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Originally Posted by patchwork
Question 40 This potentially impinges on Q27, Q29 and Q32, so perhaps those questions should be answered first, but I just want to throw this out there. Calledron has regular access to a cosm that was once highly urbanized but suffered from an extinction event. Do they colonize it? Restrict access to it? What do they think caused the extinction, and how certain are they of that?
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Answer 40 [MV]- Thresher
Praxis, City of Lemurs, was the grand capital of a realm of steppe, canyons and meandering rivers. Wayfarers spoke of its gables and pagodas coloured in lacquered sable and plum, its broad canals that crossed the city in radial patterns, its city guard resplendent in polished electrum cuirass and grass-green plumage, and its shaded liqueur terraces where dignitaries would meet over precisely poured fragrant cypress cups of palm spirit and feed berries grown on faraway worlds to their amber-furred tame lemurs. Now the city is covered in a fine soot and its more than a million inhabitants, covered in pestilent ulcers, lie in piles in the city squares or floating bloated in the stagnant waterways.
This whole dimension has been absorbed by the Thresher and forged into the reality-matter-substance of his Ring of Bitter Worlds. The world of Praxis is now stretched and warped into a segment of the Ring, itself 400 miles wide and 900 miles across, which spins slowly on the mummified finger bone of Thresher. And to describe Thresher…
A human-like skeleton, taller by ten times than the height of a planet, stretched over with a skin turned to parchment by burial in canopic salts. The skeleton stands with feet apart and one arm outstretched. The head, bigger than a planet by half, is rocked back to screech an incantation, while the other hand holds a staff 100,000 miles long with a threshing baton attached to it by chain links mined from the embers of a red star. A black mitre sits upon his head and a cowl hangs to his shoulders. From the extended forefinger, there shoots a jagged fork of electro-necrotic energy to strike an unseen target, and it is upon this finger that the Ring of Bitter Worlds sits.
An observer standing on the forward edge of the Ring would note the runnels of purple plasma streaming from it, generated from its gargantuan store of morbidity. Then if they crossed to the inner edge of the ring and looked down on the 700 mile long finger segment, they would realise that the desiccated hide below was not still, but instead that it swarmed with the souls of billions and billions of damned, engaged in a swirling, endless battle. However, looking then up at the face of Thresher, or at the crinkling bolts of lightning, these would almost appear to not be moving.
The Praxis-Thresher Portal is located two world jumps away from Calledron, but there is an imperial garrison guarding it. None are allowed to make the crossing, and any who try are brought before the Archmage to explain themselves. If reckless adventurers do manage to gain access, or if an imperial contingent is sent, they will immediately notice an oppressive miasma of doom. The city's destruction was reported a century ago, yet to visitors the corpses would seem somewhat fresh and recent. Travellers will be afflicted with horrendous waking nightmare visions, and will have to fight the spectres of the original inhabitants of Praxis as well as more from the other adjoined worlds that were absorbed by the Ring over countless millennia ago. Apart from looting, and the macabre sightseeing, there is one good reason to make the journey. The portals that existed in the other worlds absorbed by the ring may still be accessible, and would reach to other far-flung parts of the polycosm that are perhaps not even known of in this immediate cluster of realms.
As for the cause of Praxis' destruction, it could be that Thresher destroyed the world, or it could be that he was drawn to it after it fell by other means, and he came to collect its wellspring of necromantic power.
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Question 43 [MV][Name 5]- Imperial Realms
As of Answer 16/Post 31, the Calledron Empire is spread across 6 realms. One is presumably Fragment, so what are the other 5? Give some details.
(Only one answer at a time is ok, you don't have to try to do all 5 at once.)