In the midst of all this chaos, there's a small pond with normal colored water and trees with cerulean leaves and red bark. People don't walk this way often but it is one possible outlet for uncontrolled transreal travel in the vicinity of this realm.

Its tranquility is shattered when a jagged rift in spacetime rips open several meters above the pond. Almost reluctantly, it vents ribbons of shredded magic and disgorges a smoldering humanoid figure, missing an arm, into the pool below. A gout of steam erupts, then disperses. 

The figure - vaguely male, and covered in an oddly fluid crystalline armor like a second skin - splashes his way to the pool's edge and squelches out, dripping. He looks around in utter confusion, taking in the oddly-colored surroundings. "Blistering moon-fever, where in the multiverse am I?" 

A gentle breeze is his only immediate answer.

He lets out a grumbling sigh. "...drat. This doesn't look like where I was aiming at all. Must've been the blast. Well, there's probably something around here that needs killing." His left shoulder oozes a reddish fluid, which rapidly crystallizes in the air. He flexes his remaining hand, and his eyes - which look more like an insect's than a human's, shimmering from multiple facets in the odd light - narrow slightly.

Something's different, here. 

"...Well, no sense wasting time." He picks a direction at random and starts walking, limping only slightly. 

The trees change color after he's walked a short distance swapping trunk and leaf colors. A few steps after that he feels something touching his mind defenses it's not aggressive and it seems to find what it's looking for in the outermost layers of his mind before withdrawing. Not long after that a silvery matte octahedron about half a meter tall floats out from behind a tree. "Greetings. Is this the language you prefer to communicate in?" It's speaking the language he used most in the world he just came from.

The instant the intrusion begins, he shifts into a fighting stance. The movement is fluid despite his injuries. Ripples echo across his mind in the wake of the probe, and he shifts slightly, glancing left and right for a potential source. (His eyes are not his only source of vision, but no need to let potential enemies know that.) After a moment, though, he relaxes, watching the octahedron warily. That's strange - it's speaking Gravese, not Draconic, but he can distinctly feel that this world allows ki - 

His eyes widen. This world also allows magic. And powers, and telekinesis, and telepathy, and he knows what a starship is...

Come to think of it, he shouldn't be able to speak both Draconic and Gravese in any universe, and he's got both languages - along with hundreds more he shouldn't know at the same time. Is everything online?

"I think I broke something," he remarks to the octahedron in Gravese, then switches to Draconic. "But so long as you're poking around in my brain for languages, would you mind using this one?" Time to test - did it get Draconic out of his lower layer, before he brought it to the forefront, or does it need to scan again for the new language? He monitors the outer layer closely, trying to follow the probe. 

Another probe does come, though it doesn't come from any particular physical direction in a sense it's coming from all around him, from the world itself, it's searching for additional languages. "Interesting, you're using some form of ability that lets you defend your mind. And that's why the initial results didn't return this language. That's an impressive amount of control."

He notices the search and moves a few more languages to the bait layer - just a dozen or so, enough to credibly show a skilled learner without giving away how many he actually has. He restructures the shallow mind-layers as well, strengthening the shields around the first core layer and resolving secondary and tertiary bait identities in case of a deeper probe. If he's dealing with an intelligent-world level of telepathic expertise, he can't afford to take chances being clever. 

He snorts. "Lots of practice. So...who are you, where am I, and why'd'you suppose I ended up here?" While he talks, he admires the color-shifting surroundings. It doesn't seem to be optimized for hostility, but one can always hope. 

"This is the Heart's Realm, it's a multiverse nexus of sorts the magic and physics of about two thousand worlds are all present and somehow reconciled to not cause problems. And that number keeps going up as we explore more. As for me I'm Tristan Watcher, I work for a multiversal organization called Starlight that explores worlds and tries to help the people we meet. To be clear, this is a remote unit I'm not physically present."

He bursts out laughing. Kami kai, how far did I travel? 

"A nexus! And here I thought they were all destroyed!" He continues chuckling for a few seconds, then slips into a mere friendly grin. On the surface, at least; in his core, he remains on guard. "Yours seems to operate differently than the old world-ways, though. There sure is something up with the rules 'round here. How'd you secure it against the Netherlings, Tristan Watcher? Or do you even have those in this lovely little pocket of spacetime?" 

"We haven't encountered any sort of multiversal threat so far thankfully, we have contingencies but they are thus far untested and with luck they will remain untested. This is also the only such nexus we've found."

No multiversal threats at all? Well, that's disappointing.

"Huh. You might just be the most remote universe I've ever seen - well, relative to our core cluster, anyway. If you've literally never encountered the Netherlings, count yourself lucky. They can give even groups like yours a run for your money." He turns to look back towards the pond, frowning. "As near as I can tell, though, that was a one-way trip. I don't expect to be followed." More's the pity. That fight could've been fun. And these folks must have some serious resources if they're combining rules from two thousand worlds. Quite the speed bump for those hungry bastards, even if it does give their heavy hitters more options. 

"If you should encounter any multiversal threats, let me know. They're my specialty. In the meantime, I'm guessing this isn't your first extraplanar visitor. What's the standard procedure, and how much of it can I skip with my otherworldy charm?" This is followed by a rather lopsided grin; half his cheek is still in the process of recrystallizing. 

"The only mandatory thing is that you listen to a summary of our laws. There's a number of other recommended steps but they're not mandatory."

"Fair enough. Let's hear 'em." 

"Doing intentional injury to others is forbidden the exceptions are as follows: you have their permission, your act is in defense of yourself or others, or it happens part of an approved operation and within the approved rules of engagement.

Citizens in physical worlds are required to spend at least 5% of their time doing approved community service work. Citizenship is available upon request and comes with healthcare, education, shelter, sustenance, and political representation.

Theft is generally forbidden though the definition of that tends to be stricter than many other realms define it. Generally it's only applied to people's personal property or if you're taking very large volumes of material.

Otherwise, there are additional restrictions in certain areas you will be informed of those when entering."

"I've got no problem with anything I've heard so far. If I wanted citizenship, could I choose what service to do? Can I or others revoke my citizenship? Do you have any community service that involves military training, martial arts lessons, or similar?" 

"You can choose to stop being a citizen, there's indexes of available community service work. Significant parts of that are associated with current conflicts we're involved with. Hand to hand combat is something of a niche skill but we do have some people who need to learn it and you may be able to contribute there depending on your own skill level. Military training is a broad category so we would need to discuss what you mean by that in more detail."

Oooo, conflicts. He was worried for a bit that this would be a boring cluster. 

"If it pertains to fighting things, I can teach it. Ki manipulation, combat magic, intelligence gathering, hand-to-hand, strategy, tactics, logistics, piloting ships or giant mechs, whatever you got." If this were any other world he'd be limited to only a few of those things, but it seems like he's kept all his knowledge for some reason. "I prefer the frontlines, frankly, but if I can't convince you to use me as a commando then teaching rookies how to not die is also a worthy calling. I'd like to learn more about your capabilities, but it sounds like citizenship is the way to go." Also, he's hungry and has no money. 

"It might be easier to continue this conversation somewhere other than the middle of the woods. Would you be willing to be teleported or would you prefer linear transport?"

"It's actually kinda nice here...feels homey. But you're right. Teleportation's fine." 

"I can move the necessary displays into place here if you prefer, most people find this place a little unsettling."

He chuckles. "Believe me, I've seen much worse. No need to go to that extent, though. Let's talk in person." 

He feels magic reaching out to his body it seems to be trying to determine where the border is between him and his environment. Following that more magic reaches out and teleports him to a new location. If his senses are particularly acute he might be able to tell the teleportation magic is switching volumes of space. The new room has a rich carpet with a pattern that looks a bit like a mirrored sunrise over a forest. There are two couches on either side of the carpet. He appears in front of one couch. There's a tall man with dark brown skin and short black hair wearing sleek slacks blue and a white long sleeve shirt with no visible seems. There's a small logo on the left breast of his shirt with stars against a dark blue background. "Hello there, nice to see you in person."

"Likewise." He slaps his good hand to his forehead. "Huh. I forgot to introduce myself earlier. See, this is why face-to-face is worth it. I'm Blastralion Protos, also known as Kalifor in some worlds. Technically I'm Blastralion Protos 32174, but that's a long story. Oh, and I'm told several demon realms have words for me, but I can't repeat any of those in polite company. You're Tristan Watcher, I presume?" 

His crystallizing wounds have mostly finished sealing at this point, leaving a polished surface like diamond scales. It's hard to tell where armor ends and person begins - even his head is vaguely helmet-shaped. He's also not quite humanoid. From the base of where his spine ought to be, a short monkey's tail protrudes. It's also crystalline, partially severed, and just finished healing.

His feet sink deep into the carpet, implying higher-than-typical density. 

"Indeed I am, it's good to meet you. Can I get you anything, food, a drink?"

"I'm pretty hungry, actually, but I should warn you - I eat more than should be physically possible. Especially with needing to heal this - " he gestures to his missing arm. "I'll eat just about anything most folks do, but foods high in minerals help with the healing. Nuts, seeds, beans, that sort of thing." 

"How does granola sound then? And juice?"

"Sounds great, thanks." He plops into the couch, resting his good arm on the back. 

A small table with a large bowl of granola a copper colored spoon and a tall glass of purple juice appears beside the couch within arms reach.

He digs in, finding time between bites to comment, "You're more hospitable than most places I've been. Thanks and kudos. 

"So, Tristan, can you tell me more about Starlight's current conflicts? I practically guarantee I can help somehow, and I'm happy to share what I can do." Some of it, anyway. For now. 

He brings up a visual representation of the local multiverse there's blobs of color and smaller motes all around a bright shiny speck of light with strings connecting it to everything. "There are nine areas of concern in the parts of the multiverse where we have operations. The first and most encompassing is in the Jovian's cluster. They live in a cluster of about 300 universes though they aren't able to travel between them. Our primary focus in that cluster is an expansionist hive mind that incorporates those they conquer into their hive mind by force.

That work is occupying the majority of our time because we believe they are the most likely of our current threats to be able to become more threatening if left unattended. A secondary concern in that cluster is a very conflict prone universe which seems to be almost continuously either at war or dominated by oppressive empires it shifts quite dynamically though and there isn't any faction we feel comfortable supporting.

The next most relevant area of concern is another cluster this one has a high concentration of genocidal threats, we're focusing our attention in a single universe within that cluster, unfortunately that cluster contains several stable time loops that makes certain forms of intervention difficult.

This cluster over here has extremely concerning magical conflicts on a semiregular basis but they also have a habit of resolving themselves safely without our involvement. As such, we mostly observe.

This smaller cluster here is actively monitored as criminal organizations in this area make a habit of unleashing cataclysmic forces. Somehow natives are usually able to counteract these events but we've taken to preventative actions as local surveillance capabilities are insufficient for the task.

The last of the major clusters in our area very recently fought a significant multiversal war for the fate of that entire cluster. We intervened to assist and we now administer the local afterlife. The native means of multiversal travel is damaging to the involved universes so it has been removed and we monitor to ensure it doesn't reemerge.

And then there's the singleton universes that represent cause for concern: There's one universe with what is as far as we can tell an extremely powerful god who has firmly rebuffed any effort to involve ourselves, we still keep an eye on it.

Second is a universe where an extremely powerful species seems to be setting up to harvest entire biospheres for an unclear purpose on rather long timescales. We prevented this action on one world in that universe but we're not sure how to locate more worlds under threat.

There's also a universe which is nearing its end currently in a timeloop we could turn off if desired. We're actively working to evacuate people but we've hit the point of diminishing returns.

Finally, a recently contacted world is potentially under threat from an pair of genocidal gods. We don't know how powerful they are or if they are still actively genocidal just that they have committed genocide in the past and threatened to do so again if they are summoned and the people of the world aren't sufficiently united."

He listens intently, lights of the multiverse reflected in his sparkling eyes. He wasn't kidding about the food; the granola's almost gone by the time Tristan finishes his summary. 

"I could help with any of those," he muses, "some more than others. If you have any weapons that are effective but hard to wield, for instance, I can make maximal use of them. I can also poison-pill a hive mind, to some degree or another.

"My powers are limited right now," he explains, "but in my prime I was perfectly capable of handling genocidal gods. While I wait for my strength to return, I've been using more subtle powers and simple experience to influence the outcomes of major wars, and to prepare various worlds to repel Netherling invasions. If I expected your cluster to come under assault in the near future, I might recommend dropping me in the constantly-warring universe cluster; I have a knack for organizing militaries against external threats. But as is, there's not yet an obvious target...you mentioned time loops; do you have access to time dilation, by chance?" 

"That form of technology is available in the cluster with the time loops. Depending on what you mean by poison pill that might be helpful in our fight with the hive mind. They call themselves the Borg. Our main difficulty there is their sheer population and our commitment to recovering the constituent members alive. As things stand, we are intercepting 95% of their aggressive actions and are decreasing their population on net by an estimated 1% per year."

"Oh, those creeps. Man, it's been a long time since I had to deal with the Borg. You've got three hundred universes of them? My condolences. They tend to get worse with time. Before now, I was only aware of two or three such universes in our cluster, though I'm sure we could find more if we looked. If I recall, they're pretty good at adapting to new attack vectors. I borrowed a few techniques from them, actually. Took everything I had to get out from under their brainwashing, but that was a long time ago. 

"They've never met something like me before. I'm extremely resistant to compulsions, and I've had enough practice with physical, magical, and psionic domination attempts over the millenia that I can configure the outer layers of my mind into a sort of elaborate virus or labyrinth-trap. Enemies who try to possess me have a good chance of becoming me instead. It works better if I know who or what is attacking me, and prepare for it. The Borg are tricky, but if I recall right they are purely technological and have a bad habit of downloading first and debugging later. I could probably subvert and disable a cube from within if they tried to assimilate me. Give 'em something their adaptation protocols think is cool, let 'em download it into every drone in a cube, and whoops-a-daisy they're all infected. Multiple connected cubes have better defenses and response time, though, so I don't think I'd risk it on more than one. 

"Afterwards they'd update their protocols, but if the universes don't communicate, we could pull the same trick three hundred times.

"Alternatively I could drop in one universe as a mole and feed you their plans, but given the number of universes you're dealing with, that seems less than ideal." Also kind of a boring way to spend the next few decades.

"My power debt is a long story, but if you can get me forty-five years of time in a dilation field, or alternatively about ten to the fiftieth joules of energy, I'll get my full power back, and I can start dismantling Borg cubes or contend with genocidal gods or whatever you need." 

"We've only confirmed Borg presence in one universe, even with our capabilities we can't explore entire universes quickly so most of our operations are centered around our entry points. Regardless we can handle cubes without much difficulty on average we process 1000 cubes per day. As for time dilation we could likely make that happen. There's a known settlement within a 100 to 1 time dilation field and we've seen examples of time dilation being used by another civilization we have friendly relations with. As for the power consumption I don't think that's something we could easily achieve. Well, unless you're willing to take a long shot bet."

"Six months or so outer time on a settlement doesn't sound too bad, but it's still 45 years of my time and I'd rather be doing things. What's this long shot?" 

"In one universe there's a strange entity which the locals call the eye of the universe. There are conflicting theories about what would happen if anyone goes inside. We've been putting it off because one of the theories is that entering will make the universe collapse followed shortly by a new big bang. Nobody actually knows though and we can't test it in advance."

"Intriguing. That seems like it might be bad for the universe in question, though. Got any more granola?" He holds out the empty bowl. 

"Certainly," granola materializes out of nowhere and pours in to fill the bowl. "And yes it would be. It's a complex ethical quandary because the universe is in a short timeloop. Our best estimate is that if we end the time loop every star in the universe will die within the next week, most of them violently. We've done a fairly thorough search of the nearest fifteen thousand galaxies and we're not sure how long people would be able to survive past that final state. We could just end the time loop and let things be, we could maintain the time loop hoping we find a way to more efficiently rescue people from that warped existence or we could experiment with the Eye. If we hadn't intervened then one of the locals would have already entered the Eye."

He grins at the granola fountain. "That's quite the conundrum. Seems like you have to choose between everyone effectively stuck in stasis and maybe a bunch of people dead. Well, good news and bad news, I suppose - I have some experience with, and resistance to, temporal shenanigans, and I can absorb energy if it's - hmmm, this is hard to translate - formatted correctly? but I doubt I could take a big bang to the face without disintegrating first. I'm happy to take a stab at the time loop problem, maybe there's something in the universe itself I can use..." He sits in silence for a while, alternating between granola and purple juice.

"I've got more options than usual since this cluster seems to allow any kind of physics or magic, that's rare, my own travel magic limits me to a given universe's own rules. Wait, are there energy sources in the time loop itself that could be exploited? If you don't mind losing some giant stars that will get looped back anyway, I might be able to jumpstart an absorption loop if I had an external source of power, maybe some tech or magic to work with. I need to know more about the universe in question to be sure, but there might be something there. We should compare notes - you might even be able to use some of my magic, even if I can't." 

"Stars are much smaller in this universe but we do have technology to channel a substantial portion of a supernova about one percent into a concentrated area and that could be adapted. As for the flexibility I think that more applies to this place than the cluster as a whole. We have control of how physics spreads from this place to the other universes in the cluster."

"Stars are smaller? I suppose I've seen stranger things. Maybe it'd be better to find supernovae elsewhere, but that sounds like the type of tech it would take to recharge me, scaled up. Now, controlling the spread of physics, that sounds like a remarkably handy trick. The tactical considerations alone..." He shakes his head. "Well, that's probably moot if you've got this cluster under wraps already. You might want to watch where you put me, if you're worried about spreading physics to the wrong places. I'm currently sitting on more than a hundred distinct universe-rulesets, to say nothing of slight variations on similar ones. We probably ought to run some tests to make sure I can't accidentally contaminate your worlds with soul eating, vampirism, underagony, elder corruption, or the Dark Side of the Force, like some kind of world-disease. I doubt it, but you really don't want underagony in your afterlife." 

"Stars being smaller is pretty weird yeah. Physics is deeply strange in that universe in general. And yes, if you're likely to alter local physics then that's something we would want to be careful about. Oddly enough the time loop in that world also resets changes in physics so that's likely where we would do tests. Nothing else we've found seems able to undo changes in physics."