“It breaks down bit by bit, it mends more slowly, and never the same as before.”
The zone cycle is what wanderers notice when they stay in the same spot for a long time: the place does not stay the same. There is a count that goes up and another that, very slowly, goes down. Nobody has managed to work out the rule.
How a zone behaves
- The place decides when, where and in what phase each change occurs. No survivor can cause it or prevent it.
- Only a zone with people inside it spends changes. A zone with nobody in it does not break down.
- Every event follows the same chain: sign, tension, optional payoff and aftermath. The payoff, what you get for holding out, may not exist.
- Every zone has a character of its own, and remembers what has just happened to it. That is why two similar zones never break down the same way.
- Physical things (doors, objects, chairs) never block a path. There is always a way out.
- Only doors and objects of the world move. What you have placed yourself is not touched.
State of a zone
Every zone keeps four things: its degradation, the phase of its light, a short list of events in progress and when the last one of each type took place. Anyone who arrives late to a zone finds it as it is, with everything accumulated.
Degradation and recovery
As long as there are people, degradation rises over time, with a little chance. The higher it is, the more likely the deterioration: rubble, stains, mold. There is another, opposite cycle, very slow, in which the zone recovers. The two curves follow different rhythms. You notice that something is changing, but you cannot anticipate it.
Anti-repetition
No type of event repeats before a minimum amount of time, and big ones require a long pause. The more survivors there are in the zone, the harder each event hits, but they do not happen more often.
What people say
- An abandoned zone stays still until someone comes back, says one side. Others maintain that it keeps aging without witnesses.
- How long a zone takes to recover never comes out the same. Some talk of whole days without seeing any change.
- What has happened in a zone may be forgotten after a long absence of the group, or so they say.
See also
Things That Change Places, Environmental Events, The Pulse.