The Apeirons of the Brink hold a vigorous rivalry with the ConcordanceThe Concordance most closely resembles mortal hopes for an afterworld: a vast network of metropolises and landscapes in which mortals and petitioners alike seek to prove that suffering is not needed to give context to joy.Turn to chapter regarding pursuits of happiness and fulfillment. Where those of the Concordance view suffering as superfluous to this quest, Apeirons relish heights of realization and beauty that they say can only be attained when pain and failure lie on the path, and their case is presented here with terrifying prowess. To genuinely engage with this place—and it is nearly impossible not to, for in the cacophony some notes inevitably strike deep—is to undergo turns of trauma and euphoria that together result in exhilarating regeneration. As a place of constant reinvention transforming the landscape and culture as if by hallucinated natural disasters, the Brink more than any other lamina of EquilibriumEquilibrium tends towards maintenance, harmony, protection, pureness of essence, persistence, stagnation, indifference, serenity, observation, renewal, inertia, and preservation.Turn to chapter is fueled by waves of creation and destruction rather than a balance of stillness.

A semicircle of breakneck glaciered mountains feeds the central river delta of the Brink with colorful effluvia draining into a rough ocean. The delta is densely scattered with waterway-wended towns and caravans of Apeirons pursuing lives of infinite variation. Apeirons are irrepressibly hard-working and have at hand endless material resources and collaborators with which to shape their hedonism and creation. In a paler incarnation of this world, such pursuits would leave jaded and burnt-out aesthetes, but these aesthetes have mastered the alternation of intensity with rest and renewal and mental healing. Boredom is absent in the face of continual reallocation of hedonic interests among the wild expressions of a community of constant exploration. All the arts of craft and performance are found here of course in spectacular manifestation, but more striking are the experiments and contests and social explorations of a value system built around delighting oneself and others.

The result is overwhelming, and every turn will strike travellers with sights never seen or thought of before. There is no attempt to calculate the optimal circumstances for individuals; instead, manifold serendipity multiplies the chances that Apeirons and visitors will fall into felicities precisely shaped to them, while inevitably multiplying the chances of the opposite—the perfect happenstance to crack them open. But Apeirons are hardy, and learn from such experiences, and some seek out tribulation as much as they do joy.

Anyone in the multiverse is welcome to join this society, and as a result the Brink holds more mortal residents than perhaps any other lamina except the ConcordanceThe Concordance most closely resembles mortal hopes for an afterworld: a vast network of metropolises and landscapes in which mortals and petitioners alike seek to prove that suffering is not needed to give context to joy.Turn to chapter and the CrenellationAn endless fortress city divided into two warring factions that never dare come to blows, the Crenellation requires of its citizens absolute self-sacrifice, and with that clarity of purpose executes a vision of martial and material prowess with awesome efficiency.Turn to chapter. It is however urgently recommended that you find a guide and mentor—assistance that nearly any Apeiron, who are universally kind and attentive despite their decadence, would be overjoyed to provide to a like-minded outsider—to avoid being overwhelmed and burned out by the miracles and burdens of this place in which those who embarrass themselves or fail to find their way are seen as being entirely responsible for their fates.