Era (the rat)

acacia: A set of hot springs, run by Ruby and Acorn. They never take off their masks, part of the branding they say. The branding says it will banish your bad dreams. The fine print says to never sleep there.

bamboo: A botanical garden half set into the woods, foxes running among the grasses. You almost never see Piepie in town, seeming much more at home in the woods. Nature’s a much more common sight, but she has her own oddities about her.

birch: A museum in town, run by a pair of siblings who inherited it from a relative. There aren’t any clocks in the museum, and you can’t help but feel like time is passing differently, but Viking and Vintage don’t seem to see anything wrong so…surely it’s fine?

cherry: Two friends who recently moved to town. Devon has taken to the town much better than Doovid has. I’m sure the noises from the sewers are unrelated.

jungle: An abandoned development, half constructed and grown through with trees and ivy. The old cranes are still there, if you look close enough. Legundo says he doesn’t know anything about the development, even though he moved in almost right as construction on it stopped. M1g says he doesn’t know anything about it either, though that one makes more sense. He won’t even say anything about his brother.

mangrove: A swamp on the edge of the woods with quite a lot of rumors around it. A fish monster in the roots and an arsonist’s stash somewhere in the trees. Of course, Elffe and Kitt wouldn’t know anything about that. Even if Elffe smiles with teeth a bit too sharp and Kitt will never say how she ended up in town.

nether: A diner on the road in and out of town. Anathra seems a bit too young for his white hair, and the constant sunglasses are certainly a choice. And you’re never quite sure how many Fools there are. You could swear you’ve seen them with different hair and eyes but…even if there are more, they claim there’s only one.

oak: A pair of sailors who have lived in town as long as most can remember. Just…ignore the lack of a major body of water. And the fact that occasionally, neither Trog nor Quillbee seem quite themselves.

poak: A section of the forest that burned down, and an old factory that did the same. No one is sure which one came first. But the trees grew back ashen and the fireflies look like cinders. Skye and Milkman are a bit more…wooden around outsiders than most, and if they know what happened, they aren’t saying.

spruce: A ski resort on the nearby mountain. Quite a popular place, especially with their prime attraction, a railless ice skating and hockey rink near the peak. Nuke and Leon run the place well, even if they constantly seem to be yearning for other elements, Nuke for the air and Leon for the water.

Season 1 skyheads are citizens, and used to be seen around the town a lot more often, but those sightings have become a lot rarer. The doubled kingdoms and guests are outsiders to town, coming into this odd little place and finding it…quite hard to leave.

Feel free to send in asks to look for elaboration on a kingdom, or to suggest something that doesn’t fall into any of the kingdoms already!

but are there traditions that linger, from the old town? or traditions that everyone takes part in, no matter which part of town they're from?

The joke is that the town tradition is arson. And…well, they aren’t quite wrong. Granted, they aren’t exactly right either. There’s two massive bonfires every year in the town center. The one in the winter is mostly a Christmas celebration by now, but some still refer to it with its older purpose. A fire lit to stave off the Void of winters night. The one in the summer marks a turning point, and is often used as a celebration of the town and its history.

*:･ﾟ✧

for funsies yall can have a little preview of that one animatic im working on cause it's taking me a bit to work on it

run cycle will go between all four, sausage's segment extends into zam and graecie's segment for the time being until i finish animating all of them just so it completes the verse :P

It is very rarely you will ever see people leave Esbek, at least once they have stayed a night. Not many even have connections to the outside world anymore. There are…occasions, though. Anathra's sunglasses, the ones he's never seen without, left lying on the counter at the diner. A black-and-white jacket tossed over the back of a seat, and a jabbering among Wonderland's regulars about how long it will take Clover to reappear this time. (You don't know anyone who works there by that name.) Legundo's truck, an old battered thing which may have once been green, booking it out of town, even though he always ends up back here eventually. Skye jabbering on the phone to someone who's conversations you can never quite catch in full. Still, that isn't that weird. Right?

Or, how long until it becomes permanent?

- Coughs as I hand you wonderland eating people bait ++++

my good friend you know us too well +

You'll hear people laugh if you ever say that. Lost? It's a diner, you can't get lost in a diner. Still. People heed the warning to never go through the employees only door.

If they catch you in time, see you sneaking into that place you're not supposed to be, it's not really that bad. Sure, you'll probably end up a bit disoriented, and almost certainly with your sense of time messed up. The clock says it's only been a few minutes, even though it felt like you were wandering there for hours. But the owners will laugh it off and someone will guide you back to your seat and in a few days it will be as if it were only a bad dream.

But if they don't, late night or busy day or what have you, well...sometimes, you can make it through the maze. Even if it takes days. Even if the "Emergency Exit Only" door you find at the end of it does not take you to the woods that surrounded the diner before, but instead to sprouting fields of mushrooms in the same shade of red and teal that the diner is decked in. And you know how mushrooms can be. They love to spread, and they love to feed.