Editing Patchlands (section)

== 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.