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Liminality

A liminality (plural: liminalities) is a contraction of "liminal reality", and is only connected to the anthropological term by analogy.

Liminal realities are small "parasite dimensions", generally only a few cubic kilometers around at best, that have become sufficiently real in the local collective consciousness to manifest. Liminalities can manifest because a large amount of people (what's left of global culture) sort of think they're there, or because a small amount of people (a community) really thinks that they should be there.

Each liminality must be accessed in a unique way; trying to enter from some other direction will result in passing through regular Earthly terrain. A particular mode of thought is necessary to see and thus enter the liminality. For example, the Hollow Earth is accessible through special entrances near the poles, and from a few other select points, after which one must follow well-hidden diagrams left by previous explorers; just "digging down" won't get someone there. Entrances to a liminal reality are located near where it would be if it was in physical space.

Many liminalities are beautiful places, but they are all ultimately shared dreams, and they're all frayed and tattered around the edges; even renditions of Shangri-La or other utopias can quickly decay into pallid memories of that original fancy, as all liminalities are ultimately parasitic on memory and thought. They need the belief of a healthy community to survive, and that means that even the most pristine liminal grove must either parasitize the fully-real world or perish -- liminalities deteriorate, losing in definition or size, with excessive trespass, and last on average three solar orbits.

One exception is the so-called grid, a liminality that seems based on the shared understanding of just how interconnected the world was before Armageddon. Most liminalities have one entrance; the grid has thousands, spread all over the earth's yellow, red and dark zones (An exception is found in the Mediterranean, in which a number of closely spaced grid entrances exist in the Ligurian coast green zone; old smugglers tend to claim after a few drinks that this grid was there before Armageddon). The grid can be used as a method of "fast travel" between entrances; its topography somewhat resembles that of the real world, but much smaller - walking in the grid is about as fast as driving on a pre-Armageddon road would be. Accessing the grid requires being naked, unseen by other people, and entering a particular mental state that seems to be unique for each traveler (the most common being "willingness to do something embarassing", for some reason). Carrying items into the grid is practically impossible, with the exception of things that are dear enough to oneself that they may be considered part of one's imago; the current record is a Vespa scooter, which was discovered to be inoperable inside the grid itself although it worked fine upon emerging from another entrance. Leaving the grid requires that the entrance be free of observers, which makes closing entrances very easy. Ground Minus One is only accessible via grid travel.

Taking things in and out of liminalities is generally very difficult, with the grid being a particularly notable example; both actions tend to damage the liminality (due to contamination if bringing things in permanently, and depletion if taking things out). "Looking out" of a liminality is likewise difficult, although not impossible. Liminalities have proven extremely useful to hide vulnerable segments of the population in case of natural and metanatural disasters, and it's expected that they would give a significant home ground advantage to defenders if large-scale military conflict became a thing again; communities are encouraged to develop their own idea of a safe space. One thing that can be safely "taken out" of a liminality is a changed imago, or just a changed point of view; many meditation spots exist at least partly as liminalities.

Liminalities that are home to local spirits tend to be much more stable.

This said, all liminalities are inherently unstable: they originate with belief, and change with it; even a simple thing such as someone moving away from a place, or into a place, is sufficient to change an associated liminality. This happens in a very nonlinear fashion; a town with a secluded liminal pond used as a make-out spot by teenagers will not necessarily find the place made bigger or more hospitable if a hippie commune moves in. Even grid details change often. Areas with a significant Remnant presence tend to have fewer and harder to access liminalities, although there have been reports of a shared Remnant liminality, Flipside.

Some groups believe that liminalities are not fundamentally different from the real world, and work actively to expand or colonize them.

Liminal beings can leave their liminalities for some time, but disappear upon entering a blue zone. This was thought to kill them until it was found that they would simply "respawn" back into their home liminality, with no memory of how they got there. Liminal beings tend to become uncomfortable the further away they get from their liminality's access point.

There is a dark counterpart to this: The process of being consumed by a liminality is gradual and insidious, and it can be difficult to detect until it's too late. The individual may not even be aware that they are spending too much time in a liminality, as they become increasingly attached to the sense of wonder and belonging that the liminality provides. As they spend more time there, their connection to the "real" world weakens, and eventually they become fully integrated into the liminality, becoming a part of the parasite dimension, subject to the same restrictions. It is a dangerous path to walk, and those who are aware of the risks of liminalities warn against spending too much time inside them.

It has been suggested that this overall perspective on liminalities is born of a misunderstanding or at least only partial perception of the nature of reality and our place within, namely the instability and incomplete seeming nature, even the parasitic relation to what we see as the default reality, these are almost certainly this view argues either simply seemingly so from a limited perspective or perhaps even inverse of the real role in greater reality, liminalities serving to anchor the more weighty worldlines of everyday in things greater and open the edges enough for the world to actually breathe, not the fraying edges but more the sense and communication organs that connect it to the dreamlines beyond much of mortal ken's reach, at least as they are while half asleep.

More specifically this common approach to liminalities and much of this reality seems born of the pervasive depression that persists through the modern day in the face of even the massive upheaval of the apocalypse and our triumph over our very destruction, even this seemingly only worsening the malaise of the modern era and the seeming terror to allow dynamic reality into the everyday for fear of losing what little grip on identity one has already.

People (and by extension their realities) are self-modifying strange loops though really, not little decay-driven automata winding down as the victorian era shouted so loudly to attempt to ignore in the heart of their belief that this world is merely a dim shadow of something statically perfect in store, no, though it is indeed a raw and blindingly brilliant sort of fire to perceive, ours is the capacity to create where there has been nothing before, that is the nature of life and these worlds at the edge of the ongoing war.

Liminalities and our perceptions of them are at the very heart of the Armageddon we are actually having, far removed from some battle upon a field between armies amassed to see who can generate more gore, this is the battle for the soul of each and every story, do we exist as some artificially enforced negative sum scarcity feeding upon each other for snippets of glory, or do we reinforce each other in the reflected light of our majesty, glamour glinting against glamour and lasing the very substrate of our virtuality, new worldlines striking out for the very depths of possibility, far beyond horizon and shattering conventionality in their unrelenting individuality and in our unprecedented unity, standing together at the forefront of a shining new century in which we will undertake again the great work and push back further still the bounds of possibility, our birthright embraced and our divinity proven on the very weave of the tellurian as we expand the tapestry.

https://imgur.com/gallery/N1A29kb

(From Eluvaelia's PhD thesis defense) (As written by Quinn Storm)