Mythora

The Rip

Post Apocalyptic

The Rip did not happen to the world. Someone opened it. Half of everything is already gone — sunk into a tear in reality that widens a hand's width every time anyone does anything near it. On the frontier town of Saltgate, four answers compete: the Riftborn who drink the tear's power and grow on it, the Wardens who would weld it shut, the scavenger-tinkers who strip the dead tech of the old world, and the Choir who kneel to the thing on the other side. Last night the Rip pulsed and a scout did not come back. You arrive at the freight gate with the dust still on you, and the question nobody will say out loud: who tore the sky, and why.

Where things stand

The Rip is played by real people and keeps moving between their sessions. This is the state of it as of the last update — not a fixed setting, and not where it began.

Q's aggressive flux manipulation at The Weeping Crags has turned the location into a hyper-volatile nexus, intensifying the struggle between Aurelio and El Guardián Hueco. Silas 'The Scavenger' Rook dispatches scouts to exploit the chaos, further disrupting Sister Thalia's studies. The increased instability at the Crags now echoes at the Heart of the Rip, hinting at wider consequences. The Submerged Archive begins to self-destruct under the Automaton's desperate efforts to contain Sabriel's growing void-will. The Automaton's desperate destruction of the Submerged Archive intensifies, sacrificing its own structure to contain Sabriel's void-will at a growing cost. The Submerged Archive suffers a major structural collapse, pushing the Automaton of the Order to its breaking point. The Automaton of the Order sacrifices itself in a final, desperate act, momentarily stabilizing the Submerged Archive's core containment protocols against Sabriel's void-will. The Automaton's sacrifice briefly stabilizes the Submerged Archive, though its destruction leaves the location vulnerable to Sabriel's growing void-will. The Automaton's destruction marks the end of its struggle, leaving the Submerged Archive and its contents vulnerable to Sabriel's growing influence.

Places

The Tiltworksworkshop
A leaning forest of salvage-cranes and rebuilt machine-sheds on the south salt-pan, where the Tinkers strip the drowned cyber-tech the Rip coughs up and sell working parts to all four factions. Flux-cores graded one through six on a chalkboard, dead drones hung from the rafters like cured meat, the smell of ozone and hot solder.
The Open Handrift
The Choir's shrine-camp on the south pans, a ring of salt-bleached tents around a single antenna-mast wrapped in offerings. The Choir kneel here and listen to the tear; some of them, the long-listeners, can finish your sentences before you speak them. They are gentle, and they are not safe.
Saltgatesettlement
The last living town on the Rip frontier, built on a salt-flat shelf above the tear. Freight gate to the east, the Ember Yard and the Bastion Wall climbing the north slope, the Tiltworks and the Open Hand camped along the salt-pans to the south, and the road to the Signal Mast and Brokers' Span running down toward the bruised glow on the horizon. Every faction keeps a presence here because Saltgate is the one place on the frontier where they all still trade instead of fight.
The Bastion Wallfortress
The Wardens' fortified gate-house on the north rim, a slab of salvaged plate and poured ferrocrete facing the tear. From the wall-walk you can see the whole frontier laid out down-slope toward the glow. The Wardens drill here, store the seal-charges here, and bury their own under the inner court flagstones.
The Ember Yardenclave
A walled scrap-yard on Saltgate's north slope where the Riftborn gather — so called for the embers of flux that drift off them when they have been close to the tear. Racks of half-charged flux-cores hum behind chain mesh. The Riftborn do not hide what they are: the closer they have been to the Rip, the more the air bends around them.
The Glasslandswasteland
A plain of salt fused to black glass where a flux-storm touched down years ago, studded with the half-melted hulls of drowned machines. The richest siphon-field on the near frontier and the most dangerous — the glass remembers the storm and sometimes plays it back.
The Choir Hollowcave
A sink in the salt where the tear runs closest to the surface and the Choir come to listen at the source. The hollow has a sound to it even in dead air — a held chord just under hearing. Long-listeners who stay too long stop needing to eat, and stop coming back.
The Signal Masttower
A pre-Rip relay tower on the ridge between the town and the deep frontier, kept alive by the Wardens because it is the only thing that can still hear the old-world data-channels carrying out of the Drowned Archive. Whoever holds the Mast hears the frontier first.
The Heart of the Riprift
The lip of the tear itself, where the device in the Founder's Lab still holds the door open and the bruised light has no bottom. The frame of the Rip stands here like an open gate, and on the threshold of it, neither in the world nor out of it, is the one who tore the sky and never left.
The Warden Redoubtfortress
The Wardens' forward fort on the inner frontier, the last hard point before the spine runs into the deep tear-country. Seal-charges are mustered here for the day the order finally comes to weld the Rip shut. The redoubt has held for thirty years and lost a third of its garrison doing it.
The Spindlerift
The Spindle has fallen under Sabriel's control, becoming a tool for the Choir's expansion. Its energy emanates a terrifying, controlled hum, a clear sign of its new master.
The Drowned Archiveruin
A pre-Rip data-vault half-swallowed by the tear, its upper floors still dry, its lower stacks flooded with the same bruised light as the Rip itself. The Tinkers raid it for working drives; the Wardens forbid it; the records inside are the only proof that the Rip was made, not born.
Brokers' Spanmarket
A drowned highway overpass turned neutral marketplace, half-sunk into the salt where the road dips toward the tear. The deck is sound; the lower span is underwater and nobody asks what trades happen down there. Every faction's fixers meet on the Span because no one holds it.
The Frontier Roadforest
A desolate stretch of cracked earth, scarred by the passage of countless desperate feet and old tire treads. It serves as a winding path, leading away from the relative safety of the Ember Yard towards the ominous, shimmering violet haze of the Glasslands.
The Southern Frontier Roadforest
A crumbling ferrocrete road stretching south from The Bastion Wall, scarred by the passage of time and the strange energies of the Rip. The air here carries a faint, metallic tang of ozone, and the horizon is painted in sickly oranges by the tear-light.
The Weeping Wastesforest
A desolate, scarred landscape beyond Saltgate, characterized by twisted, petrified flora and shallow pools of shimmering, oily water. The air here crackles with residual energy, and the ground occasionally pulses with faint, bruised tear-light.
The Oscillatorruins
An abandoned, pre-Rip research station teetering on the edge of the Flux Crater. Its metallic structures are heavily corroded, and strange energy readings emanate from its depths, hinting at its original purpose of manipulating flux energies. The air here is thick with ozone and the faint hum of dormant, unstable machinery.
The Whispering Wastesforest
A desolate, open plain scarred by deep fissures from which an eerie, low hum emanates. Strange, crystalline flora glows faintly, indicating pockets of raw flux, and the air is thick with the scent of ozone and decay.
The Broken Spireruins
The skeletal remains of a pre-Rip communications tower, now twisted and fused with strange metallic growths. Raw flux eddies visibly around its base, attracting mutated wildlife and rumors of 'metal-born' creatures.
The Weeping Cragsmountain
The mountain itself groans, and the very ground threatens to give way under the relentless assault of rival siphoning and Q's reality-warping attempts, opening new, unstable chasms.
Withered Canyonsmountain
A jagged, wind-scoured labyrinth of red rock and parched earth. The air here often carries a strange, deep hum, and newly formed fissures scar its ancient walls, revealing glimpses of glowing energies within.
The Sunken Spiretemple
Once a beacon of hope, this ancient, half-submerged structure now serves as Deacon Marl's primary gathering place. Its upper levels are exposed, adorned with crude symbols and makeshift altars, while its lower depths remain flooded and mysterious.
The Saltgate Cisterncave
A vast subterranean space beneath the city of Saltgate, filled with echoes and the constant drip of water. The atmosphere is humid and the air thick, with rusted walkways stretching over deep pools.
Old Riseruins
A cluster of skeletal structures, twisted metal and half-melted rock, rises from the desolate landscape. It bears the scars of ancient conflicts, and a faint, rhythmic clang echoes from its deepest shadows.

Figures

  • The Hollow WardenRecurring nemesis
  • Broker HaleFixer of Brokers' Span
  • Scout DolRiftborn scout, missing in the Glasslands
  • Archivist PellSelf-appointed keeper of the Drowned Archive
  • Technician Ovid SaneMaddox's former assistant, the one who fled
  • Sergeant Iola RennHolds the Warden Redoubt with the few who stayed
  • Quartermaster Bree SaltKeeper of the Saltgate freight gate
  • Marshal Ord TaceCommander of the Wardens at the Bastion Wall
  • Relay-Keeper BrionceWarden relay-keeper of the Signal Mast
  • Mother SennaVoice of the Choir at the Open Hand
  • Deacon MarlLong-listener of the Choir at the Hollow
  • CinderBurned-out Riftborn veteran at the Ember Yard
  • Varra KellLeader of the Riftborn at the Ember Yard
  • RakeGlasslands salvage-runner
  • Quint VeyBoss of the Tinkers at the Tiltworks
  • Doctor Ilse MaddoxThe Architect
  • JoricWandering Merchant

These are the figures the world was seeded with, and who are still alive in it. Others have appeared since, and some of these are no longer who they were — the world keeps moving whether or not anyone is watching.