No Man's Land

There was a universal quiet when my men and I stepped through the portal. I said nothing, and even the guard amongst the ranks seemed unsettled by the distinctly human architecture that lay literally scattered amongst our feet. The buildings were recognizable in their mix of styles. One street looked distinctly German, another looked like the street I had grown up on in London. At least, the parts that weren't shattered to oblivion did.

We had never seen such complete obliteration of life and home. We had seen destruction in our time. Villages burnt, populations massacred, and the general acts of cruelty humanity can visit upon itself. This though... It was something out of nightmare. Whole buildings lay flattened, or removed from existence to be replaced by massive craters ringed in stone ruins, like snaggled teeth. The streets that spread out from the central square that was our destination were pockmarked in the same way. Yet the worst part in my memory is the gravestones.

They spread out as far as the eye could see in disorganized ground cover, seemingly marking where the population of the Realm fell when whatever destruction of their lives and homes took place. Thousands of them, if not hundreds of thousands could be seen just from the point we came out of the portal. Anywhere there was earthen ground they formed a blanket, sometimes only a hair's breadth apart. Even the bottom of the craters bore grave markers .

I could see the French detachment looking the same as us as their Realmportal faded. Awed and afraid of the implication in equal measure.

The grave markers were intricate glass rings, engraved with symbols I couldn't read, and impossibly balanced upon one another so as to hold each other up around a central pole stuck into the ground. One of the soldiers behind me accidentally bumped a marker, the pacification effect guaranteed that I knew it was an accident, and it's delicate balance was lost.

Each ring shattered as it touched the ground, the harsh sound echoed far enough to cause the French delegation to freeze and stare across at us like we'd smashed pots and pans in a church. The soldier who had bumped the marker, a youth whose face I still remember rather clearly, looked like he was about to cry. From embarrassment or sorrow, I never did ask him.

We all looked at the pile of shattered glass, unmoving. It felt like the balance of the whole Realm had been disrupted with that single act. Like more fanfare should have been given for the destruction of something made with such clear reverence.

We didn't have to be concerned for long.

Within moments the grave marker's fall reversed itself. Each shattered piece traveled the course it had followed to the ground back until it sat floating in the air amongst the other shattered pieces. In all but a moment it had pieced itself back together, like it had never broken in the first place.

I kept playing that image over in my head, it breaking and reforming, breaking and reforming, for the whole duration of the talks. I couldn't even tell you what border was being moved, or what actions one king or another was taking that we or the French didn't appreciate.

I was far more distracted by the graves staring at us the whole time with weary, accusatory eyes.

-Lieutenant General William Coast, Retired.

Geography

No Man's Land, or the Plane of Unknown Graves to those of a more poetic persuasion, is a curious location within the tangled webway of the Realmportals. It has no real geographic features of note, seemingly consisting entirely of things no taller than could be considered a hill, and no more shall than a riverbed.
The only thing that mars the gently loping natural features are the remains of buildings long destroyed and advanced roads and bridges shattered by craters. Clearly these features did not occur naturally, but there is also little other sign of martial conflict or weaponry that could commit such devastation left behind.

Ecosystem

It has no inhabitants, no flora or fauna other than one species of long grass and a singular species of herbaceous flower that seemingly remains in bloom at all times, similar to the common poppy

Type

Dimensional plane