art by friends and stuff

Most of Apparition's environment is comprised of a vast polar desert divided vertically by a mountain range. The climate is extreme, the terrain is hostile, and very few could survive living on its surface for long. The iterators that now occupy the region were placed there with the explicit intent of making it easier to traverse. There's no need to deal with blizzards when you live above the clouds.

Unlike many others, the iterators of Apparition are not a part of any official Local Group, as each was built, funded, and managed by separate governing bodies, many of whom were in conflicting interest with their neighbours. Because of this, very few of them spoke with each other before their creators departed. Some didn't know that they even had neighbours to begin with.

Despite their isolation from one another, they are all physically connected. Subterranean train tunnels run between their structures for the sake of accessible travel. Because of the inhospitable environment, directly sourcing Void Fluid for each one was deemed far too dangerous and far too costly, leading to Nyr, the first constructed, being built with the secondary purpose of mining and refining the Void Fluid needed for the entire group. An expansive network of pipes runs throughout the entire region, all extending from her structure, that provides her neighbours with the necessary resources.

Nyr's structure is unique for a number of reasons. The most obvious difference between her and the standard iterator are the additional facilities present for extracting Void, which are as much a part of her body as the can itself. Originally, he had many hundreds of pipes built both on the exterior and within the interior of his can. Over time, many of these have slipped out of place and now sit coiled beneath him, like spilt intestines. They also have a series of bridges spanning their legs that housed their workers and first citizens during the earliest days of their construction.

Polar, distinctly, lacks legs. Part of her structure is built within the mountains surrounding her, negating the need for elevated support. The resources that would have been used for the supports were repurposed, resulting in her can being slightly larger than average. Recently, she has been slowly but surely attempting to eviscerate her organics in her pursuit of becoming a pure machine. Now her structure bleeds the fruits of her effort, staining the surrounding snow.

Radiant, compared to his predecessors, is fairly average. His most distinctive feature is being placed on top of a mountain rather than beside one—the tallest in the range, to be specific. Modifications were made to accommodate his location, but nothing that's visible to the untrained eye. His structure doubled as an observatory, and the equipment necessary for that sits atop his roof with the city.

Eyes is completely standard, as far as iterator cans go. It's built on a short plateau to the east of the mountains. Its claim to fame was its city, which it repurposed and redesigned for its own usage. That change gave the region far more attention than it otherwise would have, but that's another story entirely.

Nights? Don't worry about them.

Directly north of Apparition is the ocean. Farther south, where the unrelenting cold eases up, and to the west, where the worst of the coastal frigidity is shadowed by the mountains, biomes can be found that are far more diverse in flora and fauna than the rest of the area. A few examples are pictured to the left of the main map.