The areas between three stelae are called “zones,“ which begin to transform to the new reality once the stelae are activated. The speed of transformation depends on the type of zone: Pure, Dominant, or Mixed.
Pure Zones
Pure Zones contain one supreme reality. Any other reality present is strongly suppressed. Some Pure Zones are located in untouched areas of Core Earth, or in the home cosms of the High Lords.
Objects transform quickly, generally within 24 hours. Living beings are subject to the axiom limits and World Laws of the Pure Zone’s reality. Within Pure Zones, Ords cannot create Contradictions at all, but reality-rated characters can as long as they’re not disconnected. If they disconnect, they find it particularly hard to reconnect while in a Pure Zone (see Reconnection, page <OV>). Around half of the Ords in a zone transform in the first three months.
Dominant Zones
Dominant Zones contain a prevailing reality. Any other reality is suppressed, but not as powerfully as within Pure Zones. Core Earth is rare in that it’s composed mostly of Dominant Zones rather than Pure Zones. The majority of areas where invaders have planted stelae are Dominant Zones as well.
Characters are subject to the dominant reality’s axioms and World Laws. Ords and reality-rated characters may create Contradictions so long as they aren’t disconnected.
Reconnecting in a Dominant Zone is difficult for reality-rated characters, but not as hard as within a Pure Zone. Ords can’t reconnect at all, unless they return to their native reality. Objects transform fairly quickly, while half of the living inhabitants have transformed within 18 months.
Mixed Zones
Mixed Zones consist of an invader and invaded reality competing but roughly in balance with each other, or a zone bound by stelae of two invading realities which have suppressed the invaded one. Tools and objects permitted by the axioms of both realities can be used without Contradiction (the axioms are effectively the greater of the two realities), and both sets of World Laws are in effect.
Mixed Zones are wracked by reality storms, violent eruptions of energy that spontaneously arise to reconcile the competing realities within. The storms cause strange phenomena and often transform beings and objects exposed to their wrath. When over a quarter of the beings in a zone take on the invading reality, the Darkness Device has enough power to flip it to Dominant. Mixed Zones bound by the stelae of two invading realities remain Mixed until something upsets the balance.