Nidus Aven
From dragonback, Nidus Aven is an odd swirl of colour in a world of green, a comma of concentric structures interrupting the breadth of breathless wilderness. To one side of its plateau, a drop-off into a great valley, both valley and plateau blanketed in rainforest; to the other, cliffs drop off into scrubby beachland bordering a briny body of water.
It looks out of place, no roads leading to or from the dense patch of dwellings. The trees and plant life inside the border of the Nidus differ in ways that become apparent on casual observation: leaves a slightly yellower shade of green, maybe, fruits of odd conformations.
The inner two and a half circles of buildings are huge, tall constructions of staggered heights and terraced rooftop topography. Dragons perch on those towering apartments, sometimes with the little crumbs of humanoids visible amongst them or at their sides. Outside the Nidus apartments is the wider town, mostly human-sized, mostly modest, but densely-packed and busy with life. Farms patch the borders, in some places intertwining with house-lined streets. It all looks bright, close to newly-built. Even fresher constructions have begun to rime the very edges of Nidus Aven’s perimeter farms.
Like any successful invasive species, it seems to be spreading. It’s uncanny and beautiful, feeling slightly wrong, or perhaps simply soaked with ten years’ worth of contained magic. It’s also entirely mundane in the manner of any town in which people live their lives.
Residents
Those who live at Nidus Aven.
A motley assortment of folks from a diversity of worlds. Roughly 300 draconids and 2100 humanoids call the Nidus home.
Cradle
Where draconids clutch and hatch.
Some at the Nidus prefer to have their children in their apartments; nonethless, all dragon records are kept by the Sands.
Flights
Open calls for clutching-partners.
Those dragons at the Nidus who prefer to find mates by open call advertise upcoming opportunities here.
Recent History
Nidus Aven was once on another planet, a haven for creatures who had come to that planet from other places. But like a horse shivers off a fly, or like skin slowly pushes out a sliver, it was rejected from its planet of origin. Some eleven years ago it began to disappear into the mists.
Less than a year ago, it began to come back out of them.
For ten years, the Nidus’s residents made do with their tiny pocket of reality, tucked away in a pocket of reality. Attempts were made to scout the mists, or to find a way out of their predicament, but those attempts mainly ended in disappearences or confusion. Almost an entire generation has grown up under a creeping shroud of uncanny fog and existential dread. When a world began to come back into being around the Nidus it hardly mattered that it shared nothing with the previous — it was green, and it was wide, and it was there. That was enough.
Rediscovering the Nexus at large, and learning their collective mishap has corresponded with the rending Drift that hit many worlds has offered the Nidus residents a surprising sense of solidarity: if things are strange for them, at least they’re strange for everyone else too. Besides, nothing makes an enthusiastic pioneer like escaping a grimmer fate. Those that call the Nidus their home are taking up the mantle of exploration with enthusiasm bordering on manic, and blessedly, there is plenty to do.