[quote=@Antarctic Termite]
[@Kho] ...Could it be imagined as the paper on which the Codex is written? Paper is a lot like fabric. Right? Right??

Heartworm swallowing a piece of the fabric of reality is explicitly mentioned in [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3760099]this post[/url], summarywards, where it consumes part of the underlying structure of existence to become more like the background of all that is, thus explaining a point of concealment. That's always been Heartworm's teleportation mechanic: literally carving up reality to make a wound it could move through.

[sub](As an aside, it's also one of my most consistent long-term bits of character development. At first Heartworm had to laboriously chew through reality, but later it could carve holes using a tool. Eventually it could slice portals into existence quickly with its vehicle, and lately it's just been kicking reality so hard it rips like paper. An upcoming post is the first and only one in which Heartworm simply [i]wills[/i] a wound in reality to open up. It's also been teleporting more as time goes on. So there's some subtle power progressions for y'all.)[/sub]

The thing is that 'the fabric of reality' is a really common metaphor for 'the underlying structure of the existent universe' when it comes to describing both physics and metaphysical stuff. I'm sure most of us have used it here at some point, unthinking, to mean exactly that.

Unless the Fabric as you describe is something specifically other than that, then I imagine it's a Vowzrid phenomenon of the general concept. Heartworm might be interacting with a different layer of it somehow. It might simply not be attuned to the sentience, or there might be some mirroring effect in which its own weird AI soul reflects on the Fabric and makes it seem cold and lifeless from its perspective.
[/quote]

I'm not entirely sure - I've said all I've really worked out about the Fabric. There's terminological stuff - like how moving through the Fabric should not technically be referred to as teleporting, and rather than reference to 'portals', it should be 'Whirlpool of Space and Time' (e.g. the Gate is a Whirlpool of Space and Time).

In the end, what Heartworm chews through has been, as you say, developed in a very particular way; that's your territory - you've lain all kinds of protections and whatnot to ensure that anyone who plays around there is at a complete disadvantage. The Fabric isn't that. Chiral Phi, for instance, wouldn't receive all existing data on someone passing through the Fabric (I think it only gets that for things entering the Submaterium? Or was it teleporting generally? I can't quite remember). It is even possible that someone passing through the Fabric can interact with the Gap without triggering Jvan's mindbells (perhaps that's how Vowzra got out of there without detection, it makes sense in retrospect).
The mirroring thing doesn't hold up in my mind - the Punisher, Juras, and Vowzra all interacted with the Fabric, and in all three cases the Fabric was fairly consistent.

Could it be that Jvanic and Vowzrid interaction have been with the same thing bit on different levels? Sure, but to me that's more or less synonymous with them being entirely different things - if the layer Heartworm and Jvan have been interacting with is a passive, malleable, unliving layer, then the layer Vowzra has been interacting with is active, resistant, alive - it recognises different characters and can even develop deeper feelings for some than others. These layers, if we go with that, are completely different and independent of each other. 
I have no issue with Heartworm, as it experiments and delves deeper into its passive Fabric of Reality, coming into contact with the conscious Fabric of Existence. I'm sure that would be a very interesting development.

What do others think? Are the Fabric of Existence and Heartworm's chaw one and the same, and the whole conscious universe thing just in Vowzie's wishful projections? Layers of the same thing? Two separate things altogether? Something else?

Edit: And how do other things fit in - the Mechanism of Change for instance, is that the interaction of Zephyrean beings with what Heartworm calls the Fabric of Reality and Vowzra the Fabric of Existence? Is Belvast's teleportation an interaction with something altogether different/ yet another layer/ just another different perception of the same thing?