Drips

Drips are one-way portals from Earth to Wable that open and close quickly, like faucets being turned on and off. Inanimate matter from Earth is frequently deposited into Wable when drips open. Much more rarely, living things are deposited into Wable, contributing to the area's great biodiversity.

### Provenance

Drips appear on both Earth and Wable in seemingly random places at seemingly random times. Drips appearing on Earth are much smaller and less easily noticed by intelligent life forms (humans) than their counterparts on Wable. They go unnoticed on Earth so frequently that they are not even known to exist, with the objects they remove going unnoticed or thought stolen or misplaced. Myths and stories like "The Borrowers" exist on Earth to explain the absence of objects that fall through drips. On Wable, however, drips are prominent parts of daily life and often appear to be very large. In recent centuries, efforts by Wablan scientists to understand the drips as natural phenomena like storms or tornadoes have begun, though there are still very few reliable ways to predict new drips. As drips bring with them never-before-seen materials from Earth, they are commonly thought to be supernatural in nature by non-scientists, who variously attribute them to deities, magic, aliens, etc.

Most humans on Earth are unaware of drips at all, and most Wablan peoples are unaware that Earth is what exists on the other side of drips. Though some Wablan peoples believe the space beyond drips is indeed a physical location that one could visit, this is only one of numerous common theories, and essentially nothing is known of the Earth itself. The Dawnwalker, the only living human known to have travelled to Wable through a drip, has a unique perspective on them. Since arriving in Wable, she's watched many drips open and seen other materials from Earth fall from them. She believes the sheer number of drips on Wable and their tendency to appear more frequently in more densely populated areas, combined with how unknown they are on Earth, is an indication that drips are controlled by a god, or multiple gods, who purposefully hide them from humans.

### Distortion

When drips appear in Wable, they change size and shape relative to the way they appeared on Earth. If matter from Earth falls into the drip, its size will be accordingly distorted when it arrives in Wable. Living creatures experience sometimes endure additional physical changes when making this trip. Distortion is well illustrated by Wablan elephants, which are all derived from Earth elephants from two different drips. The first drip was very large, leading to lines of elephants that, though small in number, are up to four times the size of the elephants that fell through the drip. The second was much smaller, leading to the common lines of livestock elephants, which range from the size of a housecat to the size of a cow.

### In Wablan society

Drips are important sources of resources for the Wablan peoples. Prospectors and their crews race to large drifts when they open in the unincorporated communities, each vying to reach the drip and secure their claim. This unregulated process is called "drip mining." Many people also make their living in the understanding and interpreting of drips, from clergy to cultists to scientists.

### Notable drips

* A drip that opened in 1978 was large enough for a human woman named Dawn Walker to fall into during her janitorial shift. When it opened in Wable, the drip was many times larger, causing Dawn Walker's enormous size in Wable. An immediately notable organism, she is now known as the Dawnwalker.
* A single pinhole sized drip has been open in the Pacific Ocean for centuries. That water runs through a manhole-sized drip in Wable to feed a large salt lake which runs into the ocean.