Infraflux Locations
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Spotty Civillisation
The physical landscape of March Earth is still roughly the same as our own. Over 400 years the climate and ecology have remained much the same on a global scale, with notable biomes staying as they were, especially if they were an anchor in people's common knowledge (thanks to the power of Lore). On a local scale, however, climate and biome may have stark contrasts and bizarre local anomalies, with creatures and energies creating new places with properties unknown before the Cataclysm. Most organisms are unique, filling archetypal roles: a tiger-type organism, a grass-type organism, a fir-type organism. The destabilisation of Earth Sense in a post-Cataclysm world means walking though a spruce forest where every tree is unique, and you may turn a corner to find one fully decorated with christmas lights and tinsel, growing those synthetic parts naturally as part of its being.
It's not all fanciful ornaments, however. The addition of powerful energies and the "anything goes" rules for the existence of new creatures makes most of March Earth's untamed terrain dangerous to some degree, and major networks of transportation such as motorways and shipping lanes are much less common than in our time. Settlements are expected to provide mostly for themselves using the resources in their immediate vicinity, with trading a tricky and far less frequent business than it is today. Cities and towns are isolated, walled, connected to each other by internet and radio signals. The spaces between these spots of civilisation and safety are called simply "Wilds", and those who make a living within them, away from the assistance of their fellow thinking beings, must be capable of defending themselves or they do not survive long.
Countries
Countries and other territories exist pretty much as they always have in Earth's history. The largest by far is the sprawling multi-continent supercountry of Infraflux, with numerous much smaller countries sprinkled within or around it. These smaller countries often do not have a single border, rather tend towards scattered archipelagos of territories linked via communication networks. Places that are unclaimed by any governmental system or that are too hostile to be realistically controlled are referred to as "Free Wilds". On land, the Free Wilds roughly equal the supercountry Infraflux in area, though the percentage of unclaimed ocean is significantly higher.
Infraflux
Location: Worldwide
Government: Cyberocracy/democracy
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Largest supercountry on March Earth.
Kee-yây-a a'aii'k ("Phinny") Kingdom
Location: Worldwide Oceans
Government: Monarchy
Although many Phinnys are also Infraflux citizens, often they still feel beholden to respect the original nomadic "nation" of their people. Ruled by a queen and her consort, the Phinny Kingdom considers the Phinny people under their rule rather than any stretch of land or sea.
Recluse States
Location: Worldwide
Governnment: Various
General term for the myriad small, self-governing nations or settlements that seek to isolate themseves and restrict access to their interiors.
Trade Union
Location: Worldwide
Government: Plutocratic Federation
Second largest nation, similar in structure but much smaller than Infraflux and much more competitive. The Trade Union has historically rushed to claim many valuable resource sites across the globe, and is comparable to a global business corporation that franchises other settlements.
Settlements
Throughout March Earth, major settlements represent safety from the hazards of the Wilds, usually well-defended and forming the hubs of a local production zones. Infraflux settlements follow a system of size and/or type categories that grant them various levels of assistance from the country as a whole. Most non-Infraflux countries use no such system.
Barrel
Location: North-west British Channel, ~250m depth
Category: 04-U (Underwater Town)
Nation: Infraflux
Main Non-english Languages: Phinny
The first and oldest of the "barrel" type underwater settlements, shaped like a standing hollow barrel. An outlandish prototype idea by aquatic engineers that worked much better than anticipated, the town of Barrel is culturally famous but a little run down. Its age, convenient proximity to London, and relatively safe location have allowed the growth of surrounding and annexed structures, leading to a sort of "shanty town" that bleeds up and out onto the coastline.
London
Location: South-east end of the island of Great Britain
Category: 05 (City)
Nation: Infraflux
Main Non-english Languages: Phinny
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The gargantuan city of London is the most influential city in Infraflux, considered to be Infraflux's "capital", though without such an official term actually existing. The city is wrapped around the Thames river and estuary, leading to a significant aquatic/amphibious population.
Neoland
Location: African continent
Category: 05 (City)
Nation: Infraflux
Main Non-english Languages: French
Second largest city in Infraflux, Neoland isn't based on a pre-Cataclysm city but was developed and engineered from scratch with growth in mind. Known for its beautiful city planning and integrated greenery, Neoland is the technological and cultural hub of the African continent. Neoland also contains the highest population density of Umnthi and Umnthi hybrids worldwide.
Shinmen City
Location: South-western Honshu Island
Category: 05 (City)
Nation: Infraflux
Main Non-english Languages: Nihon Pidgin, Japanese
A curious city buit on top of a giant face carved into the side of a tall coastal cliff. Shinmen has a local visual phenomenon of unknown origin that causes the city to have harmless optical "simplifications" that vary in strength from district to district.
Shivertown
Location: Central eurasian continent, just above the arctic circle
Category: 04 (Town)
Nation: Self-governing
Main Non-english Languages: Russian, signing
Largest settlement to have significant Dim energies and Dim-touched inhabitants. The name Shivertown is both to do with the cold (the snow lies thick between the houses most of the year) and the way the light is slowed and bent in some areas. It gives the effect as though the light is flickering irregularly, like an old flourescent light tube, and the buildings seem to be jittering slightly because of this.
Traga-Moulosch
Location: African continent, northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea
Category: 05/05-U (City/Underwater City)
Nation: Infraflux
Main Non-english Languages: Phinny, Traga-Moulosch Akan, French
Moulosch is the oldest major underwater city in the world. Its surface counterpart, Traga, is built into a shallow cliffside cave and the entire dual city is remarkable for being made mostly out of plastic and wood or bamboo analogs.
Wolfhold
Location: Aotearoa Island
Category: 05 (City)
Nation: Infraflux
Main Non-english Languages: None
A very old settlement founded during the Cataclysm as Lore-created "fantasy" type people gathered together in one spot and recreated the imaginings of humans to feel at home.
Wilds
Wilds are the spaces between settlements, the vast stretches of uncivilised, usually unsafe terrain. Wilds may still be under the control of countries as they may contain settlements within them, travel routes, et cetera, but Free Wilds are places beholden to no country. Wilds that represent no danger at all are extremely rare, with most untamed areas containing at least disgruntled wildlife or road-less wilderness.
Angelshins / Tenshizune
Location: Central Honshu Island
Category: Shine hotspot
Territories: Free Wilds
Danger: Moderate
A sprawling forest of giant bamboo analogs with extremely regular geometry. Most are perfectly vertical, resulting in an unsettling spectacle of seemingly infinite green lines while inside the forest. Some bamboo is also known to glow from within, form regular geometrical shapes, and have localised physics distortions. The entire forest is strongly Shine influenced, making chance and coincidence rare and allowing warm-type spirits, demons, and even angels a greater likelihood of appearing in the material plane. The bamboo itself is aggressively persistent, growing back immediately and flawlessly if removed without the aid of magic, making settlement within Angelshins difficult.
The Chimewilds
Location: Central Great Britain Island
Category: Lore hotspot
Territories: Free Wilds, Infraflux
Danger: Moderate
An expanse within the middle of the european island of Great Britain characterised by bare dirt, golden grass, golden-leaved trees, and a persistant theme of clocks and clockwork. Grandfather clocks and brass cogs grow crookedly from the soil, most creatures have clock faces for faces, and there is a constant ticking from various sources of influenced fauna and flora.
The Dark Forest
Location: Central South American continent
Category: Organism-created Terrain, Dim hotspot
Territories: Free Wilds, Recluse States
Danger: Very High
A long strip of the Amazon rainforest that is dominated by a True Species of plant known as Black Fig. A variety of strangler fig, the climbing vine chokes the life out of trees not only by overgrowth but also by actively stealing the light from them using a simple form of sorcery. The Dark Forest is dominated by the black skeletal shapes of the vine's ghostly tree-shaped forms, but the area also has many other plants that have black leaves and light-stealing tendencies. The floor of the forest never gets lighter than a dim twilight, and the creatures within often communicate with flashes of light. Light, warmth, and energy are precious resources to the trees and other creatures of the forest, and they are attracted to them.
The Nope Ocean
Location: Central Pacific
Category: Unique Terrain
Territories: Free Wilds
Danger: Very High
"The Nope Ocean" or "Nopecean" is the nickname for a region that occupies the convergence zone of the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. The english name is derived from the Phinny name, but a more accurate translation would be "no current region I'd never go". The Nope Ocean is an incredibly unstable and hard to define area of ocean that can only be described as suffering from an abundance of chaos. All energies are strong here, planar incursions have a higher chance of happening, anomalies are constant, and spontaneous-generation events are frequent. The chance of some major event or strange circumstance happening increases closer to the center of the zone, and extends roughly 1.5km down below sea level and up into the turbulent atmosphere. Due to the 4-6km depth of the region, it is theoretically possible to safely traverse beneath the zone, but the possibility of dangerous entities descending from above remains.
The Foglands
Location: North-west coast of North America
Category: Organism-created Terrain, Lore hotspot
Territories: Infraflux
Danger: Moderate
The Foglands are a coastal strip of vast redwood-looking forests, growing from the shore to about 100km (60 miles) inland. Pre-Cataclysm redwoods needed fire to open and germinate their seeds, and their ancestors in the Foglands generate their own flames for this task. Each huge tree, if it is touched or its roots are stepped on, can spurt gouts of blue-green flame from around its roots. With enough needles and branches lying about, the fire sometimes spreads from tree to tree, triggering more gouts of blue-green flame. The Foglands are, of course, foggy. Most of the creatures and animals here are Lore-generated, but there are also many Spirits of both kinds. Being in the Foglands is an eerie experience, with the thick tall trunks of the trees dissapearing into the fog above and drips echoing in the gloom, with distant brief unearthly glows and faint low hisses from trees discharging flame.
Fool's Highway
Location: Eastern edge of the Tar Flats, North American continent
Category: Organism-created Terrain
Territories: Free Wilds
Danger: High
Fool's Highway, also called the Road of No Return, Fool's Errand, Ol' Twisty, and The Devil's Guts, is a vast interconnecting mess of yellowed concrete highway that bars off part of the Tar Flats. It forms a vast barrier miles long, that takes days to travel around even at car speeds. Like the Tar Moss of the Tar Flats, the highway is something like a living organism, and is constantly growing outwards, building new exits and thickening itself. It can also build new roads within itself, but cannot unbuild them. It grows with about the speed of a young tree in new parts, and slower in older ones. It grows streetlights and road markings as well, though the lights are dim and tend to become asymmetrical and malformed with age.
The highway is predatory on everything, and absorbs anything immobile on its surface over several days. Spending a night on its surface will leave a slight depression where you slept, as the highway began to absorb you. Like a carnivorous plant, it has no senses other than touch and a basic day/night rhythm sense. It deliberately builds itself to draw the inhabitants of the Tar Flats onto its multi-connected expanse, to crash into unexpected dead ends or to die of neglect as they become lost trying to cross to the other side. Underneath the highway is a dark grey-green-brown toxic mud of heavy metals, hydrocarbons, corrosives, and other chemical horrors that slowly sucks down all who try to cross. The mud is a result of all toxic elements from what the Highway consumes, expelled as waste and deliberately distributed in order to make crossing underneath impossible.
Despite this, the Highway is home to several gangs, who pose yet another threat to all those who try to cross. The "Switchbacks" gang has made a living out of guiding those who want to cross this Highway, for the right price. Others may do this too, but the Switchbacks have the best reputation for actually guiding and not robbing others. The Konkrete Klaw gang is the most widespread, but aren't known for trustworthiness. Other than these gangs and the few other inhabitants of the Highway, there are none who can navigate its convoluted routes, which sometimes span three or four levels of walled concrete highway. If the gangs find someone with a map, the map is instantly destroyed, as they guard the highway labyrinth's secret's jealously. Some gangs may also set up false roadsigns, guiding fools to where they can be easily ambushed.
The Mirror Desert
Location: ~60% of the Sahara Desert
Category: Unique Terrain
Territories: Free Wilds
Danger: Extreme
The Mirror Desert occupies a large portion of what used to be the Sahara desert on the continent of Africa. The rolling dunes and flat stony reg plains of the desert have been transformed- presumably instantaneously- into smooth dunes and glittering flats of mirrored glass. The region is phenomenally inhospitable to organic life and not particularly friendly to inorganic life either, with environmental dangers ranging from whirling dust devils of glass fragments to parabolic canyons that roast travellers alive. The reflected heat during the day occasionally builds rapid thunderheads and rainfall instantly becomes flash floods that rush along any low points in the impermeable surface until they escape the desert or evaporate in the searing heat. The nights are near-freezing all year round, with the entire desert becoming slick as ice with the morning dew. The native creatures of the Mirror Desert are usually either only active at night or are as burning and light-bending as their daytime environment.
The border between the Mirror desert and the rest of the Sahara forms an area known as the Baht, where the sand from the Sahara has scattered across and blasted the surface of the Mirror desert into a coarse pale surface that doesn't reflect the sun quite as strongly but is still painfully bright to look at, similar to a salt flat. This region is ever so slightly more colonized by life than the reflective interior, and has more of the same traits as a sandy desert or rocky plateau.
"Oh you're cooking alive? How about some water! and if I mean some, I mean all the water you can imagine. But oh look! It's gone now, no more water, not a bit, but now it's cold! Have fun freezing! While we're at it, the water is back. Just frozen, have fun trying to move on this endless ice slope. We hope you're having a nice experience 😁"- my hilarious friend Chee
The Radioactive Zone (MEGRA)
Location: Center of the european sub-continent
Category: Irradiated Terrain
Territories: Infraflux, Free Wilds, Trade Union
Danger: High
Over much of former eastern Europe, Germany, and parts of Russia, stretches a large contaminated area known as the Radioactive Zone. Though radioactive zones are not uncommon on March Earth, this enormous area is "The" radioactive zone, and it's officially called the Mid-European Gargantuan Radioactive Area or MEGRA. The Zone is a result of a disasterous Cataclysm-era explosion of two nuclear power plants, one in northern Austria and one in eastern Germany.
MEGRA is inhabited exclusively by radioactive or radiation-tolerant organisms. They have a native Darwinchild species: The white-skinned human-descendant Freed. In general the Zone has a very low population density, with a few major cities that have poor organic resources, minimal internet connectivity, but excellent nuclear power. The Radioactive Zone's borders are surrounded by massive raybender towers manned by vigilant AI/Synth staff and many warning signs, but only parts of the border have fences and sometimes vulnerable people wander in, usually with tragic consequences.
The Tar Flats
Location: Flat areas in central-southern North America
Category: Organism-created Terrain
Territories: Free Wilds, Recluse States, Trade Union
Danger: Moderate
In wide open areas of former southern/central USA, where the prairies and deserts used to spread, there exist now the Tar Flats. A form of crawling, living asphalt (tarmac) took over the areas, growing like moss and spreading rapidly. On this vast expanse of "open road", crisscrossed with the painted road markings of gangs and strange organisms, no organic thing can grow. The air smells of burnt rubber and tar, and a thick brown cloud of ozone smog, CO2, CO, and other fumes dims the sun. Any rainfall is acidic, ranging from normal acid rain to acid showers able to burn through soft metals and reduce vehicles to smoking ruins.
The living asphalt is called Tar Moss, and if it is scratched or damaged it heals itself. It can grow as much as an inch an hour, and will grow around stuff in its way, leaving it sticking out of the asphalt dangerously. The Tar Flats are home to all kinds of creatures, but all of them have something to do with roads or movement. Synth and semi-synth animals with wheels are the commonest, such as P-Horses. There are also many car/bike gangs and hooligan groups, who make a living as bandits and raiders, stealing and plundering each other and anyone unlucky enough to travel across their path.
Turvyland
Location: North-east Australian Continent
Category: Physics Anomaly
Territories: Trade Union
Danger: Low
In the northern part of what used to be Australia, along the coast, there is a phenomenon that has isolated an area of land several hundred kilometers long. An unknown event sometime in the past flipped the gravity of the entire area, switching Earth's normal pull from down to the ground to away into space. This has also affected the water of the ocean, and the elevated water turns to salty clouds of ice in the upper atmosphere, eventually pulled away by turbulence or microgravity to create salty rain in an area around Turvyland known as the Tang. Turvyland itself has its own strange ecosystem: The ground is known as Roof, and is eroded away in many places to bare rock. What few plants can grow there are either very light or very well anchored. Roof is extremely hot and arid, and is a barren desert at its center watered only by fog and condensation. Turvyland is a haven for bird-type creatures, and the foggy skyscape just below Roof is usually thick with birdsong. They mainly nest on floating platforms, introduced into Turvyland long ago for this purpose, and also on any dwelling made on the same principle. Floating plants also drift through the cold, thin aired depths of Turvyland, and the land's etherial up-lit beauty has captured the world's imagination in popular media. Cashing in on this, the Trade Union has claimed the entire region, developing an industry of capturing the floating plants' strange and delightful scents for luxury perfumes and so forth. Aside from Trade Union employees there are very few people living in Turvyland, and it is largely uninhabited.
Getting in or out of Turvyland is very dangerous, as the border where gravities fade into each other is only a couple of dozen metres across, and is buffeted by heavy saltwater rainstorms, fog, and whirlwinds. Where Turvyland borders the sea there is a vast vertical waterfall, though the rocky coast is very shallow and the waterfall is not as impressive as one might assume, in some areas even stopping during low tide. While Turvyland itself is surprisingly benign, crossing into the flipped gravity zone without some means of flight is a death sentence for most and a direct pathway to the void of space.