Forbidden Zone

When you think you've seen the worst this blasted Surface has to offer, you see something like the Zone.

— Senchai, Blight-Tracker

The Forbidden Zone is where the mysterious Q'x have rent reality and reshaped the Surface to match whatever beyond that spawned them. The Zone is a small part of the Surface, surrounded by Blight and cut off from them rest of Araea by the Shrouded Lands almost year around. On occasion, the Shrouded Land withers enough to allow passage and those who have ventured into the Zone speak of an alien world.

Geography

The Forbidden Zone has been warped and twisted through the lens of an alien perception. The land in the Zone is improbably, with the laws of reality fragmenting apart the deeper in to the madness it goes. While the borders of the Zone are merely odd, the center where the Q'x raise their monolithic temples to unknowable powers, it becomes land of impossiblities. Few have ventured into the Zone and only a couple have ever gazed upon what stands at the center.

Borderlands

The Borderlands are a barren badlands consisting of flat, dry plains interrupted only by jagged hills of rock and craters left by meteorite impacts. It is the closest to the Shrouded Lands, with varying levels of Blight flooding across the Borderlands at irregular intervals. At first glance, there is little obviously wrong with the Borderlands but on closer inspection, the jagged hills look too much like the fangs of some great beast or hold formations that look made by human hands rather than wind and time.

The Borderlands take on a vague biomechanical look deeper in, with smooth and organic looking curves or impossibly symmetrical patterns. The sand shimmers in the sun and refuse to be lifted by the wind. The Borderlands are about ten miles deep before the Deep Zone begins.

The Peeling Hills

Deep into the Borderlands, the Peeling Hill are large rock formation that curl upward and into themselves, as if someone had peeled them away from the earth. Despite the wind and frequent dust-storm that rolls in from the Shrouded Lands, they remain oddly smooth.

The Deep Zone

Beyond the Borderlands, the sky takes on a sharper hue and the ground becomes less dry. In the Deep Zone, things look like they are part of a living thing with even rocks and pebbles having an sleek organic look to them. The ground will sometimes writhe, pulse or rise on its own accord, with grass made out of sharp glass sliding out from below. Crystals made from a bone-like substance grows along side pools of liquid metals, while chromatic sand dunes blaze in the warped sunlight. It is a world from beyond this one, reforged by the Q'x

Every where and there in the Deep Zone are large spheres out of smooth bone and metal that hang effortlessly in the air. Thin seams betray them as artificial constructs and these are where the Q'x slumber... Or their equivalent of it.

Reality begins to fracture in the Deep Zone. Thoughts have the power to warp things here and those few who have been here say that time behaves strangely.

The Nexus

At the very center of the Deep Zone lie the Nexus, the monolithic temple that the Q'x have erected to alien gods and cosmic powers. It is a large structure of unknown stone, engraved with symbols and surrounded by quietly collective of shards that circle the Nexus. It is the center of the Q'x's power in Araea, the fruit of all their efforts.

Read more about the Nexus

Flora & Fauna

No natural wild life remain in the Zone and no creature recognizable as from the Surface has been seen there. Only the Q'x and their creations live in the Forbidden Zone. They are odd things that seem as much inorganic matter as living beings, part metal, stone and stranger things. From four-legged crystals that feed on metallic sand to ponds of metal that come to life to drag them under.

The creature that inhabit the Zone are part thought: almost, but not quite, hallucinations. People see strange things, dragged from their minds and twisted through the Q'x perception. No matter their origin, their claws remain quite sharp.

The most common creature found besides are a metallic guard-beast with smooth metallic plates and bundled wires as muscle for their limbs. They prowl in the greatest number outside the Nexus itself but unless antagonized they ignore human visitors. Whatever it is they are made to protect the Forbidden Zone from, it is something far greater than humanity.

Touched by the Beyond

It is not known what it is the Q'x want or why they have set down their great temple here. Beyond those few abducted by the Q'x for reasons unknown, the aliens have so far seen content to leave the people of Araea to their own devices. Perhaps it is that they harbor no ill intent, or that they think of humanity as little more than insect. As they've never seen even attempting to descend into the caverns, there may be other reasons not yet clear to those few who know of the Q'x.

The Forbidden Zone is their domain and while intruders into it have so far not been attacked, they have all told of their sense of always being watched and their thoughts laid bare. What they want and what secrets that is kept within the Nexus remain unknown.

by X-Files

The Surface
The Surface of Araea is a blasted wasteland, plagued by Blight and ranging from scorching deserts to frigid arctics. There's little nourishment to draw from the soil here and most of humanity have retreated deep underground for safety and sustenance. Of all the strange terrors of the Surface, the Forbidden Zone may be the strangest.
Read more about the Surface

Visitors from Beyond

The Q'x are strange alien creatures from the stars that have come to Araea for reasons unknown. Little is known about them and most don't believe they are real at all. The Q'x are only in part physical beings, existing in a flux of thought-matter and hallucination as much as actual tangible matter. So far, no one has managed to communicate with one of the Q'x and their motives remain murky.
Read more about the Q'x

Shrouded Lands

The Forbidden Zone is isolated from much of Araea by the Shrouded Lands, a land of intense and deadly Blight that covers most of the Surface. Strange and terrible things live in the Shrouded Lands, things that even the Q'x must guard against. Araea is no more merciful for strangers to its land than it is to those who have always lived there.
Read more about the Shrouded Lands

— A Blight-Tracker's depiction of creature encountered in the Deep Zone