It's... a forest. Sort of. There's grass on the ground, and trees, and the sound of birdsong, but there's something subtly off about it. Strangely regular.

Huh. Anyone around?

N—

—yes?

"Welcome to Terraria," says a human with no discernible mind, emerging from between two strangely regular trees and holding out a canvas bag toward her. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt and has a blank, fixed smile on his face.

Creepy.

But, ugh, best not to be rude.

"Hello."

"You can use your pickaxe to dig through dirt, and your axe to chop down trees," he says helpfully, continuing to hold out the bag in exactly the same manner and smile exactly the same smile.

Actively creepy.

She tries to see if she can feel any minds.

One. A few miles away, in that direction.

That's something, then. Does it feel baseliner, mildly divergent, or nonhuman?

There might be something non-baseline going on? Maybe?

Okay then.

No immediately obvious danger, she tells her sister, bouncing her the last few seconds.

Weird, she opines of the situation, but they've dealt with stranger, really. She steps through the portal and lets it collapse.

—and she is not next to her sister.

She is in a different forest, although it's just as strangely regular, and has an identical blankly smiling man in it holding out an identical canvas bag.

"My name is Kevin!" he says.

"The fuck."

"I am here to give you advice on what to do next. It is recommended that you talk with me anytime you get stuck," says Edie's blankly smiling man.

"Greetings, Emily. Is there something I can help you with?" says Emily's.

Okay this has been going far enough beyond "creepy" for anyone's tastes. She confirms that she can at least still feel her sister--thank fuck--and rises into the air--she has to bootstrap herself, no ambient magnetics--and takes off in her direction.

"They say there is a person who will tell you how to survive in this land... oh wait. That's me," calls Kevin as she recedes into the distance.

Yeah because she doesn't know better than to take candy from creepy strangers. Oh, wait.

"My name is Kevin!" says Kevin, in exactly the same tone as before.

And then she can no longer hear him, yay.

...

Biomes aren't supposed to change that abruptly.

They are not! And yet, up ahead there is a perfectly straight dividing line between grass and snow. On this side, bunnies and little songbirds; on that side, penguins and absolutely beautiful mysterious round hopping things. The round hopping things seem to be made of something translucent and jellyish, but coated in lovely patterns of frost so it's hard to tell what they look like underneath.

...The lovely hopping things are really tempting to go get a better look at but this place is super creepy so she should not do the obvious trap thing.

She keeps flying.

A hopping thing lands on a penguin.

The penguin explodes violently, showering the vicinity with blood and penguin parts.

Yep not going to investigate that was a good life choice.

She flies faster.

The next biome transition looms in the middle distance. It's... very red. And there is a faint smell of blood on the breeze. Are those trees bleeding...?

...She's going to fly around that one in case there's some chemical that will make her bleed to death.

A horrible-looking creature with no visible means of supporting itself in the air nevertheless flies out of the blood biome directly toward her. It's hard to identify its parts - are those arms or mandibles? Is that a mouth or an eye? Are those tiny useless wings, or tiny conical legs?

Whatever, she's faster than it. And if she isn't she can wrap it in some spare metal and slow it down.

How about its six friends, can she do the same to them?

...She can do the same to two of them and use the three she's got to obstruct the other four.

An obstructed horrible flying thing just sort of bashes itself helplessly against the obstruction over and over again, trying different angles but not trying them very hard. Bash, rebound, fly a little to the left, fly forward - bash, rebound, fly a little to the right, fly forward - bash, rebound, fly a little lower, fly forward -

One of the obstructions has apparently had enough of this treatment. It explodes in a shower of blood and unidentifiable monster anatomy. A handful of small metal coins (silver and copper) that weren't there before fall out of the mess.

What.

Okay, well, she'll grab those--keeping them well away from her body in case they're harmful in some way.

The coins seem... mostly normal?

Except that if two coins of the same denomination touch, they merge into a single coin of that type. Silver with silver, copper with copper.

Another of her obstructions gives up the ghost. It drops more coins.

...Huh.

She collects and consolidates the new coins.

The third obstruction goes down, dropping yet more coins. And then she's past the red area and the horrible flying things are falling behind.

Next up: ...desert? Yeah that's a desert. The round hopping things are pretty here, too, textured like shifting sand in a way that would probably camouflage them better if they weren't round creatures travelling across an unrelentingly orthogonal landscape. There are strangely regular cacti.

...This is weirdly videogamey.

Isn't it just?

Look! A giant fucking bug! It's twelve feet long and it doesn't look happy to see her!

Fascinating. Well, given how suicidal the other things were, she probably doesn't have to worry about killing these things being really bad. Bug meet coins at sufficient velocity?

The bug detonates. Bug parts splatter across twenty feet of desert. More coins.

Not unexpected at this point. She collects the coins.

I hope the person you're sensing can help us make sense of this place, Emily sighs.

Yeah.

Edie has, for lack of anything better to do, started walking personwards.

If the direction from which the cheerful morning sun is slowly rising is due east, then Emily started out almost precisely due north of Edie; the stranger is not quite so precisely northwest.

Directly ahead of Edie: a small pond, with lovely clear water rippling faintly in the breeze, and a round green hopping thing hopping industriously across its surface. Hop, splash, hop, splash.

Edie stops walking, remembering the things that attacked her sister. These things don't have minds, so she can't just kill them.

...The creepy unperson said something about survival. She heads back to him.

"Greetings, Edie. Is there something I can help you with?"

"How do you know my name."

"My name is Marty."

Deep breaths, Edie.

"How do I not die."

Marty holds out his canvas bag.

"If you want to survive, you will need to create weapons and shelter. Start by chopping down trees and gathering wood."

Okay, fine. She takes the bag. What's in the bag.

In the bag: a copper short sword, a copper pickaxe, and a copper axe.

"You can use your pickaxe to dig through dirt, and your axe to chop down trees," says Marty. He's said that before. He's said that before in exactly the same chipper, helpful tone with exactly the same cadence and intonation.

Yeah she's going to go with "weirdly three-dimensional NPC/babbling meat-statue."

"Why would I want to dig through dirt?"

"You should do some mining to find metal ore. You can craft very useful things with it," Marty advises.

Huh. "How far down is ore?"

He pauses for a second before answering.

"There is treasure hidden all over the world. Some amazing things can be found deep underground!"

Sigh.

"Why would I want to chop down trees?"

"You can build a shelter by placing wood or other blocks in the world. Don't forget to create and place walls."

Yeah Edie isn't really feeling motivated to do that. She'll probably just wait until Emily gets here and can insert metal into relevant murderthings.

Marty wanders back and forth a few steps, then says, "You should stay indoors at night. It is very dangerous to be wandering around in the dark."

Lovely.

Sigh.

Well, Emily's coming as quickly as she can, modulo murdering anything else that tries to chase her.

As Emily crosses the desert, she is repeatedly harassed by twelve-foot-long flying antlions. They're all as easily killed as the first one, and they all drop coins. Hopping blobs pass below her, sandy and green and blue and a tiny pink one that hops higher than the rest.

And then the desert gives way to a jungle, whose flying enemy of choice is tiny bats; and then there's another red zone she has to skirt around through a patch of forest; and then desert again, and a sandy beach, and a mile of open ocean followed by a perfectly flat vertical wall of fog.

The hopping blobs are kind of charming, really.

The tiny bats are harder to hit and may take multiple tries to get one sometimes but none of them manage to touch her before she gets them.

She hits the fog at full speed.

For three seconds, she is surrounded by impenetrable fog and completely cut off from the outside world.

Then she emerges from the other side of the fog wall, travelling at the same speed at which she entered.

Oh thank god, Edie breathes, having almost had a heart attack when her sister's mind was cut off.

Ugh. Yeah.

D'you want me to come straight there or investigate Other Person?

Come pick me up and we can investigate together, I don't think separation is safe right now.

Fair.

Ocean, ocean, ocean, beach, forest, jungle, hazy purple area with horrible deathly smell...

She'll be flying around that too.

Horrible grey creatures, with approximately the same silhouette as the things from the blood zone but different details, emerge from the purple haze and fly towards Emily. They follow exactly the same flight pattern as the blood creatures, too.

Well, they too can learn the joys of dying explosively.

They explode. They drop coins. That was easy.

Whoever designed this place was not anticipating her.

And eventually she makes it to her sister, right, this place doesn't decide to be unhelpfully non-Euclidean or anything?

Nope, it's perfectly topologically ordinary. The sisters can be reunited without trouble.

When Emily arrives, Marty looks at her and says, "Greetings, Edie. Is there something I can help you with?"

"You can fuck right off."

She scoops up her sister and starts heading Personwards.

"My name is Marty!"

"Don't care!"

Flying flying flying.

Desert, forest, jungle, hazy purple area, snow... beach! Ocean! Ocean ocean ocean.

The fog wall Emily came through meets another one here. The corner makes a perfect right angle.

...Well. The fog was unpleasant. But this time they're at least braced for it. And maybe it'll be different if they're both there?

They're cut off from the outside world but not from each other.

That's not so bad, then.

And then presumably it's another mile of ocean before they hit land again?

Yep! Ocean ocean ocean, beach, island -

The other person appears to be north and up from their current position.

...

Well, she will go north and up, then.

Hey look! It's a... strangely regular cloud! With a cute little gold-plated house on top!

Also, a couple of women with wings for arms, firing bright blue feathers at them through no visible mechanism!

Crazy feather ladies can go boom now.

Presumably house contains person! They will knock on the door like polite people.