The Shattering

A cataclysmic event that took place a number of years before the action of Patchworld. Some of the stories of Chunnel Surfer II may also be the result of the Shattering.

Possibly instigated by a man known as The Engineer, the time field of the Earth was broken into many shards, each of which experienced the passage of time at a different rate. From within, each shard was isolated from its neighbors by mirrored, shimmering walls. When the walls came down (26 years later, from the point of view of The Engineer), some shards had experienced mere seconds and others many epochs. The reunited world exists in a state of chaos as humanity and other evolved creatures struggle to coexist after evolving disparately for so long.

Some shards seem to have moved backwards, or to have created unexpected, almost mythological or alien beings and cultures.