The Waybetween

Created by

Ziegander

It is said that untold eons ago there was but one world, a paradise of unparalleled beauty, The World That Was, but it was split apart and its shards cast infinitely far apart from one another across the Void. If that can be believed, the legends go on to state that The Spider casts her webs throughout the Void, tethering shards of The World That Was to prevent them being eroded over time by darkness in the hope that she might pull it all back together one day. This network of webs and the places snared within it, that is The Waybetween, and it is perhaps the only thing standing in the way of the eventual entropic erosion of all things. To be stuck in The Spider's web is to be shielded and hidden from the millstone of the Void that grinds all things back to star dust.   Indeed, The Waybetween is a universe of breaking and broken worlds, of Shard Worlds, now mere pieces of the greater worlds to which they once belonged, in danger of being lost to the Void. The inhabitants of these worlds may have little to no idea that their existence is fleeting or that anything has happened to the rest of their worlds, and if they have the barest inkling of the greater cosmic struggle at hand it is in legend alone. One must wonder what might happen to the inhabitants of these Shard Worlds should The Spider ever succeed in piecing The World That Was back together. Would anything change? Would everything? Perhaps their lives would end entirely in the service of resurrecting others that once were...   Faring your way through the roads and gateways of The Waybetween, perhaps you are one of these inhabitants living out your life on one of the Shard Worlds, unaware of The Spider's toils against the Void. Or maybe you are one of the few out there amidst the web itself, wayward souls aboard a directionless vessel, or perhaps even an agent of The Spider herself, a Herald of the Silver Strands, spinning webs of your own against the encroaching darkness.  

Shard Worlds

The Void beyond The Waybetween is hazardous, corrosive emptiness within which all things are worn down and slowly devoured over eons. Stars, asteroids, worlds along with all of their people and their memories, none are safe from the nightmarish entropic forces out there that eventually break them all down into Star Dust. Shard Worlds are the perilous remains of worlds that The Void has broken apart and continues to break down and if not for the efforts of The Spider and her Heralds of the Silver Strands these Shards would eventually be lost forever.   There are potentially innumerable Shard Worlds adrift in The Void, but there are a few major ones that have been discovered, either by The Spider herself or by her Heralds - The Switchboard, Slumberland, Ticonderos, Lunefreya, and the Prison of Halls.  

The Switchboard

Perhaps the least of these Shard Worlds is Ziegander's Switchboard, which, despite its diminutive stature might be the most important of all of the Shards. The Spider herself regularly visits this part of her web, communing with the agent she has posted there to observe, maintain, and operate all of the main Webways, passages that link directly from the Switchboard itself to all major discovered Shard Worlds.   The Switchboard is a chunk of concrete, asphalt and earth that appears to have been torn straight out of a modern-looking city block, comprised of a street corner, a black iron bench sitting next to a black iron, working, lamp post, and a garbage bin maybe three feet away from the bench. The man Ziegander who dwells here, toiling in service to The Spider, is obviously out of place, wearing heavy plate armor, mismatched clothes, a dark cloak, and, most peculiarly, chains wrapped all over his body and limbs, chains that are fastened to the bench which at their fullest length allow him to move only to the edges of either ruined street.   Newcomers who have been snagged in The Spider's Web, rescued from eldritch erosion by The Void, are first processed through Ziegander at his Switchboard. It is Ziegander's job to learn who they are, where they're from, and where they would like to go. Ziegander is given no direct orders exactly what to do with any of them, of course, with but one exception - should he feel he has met a candidate who might serve The Spider as a worthy Herald, he must offer to set them on the path.