Is she sure? It's a pretty boring place. Ocean far as the eye can see.

She wasn't bored while falling through a portal to an unknown location... now that she's here... yeah it's pretty boring. She'll try diving underwater. She's able to breath underwater and maybe everything here happens underwater. She can see really well underwater.

The ocean is... fascinatingly boring. There's nothing in there. No fish. No garbage. No seaweed. No coral. Just saltwater. Lots of it.

Goodness, that's remarkably boring... she will resurface and run along the surface picking up speed until she's going just under the speed of sound. She'll keep at that until she sees something different or it's been an hour or so.

At that speed she will be approaching the shore pretty soon. There's civilization on the shore! Sorta! No farms. No weeds. A weirdly small number of individual but large and healthy trees. Mud huts. And a waterslide with a splashdown exit over the sea.

Oh neat a waterslide, she'll head towards that. As she approaches she'll slow down and once she's really close she'll start swimming instead of walking on water.

The waterslide has a ladder, and a stream of water coming from the spigot at the top, and no obvious way for the water to be coming from anywhere, not even the ocean itself. There are some people, all young adults, hanging out around the mud huts in the area. The roofs of the huts look like they might be plastic harvested from the slide, except for how the slide is intact. They look at her as she swims in, blinking curiously.

She has a hat shirt and pants in a variety of mismatched colors all of which are mysteriously dry and large pink wings which disappear after she notices they don't have any.

Yeah, that's really weird and they're all staring at her now. One says, "Hej!", but not with the apparent expectation that they will have a language in common.

She understands that, language barriers aren't an issue for her. She says "Hello" back except it comes across for each of them in whatever language they're most comfortable with.

Most of them start replying - in a bunch of different languages - and then they look at each other in puzzlement, and then the one who spoke first says, "What's your language?"

"Oh... is this a place where it's supposed to be hard to talk to each other? I guess I could just pick yours."

Most of these people are naked, though a couple of them have something on - one's got a pair of shorts, one's got a lovely cloth wrap in markedly better condition than the shorts. The pale ones haven't tanned despite apparently having a habit of sitting around in the sunshine naked all day. "I don't know about supposed to," says the speaker.

"Well things usually work out about how they're supposed to or else they get fixed or whoever set things up changes their mind and decides they're okay with the way things ended up. So... is it a place where it's hard to talk to people?"

"Well, it depends where you land. In a village like this one we mostly speak our pidgin."

"If you can understand each other locally and it's not too disruptive I'll keep talking the way I am if that's alright. I could try to pick up your mix if that's better but it would be a little awkward."

"No need to put yourself out on our account. I'd assumed your thing was your outfit, there, but - do you have another thing, for the languages -? Not that I have any idea what it might be."

"My thing? Oh, does everyone have abilities tied to some specific object around here? Hmm, what would I pick if I was going to do that?"

"...I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"I'm new around here so I'm not sure how things work yet. I appeared in the middle of the ocean and it was a long way to get here and find some people. It took almost a full half hour."

"Oh. Well, you're dead, and everybody gets one thing, though it can be a complicated thing," he gestures at the water slide. "Welcome to Limbo. That doesn't explain the business with the languages, though."

"I guess I can pretend that's what happened if it makes me fit in better. Just having my outfit and nothing else sounds pretty boring though. What kinds of things do people have?"

"What do you mean, pretend that's what happened? That's how everyone gets to Limbo..." says the guy.

She ignores the question. If she's pretending she shouldn't clarify. "Is that what you call this place, Limbo? That's simultaneously vague and slightly foreboding. Neat! What sorts of things do people do in or on Limbo? Is there some sort of unifying theme or mechanic beyond the everyone gets one thing bit?"

"...that's basically it. The ocean was someone's thing. There's not much here besides things that are somebody's. We just... hang out. Not much going on."

"That feels... unfinished is this place connected to other worlds somehow? You implied this is a  afterlife. I guess the main events could be happening wherever people are before they die."

"Right. There's also concordances, but that's pretty far from here."

"Hmm, what are concordances?"

"They're where Limbo runs into one of the other, nicer afterlives for a bit every few years."

"I see, if they're nicer and people are still here I assume there's a reason why people can't just move?"

"Only stuff can go to the other side of a concordance, not people. 'S where the train comes from."

"Alright I can work with that. Well, I suppose I'll just have fun. I might need to do something so nothing disruptive can go to one of the other afterlives just in case but it sounds like Limbo isn't an important part of whatever's going on in this world cluster. So... things are really scarce here. Do any of you want clothes? I don't have the infinite variety but I do have a decent number of options more if you count different colors as different options."

"...sure, if you have clothes to hand out some of us would like that."

"Oh, I guess I wasn't clear. I can make as many sets as I want I'm just limited to a set of patterns. I probably have thirty or forty complete outfits and a bunch of accessories mostly headgear of various sorts. Well, that's what I'm willing to make to start with anyway. Some things I should think about more. Vanity items aren't a big deal."

"- in that case we'll take as many as you can spare, what we don't wear we can trade with the neighbors."

"I still feel like you're not quite understanding me..."

A small mannequin is suddenly in her hand and it grows to person size before she puts it down. An old fashioned top hat suit jacket and matching pants appear on it. She repeats the maneuver with a pink dress, a wedding dress complete with veil, and a bikini of sorts made out of leaves.

"I could keep going for hours. I wouldn't because I'd have to start repeating myself by then and I would get bored but there are lots of options. I can keep making things as long as I feel like."

"All right, and we'll take as many as you feel like, and trade the spares with the neighbors," he repeats patiently.

"Do you have any requests? I can't promise I have any particular thing but it could be fun to see how close I could get. If not I can just do the basics and call it a day. I suppose I'll start with undergarments while you're thinking. Most clothes are more comfortable if you have something under them." She puts words to actions and a collection of sports bras and boxer briefs starts appearing on the ground.

The lady with the drape grabs some of these and ducks into a hut; everybody else loosely queues after her to take a selection.

"She wants a baju kurung," says the guy who's been talking, pointing at someone who has said something to him.

Whenever someone picks up an article of clothing it resizes itself to fit them.

"Hmm, I can't quite make one of those. I can offer a short sleeve dress that's somewhat close. This is one of the basic options." She pulls out a mannequin to demonstrate. It's indeed a short sleeve ankle length dress that seems designed to be moved in. "The Chef's coat could be layered over that though it wouldn't be put on the same way." She takes out another mannequin for the coat. "I also have some other dress and robe options. The dresses definitely tend more towards European styles though." She pulls out another three sets of European style dresses to demonstrate followed by two styles of robes one which is a single unbroken line the other cinched at the waist with flared shoulders. "Oh, I also have graduation gowns from the European tradition." She pulls out one of those. "I can also just make bolts of silk and spools of thread but anything you make with those isn't officially clothing and doesn't have the benefits or quirks of being officially clothing."

"What do you mean, officially clothing - we'll still take it, we could make curtains and beds and things -"

"Oh I can make furniture too if you want that. Official clothing will automatically resize to fit anyone, will never get dirty, won't inhibit movement and is effectively indestructible. On the other hand, it will be no more protective than mundane clothing even where being indestructible should result in more protection."

"Yes, we want furniture too. We're indestructible but most clothes aren't." He gestures at the guy wearing the shorts.

"Oh neat, I didn't realize people here were indestructible. What sort of furniture do you want I have all sorts of themes though a relatively limited selection inside any given theme. Disregarding cosmetics and one-offs, I have sofas, chairs, soft beds, tables, side-tables, dressers, chandeliers, candles, lamps, lanterns, candelabras, pianos, candelabras, sinks, bookcases and... bathtubs."

"Well, we don't have power for the lights, but everything else."

"The lights power themselves and the plumbing bits fill and drain without being attached to anything."

"- ah, in that case lots of everything."

"Hmm... that sounds boring. What can I do to avoid that... Oh, I know, I could give you the ability to do it. Does that sound good?"

"- yes. Me specifically or can someone else have it?"

"I don't have any preference on who gets to make what. It probably makes sense to divide things up a few ways so one person isn't making all the furniture or all the clothes or all the whatever else I end up giving out the ability to make."

"It should be someone who wants to travel, so they can go around to many villages and hand things out."

"That does sound like it makes sense."

He interviews various villagers and comes up with three who are willing to walk around being "the train", whatever that means.

"So how should I divide things up. For now I'm planning to give out the ability to make furniture, clothing and some raw materials for making things by hand. It might be easiest to divide it up that way or I could give each of you the ability to make some of each or I guess I could give you all the ability to make everything that seems kinda boring though."

"If you don't want to give them all the ability to make everything then giving them all the ability to make some of each will still let every village they hit have most of the benefit up front while allowing trade later."

"That makes sense. Okay, so here's the plan, each of you gets the ability to make basic clothing, a third of the weird costumes, a third of the more practical stuff, fourteen furniture sets, silk, thread, and a couple types each of wood, metal and stone materials. You already seem to have plenty of dirt around so I won't worry about that. Does that sound reasonable?"

"Yes, thank you!"

She taps each of them on the head gently. After she does so they should feel a button of sorts at the edge of their mind. "Oh interesting, I almost couldn't do that, I think I only could because you already agreed."

"Huh, maybe it's like drug effects and being indestructible means we need to give permission?" suggests her interlocutor, as the tapped people start experimenting with making things. One starts trying to make a stone house.

The interface seems to allow them to make blocks and cylinders of stone in whatever size and thickness they want up to about ten meters on a side. They can only create things where nothing but air is occupying the space. There isn't any provision for joining materials together but a simple structure with walls and a flat roof should be easily achievable.

This is very exciting, apparently. Somebody is energetically smacking two rocks into each other to get convenient shapes soon enough.

That works as you would expect the stone is not indestructible.

Yaaaay! They are all very excited about the things they can do with all this stuff.

Their excitement is contagious and she's hops about watching them experiment with things. Chandeliers and lanterns will attach to the bottom of horizontal surfaces. Everything else is freestanding. All the furniture is indestructible.

Soon they have replaced all their huts with stone and wood houses and somebody's busily chipping a stone into a tool suitable for carving the wood into a more decorative shape and turning the fabric into curtains over their doors and windows.

She continues to be pleased, she's shaken things up everyone is happy and nobody's come along with to tell her off for messing with balance.

Indeed, no one seems to think there was a balance to throw off in the first place. After a little while the three chosen emissaries set off for neighboring villages, one each way along the coast and one striking off inland.

"So... about concordances? Are those an all the time thing or just a sometimes thing and do they happen at consistent places?"

"Consistent places," says the spokesman. "But only every few years and not all at once."

"What are the other afterlives like? What makes them better?"

"The people in them have powers - to make things on their own, or change them, or move them, and the last one has plants and animals and weather all by itself."

"Those do sound like useful abilities. And having living things around sounds nice. I could do something about that actually... you probably don't want corruption, crimson or hallow but normal grass should be pretty safe. Jungle stuff is borderline... people here are indestructible but I don't think being stung by bees is enjoyable even if you are indestructible."

"It'd at least be something new. Precious little of that."

"That's a good point." She takes out a long staff with what looks like a rose on the end and vines curling along it's sides. She taps it on the ground and a square thirty meters on a side is covered in grass. "The grass will spread and grow some wildflowers on its own. If you use it on mud it'll spawn jungle grass instead. It can also plant trees on either kind of grass, sand or snow. Bare dirt won't do." She hands it over. "If you don't want it yourself I'm sure you'll be able to find someone who does."

"Thank you!" he says, accepting the staff with both hands and bowing.

"You're welcome." It's great how much everyone likes her gifts here. She wanders around for a while watching people do things. If nobody approaches her she'll pick something else to do.

They are building and carving and taking baths and installing lights and sewing and laughing and chattering in their village pidgin.

She'll watch for a while and then go make a beach on the side of the ocean.

It's not totally unlike a beach already but it's definitely more mud than sand.

Sand seems more classically beachy to her and also people here seem to like variety.

They do! They're pretty occupied with the current variety but someone does call a thank-you for the sand.

Hmm everyone seems pretty busy and happy at this point. She asks for directions to where the next concordance will be and starts heading in that general direction.

It's a couple months' walk That Way.

A couple months is a long time so obviously she won't walk. She summons a golf cart gets in it and drives at about 66 kph.

That is faster than walking and will cut down her travel time considerably, though not down to "a quick jaunt". There are more villages, mostly clustered around trees and other stationary Limbo Things - houses, temples, ponds, a golf course, a theater.

How interesting, a golf course. That sounds fitting considering her current mode of transport. She'll stop and visit that.

It's pretty crowded for a golf course - people are hanging out on it apparently just to enjoy lying on the grass - but it's still recognizably that, with perfectly maintained grass and sand traps and all. Three people are actually golfing around the people who are lounging on its slopes.

Huh, that is unusual but she supposes it makes sense with how this place works. She finds someone and says hello.

"Hi," says this person who is lying on the "beach" of a water hazard.

"Hi, I think this is the biggest thing I've seen other than the ocean. It's weird how much people's one thing seems to vary in size isn't it?"

"Yeah, it really is. This one is Josh's, but he's not here right now."

"Oh so people can leave their thing behind and go elsewhere? I didn't realize. I figured whoever had the ocean was one of the people hanging around there."

"I don't know whose the ocean is. Maybe they just swim all the time. Maybe they got sick of it a hundred years ago, the ocean's been around a while."

"That would make sense, I didn't look through the whole ocean but what I did see was just water and nothing else no cool fish or coral reefs or underwater volcanos."

"Yeah. I guess a cool ocean would be more than one thing."

"What sorts of things do you wish Limbo had that it doesn't?"

"Plants. And maybe weather. Not a lot of weather, but like, any weather. I miss clouds. I can't believe nobody's managed to die firm in the conviction that whatever the afterlife is like it at least needs clouds, that's a pop culture staple. Maybe clouds aren't thingy enough."

"Hmm, clouds.... I can see that. It is a little boring having a clear sky all the time. I don't feel like there's enough wind to blow them around though. They'd just be fixed in place like this golf course."

"Wind would be nice too. We sometimes get a little breeze, this close to the ocean, but mostly it's dead."

"I could make permanent clouds, for real though. I'm just not sure that's what you really mean. There's a few types I could make actually. There's insubstantial ones and then ones you can stand on." She appears a block about a hand across of both types between them.

"...I have... no idea what you just did."

"I... made clouds... like I said I could?"

"That's a cube."

"Cubes of cloud. I can make them in other shapes but cubes are easiest."

"If that's fluff like they have in Heaven, I guess, but I meant, like, real clouds. Those are never cubes."

"Oh, they have clouds you can walk on in one of the other afterlives? That's neat. Anyway, if it's not what you meant it's not what your meant." She waves a hand and the cubes disappear.

"In Heaven, yeah, they call it cloudfluff because it can sort of look like that. They have some in the museum in Hereafter."

"Oh cool, I'll have to visit sometime. Is that near here?"

"Nah - well, not on foot."

"You might be surprised how fast I can run. How far away is it?"

"Last time I went it took me six weeks but I didn't go straight, I stopped a few places."

"That doesn't sound too bad, what direction is it in?"

He points.

"Would you like a golf cart? It seems kinda fitting to leave it here considering."

"I would love a golf cart, thank you."

"Well, that's that taken care of then. No keys needed and the controls should work pretty normally."

"You're too kind. Have a nice time in Hereafter when you get there."

"Thanks, it's nice of you to say that." She summons a giant rabbit as big as a horse gets on it and it starts running. The rabbit is almost but not quite as fast as the golf cart once it hits it's stride.

"Whoa," says the guy, though by the time he says it she's probably too far to hear.

Limbo villages thin out farther from the coast, and then start densifying again as she approaches the concordance zone.

She'll slow down to maybe half her top speed once things get a bit thicker. Half the fun of doing silly things is to see people's reactions.

People do look at her and her giant rabbit as she bounds past, sticking their heads out of their mud huts and dropping down from trees to get a better view.

She will keep going unless someone tries to wave her down or talk to her.

Somebody tries to chase her! They have a big malamute.

She'll slow even further down to make it fun, keeping just a little out of reach and having the rabbit jump a bit more erratically.

They think this is great, apparently, and will keep chasing her for a really really long time.

She'll give it a good half hour. It's more fun than most of what she's been doing here. Then she'll pretend the rabbit is getting tired and let them catch her. The rabbit is not harmed or even apparently bothered by the dog's teeth.

The dog and the runner catch up. "Where'd you get that! It's huge! Is there a mortal industry of giant rabbits now?"

"I made it, I'm from another place that isn't any of the afterlives or wherever people start off before they die and I'm wandering around finding ways to make Limbo less boring."

"New kind of concordance?"

"I intentionally destabilized a form of interworld travel because I was bored. It didn't quite have the results I was hoping for but I'm satisfied with the outcome."

"Wow. What were you hoping for?"

"Well, mostly the portals drew in monsters of various sorts. I was hoping to get new monsters to fight."

"Is fighting monsters... fun?"

"It depends, it's mostly fun when you balance things so that there's a surmountable challenge. If I had gotten new types of monsters the goal would have been to figure out how strong they are and see if I can make them appear consistently. Then it could be part of the challenge me and my siblings run back home."

"Huh. I guess it could be fun to try fighting a ton of monsters and see how it went, though I haven't been indestructible that long so it's a weird idea."

"Yeah, being able to try again when you mess up makes things a lot more fun than if a mistake means you die and never get to try again."

"No kidding." He scratches his dog behind the ears. "Thanks for the chase. We like running and there's so little to run to, you know?"

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I had fun too. I would offer you a rabbit like this but I don't think it would be what you want. It looks like a rabbit but it's closer to being a fancy bike. It won't actually move on it's own."

"...yeah, that's a pretty cool concept but not for me specifically."

"I thought so. Is there anything else you're wishing for? I have a weird medley of abilities so it's possible there is something I could do that you would enjoy."

"Do you have... shoes. Magic wands. Plants. Electricity. Food."

"I actually have some things in all of those categories... well I don't really have electricity. But I have lights and conveyer belts that work without it."

"Like they're battery powered?"

"No, they just stay on forever without needing power."

"...wicked. I'm more excited about food but it'd be nice not to be fumbling around in pitch dark every night. Do you have, like, bags, Hal here can carry some stuff for me if you can get him panniers."

"That's as good a place to start as any." Suddenly she's holding a purple star speckled sack about the size of a briefcase with a slight glow coming from the mouth. "Here, you should be able to put a lot into this. It'll preserve whatever's in there and you should be able to pull out what you want to pull out." She holds it out.

"Wow. Kind of girly color but I guess beggars can't." He takes it. Feels around inside.

Even if he sticks his arm in up to the shoulder he can't feel the bottom it's like reaching into thin but warm air.

"Whoaaaaa. How will I get something out again if it's bottomless?"

"The bag and the empty space you're feeling are both part of the interface to a piece of magic. If you want to pull something out, it'll be floating waiting for you to do so. If not, then it'll be empty like you're feeling now. It's also locked to the person. If I put something in you couldn't take it out and vice versa. If you forget what's in it you can have it give you everything that you stored in it one thing at a time."

"Wild! Did you put anything in here that you're gonna want back?"

"I have different magic for the same purpose. Also, I can make more bags like that and they're all connected."

"They're all connected? I guess the locking to a person thing means nobody can steal the stuff..."

"Yep, there's no way to steal things. Where I come from having it work like that makes it harder to steal things actually since you can't hold a bag hostage to keep stuff from someone."

"Neat. I could get a distro route with this. Not sure I want one, mind, but I could."

"What's a distro route?"

"Traveling around handing out stuff from the train."

"Oh, for the stuff sent via concordance."

"Yeah. Closer in there's actual tracks that go around, but a lot of people live farther away, so folks who can carry a lot - like if they've got a car - or just like to tromp around handle the last few hundreds of miles."

"That makes sense. So... you had a list shoes are an easy place to start, I have two options for you. The first is basic shoes that will never wear out and always be comfortable to wear but otherwise don't do anything special. The second option is boots that also let you run faster."

"...are the boots also comfortable and never-wearing-out?"

"Yep."

"Then yeah, I'll take those. I don't s'pose they come in dog sizes." He pats the dog.

"I hadn't thought of that but they should work yeah, they resize themselves to fit whoever's wearing them that's part of how they're always comfortable. They come in these four colors."

Four pairs of boots appear. The first is a green on the lighter side of plant leaves. The second is a sort of blue that evokes a cold day. The third is a teal color. The fourth are brown with a bit of sandy yellow on the top most portion. They all have little wings coming off the back.

"Oh, snazzy." He takes the blue and puts the green ones on Hal.

She makes a second pair of green ones for Hal's back paws and vanishes the others.

Hal sniffs the boots but he is a Good Dog and does not try to bite them off his paws.

"I'd take some other clothes too if you've got 'em. Especially underwear. I'm mostly used to the nudity situation around here but I'm not totally used to flopping around."

"That's easy enough, just underwear or do you want other stuff too?"

"I'd take an entire pair of pants and a hat. Don't feel like I need a shirt, I'm in the best shape of my life."

"I can do pants, any preference on color? Also do you want a hat like mine a cap with a bill, or something else?"

"A hat shaped like yours is fine, and let's match the boots?"

She makes pants and a hat according to those preferences. "So... food, I have a weird collection of food options. There's a bunch of seafood, a bunch of fruit, some simple stuff you might expect to someone to make from hunting in a forest, and then a bunch of random prepared dishes. Like cookies and pad thai and pizza. Oh and marshmallows."

"...and anything in the bag stays good forever?"

"Yep, though there's a limit on how much can fit. The bag's magic is also weird so having a lot of one thing takes up the same amount of space as just one of it, up to a certain limit."

"...can I have that limit of all the foods, then?"

"That would take up more than half of the space in the bag but yes."

"I like food and it's almost impossible to get any here."

"Alright, actually putting all that in one at a time would take a really long time but I can put it all in for you. There will be 9999 of each of the items on this list." She produces a piece of paper with the list written on it and hands it over.

"Hah, I don't recognize some of these things but I guess I'll find out what they are and if I hate them I can give them away. Throw a party."

"Parties are fun. I encourage throwing parties."

"Do they have dishes?"

"They have dishes when you need dishes. Drinks all come with containers. Things you can't eat just by holding it comes with plates. They don't come with utensils but I included some, just the basics forks, spoons, knives and chopsticks. They'll clean themselves whenever you put them back in the bag."

"And the plates and cups keep existing after they're empty?"

"They can, but anyone can also make them disappear if they want when they're holding an empty one."

"- awkward! Hopefully nobody will do that and then regret it if I give them a plate."

"Any remaining food residue will disappear with the dishes so at least they won't regret it for that reason."

"I guess! Though Hal might not regret it if he were around." Scratch scratch.

"Unfortunately, it's impossible to please everyone."

"Tragic. Say, what's your name?"

"I'm Akira. What's yours?"

"Damian. Lovely to meet you."

"It's good to meet you too."

"Are there going to be more of you?"

"I don't think so, but I have given some of my powers to other people. Giving everything could be kinda dangerous though, some of the things I could make would hurt a lot of people if they were used around people who weren't indestructible."

"...there aren't any people who aren't indestructible in Limbo. Unless you're not?"

"I'm not, but I also can't die permanently. I'm more worried about things spreading beyond Limbo. Maybe that's not actually something I need to worry about though."

"We get concordances to the daeva realms, and even export a handful of things to Fairyland - they'll send stuff on to Hell or Heaven if that's where it's going and they don't need us to assemble an outgoing train with fuel to drag stuff across, we do that only with Fairyland I think - but not to the mortal realm where there are squishy people."

"Is there any way for people to take things from the other afterlives to the mortal realm?"

"I guess they could bring them along on summonses, the daeva can get summoned."

"I see... I think I'm getting a better sense of things from that. It still doesn't really feel like the right vibe to hand out weapons but maybe I don't need to be as worried about other things."

"I don't really need any weapons, personally," he shrugs. "What would I even do with them, right?"

"Some of them could probably double as fireworks or could be used to see how deep the dirt layer goes but otherwise nothing much."

"I think the dirt goes on forever but I guess we could blow out a big crater and irrigate it from the ocean and have a salt lake?"

"That would make sense. I do actually have vehicles designed to do excavation though."

"Oh, neat, like a bobcat or whatever?"

"I'm not sure what a bobcat is. What I have is called the Drill Containment Unit. It's a flying vehicle with mining lasers that can convert stuff in their path into a compacted form. It wouldn't work on people or other indestructible stuff but it could work on some other things people have made and it would definitely work on the dirt."

"Wow, fancy. The dirt's not already as compact as it gets?"

"It's magically compacted. A cubic meter of dirt becomes something you can hold on the palm of your hand and expand at will."

"Whoa! Does it make better buildings that way than just doing the mud thing?"

"I wouldn't suggest using the compacted form as a building material. Expanding the dirt into the shape of walls would work a little better than using mud bricks but not by a lot and I don't think it would work that well for roofs. I can just give people the ability to make wood, stone and metal. Those work better as building materials. I could also give out my full ability to build things but that's a bit more abusable since it can make indestructible boxes someone could be trapped in."

"Oh, yeah, that does sound bad. I think current state of the art for people who are awful nuisances is to shove them into a pit but then they can get out eventually, faster with help."

"Yeah, what I gave out is the ability to make raw materials that can then be reshaped by mundane means. It's certainly possible to use that to trap people but you don't need magic tools to free them. The way I have to make things like that into indestructible structures anchors them into place even if they're floating in midair."

"Whoa. That actually sounds really cool but I don't want anyone to be stuck there forever."

"It is people back home make some really pretty and exotic things. It's just everyone back home has the ability to remove things so being trapped isn't a risk."

"Can you give that ability out too?"

She starts to speak then pauses. "I was about to say I can give out abilities but not the ability to give out abilities, but that particular ability is tied to magic items so I could give people the ability to make those magic items."

"The removal one? Then you could let people make stuff in midair and it'd still be possible to rescue anyone who somebody boxed up."

"Yeah, it would be. I'm trying to decide if I should setup a self-sustaining system or just hope that a bunch of people with the ability to make pickaxes is sufficient. I don't think I can make something truly infinite but it still might scale better. The disadvantage is I lose some control of what exactly people can make. None of the really dangerous stuff should be available as long as I'm careful but it puts some more constraints on what's safe."

"Pickaxes? Like, special magic pickaxes?"

"Yeah they would work like I said the DCU does though less efficiently it would only compact cubes about a third of a meter on each side."

"DCU? Oh, the drill thing with the lasers?"

"Yeah, that."

"Big improvement on most people needing to use our bare hands."

"Yeah, giving people raw materials they can use to make tools that aren't indestructible would hopefully also have done that just slower. I thought about things a little more and as long as I don't give out the ability to make inherently magic metals it shouldn't cause any issues if I give out the ability to make magic tables."

"What's magic about the tables?"

"They let you transmute certain specific things from the right raw materials including more tables."

"Oh, neat!!"

"Yeah, it's a big part of how people do things back home."

"What are the magic metals - I'm not asking for any -"

"Let's see, there's meteorite, hellstone, demonite, crimtane, cobalt, palladium, orichalcum, mythril, adamantite, titanium, chlorophyte, shroomite, spectre metal and luminite."

"...I think at least some of those are normal nonmagical metals but I guess I have no idea why you speak English."

"Huh, which ones do you think are mundane?"

"Titanium and cobalt and I think palladium but I could be remembering wrong about that one, it might be like mythril which I do think is not normal."

"That could be a problem... though the real issue would be if mythril or orichalcum were mundane. Cobalt just makes someone hit harder and run faster when made into armor and palladium does that plus heals you when you hit something animate that you're trying to damage. Other than that it just lets you make really sharp weapons and supernaturally good crossbows."

"I haven't heard of cobalt or palladium doing those. They make airplanes out of titanium, I think."

"You need Mythril or Orichalcum to make anything dangerous from Titanium."

"Huh. So titanium itself isn't magic then."

"I think that depends on what you mean by magic. Refined titanium doesn't have any inherently magical properties as far as I'm aware. But of those I mentioned only Hellstone and Meteorite do and all those do is stay hot. The magical properties come in when you transmute them into things."

"Huh. How hot?"

"They're magically warm, they are a little below the temperature needed to burn someone who isn't indestructible. They're also always a bit warmer than the material surrounding them even if that material is really hot. Their ores are similar except those are magically guaranteed to burn anyone who isn't protected against being burned."

"Huh. I can't really think of a use for that. If they're not hot enough to burn they're not hot enough to cook."

"That's generally the way of things, objects from my world are mostly designed to fulfill a particular purpose or aesthetic and aren't very amenable to uses falling outside those limits."

"Why's that? Who's designing 'em?"

"Most items and the core magic were made by the Logic they're the ones who created the entire cluster of worlds we're from with all their variants. My siblings and I came along after and carved out our own subcluster and added new things and tweaked older ones to be more to our preferences."

"The... Logic?"

"They're a group of people who took a worldseed and turned it into the cluster of worlds known as Terraria."

"A worldseed?"

"All of the world clusters I visited before this one and I suspect this one too are crafted from worldseeds. They're the concentrated potential of a universe. I don't really know how people find them or how common they are. I know me and my siblings came from somewhere else but we lost a lot of our memory as part of the trade for being able to carve out our subcluster. When I spoke to the Logic they've said that they are in a similar situation to my siblings. I guess they could be lying."

"So you're saying God exists, and there are a bunch of them, and their claim to fame is stumbling across seeds and deciding to make something of them??"

"Maybe? That word you're using has a lot of meaning behind it and I don't think it all applies. Creators are people the same as visitors and the instantiated. They don't have unlimited time or attention and they're usually not particularly smarter or more skilled than the average person."

"Where are they when they find the seeds, where are the seeds?"

"I don't actually know, that's the central core of what we all forget. If we ever decide to stop being creators we'll get our memories back."

"And being a creator is how you can hand out all this stuff? - why didn't you write it down?"

"Strictly speaking, yes but I can only give out items and abilities my siblings and I have decided visitors are allowed to have. I can't make new items or abilities while I'm here. As for not writing down what we were about to forget, we weren't able to bring anything with us."

"Is this even what you originally looked like? Like, you're funny looking, but not a space alien."

"This is similar to what my body looked like before but I've definitely tweaked some things."

"Some people manage to have self-concepts that are pretty weird and then their indestructibility gets the hint. Helps if they import some Fairyland fruit that speeds that up."

"Oh, like gender change potions?"

"Some of them are just doing that, yeah."

"Oh, so it's a full customization of appearance. I think Visitors get to do that. Well... except in places where Visitors are taking over the role of a specific person. I remember visiting somewhere like that once. One of the narrative focused worlds. It still had cool fights though."

"You keep like... pronouncing 'visitors' with a capital letter."

"Visitors like Creators are people from wherever place I was before I became a Creator I think. Depending on who you ask they're either the entire purpose of the worldseeds or just a substantial portion of the purpose. More specifically, when people say that they mean the point is to give the Visitors an experience."

"...huh. I don't think we... have... those? Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding."

"Yeah... I've been a bit confused about that, at first my assumption was that they were all just in the world where people are before the afterlives but there are sooo many instantiated people here as far as I can tell. Nobody I've met and talked to felt like scenery. It may be that this place is just completely outside the paradigm I'm accustomed to."

"I mean, everybody here used to be alive, also."

"It is possible to sculpt instantiated people such that they don't notice the discordant features of their world and smoothing over the weird things Visitors say is something I've seen that used for. I just wouldn't expect the sort of Creators who do that to also create a place like this unless it was somehow essential to the experience they were trying to craft. And I don't have any guesses as to how it would be."

"So you're - a content creator of a weird vacation destination universe - but you decided to go do something else and now you're here, creating, uh," he hefts his bag, "content?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"Any guess why you wound up here?"

"The portals do allow for travel between the vacation destination universes, as you so aptly described them. If this is one of those, just a really weird one then it's totally reasonable. If this is somewhere else... I'm really not sure. I guess it's a result of messing with things too much and breaking the safeties for lack of a better term."

"Huh. Magic portals have safeties? Like daeva bindings, or nah?"

"I don't know if it literally has safeties... like I said I'm guessing. I'm also not sure what daeva bindings are."

"Oh, when live people summon them they get fancy with it so the daeva can't go nuts and kill people."

"And that's necessary?"

"I don't know, I've never met a daeva."

"That's fair and if they're people then I guess some of them would go out of their way to make trouble."

"They are, yeah, sometimes dead people turn into them instead."

"Wait... do some people start as Daeva instead of living elsewhere and dying first?"

"Yeah, most of them aren't dead people, just a few."

"I wouldn't have expected that given the first reference I had to where they live was as better afterlives."

"I mean, they're afterlives, and better, but yeah, most people there just kind of pop into existence."

"Huh, interesting... I feel like if your world is a vacation universe my first guess would be that that's how the visitors show up. It still doesn't feel likely though."

"I mean, I guess it does sound like kind of a nice vacation. But they never, like, leave. They're indestructible like we are."

"I don't know enough to know if it's plausible but I would expect people leaving could be covered up as moving to a different part of the world. Especially with a large population."

"- nah, the demons would notice. I mean, I wouldn't, so maybe the demons are constantly going 'why do daeva keep disappearing for no reason' and just haven't told me, but they would notice."

"Why them specifically?"

"Because they can make stuff, so if someone is gone they'll notice trying to make them-and-where-they're-at-now doesn't work, I think?"

"That's.... a lot more flexible than I was expecting. Do they have any limitations at all?"

"I... assume so?"

"Fair enough, maybe the museum I was headed to in Hereafter will have that information. Otherwise, maybe I can talk to an actual Demon in a concordance."

"Oh, you won't be able to do that, people don't go into the concordances anymore. The thing opens up and they send a bullet train through and it just keeps going the entire time so it's all on this side when the window closes. It's the size of the concordance itself."

"Well there goes my plan to see if I can use a teleporter to bypass the restriction on people going through a concordance."

"... you have teleporters?"

"Multiple kinds actually. There's three potions that teleport you, a few devices that are similar and then the actual devices that when connected allow for teleportation between them."

"Oh, those would be game-changing. Mostly to get around in Limbo you have to walk. It takes so long."

"Yeah, the placed devices are the most predictable, sometimes in inconvenient ways though, if you connect three or more together only two of them do anything unless you get really fancy."

"So probably what you'd want to do is have a bunch of them in Hereafter all connected to different towns?"

"Either that or a loop. Everytime you activate one the animate entities above each linked teleporter are moved to another teleporter in the link."

"Animate entities? Does it make you leave all your stuff behind?"

"No, anything you're carrying or wearing comes with you. Animate entities is just the best term I could think of that includes animals, monsters and people."

"Monsters aren't animals?"

"Not unless you consider skeletons, ghosts and floating robot eyeballs animals."

"...wow, okay, I admit those do not sound like animals."

"Yeah, some monsters are, like the giant spiders and giant hornets. They're in the minority though. Undead are one of the larger categories especially if you combine spirits into that. And then there's weirder stuff like all the flying eyeballs; robot and otherwise."

"Where'd those come from?"

"They were invented by the Logic. It's possible they were inspired by something else but I don't know what if so. My siblings and I tweaked a lot of the monsters to make them a harder but fairer challenge, especially the bosses. There was a lot more randomness in the Logic's original design."

"Huh. Why'd the Logic do it that way?"

"Randomness is a faster path to variety than carefully designing things is. It also doesn't require synchronization."

"Huh. I guess that makes some sense."

"Yep, generally the worldseeds fill in details but for structured entities like my world's monsters someone has to specify how they behave."

"How do they fill in details?"

"The central example is that they can extrapolate an illustration into a three dimensional object. They can also create full people from a relatively minimal outline of their personality and other traits. I can come up with more if that's not enough to get the idea."

"Whoa, that's... creepy and cool... what are people created that way like?"

"It depends... if you have enough of them or enough other background to justify why there's only a few then they can be pretty much normal... insofar as someone as weird as me knows what a normal person is like. If you're having the worldseed paper over obvious gaps they just don't hear you when you say certain things and if you push them they either get mad or just forget part of the conversation. It can be pretty jarring. That's why we use scenery instead of instantiated for things that look like people in Terraria."

"Scenery?"

"Yeah, that's what I call it when you have something that looks like a person but only ever says things you came up with for them to say and only does things you came up with for them to do."

"- oh, like, an NPC."

"Yeah, people do use that term, but sometimes they mean anyone who isn't a visitor so I prefer scenery."

"I guess that's a distinction you'd have to make if there's also some who have, like, feelings and stuff, yeah."

"Yeah, it probably doesn't help that my siblings and I made scenery that can stand in for us when we're busy with other things and that sometimes we take on other roles usually filled by scenery... people get pretty confused."

"- yeah, I guess that would look like the same person sometimes being livelier than other times?"

"Yep, pretty much. Anyway, I'm happy to keep talking about this if you like but we have gotten a bit distracted from the teleporters you sounded so interested in."

"Oh, right, I don't personally need them in my day to day but some people would love them. You're already going to Hereafter though and that's where all the businessy people are."

"I'll make sure to mention it then."

"They'll be thrilled. They'll all be able to go on day trips to music festivals and get home to get back to all their important work."

"The important work being concordances?"

"Well, not all the time, there isn't one most years. But setting up all the long term infrastructure stuff they're trying to build out with what's sent along with the public interest cargo, sure."

"Concordances and the things they make possible," she agrees.

"They also have stuff they can do with things you can get off of people's Limbo Things. Sometimes I brush Hal and somebody spins his fur, stuff like that."

"How creative. I guess that will be one unfortunate consequence of what I'm doing, less effort put into solutions like that."

"I guess, but it's still nice."

"I agree, and I'm excited to see everything people do and create with the new tools I'm making available. I'm just accustomed to celebrating uniqueness and it's a little sad that in some ways there will be less of it here than there was before."

"Enh, most of Limbo's very samey."

"Yeah, that's true, I guess with a few exceptions most people's one thing isn't too out there."

"Yeah. The older folks mostly got, like, trees. Still some of those in the modern day but fewer as we got more... stuff."

"That makes sense. Goodness, if your world has a true history there must be people who are millenia old here. Do people remember that far back?"

"I think not that well. I don't know any of them, I'm only a hundred and... nine? I think a hundred and nine but I'll do the math again next time I learn the Earth date."

"I'm not really sure how old I am either. Layered memories are weird like that."

"Layered, what's that mean?"

"I mentioned that sometimes my role is played by scenery. One of the things I can do is absorb something of a summary of what my stand-ins experienced. The resulting memories are very strange. They encompass a lot more time than I can really claim to have experienced."

"Huh, I can see why that would be confusing. What is your role, exactly, that the scenery does for you?"

"Oh, I give advice, sell summons for rare monsters and offer a challenging fight somewhere around the midpoint of my world's order of events."

"Scenery are good at fighting?"

"The fights of my world are closer to a dynamic obstacle course than to hand-to-hand combat. I do things like shoot a volley of heart shaped projectiles on a fairly predictable path. Or create a grid of damaging energy with the safe zones marked a few seconds ahead of time."

"...video-gamey."

"...What's a video game?"

"...oh, that's gonna be complicated. I don't know anyone who's got a computer or anything. Uh. ...yeah I have no idea how to explain that."

"Fair enough."

"If you find somebody who's got an example, like someone who imported a console or who got a house that had an old Sega in it or whatever, you should get them to show you."

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

"The bag's only partly full, right? How many more things could it hold for me to give out?"

"Another 60 or so things."

"Any recommendations?"

"I'm not sure. I don't think building materials are a good fit because there wouldn't be enough for anything like the number of people. I could give you more clothing. That seems like something a lot of people would want. I could also give you torches or other light sources or furniture. I'm not sure what else people want around here."

"Light would be nice, if it lasts, and clothes and like - pillows."

"I can do all of that. Do you have any preference about what kind of lights you want? Most of what I have is freestanding but there are also lights that attach to walls or ceilings. They'll all keep working forever."

"Freestanding sounds good, we could have nighttime parties around them."

"How about this?" She produces a glowing ice sculpture about the same height as her.

"Wow, that's gorgeous -" Is it cold if he pokes it?

It's cold to the touch but not when he holds his hand close.

"Wild. Doesn't melt?"

"People ask that a lot. Ice doesn't have a habit of melting in my experience."

"If you find somebody whose thing has an ice machine in it and they give you ice it'll melt."

She giggles, "I can make something called an ice machine. It's for transmuting ice based furniture like that lamp from ice and other necessary ingredients."

"Wow. Regular ice machines just... freeze water, into ice, usually in some kinda shape."

"You know, I'm pretty sure the only time I've seen something freeze is from ice attacks or the way people spontaneously freeze in cold water sometimes. That ice doesn't melt though it just disappears so I'm not sure it's really made from freezing water."

"...people can die of cold, in cold water, but not, what, freeze solid?"

"Oh, being frozen doesn't kill you it just prevents you from moving for a a few seconds before you unfreeze."

"Your world is very different from ours," he says bemusedly.

"That seems like quite the understatement," she agrees.

"What kinds of things go on there besides monster fights, is there like a music scene or anything?"

"Some people do spend time playing music, I think there's other vacation universes that are designed to focus on that though so many people go there instead. The most common thing people do other than fighting monsters is building elaborate buildings and landscapes. Sometimes for functional purposes and sometimes just to enjoy looking at them."

"Man. What do these people take their vacations from?"

"Some of the details aren't clear to me but typically it comes down to seeking out excitement, variety and experiences not available in their normal life. Many people have mentioned that they enjoy being more athletic than they are capable of being outside of my world and others have said that it's a welcome break from drudgery, drama or ennui."

"It makes them more athletic?"

"While they're present in my world people can jump quite high. Even without equipment they can jump twelve feet straight up. That's not something they can accomplish in their world. They can also sustain running at 15 miles per hour for as long as they wish to."

"Wow!"

"And that's just the baseline, with the right equipment people can fly and run really really fast, though it can be hard to keep track of where you're going at that speed."

"Nothing about the place helps with that?"

"Oh it helps a lot with being aware of where you are. There's only so much it can help when you get close to breaking the sound barrier on foot though."

"I wonder how fairies deal with that."

"That's a good question. I think flying helps a lot. there's less to run into. I also think being indestructible helps. It certainly helps people in my world that anyone capable of that in my world doesn't get hurt from running walls or the ground."

"...do they get hurt from running into other things?"

"Only things that are dangerous to touch at all like monsters and traps and sometimes lava."

"Only sometimes lava?"

"People swim in lava all the time with the right equipment or potions. You don't even need special equipment or potions to breath as long as you don't burn to death."

"...does... making yourself unable to burn to death... also make you not need to breathe?"

"Now that you ask... it doesn't. For some reason people can just breathe lava in without issues even though they can't breathe in water or honey without special potions and suffocate in space."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It doesn't. It's still how things work though."

"Maybe your lava isn't even molten rock? If your ice isn't frozen water."

"I don't think things generally do phase changes in my world... the closest thing I can think of is the solids that form when two liquids touch each other. That consumes some of the liquid... or maybe replaces it."

"Okay. So your lava is different and maybe it's exactly like that amniotic-fluid-kinda stuff that people can breathe, or something."