The Rift
From Beyond The Rift Wiki
The Rift is a hole in the universe that connects to all other possible universes. Things fall through from those universes - people, creatures, objects - and land in this one. The thing is, the Rift only goes one way. Anything that tries to go the opposite direction through the Rift gets shredded, like going through a woodchipper, and thrown back into this universe once more. It's not pleasant. There has been one attempt to reverse the Rift, but it resisted, violently, and sort of... exploded.
People who come through the Rift are referred to as wanderers. Everyone who comes through is changed, in one way or another. Sometimes it takes away or grants an ability (magical or otherwise), sometimes it changes something physically about a person, it's all up to random chance. The Rift cannot turn a wanderer into an angel or demon, but beyond that, anything is possible.
As far as anyone in this world knows, the Rift was created as a result of a civil war between faeries in a parallel universe generally referred to as the spiritual world.
Visually, the Rift appears as a flat, two-dimensional doorway - not in the shape of a doorway, mind, as it's usually not at all even or orderly, ragged around the edges, more like something's torn through a canvas than anything else - made of coruscating purple-blue-green light.
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[edit] Known Openings
There are several openings in the Rift - some of them open and close at random, and don't stay stable for long. Some, however, are stable, and remain open indefinitely.
[edit] Conrad Hotel Basement
The oldest and most stable opening in the Rift is in the basement of the Conrad Hotel. It's set against the wall of a room called the Rift room, and many wanderers have come through here. The Rift room contains a bed, a couch, a television, and the scorched remains of a machine built by the Doctor and Toshiko Sato in an attempt to reverse the Rift. The walls around the Rift itself are scorched and blackened too, thanks to the backlash from the attempt to reverse it.
[edit] Calisto's Warehouse
The opening of this section of the Rift triggered an earthquake that destroyed and damaged quite a few buildings in Chicago. It is the largest opening at the moment, in a warehouse in one of the more dangerous areas of Chicago. Almost all of the buildings around the warehouse were destroyed in the earthquake - the warehouse itself was left standing, in near perfect condition. This section of the Rift was originally discovered and controlled by Calisto. After her death, the Rani came through this section of the Rift, used it as a laboratory for some time, and still occasionally returns to perform Rift-exposure experiments.
[edit] Grant Park
Grant Park is not so much the location of a stable Rift opening as a place unstable openings are very prone to appearing and disappearing shortly after. Usually, Rift openings in the park are only open long enough to allow something through, and then they close shortly after. This usually leads to monsters attacking random passersby in the park... or occasionally cars crashing into Buckingham Fountain. These things happen.
[edit] Cicero Construction Site
In an under-construction strip mall in Cicero, Illinois, not far from the Main Gauche Apartment Complex, a section of Rift opened up and dumped out a Plague-infected corpse. Elashte ordered Cmdr. Shepard to lock down the site, and she and Harry Dresden set up a warning system to alert them to anyone coming through. Persons coming through this Rift opening are held in the construction site by magical barriers until the demons and demon-allied forces of the Main Gauche come to collect them and take them home.
[edit] Kashtta Tower
In a tiny sub-basement of the Kashtta Tower, there is a Rift which may or may not be haunted. It's was once blocked off, but the shield broke after John Hart messed it up, then it spent a while being creepy, and then Owen yelled at the Tower enough to temporarily close it. At the moment it's buried under many many tonnes of dirt, and thus inaccessible.
[edit] Casa del OT3
There's a tiny Rift in the fireplace of the Casa del OT3. It's just about big enough for an adult human to get through, though it wouldn't be very comfortable. Especially because the grating in front of the fireplace is often locked. Mostly, it's just random objects and small animals that come through.
[edit] Other Rift varieties
[edit] Green Rifts
The much rarer Green Rifts transport you to the future (though which future is never certain) of the game's universe. Sometimes, maybe, they'll transport you back.
[edit] Invisible Rifts
The Invisible Rifts, first poked and prodded at by Dmitri's Doctor back home, grab people and hold them in stasis until they're released at some arbitrary time. Most of the time, when this happens, it's accompanied by a psychic effect that causes no one to call notice to their disappearance until they're forced to notice by an outside force. Basically, no one can tell that anything is wrong, even though it is.
This is the in-game explanation we use for the characters of vanishing muns.
