Since my other Nether worldbuilding post was received pretty well... I'm back on my bullshit!
This time featuring zoning and biomes of the Neath: Lore below cut
Nether (noun): the formidable hellscape straddling the boundery between the Fragments of the Overworld and Death's Realms.
Derived from Beneath -> Neath -> Neth -> Nether.
The Nether is most easily accessable through outer regions of the nether, regions that are comparatively closed-off, and lacking in biodiversity compared to the Deep Nether where most Neath civilizations are centered.
The Neth is divided into three primary zones, distinguished by altitude and general climates.
The Calfactory Zone: the largest and most iconic of the three, the Calfactory zone is blisteringly hot and bone-dry, it's most prominent features are its abundant seas and lakes of magma, and the massive Supermagmas atriums that are common above the magma. In the largest of these atriums, the ceiling may be so high above as to be completely invisible from the ground, obscured by an ever present smog of toxic vapor and minerals formed in the self-generated micro-climates that are generated from the rising heat of the lava that begins to cool at a higher altitude.
In the Basalt Deltas and other biomes around the edges of these lakes, massive pillars of rock and crystals bulwark the more-visible ceiling.
The most common of this zone’s biomes is the Crimson woods, home to hearty thermal-philic fungi and plants that grow on the minerals and vapors of the lakes. Many are carnivorous in their lack of access to water or sunlight, and these forests contain many sub-biomes and ecosystems of flourishing life.
The Wastes are perhaps the most desolate regions of the Neath, irradiated deserts of red-rock, brimstone, and sharp sand. Even the vast majority of nether-folk avoid these deserts due to the leftover radiation that rots and destroys anything that waits too long. The only forms of life are particularly robust lichens and bacteria that are happy to sit by the boiling pools of sulfur and mud and toxic sludge that dot the landscape. Growing within the rocks themselves are colonies of amorphous fungus, called geocorpus molds, they get their spores into cracks in the soft netherack and slowly feed on it; the ‘rock meat’ is considered a delicacy in nether cuisine.
The Temperate Zone: Cradled in the heights of the Neath’s atriums and sat below the roof is the temperate zones; the rising heat of the zone below begins to cool and by doing so, distinct weather patterns form within this zone, leaving it, while still sweltering, a cooler though much more humid climate.
The main biome are the luminescent warped-fungal rainforests that collect the high-rising minerals and odd moisture from the lakes. Liquid is actually present here, though, if it’s not safely filtered through the innards of the various plants and fungi, this water is usually aggressively corrosive, and it is best to shelter from the acidic precipitation to avoid chemical burns. The nether folk and ender local to these rainforests are suited to deal with these conditions and the ender especially do not have trouble with the extreme pH of the water here like they would in the overworld. The zone is lit almost exclusively by the biolumincense of the organisms there and have often been described as false-stars.
In the Deep Nether, the ceiling may give way, allowing one to pass onto the plateaus of the Nether Roof and the yawning void above. The bedrock of the nether roof is jagged and layered in huge slabs, sometimes broken up my mazes of pillar-like structures and shallow, thermal pools of crystal-clear liquid. The kind you don't want to touch of course. fogs may hang low to the ground, but when its clear, or above the fog, the entire universe seems to spill out into the sky. The nether roof was culturally significant and a source of much knowledge and inspiration in the early days, but I'll get more into that in a later post 0.0
The Rime Zone: Plunge deep enough and one might find themselves bellow the lava beds. Here, where the heat can't quite penetrate, the temperatures will drop rapidly to sub-zero.
Namely, the Rime Zone is made up of the soul valleys, flat steppes of cinder and clotted sand, you can imagine it almost with the blindness effect, a fog that pools by your feet, and a heavier darkness hanging from the sky, it feels massive and endless and claustrophobic all at once. Frost collects as crystals on the irradiated, soul-soaked barrens, and the bones of the massive nether wyrms lie fossilized, breaking up the landscape. The sands are also split with patches of crazing on the ground and vents of blue fire that spills out and sets the sand ablaze.
These same wryms can be found sometimes, ancient things that dig through sand and soft rocks and the magma lakes, far and few between and treated with both fear and reverence.
And in the deepest pits of the Neath are the glowing frozen lakes that are colloquially and rightfully called the Gates to Death, glowing blue from beneath their surfaces. Indeed, any further down and you pass into limbo, the edge of Death's Realms.
Extra Notes??:
Soul sand/soil is tread on carefully or not at all, is one form of remnants from the apocolyspe. Like the general radiated rubble present through the Nether, it's a fault of nuclear fallout. Unlike other areas of radiation, its also been infused with the souls of those who didn't survive the joining of worlds. That said, unlike soul sand, soul soil is used productively to grow certain nether crops. It’s minerally and magically dense.
This infused quality is also precent in Nether Debris, resulting in a material that takes magic particularly well.
Iron cannot be found in dense veins and crystals like gold or quartz in the nether, but it's a pretty rich mineral a lot of netherack, giving it its ruddy coloring.
Sorry for this massive rant that no one asked for. If you have questions please feel free to send an ask, I may not have an answer yet but I'll certainly come up with one if I can.
I'm also hoping to do a pass on my headcanons about history and culture in the Nether and then we might start talking about character headcanons since this is also an actual AU.
If you read this far, here's some notes on striders and ghast
“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
It is the mid-1800s. You are Karl Marx. You have risen to prominence aming leftist circles, with your scathing attacks in contemporary Capitalism and Imperialism. You hear a knock on your front door. Your front door is shattered.
A very large black dragon, a veteran of the British Millitary, apologizes for the damage. His name is Temeraire, and he is a Member of Parliament.
He has read your work and wishes to discuss it with you.
Please don't leave this in the tags: #temeraire would love the 'workers of the world unite' bit#but would not like being told that wealth is bad#“ok the workers can own the means of production but can I keep my very nice chain”#“i do not understand why i should have to give up my gold. i made it through my labor”#Temeraire accidentally causes a leftist schism
This brought tears to my conservationist heart today.
The continued existence of these species is the legacy of so many people whose names we will never know--some of who never lived to see the impacts of their work.
When you count up the flaws of our species, you have to count the good things too--out of the many species throughout Earth's history that have caused the demise or endangerment of other species, we are the only one that tries to fix it out of our fascination and love for other life forms.
(Big thank you to the anonymous asker who sent this in!)
as we all know, everyone falls in love once and only once with their one true love the first time, and if they had relationships before that they weren’t real and didn’t love each other, and you can’t love more than one person at once, and your friends and family need to be pushed out of the picture to focus more on your romance, and no one has sex with people they don’t love, and if they did, they’re dirty and they have to have hated it and the sex they have with their one true love after they’re officially together has to be better sex than they ever had before, and no one ever breaks up for any reason other than death, and everyone wants to get married and have kids. aren’t you fucking tired.
Grace: rocky, this is a thumbs up. in my culture, it means that something is good, like your equivalent of jazz hands. it is a universal language that most humans understand in multiple cultures transcending languages. it is *the* visual symbol of “liking” something. it is a symbol that has existed across human culture for decades, and we have done it this way for a century.
Rocky: hm. no. i have decided the thumb points down.
Grace: actually you’re so right it does point down.
snowghoul
kaledo-art
gummygunk
titsay
kianamaiart
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
janainaart
izzy806
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled
