Wonderland - Jags

Deeper Mysteries - Chessboards
Flux Terrain Examined
Some elements of
Chessboard Four are “stable”—
they are always there when
you visit. Some are “in flux”
meaning that they only appear
at a given place for a period
of time. Usually this is very
predictable: the road (a super
highway) crosses the great desert
to the north … from 3—6 PM.
If you are on that road after 6:
01 PM you’ll find it dissolving
into sand. Maybe there’s a
tower out in the desert that
exists from 2—4 in the dark of
night. The native inhabitants
of the tower experience it all
the time (and, perhaps, during
the other hours it’s somewhere
else … or nowhere at all)—but
if you aren’t native, you’ll find
the walls begin to crack and
crumble, floors collapse in, and
furniture turns to dust, and the
place becomes a haunted ruin in
a few fluid seconds … and then
it puts itself back together again
later.
What is stable and what isn’t—
and how you “get caught in
the flux”-- varies from place to
place. Sometimes being inside
or near a disappearing terrain
feature is enough to be taken
with it. Other times (as with
the tower example) it’ll decay
or mutate right around you.
Sometimes the cycle is on the
order of hours, sometimes days.
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Chessboard Four: Where the Wild
Things Are
Chessboard Four is alien—to some it is even worse than the deep places
below it. Its inhabitants are inhuman at best—monsters at worst—and
mostly a cruel mockery of human beings. The land itself is fluid and
unstable: over the course of days (or even hours), mountain ranges melt
into oceans. Seas drain into vast deserts. Cliffs crumble to reveal lush
rainforest, and so-on. Traveling on Chessboard Four gives a strong sense
of hallucination: you can “travel” just by standing still.
But unlike the even deeper realms there is a method to Chessboard
Four’s madness, a key to understanding it. Chessboard Four is composed
of the raw materials of stories. Instead of the chemical compounds of
natural substances the base elements of the fourth chessboard are literary
elements.
There are no seas filled with mixtures of saline and water; there are
oceans of doubt. The sediment—the ground you walk on—isn’t ground
silicon and aluminum oxides; it’s 64% atmosphere, 17% tone with traces
of plot devices, influences, and faiths. In dangerous, volatile regions
there are boiling fountains, raging storms, and devouring maelstroms of
climax and resolution.
Chessboard Four is primal and chaotic; it is an engine that drives the
higher Chessboards, spawning the monsters and treasures—the truths
and revelations—of Chessboards Three and Two. It is a source of energy,
like a distant star that sustains the life of broken shadows—the whirls—
who have been cut off from their casters. It is a mythic place where
even the dirt has the power to shape lives and fortunes. Chessboard
Four answers some mysteries about the nature of Wonderland while
suggesting others and raising questions about what might lie beneath it.
Topology
Chessboard Four’s terrain changes the way the weather changes; rolling
in and out and re-arranging itself from day to day, or suddenly shifting
violently and cataclysmically for those caught in its grip.
There are regions of stability where there are great alien cities peopled
by inhuman creatures; more common are distant, scattered townships
and villages that “drift” from place to place as the world ebbs and flows
around them.
Relevance to Chessboard Zero
Chessboard Four’s connection to Chessboard Zero is tenuous at best;
absent in most cases. Sometimes there are patterns that seem to suggest
or imply the terrain of the natural universe (a reassuring grid of stones
where a city lies; a general matching of the locations of oceans), but
these are transient, fading as a new landscape rolls in.