Editing Patchlands (section)

= Places =
== The Patchlands ==

The Drain, the Corral, the Sewers, the Asshole of the Multiverse. Names are bandied about freely, but The Patchlands is used most often.

Portals and gateways lead into the Patchlands, popping up at random throughout the Multiverse. It’s a one-way ticket, no exchanges. No magical effect, no Artifact, nothing has ever been known to lead a denizen out. Debating the reason for this is one of the favorite pastimes of the City's many sages and a growing cause of insanity amongst new denizens.

The Patchlands are a mess of portals of varying stability. One-way portals from other planes from around the Multiverse appear constantly, but there are also countless portals leading to various destinations around the Patchlands themselves. Some of them are temporary, some of them are permanent. It is not uncommon for a portal to appear out of nowhere within the City, nor is it unknown for one to simply change its destination.

Each area of land brought in from outside the Patchlands is called, naturally, a Patch. A Patch may simply be a few yards of bright grass, or a mountain-range if you look hard enough. There is a clear and visible border between each Patch called a ‘stitch’: The earth is suddenly made of a different composition, the color of grass changes from green to purple, a tundra becomes a lush valley… while there are commonalities amongst some adjacent Patches which allow for settlement, they are not terribly common and the vast majority of Patchland denizens live within Quiltworks City. 
Quiltworks City is generally (though like many other things, this is a contested claim) considered to be in the center of the Patchlands, having expanded out to the size of a large nation.

Anything that appears in the Patchlands from another universe (via portal) is heralded with a flash of light proportionate to the size of the object it is bringing. Small objects end up in the city. Animals, the errant sock, groups of people, never bigger than a small building. Larger objects appear farther outward from wherever the center of the city may be... Entire villages, forests, mountains and oceans simply appear out of nothing in a flash of light as if they had been there forever, appearing between existing Patches or (it is said) on the Edge of the World, expanding the borders of the Patchlands.

One of the most baffling and upsetting parts of this world, at least to the sages, is that water doesn’t act correctly. Water evaporates, but after a certain height it simply disappears in clear violation of the Laws of Physics. This does not stop the clouds from being permanent, shifting fixtures in the sky, nor does it stop the rain from falling down, pure and unpolluted. Attempts to reach the clouds and study them has been relatively fruitless, for they are utterly intangible and seem to part when one tries to grasp them.

No stars have ever been seen in the Patchlands, though there is still a sun and moon. As there is no magnetic pole, the cardinal directions must be determined by the location of the sun. Naturally, other cultures may have different ideas of what those directions may mean.

== The City ==

Even the most experienced planar travelers have been seen dumbfounded at the initial view of Quiltwork City. Its size is that of a continent, an endless horizon of buildings in every direction. Its size is so vast that rumors have spread of a city block simply appearing within a district, unheard of a scant 100 years ago. 

While the numbers vary, you've been told that somewhere between 'a lot', 'too many', '40 million' and '70 million' people live in the city. You did manage to get a specific number at 502,394,295 but the source was drinking a barrel of wine one-handedly and slurring all the while.

One look at the skyline will show easily enough how so many can live in one place. There are more buildings here than on many of the planets the citizens originally hailed, and not a one of them identical to any other. Towers of stone, jade, crystal and glass pepper the city, matched in height only by the floating nesthomes of the flying races. The lower races’ Underhomes may well extend beneath every house, mansion, hovel, tree dwelling for all they know… spheres of flame, ice, electricity, celestial light and infernal darkness take up some lots, simply resting on the ground as though it were utterly normal.

The residential buildings are by far the least impressive of the lot. Temples of every deity who has ever walked the Multiverse have been raised to starless heavens. The Great University is raised far beyond even them, encompassing an entire district the size of a small country. It is the greatest library ever constructed by man or God, though many buildings have such claims to their respective fields. It is made entirely of polished wood, the entire building protected by what looks like small mountains that lazily orbit the Great University, burning gently with runes visible only to those who know how to sense magic.

But everywhere you turn there is a glory, a monument, a marvel and treasure of an entire universe that people pass by. The Rivers of An’guah run throughout the city, providing fresh water and irrigation to most districts from a lake merely three feet around in a perfect circle. A small-scale solar system exists in some district you don’t know, complete with its own sun, which can be observed from 100 yards without a bit of harm. An aurora mingles and swirls with twelve others, and you swear that you have never even seen some of those colors before and cannot imagine them again. These are all beyond what you have seen in your travels, and you could spend a lifetime among the marvels.

The city is explained as being divided in to districts, the boundaries of which are known only to those near them. There are so many of them that the merges, splits, changes, and takeovers cannot be kept track of even if they were publicly known. When people end up in the City, they do tend to seek out creatures similar to them, whether by race, profession or alignment. There are Orc districts, as well as Basketweaving districts and Aasimar districts. Near the center of the City is the much-beloved Cooking district. Districts tend to be patrolled and protected by volunteers, wanting to keep their homes safe. Alliances are often formed as well, though they always stay very small-scale. Nobody has ever come close to uniting even a small part of the City.

Nameless streets start as soon as they end, wells and marketplaces are stuck haphazardly all around, the city has thousands of separate, unlinked sewer systems and one may even find small forests and lakes in the middle of the town. Getting lost is easy, and sometimes, people never find their way back. There is no centralized leadership of the City, though there are leaderships that exist within some individual districts. Some are democratic, some are tribal, some are informal, and others less savory.

This gives the City the virtue of being the most diverse land in the Multiverse (that anyone knows of). The streets are cluttered with humans, orcs, Halflings, thri-kreens, salads, elves, bladelings, pixies, gnomes, angels, demons, elementals, goblins, and those are just some of the ones you’ve heard of. There is a blessing in this diversity: A drow can walk among the forest elves unscathed so long as no overt action is taken, lest a fullscale assault between districts start. Small scale gang wars between districts break out relatively often, but resources are quite plentiful and there isn't a lot to gain by waging a war. There have been only a handful of large-scale battles in the history of the City, and there seems to be no overpowering desire to change that.

The City has a number of colonies around the Patchlands, through the various permanent portals one can find in the City. About a third of the town's resources, food, building materials, luxury items etc. come from the said colonies. The rest of it is either made within the City itself, or quite often, simply appears there.

The most respected folk around the town are District leaders (if a District has one), architects, engineers and wizards. Sages, groups of self-appointed full-time philosophers, tend to be either respected or completely shunned, depending on what part of the City you're in.

Within any individual District, there are individuals to turn to… the leaders (should a District possess one), the architects, the engineers, the wizards all have their part to play like any citizen, but it is well known that their parts are often larger than most.

== Elsewhere ==

‘Elsewhere’ is considered the general term for anywhere that is not the City. Lakes, swamps, deserts, oceans, villages, anything and everything is in the general area known as Elsewhere. Generally speaking the farther you go, the larger the Patches become. The populated Patches often have their own cultures and civilizations, often virtually untouched from the planes the Patches came from. Sometimes, Patches are connected to the City by portals, leading to heavy cultural exchange and trade between the people. Still, in most cases, the people in the City tend to consider people living Elsewhere barbarians… far too many have shown up from a Portal-less journey from some populated Patch in tattered rags, claiming to be everything from pauper to King, hoping to find The Way Home.

Most Patches are quite normal. Green pastures, purple deserts, desert jungles, floating lakes, farmlands and such, varying from the size of a cottage to the size of a small continent. But there are a number of Patches that have come from places such as the Negative Energy Plane, and it's rumoured that there are Patches from outside the known Multiverse as well. Carelessly stepping through a portal can be lethal. 

Patches keep the same exact weather and season cycle as they had before they were portaled in. Not every universe has the same time-structure, and the Stitches are often made clear by looking at the weather patterns of an individual Patch.

== The Transitive Planes ==

Like most material planes, the Patchlands has its own Plane of Shadow and Ethereal Plane. They function quite normally: whatever prevents people from leaving the Patchlands doesn't stop people from traversing to the coexistent transitive planes. Planar experts are baffled senseless, however, by the existence of what appears to be an Astral Plane existing only within the Patchlands, a plane that normally is shared between every plane in the Multiverse. For whatever reason, however, it is unstable, unexplored and wildly different from the more well-known Astral Plane. Adventurers breathe a sigh of relief when they realize magic generally works with it as it should.