No, Scott, I'm not lazy, it would have been easier to be less slavishThe Meshed Lands
It is the nature of the world that everything is itself. This may seem a truism, but it does not hold in the Meshed Lands. The Meshed Lands connect everything together, in the Meshed Lands things *blur*. Notably the line between death and life. There is life, of a sort, found in death and death, of a sort, found in life.
Eating anything grown within the Meshed Lands is very difficult. The grain may screech when harvested and make bread that crumbles into something like silicon dust when baked. Its beer could taste and smell of decay. Cattle tend to be stillborn, which makes it all the more disturbing as the herds continue to grow.
Nevertheless there is much wealth to be found in the Meshed Lands for the brave of heart and strong of stomach. Examples: A tree with branches that when aged and dried suffice as nuclear fuel, after being killed and ashed, of course. A stream in trainable, watchful motion. A pit full of knowledgeable darkness.
The Meshed Lands exist and spread for some unknown reason, perhaps by the dictates of the Machine God. They are not well suited for the merely living. The eldritch powers of the Meshed Lands often frighten, attack, or drive the living to various forms of insanity.
Those close to the spirit of the Machine God have a natural affinity to the Meshed Lands. The Adepti and the Countless can exist free and undisturbed in the Meshed Lands. Their senses are sharpened, their arms strong. The Meshed Lands are also a source of many wonders... often grotesque or terrible. The useful ones can be kept or traded. The useless ones - and there are many - can be a burden to any nearby living land. Many substances found in the Meshed Lands are enticing and addictive, and so the mere closeness of Meshed Lands fosters unhealth in nearby areas.
Perhaps most disturbing, at least to those who have not reached true freedom of form, is that those bearing wounds in the Meshed Lands do not always heal true. The substance of the Meshed Lands, or the lack thereof, enters their flesh. They take on the form of clockwork devices. Some carry on afterward, cleaving to their old principles and loyalties. Some go strange, eventually raising their hand - or whatever it has turned into - against all others.
The Countless can undergo a different transformation with the Meshed Lands. They share out part of their own substance and humanity to the surrounding terrain, drinking even more of the territory's inhuman nature. They become Swarm. Insubstantial, but hardly less terrible for that. Whip-fast, hard to see until it's right on top of you, a Swarm's airy frame can't take your head off, but this is hardly a comfort when it roars through your army and sinks its claws into your skull.
Mending nature
Sometimes, some unknown intelligence contacts certain persons and bids them to "mend" some location, often but not always a forest distant from any human habitation.
Countless - the already mysterious and withdrawn Countless might sometimes simply disappear. When they one day reappear, an area of Meshed Lands is always known to soon be found somewhere close.
Adeptus - the Adepti, being closer to society's functions, rarely just disappear. However, this is not needed for them anyway: Should they wish to, they can introduce the Meshed nature to hectares of land with what seems a mere thought to others. Still, after effecting such a transformation, they often do not remember having wished it.
Finally, the mere existence of Adepti and the Countless, it seems, allow Meshed Lands to spontaneously wrest themselves from non-existence. The more life, the more likely the transformation: Wooded areas are the most likely to change, deserts the least.
For now, the Meshed Lands are small and scarce, found only in a few distant passes of the Crestfallen range. Similarly, the Countless, named not after the number of individuals but after the nature of each so-called individual herself, only barely skirt the edges of society, devoid of a Will or participation in the Machinarian life. However, both are known to Machinarian society, and there are some who take the existence of these things as a call: That the proper destiny for Man is not to just protect and conserve nature, but seek to return it to a state of true oneness. And maybe, eventually, to join with it themselves.
Anyways, yeah. This is just about the farthest extent of weirdness I intend to go... well, at least on the fantasy side anyway. It's going to take a lot of explaining to fit all of those concepts together, but I do have some ideas about how it will work, so by God, I'm going to do it, or get bored and stop posting for a while trying.
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