Places under the Dying Sun: The Floating Garden of Unearthly Delights

The Floating Garden of Unearthly Delights (200 XP on view; 800 XP on entering)

The Floating Garden is a popular traveler’s tale of paradise and horror.  It is rumoured to lie in various places over the centuries, much like the equally fabulous Black Ziggaraut.  That is because the Garden manifests as a hyper-spatial anomaly on this world and can appear literally anywhere.

When it manifests, it appears as an oasis of stunningly large and succulent plants.  This would be recognized as a jungle on our world, but such a thing is unknown under the Dying Sun.  The anomaly appears as a circular manifestation of 1 mile in diameter. Once it appears, it will remain for 1D hours before vanishing.

If the Floating Garden is entered, travelers will immediately note the humid air, filled with the sounds of birds and humming of insects.  The sky is a royal blue with a golden orb hanging there, giving pleasing warmth.  Rivulets of clean water are almost everywhere and even a large party can quickly fill up its water-bags.  The place is home to a vast profusion of animals and plants and the Referee is encouraged to include anything he likes, such as dinosaurs or reptile folk.

As long as the hyper-spatial anomaly persists, travelers may emerge from the Garden as easily as they entered.  However, once this trans-dimensional extrusion vanishes, the traveler will be unable to exit.  Wherever the traveler goes, he will simply find more jungle.  The Garden of Unearthly Delights is, in fact, a closed-loop universe like a globe covering some 100 square miles. There is no edge or end to the Garden; anyone travelling in any one direction for more than 50 miles will simply find himself back where he started, having circled the globe.

At any time, there is a chance (11+) of finding other stranded travelers within the Garden.  These may be human or not, may come from the character’s world or from ultra-terrene realities.  As with the animal inhabitants, the Referee is free to let his imagination run wild here. A  Lord of the Flies scenario is certainly plausible, with the stranded folk having become wild barbarians, as is the classic Lost World set-up, with a colony of antique Mycenaeans, for example, having survived in this pocket-cosmos. The inhabitants may have formed a new society; is it one that welcomes new additions to widen the gene pool or is it homicidally xenophobic?

A new trans-dimensional extrusion is formed every 2D days, although whether or not the trapped travelers are there to see it is up to chance.  This extrusion might appear anywhere and not necessarily under the Dying Sun.