“It's not that simple. If you take the upper pass along New Hamburg's north face here, you’ve got a 50/50 of making it three days before the Grey turns the entire route into a lake. Instead, you want the under-sink. It takes you close to Shandorlan, and the place is crawling with Bridgees and their ilk, but you're packing enough heat to scare them off. Probably. More importantly, it's dry this part of the year. Probably. Anyhow, you’ll need to leave out in the next month or so, before both are cut off for the rest of the season from the Tollxicrol leakage farther east. Oh, and please stay tight to the map. Too many before you died to excuse further stupidity.”
— Knight-Sergeant Chomst Cromwell, VPR New Hamburg Chapter
Towering mountains laden with snow overlook forested plateaus dotted with the unseemly remnants of human habitation. Vast plains collide with boiling deserts and buzzing marshes, the multicolor hues of acidic hot springs contrasting against the black, igneous rock of volcanic flows. In-between the scattered outposts, towns, and Free Cities within the Shattered Continent, it is as though the whole of the world has been crammed into a space far too small for its multitude of wonders, each as out of place as the people who live in them. Elevation reaches up and past the roiling clouds of the Grey, an ever-present storm that oscillates between imminently arriving and arrived, all the way to the lowest reaches of the Shandorlan crevasses, where light is a distant memory. This kaleidoscope of clashing terrain becomes increasingly more confusing as you stray from the trusted routes. The weight of the divine yoke unburdened during the Shattering lingers, perverting space and time where it remains. A thin crevice on a cliff side may lead to a vast desert under twin suns, a shallow lake concealing a strange ocean below its twinkling surface. Within these microcosms of worlds, further cracks exist leading farther into distortion or back into the Shattered continent. One can travel vast distances through these areas, as long as you know when and where to leave. Just as likely, you never find a way back out at all. Like a spiderweb of cracks weaving their way through a glass window, these paths split and fragment the deeper you go, each more bizarre than the last. To the Librarians of the Glass City they are called Slip-Canyons, to the DMV they are X0M-12 Anomalies, but to the Free cities and their VPR guardians, they are called the In-Betweens, as you should only ever pass through them on the way to somewhere else. To linger is to become lost. The existence of the In-Betweens, and the utter lack of central repository for where they are or how to safely traverse them has confounded the great powers of the world. Hostile forces can appear virtually anywhere, at any time. Frontlines and fortifications, already hampered by the oppressive Grey, become near worthless as the remnants of the American occupation forces would discover during the Battle of the Crucible. The correct combination of In-Between shortcuts and overland travel is the prized possession of the inhabitants of the Continent, and often the difference between life and death in a landscape torn asunder by war and lurking dangers.