All deserts are not the same, but they are all connected. A wanderer loses herself within one, and lost she walks on, thinking that over the next dune she will see her home. It is not so. She has stumbled into the Shift, and if she finds herself again it may not be within the world she knows.
The Shift is a desert stretching for thousands of miles without relief, a wasteland punctuated by few oases. At its edges, the Shift borders on many worlds, among them our own. Men, women, can reach the Shift when they venture into deserts not only unknown to themselves but unmapped by their people. Most worlds, we suspect, cut themselves off from the Shift by mapping their deserts before they know what they have done. Some, though, realize in time to mark off one desert, or many, as a mystery preserve (the Death Flats are Hill City's own example), a gateway to the space between the dimensions.
Down the centuries the people of five worlds have met and mingled through the Shift. Hill City, the Kestrethene Archaeopolis, Seven-Eight-Six of the Forerunners, the Centerland, and the Necrus trade goods, news, knowledge from one world to another. All worlds are different (much advanced Forerunner
To enter the Shift, one loses oneself. To find one's way across it, one must be certain and sure-footed: the landscape changes, and none but the most strong-willed guide can bend it to her purpose. To exit the Shift, one loses oneself again, forgetting the mutability of time and space and allowing a new world to assert itself. Guides with this skill are rare, and in demand. Most are Tosh, the people native to the Shift, a hard and strong tribe of nomads; their rich culture was devastated after they made war on the Settled People ten years ago. To win that war, the Forerunners, with our complicity, made the God Beasts,
As you can imagine, this has made trade difficult.
(another diagonal slash. "Too impersonal.")
