Churn

Bridge Over Troubled Not-Water

The breach point opened in a cramped cobblestone alleyway, with peeling posters in a close variant of English and glimpses of the passing crowd looking vaguely early 19th century. The first few minutes of quiet mingling and observation seemed to confirm this, though the architecture was odd: Buildings were tall, 4, 5, or more stories, and not early skyscrapers or similar buildings, but somewhat ramshackle, different architectural styles and building materials used level by level, as if each story was built decades apart. Gangplanks and road bridges hung haphazardly between buildings, and several had complex pulley networks to haul or lower items (and chickens, and a small child).

Then the first-in team explored slightly further, reaching a railing demarcating the edge of the street. But, technically, the street was a bridge, part of an immense structure which brachiated across an endless sea of... something. Swirling substance, of an indescribable texture, made of materials that formed patterns of whorls and spirals and concentric circles, some thin and oily, some thick and sluggish, constantly heaving, about thirty feet below the railing. And suspended above it, on improvised cranes or seats like old-style dunking stools or suspended by rope at the end of something like a fishing rod, were dozens of people, all down the length of it in either direction, scooping or clawing at the ever-shifting not-liquid, not-solid, not-sea.

As the team watched, took notes, or shrugged, they saw some pull things out of the mass -- chunks of rock, a length of wood, a scoop of one of the many liquids that swirled but did not blend or disperse. Then they heard a shout. They didn't see how, but someone had fallen in, and was struggling to not be swept away or under. A few of those near him waved, shouted and signalled, and their partners on the bridge tried to turn or pivot them toward the screaming man. As they neared, the substance near him grew increasingly agitated, and something with far too many teeth emerged, engulfed him, and vanished again under the roiling surface. There was some profanity, a scream, a shriek from further down the bridge, and the rest resumed their task.

The Churn

Gathering information about the most basic facts of life on a new world is, oddly, one of the hardest tasks a BREACH operative must learn to do, at least if they don't want to be treated as an idiot, lunatic, or spy. So it took some time, bluffing, and desperation to piece together what little is known about the world at this point.

As far as can be told, "things have always been this way". No one is sure who built the bridges, upon which all human life exists, how, why, or when. Records of the past are unclear and contradictory. They interconnect in a maze reaching in all directions. An immense range of cultures likely exists, and there are books in languages and alphabets close to multiple Baseline sources. Travel is mostly by foot, though a number of railway lines span through the largest intersections. Food is grown on long stretches of bridge dedicated to farming, a mile or two wide at most and many miles long. Smaller domestic animals, such as dogs and chickens, exist and are used as they have always been. Horses are the only larger animal in common use, as transport and beast of burden.

Anything not grown or recycled -- and the bridge folk are quite good at recycling -- is drawn from the Churn, the seemingly endless and infinite ocean of substance surrounding them. Chunks of iron, copper, or coal, scoops of oil, even long branches of wood (or cut boards!) emerge with regularity, to be grabbed and hauled up. Some parts of the Bridge have industrial-scale dredging, where huge nets are lowered and worked over in search of anything useful; others rely on what the poor and desperate can haul up piecemeal. Many hope to pull out jewels, gold, or other valuables; virtually anything can be found, even books or musical instruments. From where they come, no one can say. (Many think they must have been dropped from some distant place and then surfaced again.)

"Cities" exist where multiple chains of bridges converge, and interlink like stone and steel webs, buildings growing up and spreading to the very rim. Long stretches between are agricultural, worked by people who lived there for generations, and some parts are wilderness, where the farms have become overgrown and even forested. No one has circumnavigated the bridge, and maps are considered unreliable the further out you are from their point of origin.

The endless shifting of the Churn sometimes pools resources; areas of the Bridge are known for being rich in specific metals or stones. These regions have spurred the growth of cities even where the bridges are not ideally arranged, as well as wars to control them. They also do not last longer than decades or at most a century, but new ones form, and so Churn history shaped.

BREACH

This world is fairly new and has only been cursorily explored. One proposal, half-joking but half-not, was to introduce airship technology. From what little has been learned, technology moves very slowly; the railroads were first built centuries before, and have progressed, in that time, about as far as Baseline's did in a few decades. To be fair, building industry is difficult when your supply chain is effectively random. Certainly, the introduction of such technology would transform the world, and the region which gained it would have tremendous influence... as would the mysterious strangers who provided the secrets.

World Type

Non-Terrestrial

Divergence

Unknown

Current Year

Unknown

Who Are The Builders

The close cultural parallels, including a language close enough to English to be understandable with just a little practice, when there were no Angles, Normans, Vikings, or Romans to provide the roots, has led some on Baseline to speculate this world is something like the Hedgemaze, a creation of the Precursors, now abandoned, for purposes unknown.