Eden
Eden is a pocket dimension within the Clarkwoods Literary Universe. Created during The Calamity which brought the first iteration of reality to its end, Eden is best known as the place where refugees from one universe begin planning for the start of the next.
And yet, except during these Interregnums, Eden is a quiet and sparsely populated land. In fact, once the universe has been reborn—and until someone screws it up again by doing the unstuck—the only sapient species to be found in Eden are the Halflings, who have been charged by the gods as its caretakers.
Geography
Eden is comprised of a single flat-world planetoid that is surrounded on all sides by the The River Without End. The planetoid is home to a single continent which can be subdivided into the regions of Nalké, Nunya, Oz, Wonderland, and The Reek.
It is a world of disparate biomes, extending outward from the temperate rainforest of The Garden, through every other kind of land imaginable, until reaching the barren wasteland of The Desert at the Edge of Existence.
From the lofty peaks of the Melancholy Mountains to the lusty swamplands of Quadling Country, Eden is home to every kind of paradise. It may be a kind of purgatory, but it’s a beautiful one—the loveliest liminal space that has ever been, or ever will be.
Fauna & Flora
As Eden operates as a staging ground for each version of reality, it has been home—at some point or another—to nearly every bit of flora and fauna that has ever existed. That said, outside of the cities, Eden is a rough place for living things. Some creatures and plantlife never make it to the next version of reality because they find themselves tossed up against another living thing that time and evolution never meant for them to meet. But them’s the breaks. This is just the nature of how quickly and violently The River Without End compresses existence at the end of The Calamity.
History
Whenever reality breaks in the CLU—always as the result of someone traveling through time and successfully altering the past—Eden becomes a refuge for all life in the universe. The Halfling caretakers of the place make way for the influx of survivors, the Interregnum government of The Council of Five is re-established (along with the governments of its member states: The Grand Duchy of the Garden, The Free Cities of Nunya, The Ninth Empire of Oz, The United Kingdom of Wonderland, and The Democratic Republic of the Reek), and preparation for the first Harvest of the Voices begins.
This has happened 668 times so far, and there’s no telling how many times it will happen again. Some might call it a vicious cycle, but many in the universe count themselves lucky to live in a place that seems destined to never truly die.
Maps
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Eden
A map of the land of Eden, based on the work of Lüe the Mapmaker from the First Interregnum.
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