The Shift

Archivist's Excerpt from Curious Landscapes & Their Quite Commonplace Explanations, Vol. III, CVI 42.4

Excerpt from Entry 6: "The Shift, & Other Unmannerly Acres"

Giving proper heed to the crucially somber tones of such mysteries, this entry will feature many words like “eons,” “cryptic,” and “non-euclidean.” The reader has been warned.

Littered throughout the continent stand dark ruins of some ancient and cryptic people from the darkest eons of the world’s forgotten days. Impossibly formed and forged of megalithic components (bricks, in other words), these ruins often align with astral patterns, particularly those in the Zodiac, though others get to join the party as well. Some in other Confluences and locations have come to call this exterior anomalies “Outcroppings,” for whatever reason. Regarding The Expanse, many of such ruins exist, some in better or worse states than others, and one apparently erected in one of the most unmannerly and difficult pieces of land, commonly known as the Shift among the Galó locals.

The Shift is a region of land surrounded by high ridge lines. Unknown geometric forces beneath the surface keep it in a continual state of churning upheaval, resulting in constant overturning of the dry, crystalline sand, doing the labour of ten trillion earthworms every half hour or so. It’s quite deadly. Long since viewed as a treacherous place by the Galó , the Shift is avoided by most settlers in The Expanse, though it has been used in times past for various and unpleasant initiation rites.

It is in this place that, of all things, major constructions of eldest days seem to reside, intricate and sprawling and majestic, though now mostly under the watery ground, making excavation not only impractical, but less than desirable. However, the mysteries beneath the Shift have intrigued many curious adventurers over the years, but most simply became examples to others.

Orphan’s earliest scouting parties quickly decided that it wasn’t worth the effort, and turned their attention to researching more useful things, and then produced proper book binding.