Susur
Flaming Giraffes
“Human, imagine your Salvador Dalí, M. C. Escher, and Hieronymus Bosch dancing together all night long to psychedelic trance music and amplifier feedback, then, come sunrise, collaborating on the creation of …an entire world. That’s where I’m from, a realm of non-euclidian geography, variable gravity, flexible distances, and even some flaming giraffe-like creatures that wouldn’t be out of place in a surrealist painting.
It means floors covered in equally-sized tiles that nonetheless take different amounts of time to cross, the surrounding walls appearing to recede and advance as you step inside different ones. It means doorways that lead you right back into the room you just left. It means waterfalls that sometimes fall up. It means a sky where a handful of suns criss-cross the sky at complex intervals, their absences offset with the eternal twilight of a thousand smaller silvery suns. It means a place that hums with magical power.
Unfortunately, Susur was recently torn apart by a civil war; Short version: The Incandescent Order, the bad guys, won. The good guys –my guys– are fleeing to other dimensions, often using your world as the first stop on their escape route. Once past Earth, the Order almost always loses the trail and give up the chase. A few refugees are going native and staying on Earth, despite the danger of being discovered, to help other refugees move on past your world, and to hopefully keep our troubles from becoming your troubles.”
—Helena “Hex” Saint-Exupéry, Veteran of the Susur Mage War