Weather in Cross[]
Effects of a low-gravity front
Magic levels and other localized rules of physics leak through open cross-dimensional portals, causing variations in how technology, magic, and other aspects of reality work in different parts of Cross. These leaks are called "weather" by the inhabitnants. People are still learning to track and control these leaks, which can flow unpredictably from place to place. Poorer districts and those with lax rules about portal placement often have very little control over the weather.
Types of Weather[]
The Fog
Outside the city and in carefully-walled off areas of varying size, there is a kind of "weather" known as The Fog. It is misty and obviously cloud-like, comes in various colors, and usually people who go in do not come out. Sometimes they come out before they went in, or several instances of them will come out (all with different traits, some of whom cannot see eachother). Sometimes people come out that never went in. Things that try to exit the Fog are known as "fogborn", regardless of what they appear to have been before. Many (but not all) fogborn eventually prove to have unsettling properties that were not immediately apparent. Most districts do not allow them inside. ReynoldsDistrict is an exception.
Leaks
Weather (or physics) leaks appear to occur when the rules pertaining to certain universes make their way through portals or other gateways into Cross. A wide variety of weather patterns may be caused by these leaks, which can affect magic, technology, or the basic rules of how people think the universe works.
Weather leaks don't necessarily happen every day, and in the absence of an obvious leak, people's pyshics work the way they expect it to. In many districts, weather leaks are prevented to a great degree.
Examples of weather leaks manifistations are:
- High and Low weather fronts: It is common to get weather which causes an increase or decrease in the effectiveness of certain things. It might affect magic, or a kind of technology, or it may specfically only affect a cetain kind of magic (healing, necromancy, etc) or certain physical properties (the melting poitn of gold, strength of gravity).
- Low Gravity Fronts: A common weather that affects only a specific phyiscal property, it is theorized to be caused by leaks from universes where gravity does not pull objects towards each other. May also occur on the boundaries of areas that have drastically different gravities (such as found at the boundaries of a zero gravity district).
- Magic Squalls: Violent but brief storms of high magic energy, which may temporarily boost magical powers (possibly to dangerously explosive levels). Super science does well during these storms, but high tech often fails. Magic lightning rods may help prevent some magical overload.
- Reality Waves: Periods of time when magic doesn't work as well, sometimes being "becalmed" entirely. High tech works fitfully depending on how far from mundane tech it gets, while super science fails the further it gets from "real" science. Some of the more mundane districts are constantly at the mercy of overwhelming reality.
- Electron Clouds: Like a gritty smog that rolls in not quite at ground level, but not quite in the sky either. High tech works more effectively, though may overload. Magic works normally, but super science tends to falter.
- Static: This can't be seen coming in, but static storms fill the air with an electric feeling. High tech and magic tends to short out, or go very wrong. But super science does exceptionally well. Especially when blowing things up.
- Physics Hurricanes: These weather patterns are rare, and usually combined with actual high winds. During this time, magic, high tech, super science, and even mundane electronics get supercharged and behave erratically.
Weather altering technology/magic[]
- Rivets: A Rivet is a small, fixed, area that has a specificaly set 'Weather' that cannot be either altered or pumped out in any yet known fashion.