[i]What is the Heart? Assorted Theories, Summarized for the Beginning Student:[/i]

[list]
[*]The graveyard of failed cities. Whenever a city of a certain size dies completely, it sinks into the Heart, crushing everything beneath it into even more of a confused mess as it splinters and breaks apart. Because cities are alive, they are all trying to put themselves back together, but each one foils the attempts of the others, like crabs in a bucket. Delvers are vultures and dung beetles, stripping them down to their stony bones.
[*]It is a prison for dark gods, or the titans who made the gods, and delvers are either foolishly opening the door to let them free, one treasure at a time, or are stripping them of the tools they would use to break free, each stolen treasure sapping more of their power until they become weak and pitiful shadows. If it is not a prison, then it is all the dream of one of these gods, the true god, and woe betide those who awaken them and cause the Heart to fade away like a dream at dawn.
[*]The Heart is a marvelous world-creating engine from which all creation emanates. If anyone understood how to manipulate it, they would hold in their hands the controls of the world. Because delvers work at cross purposes and act without understanding, the world is a baffling, capricious series of ridiculous nonsense. But if you figured out the pattern, or sat in the Last Throne, or dethroned the Pattern Guardians foolish people think are deep gods, you could make it better. You could make it all better.
[*]The Heart is a nightmare labyrinth that, in hindsight, we never should have entered. But now that it’s open... good people have to go down there and stop the Angels and the gods and the blood-rats and the parasite words and the goddamn trains from escaping. And the clowns. God. The clowns.
[/list]

[i]Facts Concerning the Metaphysic of the Heart:[/i]

[list][*]The Heart has “up” and “down.” Up is closer to the world, more stable, and down is... stranger. The further down you go, the more risk and reward. Nobody knows if there’s a bottom. Nobody who made it back, anyhow.
[*]The Heart shifts and changes while you’re not looking. Navigation is a matter of intuition and communion, not cartography. You can’t cross the same hungry river twice, as they say; if you find your way back to a place once seen before, it is invariably changed somehow.
[*]Motifs like the Library and the Forest are not so much places as they are conditions or tilts. The Heart is a jumbled mess of ruin. Machinery and infrastructural motifs are common, but usually corrupted by some other influence.[/list]

[Hider=Gazeteer]ANGELS: actually a taxonomic class; a non-animal denizen of the Heart which is not (barring the theological debates) of mortal origin. Many are faceless; many are winged; many are dangerous. Many work at cross purposes. Some are flickering electric fractals and some are horned moss-drowned hunters and some are skittering vicious librarians.

BEES: up to something. They’re a pale blue, glow faintly in the dark, and are constructing... something. They repurpose the environment around their hives and stick various pieces of junk together with their spittle. Angels fear them. As long as you don’t break anything, you’ll be safe around them. For varying degrees of safe. They’ll start whispering to you if you sleep too close, offering you the chance to be part of the Great Work.

BLOOD-RATS: gorged on the luminous blood of King Dragon, the blood-rats are his eyes and ears and tiny hands throughout the Heart. They are trappers and saboteurs and steal vital supplies, and at the same time, are willing to sell you just what you need when you need it most, at ruinous price. Nobody loves the blood-rats. Nobody except their burning, hateful god.

THE CHIMERAE: known more commonly as “Beasts,” these are non-animal denizens of the Heart, of mortal origin. They drank too deeply of still pools, or were transcribed into words and then translated back again, or offended the king of all these woods, or ate an Angel’s flesh, or in some way invited the Heart inside themselves. Some cling to what normality they have left, offering themselves as guides in Detritus or forming nomadic scavenger caravans. Some even try to leave, but few can, and even fewer don’t come back. The Heart won’t let you go.

THE DARK CARNIVAL: danger in limelight. If you’re very lucky, you might get supplies, strange entertainment, and win your heart’s desire in a claw game. If you’re very foolish, you’ll accept the immortality the Fools’ Mysteries offer. If you’re unlucky, the clowns will begin howling and honking. Run.

DELVERS: professional tomb-raiders, thieves, and swords-for-hire. They carry no maps, but learn the moods and seasons of the Heart— that is, if they survive. Delvers live by an unspoken code: don’t kill (you’ll attract the Angels), share your food and drink when asked (one day you might be the one who needs it), and take whatever you can (tough luck if you can’t hold onto it). If you break the code... better make sure there’s no survivors to spread word around.

DETRITUS: on the “surface” of the Heart, where it brushes against the world, sprawls a wild and dangerous city filled with intrepid or foolish entrepreneurs, criminals and exiles hiding from their past (who usually know better than to descend), several university annexes, cultists and theologians. The city entire is bisected by Nexus Station, a holy cathedral which offers lodgings for hopeful travelers waiting for a train’s attention. Attempts have been made to establish government, but they always fail, leaving behind yet more dilapidated offices and another layer of impotent bureaucracy.

THE FLOOD: she leaks in between tiles and surges down corridors without warning, she lies stagnant and green-choked between you and what you want, she vomits forth pearls and coral twisting like bone, she drags you underneath unless you drown offerings to her, and if she takes you, you may find yourself elsewhere, years later— or earlier— gasping and mottled with her touch.

THE FOREST: up through bookshelves and between the tracks come the brambles, and their berries are black and bitter and cause strange reveries. Ceilings become twining branches, or are they roots? Far off, but never far enough, the hunting-horn sounds. The king of all these woods— you can smell him before you meet him, and the sight of his horns is terrible.

THE LIBRARY: the walls are spines, and the lion’s share of what you see are books yet unwritten, or never written, or from other places you might hope never to see. Mined books serve as currency among many delvers; the Heart detests useless books. And as a last resort, tossing them to a charging Librarian might earn you reprieve while it reshelves them.

OWLS: oh god oh god oh god we disturbed the nest I’ll hold them off as long as I can

THE VERMISSIAN: a terrible mistake made long ago. A dead civilization thought to abuse the liminal nature of the heart, to bore rail-lines through them and facilitate travel on luxury locomotives, cutting travel times from months to days. Now the rail-lines are hissing, echoing labyrinths, twisting all through the Heart, and the trains run themselves through conductor-cults. The Vermissian Knights serve as templars and wardens of the rail-lines, clad in shining armor made from train-moltings and carrying sharpened rails the size of greatswords.[/hider]

[hider=Music][list][*][url=https://serialsymphony.bandcamp.com/track/devils-music]The Vermissian Line.[/url]
[*][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUswen66xQA]Looking Down.[/url]
[*][url=https://youtu.be/yzPDq9d_-Lg]The Forest.[/url]
[*][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfLA5rqoNqs]The Dark Carnival.[/url]
[*][url=https://youtu.be/oACrQBuXCpM]Lament for the Lost.[/url]
[*][url=https://failbettergames.bandcamp.com/track/oceana-lonissima]Angelsong.[/url][/list][/hider]