Wable

Wable refers to an area, comprised of various landmasses and seas, roughly the size of Earth's western hemisphere. Though not parallel or alternate versions of each other, Wable is deeply cosmically connected to Earth, with the development of intelligent species in one area occurring roughly in tandem with their development in the other. There is no space travel in Wable, so this area (and the celestial bodies that can be viewed in its sky) constitutes the entirety of the known universe for most of its residents.

Other regions containing intelligent life may exist within the universe, but do not appear to be accessible to residents of Wable or Earth. It is also difficult and rare for living creatures on Earth to reach Wable. Wable, however, is distinguished by its "drips" - portals connected to Earth, through which objects (and, rarely, living things) are funneled into Wable.

Drips
The key distinguishing feature between Earth and Wable is the presence of "drips," one-way portals from Earth to Wable that open and close quickly, like faucets being turned on and off. The reasons for the drip's sizes, shapes, locations, and provenance are largely unknown and are the subject of debate among certain scholars and philosophers. When drips open, they usually deposit one or two inanimate objects from the Earth into Wable. These objects are most commonly small and light, suggesting that the portals that open on Earth are also generally small. When they open in Wable, however, the drips change sizes and shapes, manipulating the matter from Earth in a similar manner. If a small item, like a key, were to fall into a drip on Earth, that same drip might appear in Wable as a highly-visible mile-long gash, which would cause the key to be many times bigger, heavier, and longer than it was on Earth. This process is called "distortion."

The drips' tendency to grow when they appear in Wable, as well as the way they leave physical evidence there, is part of the reason they're such a part of the fabric of Wablan society despite being generally unknown on Earth. There may also be some sentient force behind them, purposefully hiding them from residents of Earth to unknown effect. On Wable, drips are not only much easier to find, but also potentially a considerable source of resources, making "drip mining" a viable, competitive, and often dangerous profession. They also have spiritual and religious significance to Wablan peoples. Drips are more common in less densely-populated areas, but can occur anywhere - most major communities have dedicated crews to clean and repair damage caused by the arrival of drips.

Flora and Fauna
Some, but not all, Wablan plants and animals are derived from plants and animals on Earth. Though it is rarer than drips of inanimate objects by a factor of a thousand, living matter is sometimes transported to Wable, and is also distorted by the shape of its drip. An Earth elephant, were it to be dropped into Wable through a small drip, might be only the size of a housecat on Wable. Through these distorted plants and animals' breeding with native Wablan organisms, as well as their descendants' adaptations to the Wablan environment, species wildly divergent from those found on Earth have evolved. The Dawnwalker is notable as one of the only forms of highly intelligent life to arrive on Wable through a drip.

Other notable Wablan animals include the Wablan peoples (a loose term used to collectively refer to a large number of different species that can communicate with each other and mutually recognize each other as similar beings, often intermarrying and living in community with one another), horses (regarded as the lifeform most similar to peoples, and a crucial element of Wablan transportation), elephants (common livestock, the source of more food products than Earth chickens and cows combined), Muammar, and, formerly, the Living Moon.

Because of the large number of intelligent species on Wable, as well as the great variations seen within even single species caused by both drips and Wable's incredibly varied environment, taxonomy is not a developed science in Wable. It is even possible that every Wablan people represents a distinct species, with notable biological differences even between close family members. Reproduction does not work consistently across the various species, with the number of parents contributing genetic material to new lifeforms as low as one in some biological groups and as high as 48 in others. For those reasons, most ways the single race of intelligent creatures on Earth subdivides itself (gender, race, sexuality, ability/disability, etc.) are not even concepts in Wable. Class, caste, and the location of one's birth or residence are present as divisive or uniting factors in Wablan society, however. Also, within mid-sized or large communities of very similar organisms, prejudices based on appearance or biology can certainly form.

Wablan flora is somewhat less obviously distinguishable from Earth plants than Wablan animals are from their Earth counterparts. A notable difference is that Wablan plants generate much more potable fruit, with even grasses and mosses producing large, edible berries and apples.

Society
Wablan society is loosely structured around several extremely large city-states with democratically elected administrative corps. These city-states provide protection and infrastructure for the smaller independent communities that exist within their orbits. Though they officially do this with no expectation of return, most independent communities view the cities as both benefactors and potent markets, and try to live as harmoniously with the city (or cities) who service their area. The city-states' spheres of external influence overlap in many places throughout Wable. The independent communities' interests are also collectively represented against the city-states by the Federation of Unincorporated Communities, a powerful network capable of mobilizing many different, unrelated communities in common cause. This network of overlapping alliances and agreements makes war between city-states a mostly non-viable idea. Inevitably, armed conflict with a neighboring city-state would require one city to act with force against an unincorporated community within its own sphere of protection, which would provoke revolt among other unincorporated communities within their influence and a coordinated guerilla response from the FUC. This would leave the attacking city-state attempting to quell a revolution within the communities that supply most of its own resources and consumer goods while fighting two separate wars, a traditional one against its well-equipped rival city and a larger insurgency led by the FUC. For those reasons, antisocietal action within Wable more often manifests in the realm of politics, with bad actors acting to gain influence within the administrative bodies of the city-states and the FUC. Antisocietal actions are also commonly observed within and around the independent communities, particularly those that are far away from their administrative city-states, where the legal environment is similar to what you might associate with the Wild West.

The most widely dispersed contemporary technologies within Wablan society are radio and modern plumbing. Though objects like cars and telephones have dropped through drips, Wablan peoples lack the resources or information needed to make use of them on a societal level. Consumer goods are rarely distributed outside of the administrative areas where they were produced, and transit systems that service the city-states have not yet been built out to most parts of Wable. Dangerous creatures also live in Wablan wilderness, some at a much larger scale than anything we deal with on Earth (due to drips), leaving some areas totally untamed and others as frontier country. There is little, then, in the way of Wablan mass culture outside of the radio and certain shared attitudes rooted in practicality (the treatment of horses, for example).