Wabe

Though Wabe is currently, will always be, and always has been merely a small town located in an obscure valley in northern Toswald, it is remarkable because it is constantly moving through time. At the dawn of every morning, it gets reshuffled in some sort of cosmic deck of days and reappears in another time, replacing a Wabe from some other time and being replaced by a Wabe of yet another time. Travelers entering Wabe might find that in Wabe, it is three thousand years in the future relative to the time from whence they came. Although days are more likely to be exchanged with days relatively close to them in time, there is no absolute limitation on how far in the past or the future you might end up when you enter Wabe. Of course, if you stay until sunrise, you will travel along with Wabe, and the next time you leave the town you will find yourself in another time.

Wabe culture tends to change very slowly in its own subjective time frame, as travelers from all kinds of eras have already entered Wabe by the time nearly anyone else gets there. In spite of their out-of-the-way location in the hills, Wabians are a completely independent and sophisticated group of people who are very much aware of their movements through time. They are wary of fashion and more than a bit cynical about any government which claims to rule them, since at least a few different governments lay claim to the town in different time frames. Wabians possess their own form of currency, which is (incomprehensibly) based in the exchange of small rectangular pieces of paper, and they enjoy being self-sufficient and not trading with other cultures, which strike them as constantly and pointlessly in flux. Wabians don’t know nearly as much about either the past or the future as some people might believe, however; Wabians seldom leave town for more than a day, and those who do rarely find their way back to their original subjective time. What Wabians do know about the outside world is mostly based on information given by people from those times who have wandered into Wabe in Wabe’s past.

Life in Wabe can be a bit strange, as most Wabians have cultural characteristics from a variety of different historical periods. One thing which makes them quite unique, aside from their tendency to time travel daily, is the fact that they have no magic. This is because magic cannot enter Wabe. Anyone trying to enter while carrying a magic item will start to encounter resistance from the same field that causes the town’s time travel, and eventually it will become impossible to move any closer without dropping the item. Spells automatically fail in Wabe. Where other cultures employ magic, Wabians substitute the art of law. Wabian lawyers manipulate the conditions of people’s lives using law as skillfully as any sorcerer might employ magic, especially since the potential for legal trickery grows exponentially as one travels further and further through time.

Staying overnight at an inn in Wabe is best avoided, mainly because it can be such a time-consuming prospect to sign all the complex release forms innkeepers require you to sign in order to use their beds (the likelihood of someone who stays the night in Wabe ever returning to their own time is low, and the innkeepers don’t want to be blamed).

Although Wabe hasn’t yet been founded as of the late 900s FA, it will one day be created when someone builds a large magical sundial in what will have already become the middle of town. When this happens, the sundial will have retroactively existed for all of Wabe’s history. This sundial is apparently responsible for Wabe’s time-shifting, and it cannot be destroyed — not because it is made of any kind of special material (although it is quite sturdy) but because of the paradox its destruction would generate. Anyone trying to destroy the sundial just never quite manages to do it. Either they hit the structure insufficiently hard, get stopped by the Wabian police, become distracted at a crucial moment, or something else.