didn't. They started a war, those gods, and being godly, they did some exciting and flashysparklycolorful things with their god powers. Unfortunately, some of them screwed up along the way and ended up tearing a rift in the fabric of reality.
Ooops.
Reality didn't take kindly to that, and the rift expanded, bleeding through all of existence and taking things from all of the universes it touched. It stored those things in its world of origin, the world of those dumbass incompetent gods we mentioned earlier. (They're all gone, by the way. Probably dead, possibly just on vacation.) The rift is still open.
And guess what role you play in all of this? CORRECT! So now you're here.
- Why You're Screwed
We'll only list a few.
1. HAVE YOU BEEN READING?
2. Things here have this really disturbing habit of doing bad things to people. For instance: see anything rainbow-colored? Keep at least a mile between you and it at all times, unless you feel like being genderswapped or turned into an animal or having your personality inverted or...
3. Death isn't permanent. Have fun figuring out what to do with your enemies when neither of you can die.
4. Lions and tigers and FLESH EATING PARALLEL UNIVERSE GAZELLES WITH TOO MANY EYES oh my!?
5. We'll probably have to add more later.
[welcome to Thav̱máto̱n. we are Wonderland.]