1: What is the Hearth?
In its simplest definition, the Hearth is an infinite dimension consisting primarily of varying forests on a flat terrain plane, with a pitch-black & featureless sky.
It is an external dimension to any existing universe, and is capable of pulling in matter & energy from other planes via unknown methods.
The Hearth's biomes tend to primarily be forests- tropical, temperate, boreal, even some containing more extreme conditions than the Earthen biomes it seems to base itself off of.
Other biomes have been recorded, such as deserts, mountain chains, and even oceans, though these tend to be quite sparsely occurring.
2: About the Hearth
Though the Hearth is a mysterious and hostile place, it is not completely unpredictable. Thanks to the effort of many, things like weather patterns, seasonal changes, and even wildlife, have slowly been catalogued.
Some common sights are as follows:
Hearthkeepers: 20 foot tall, spindly, bony creatures. Pitch-black skin strung tight around their bony frames, large lanterns for heads. Able to be killed somewhat easily by shattering their lights. Dead Hearthkeeper matter attracts other Hearthkeepers, regardless of distance.
“Wildlife”: Generally-applicable term for the various creatures found within the Hearth- often mutated, fused, chimeric, or anomalous forms of pre-existing wildlife from other worlds. Somehow, the vast majority are safe to eat, but some are dangerous predators, or flat-out inedible. The Hearth’s ecosystem is unstable.
Creakers: Inexplicable creaking, snapping, and similar sounds, always seeming to be right behind you. It has been determined that nothing physically dangerous is causing these sounds, though the potential of an extradimensional or invisible creature has not yet been ruled out. The leading hypothesis is that the sounds are meant as a deterrent, and that the creaking is likely caused by some manner of prey animal.
One of the most well-known features of the Hearth is the Scintillation, which is the term for pockets of corrupting material that occasionally appear and disappear throughout the Hearth, appearing as a black-and-gold shimmering mass, spreading across physical matter as a thin film. It is one of the few things in the Hearth that can kill you.
The Scintillation is capable of infecting living beings, causing excruciating pain, material degradation, and death within 32 hours if the Scintillation continues to spread across the body. It can only be treated by amputation, on flesh-and-blood/carbon-based creatures.
3: What are the "Rules of the Hearth"?
The Rules of the Hearth, as roughly determined by the first few Iterations to wind up here, are as follows:
4: Weather & Seasons of the Hearth
Partially due to the sheer oddity of the dimension, but also due to the fact that it’s an infinitely-extending nearly-flat plane, the Hearth’s weather is unpredictable, and often violent.
Piper Ataraxia developed a scale for Hearthian weather, and has spent lots of time studying these patterns, even managing to figure out a rough seasonal cycle.
Seasons of the Hearth
Each season is outlined with the following format: # - Name, Length in Hours, Temperature Average (F), Precipitation Type, Precipitation Intensity, Most Common Wildlife, and Special Notes.
1 - "Warm"
2 - "Foggy"
3 - "Anomalous"
4 - "Scintillating"
5 - "Cold"
6 - "Stormy"
Weather of the Hearth
Some examples of weather in the Hearth, categorized by hazard level.
HAZ-0
HAZ-I
HAZ-II
HAZ-III
HAZ-IV
HAZ-V
HAZ-V is reserved for one event, and one event only- rollbacks. A rollback is the term for an event that occurs when the landscape experiences significant alteration to its surface, and undergoes a violent 'reset' due to these changes. Activities like digging and mining are completely safe, but logging must occur a significant distance from any inhabited areas, in case of rollbacks. Rollbacks themselves look like the entire landscape is upending and inverting itself, bursting violently into the sky, before rearranging and resettling into a completely new shape, sometimes even a whole new biome. There is no chance of survival if you’re caught off-guard by one.