Shattered Spaces

The people, buildings and injuries inside one are entirely real while you are in there. None of it automatically counts as the history of the present world.

Adventurers call the larger ones with stable entrances and internal anchors dungeons. A dungeon can be at the top of a tower, on the surface of the sea, or behind an ordinary door — “dungeon” is simply the word the earliest survey records used.

Life cycle

1. Seeping — the present world produces repeated footsteps, wrong reflections, two versions of the same object.
2. Opening — the fissure stabilises enough to enter, and nearby monsters and weather start reflecting its contents.
3. Phasing — explorers’ actions gradually fix one set of causes, and loot begins to be able to leave.
4. Closure or anchoring — resolve the central contradiction and the space disperses. Pin it with a Star Tower, the Guild or a powerful individual and it becomes a long-term dungeon.

An untreated space does not sit still forever. It can grow and overwrite reality, or collapse for lack of mana and fling its contents into the present at random.

Anchor cores, and the so-called Master of the Labyrinth

Every stable dungeon has an anchor core holding its internal logic together. It may be a monster, an object, an oath, an unfinished ritual, or an event that must keep happening.

Adventurers personify the core as a Master of the Labyrinth, but killing the strongest thing inside does not necessarily clear it. The real completion condition is resolving the contradiction the core insists on:

• A fortress under eternal siege might be anchored to an order stating that reinforcements are certain to arrive. Burning the order, waiting for the reinforcements, or getting the garrison to accept a retreat each produce a different ending.
• A field repeating one harvest day might be anchored to villagers refusing to admit the drought already happened. Looting the granary only resets the loop.

Phasing and loot

Objects from inside only persist in the present world after phasing. Un-phased items leaving the entrance turn into harmless grey sand, or revert to their original possible state. Guild appraisal desks read the stability sigil to decide whether loot can be traded.

The stable mass one dungeon can export is finite — which is why adventurers cannot infinitely duplicate gold, grain or relics. A stronger core means a larger phasing allowance; over-extraction collapses the space early and traps whoever is still inside.

Exploration procedure

The Guild registers stable entrances, grades them for risk and runs return-point timers. Anyone going in leaves a blood sample or mana signature, so that it can be established whether the person who came back is still the same version.

The procedure unnerves new adventurers. It exists because of real incidents.