Editing General Setting Information (section)

=== '''GREATER OREXIS''' ===
What about the rest of Orexis, the lands that lay outside of Karteria's protective shell? There is more to the island than a lone city, though when it comes to centers of population, arcane radiation has rendered them effectively a thing of the past.

==== Greater Karteria ====
Directly outside of Karteria itself, there remain the abandoned shells of homes and businesses, largely emptied of anything useful (by their former owners, or later opportunists, it's hard to say). It wasn't so long ago that the city had been a sprawling and thriving metropolis, taming and converting nearby forests and wetlands into human-friendly habitations. But when the barrier went up, not all of Karteria could fit within it, and the difficult decision was made to abandon all at the edges, so that the densely-populated core could be protected.

This choice was not without its detractors. No one wanted to leave their home, or abandon what they'd built at the then-outskirts of the city. In efforts to rehouse the displaced, whole sections of Inner Karteria (primarily within Belle Ville, Gloria, and East Sophia) were converted from single-family dwellings and duplexes, into apartments intended to fit as many as possible. While some monetary compensation was provided to all those affected, the reconfiguration left almost all in a worse place than before. The poorer districts became poorer, as more stress was put on dated infrastructure, and prices only continue to increase.

No one was happy with this. No one ''is'' happy with this. Yet while none were ''forced'' to leave their home in Greater Karteria, rising illness (and being cut off from water and electricity) finally forced the hand of those who initially elected to remain.

So that dense core of Inner Karteria is even ''more'' dense now, and the citizens who lost their homes in the compression (or who were made to share theirs with the displaced) will be none too pleased with the addition of more bodies.

===== Decaying Village — Life at the Edge =====
Not ''all'' of the buildings on the outside of Karteria's barrier are uninhabited. There remain small pockets of people determined to survive in an increasingly hostile (to humanity) landscape. The primary collection of these attempted settlers live Southwest of the city.

Their reasons for being there are varied. Some are conspiracy theorists wary of Patho-Gen and the Council. Some don't think the radiation is as bad as people say, and that clean living and measured exposure will enable them to endure it. Others ''can't'' consistently find a place to stay within Karteria, and shelter here, hoping to survive until their fortunes improve. And there's some few that just... didn't want to leave the lands they grew up in.

Officially outside of Karteria's jurisdiction, they are also outside of its laws, protections, and punishments. While these "defectors" receive no consistent help from inside the city, there have been some attempts made from both Patho-Gen and the Augmented to improve their living conditions. But it remains an uncomfortable, difficult time out there, a tangible look at what it's like to try and survive as a human outside the Karterian barrier.

==== Lost Towns: Phantasia and Doxa ====
To view a map of Orexis is to notice that Karteria is not the only named settlement on the island. But while the average Karterian might express curiosity or concern over the fate of Kelesis or Enochlesis, no one seems to care much about either of these more 'local' townships.

However, Augmented exploration to the North has managed to reconnect with the ailing population of '''Phantasia'''. More information can be found here on the town and its environs, but to summarize: Phantasia consists of around 500 people huddled around small farms and decaying buildings. Karteria helped to fund and build their barrier, which is a much simpler, less effective version of the one that shields Karteria. The population is extremely wary, watchful, and stoic. They feel certain that these are the end times. While not hostile to visitors, they want nothing to do with either Karteria or the Augmented.

Some overtures of material help have been made, if with limited success, given how withdrawn the population is. But teleporters have been set up closer to Phantasia, connecting Karteria to the Northern part of Orexis. While the Phantasians are completely opposed to leaving their home, they have suggested a reason for it to the Augmented who visited them: their ancestry ties them to '''Lupê''', a culture who valued living with the land rather than taming it. Cooperation, rather than control. Karterian 'Calling' magic is anathema to them, as is the big city life. It's a wildly different interpretation of the fallen Lupê than what's said in Karteria. (As it turns out, their ancestors were not of Lupê, but this idea of their cultural mores persists, embedded deeply in Phantasian life.)

The areas around Phantasia are absolutely ''inundated'' with Katalyth outcroppings, and both flora and fauna have adapted through rapid mutation.

While attempts to reach '''Doxa''' were similarly successful, the harbor town was discovered to be completely empty of its former human population. The original description can be found here, but to summarize: Nature has already begun to reclaim the abandoned Doxa. While there are some fragmented human skeletons around the town, there's no sign that any great number of people died here. There ''is'' sign that there was an orderly emigration from the area; the people who abandoned this town knew they weren't coming back.

There is presently no easy way to reach Doxa, as no teleportation platforms have been installed in that direction. Were seafaring ever revived, Doxa would be a reasonable staging point for an approach towards Ekklisis, the island to the West.

==== Other Lands & Features ====
What may be surprising to some, is that in the advent of arcane radiation, most forms of flora and fauna are... thriving? It's true that their lifespans tend to be shorter now than they once were. And mutations in their populations are becoming increasingly common (some benign, some less so). But to venture out into the marshlands, forests, and fields, you would not find a landscape bereft of life.

==== The Woods ====
To Karteria's West lies increasingly dense forests—creatively nicknamed "the woods". They're the only woods around, and the old habit of referring to them as such simply... stuck. While fragments of trails (and even parts of an attempted road network) remain, they have ''ravenously'' been reclaimed by nature. There's even the occasional campsite, or lonely cabin—but with no human visitors in decades, the conditions of either is questionable. Wild deer, boar, even bears can be found rooting about in the forests' undergrowth, protected from the sun by a thick canopy. Small predators also exist, such as foxes, stoats, and similar.

The terrain is rocky, even hilly, and natural outcroppings of Katalyth can be found as clusters upon boulders, or hidden in crevices. Their growth is not restricted to rock, however, and infestations of it have been found to wrap around the trunks of trees, bark melded into crystal. This direct contact ''does'' warp and kill the plant in question, and the sight of any dead or dying plant life is a sign to be cautious. Is this a normal blight, or is Katalyth about?
{| class="wikitable"
|+
|Patho-Gen & the Council '''STRONGLY''' encourage all citizens and Augmented to '''inform them immediately''' on coming across even small amounts of Katalyth in the wild! Clearing them up may not cure the world-wide pollution, but it might help everyone's immediate surroundings.

On encountering Katalyth, Patho-Gen asks all Augmented to use their Syntrofos to report it. For their convenience, the location of the character's Syntrofos will be transmitted automatically, and while there is also a field where characters are encouraged to write down any notable features of the sighting, the process is made as painless and simple as possible.

In addition, characters will receive some amount of money in return for each unique verified sighting.
|}
Some old adventurers swear that they've seen trees move, that the borders of the forest are changing on their own. Considering that hallucinations are one feature of arcane poisoning, their accounts aren't taken terribly seriously. One thing that ''is'' largely agreed on is that the composition of these forests is changing, and not necessarily in a positive direction. Though there's plenty of life, the mutations are a worrying trend, and who knows where they'll stop?

==== Asphodel Fields ====
To the South of Karteria lays an expanse of wetlands. Barely above sea level, these lands are water-logged and difficult to traverse at the best of times, and outright deadly at the worst. A shallow pool can suddenly give way to a chasm, leading many an unwary walker to drown. The mud is sticky and easy to be trapped in, and with the land flat and fog common, it's just as easy to become ''lost''.

These lands have never been particularly well-trod or well-developed. Some attempts have been made to drain the water, or even construct platforms to live above it, but neither approach showed much success. Even before arcane radiation became the problem that it is today, most of these attempts had been abandoned. No one ''wanted'' to live above a festering bog.

To go out there now, it's possible to still come across the skeletal remains of some abandoned building project. Harder to find are the skeletal remains of whoever built it, scattered and sunk deeper into the muck.

Presently, due to the effort of Augmented exploration (and some Patho-Gen guidance and materials), there are now multiple '''waystations''' breaking up the mess of marsh, providing places to rest and take shelter from the buggy climes. There are additionally '''teleportation platforms''' installed alongside some of these waystations, allowing one to skip directly from the origin point (Patho-Gen HQ, within Karteria), across the swamp—all the way to the bridge connecting Orexis to Eparsis. And even across it, with the furthest point being just outside the borders of Kelesis itself! Asphodel Fields is now a holiday destination for those who love bugs and muck, rather than a treacherous impasse for anyone trying to explore Southwards.

As in the forests, life of a sort thrives here. Insects and avians abound, as do a variety of reptilians. Arcane radiation has made its own mark on the land, as all mud and water here is '''deadly to ingest''', at least for a human... and not recommended for the Augmented either. Simply coming in contact with the tainted materials invites rashes and fever, and to be bitten by the insects that live here is similarly dangerous. Physical masses of the arcane mineral are suspected to lay underneath the marshbeds, but who's going to go looking for them?

(Reptilian, Arthropod, Cephalopod, and Golem-types have an easier time in this landscape than others. Terra-types have it ''particularly'' rough, unless the particular plant(s) they're based on are comfortable in marshes and swamps. Aves-types can potentially fly above it... but will have to land eventually.)