Tag: Locations

Vascular Network

Description

The Vascular Network is a form of public transport managed by the Integumentary System & the Basocytes. It is dominated by the Strain of Gravity.

It is a huge network of ancient magnetic railway lines and stations that flooded during the creation of the supermassive lakes. The network has since been repurposed and partially restructured.

There is now at least one station under or in close proximity to each capital Sanctuary.

Many of the tunnels are flooded and now house a great deal of the planets’ ancient biodiversity, long after the tropical ocean surrounding the tubes evaporated. This created long stretches of “overland aquarium tubes” where Orchades and Undarians move between the supermassive lakes and Sanctuaries.

Safety and Regulation

Travel through the Vascular Network is permitted, but due to the complex network and tendency for old tunnels to veer off into dead ends or into deep chasms (called “Dead Legs”), it is not entirely safe.

That being said, The Vascular Network is protected by the Amiiar-Maka (Islumian) Biodiversity Protection Initiative (BPI), and hundreds of Fleurivine-derived security drones sift through the network; both in an attempt to protect Orchades from poaching (whom seem to use the tubes as migratory paths), as well as to map the full extent of the ancient transport system.

Vascular Chambers

Stations, or Vascular Chambers, resemble the giant lofted reservoirs of Terran cities, with huge pillars made of glass and the Sycan’s own ancient form of concrete. Many of these Stations contain old “Stay-Bunkers”, presumably places where ancestral Sycans would have rested between long journeys.

The original mechanisms that ran through the Vascular System before it was flooded looked like Terran hyperloop trains. The large magnetic panels that once powered these lines now lay rusted and unpowered below the water’s surface. Any remaining train cars have been either junked for their metals or repurposed by Burrowers for housing.

The Vascular System is often “generated” by Alkemus, the rogue Phantasm that wanders the wastes building nonsense architecture. He is known for merging tunnels, adding imitation tunnels that lead to nowhere, even false Chambers with bizarre architecture. Alkemists use the most serviceable of these for underground hubs.

The Vault

Vault is another word for the sky on Elladion, and often takes the place of the word “sky” in conversation.

The implication of an atmospheric vault is literal, as all modern space-faring attempts have failed due to the increasingly violent weather of the upper atmosphere. There are innumerable amounts of records detailing attempts by several species capable of either flight or building a vessel capable of flight. Those who travel too far are simply battered away or shredded into pieces by wind and airborne particles.

Valenkin Faeries (Pterosaurs) pride themselves on challenging the Vault, finding ways to achieve, at the very least, reliable aerial travel in bold experimental ways. 

The largest of these Faeries shuttle populations from one Settlement to the next, and even fly through Sunspotting events as a sort of extreme sport.

Only the fabled Atlantean Tower (A failed megastructure similar to a Space Elevator) came close to breaching the surface-vault barrier.

The Dust Bowel (Eastern Badlands)

The Dust Bowel is a region in the Mavve-Kechyo Territory. While considered synonymous with the Eastern Badlands, the Dust Bowel more specifically describes the large sandy basin and bordering dunes stretching south from Livewire.

Popular with sand sailors, the Dust Bowel is mostly loose sand and only has small pockets of larger sediments. This makes it ideal for the use of Gritfoils, which speeds up travel through the desert significantly. The region is void of any notable settlements, as the ground is too loose and unstable to support long-term tent living.

Anything that is lost in the Dust Bowel vanishes within seconds as it is buried beneath constantly shifting and cycling sands. Legends tell of great monsters, sometimes described as resembling the towering necks of glowwyrms, as the culprits behind the movement of the earth. Though, the most dangerous thing a sailor would have to worry about would be the bandits that frequent the region for it’s easy crossing.