The Ether Drifts are a belt of asteroids at the far edge of The Void, where the wreckage of lost worlds floats aimlessly in the shadow of a huge purple gas planet. They have hosted a mining mission, a three-way Deathmatch and more than one brawl on the same small orange rock. That rock happens to be home to a town of tiny worm people who keep getting caught in the crossfire. Something innocent dies here every time.
Description
The Ether Drifts lie “at the edge of all of void space, home to a wreckage of worlds and locations and asteroids that float around aimlessly.” Large orange asteroids hang in the shadow of a vast, gaseous purple planet. Meteorites streak through the sky and crash down around anyone standing there, and the ground is pitted with craters. Gravity is lower here than at The Dread Fortress, though, as was admitted at the time, “We never really talked about what the gravity is at the Dread Fortress, but it’s different here.”
The Drifts have at least one mine, and one orange asteroid is home to Wormtown, a tiny underground civilization of multicolored worm people living in a crater. Wildlife is not what anyone expects in deep space. When a slightly adorable deformed raccoon named Jimothy crawled out of a crater, the Arbiter protested that “you don’t see a lot of raccoons in the Ether Drifts.” The Grandmaster replied, “Well, you don’t go around the Ether Drift very often, do you?”
When The Acolytes come to watch, they sit in floating grandstands. On one occasion these were zero-gravity stands, and the Acolytes wore helmets with tubes so they could still get their beers inside. (“Don’t worry about it. It works. It’s mechanically sound.”)
History
Wormtown’s first tragedy
The worm people’s troubles began in the Wild Magic asteroid round of Season 1, Episode 7. That round was fought on the orange asteroid, and Strako killed Wormtown’s mayor, Mayor Timothy.
The Ether Drifts one-shots
In the Season of the Trials, the Arbiter lost contact with “miners, I guess” working deep in the Ether Drifts. They had been gathering “a certain mineral… integral to the fight against The Shadow King.” In Ether Drifts Part 1, he clapped his hands and portalled a team of champions to the edge of a mine on the large orange asteroids. Their job was to find out what had happened and bring the mineral back. A meteor shower greeted them on arrival, with meteorites crashing down all around, but everyone shrugged it off while the Acolytes watched from a giant grandstand.
In Ether Drifts Part 2, the Arbiter’s sound wave opened another portal to the Drifts for Team A’s Deathmatch. Atlas, Robbie Clark and the Hunger and Copycat fought on an asteroid beside the gas planet, in the lighter gravity, while the Acolytes looked on from a floating grandstand.
Season of Vigilance
The orange asteroid came back in Season 7 for Akumu versus Jinx. Tiny worms emerged and dragged Jinx’s body underground.
The Drifts returned again for Agatha Middlebrooke versus Lug Hardblock. The Grandmaster sent them off with a simple instruction:
“Whatever you do, make sure you’re the only one who leaves this planet alive.”
She then put on her spatial helmet and flew up to join the Acolytes. Jimothy the raccoon made his appearance during the fight. When the Arbiter asked what he was doing on an asteroid in space, the Grandmaster said, “Don’t ask questions. Jimothy goes where Jimothy wants.”
The worms fared worse than usual. Agatha was spiked into the crater that holds their town and crushed sixty of them on the way down. Lug, for his part, wants to build condos on their land. Agatha and Lug ended the fight as co-champions, and the worms were left to count their losses once again.
The Hollow’s revenge
The worms got their turn in S7E10 — Thea’s Adventure. Their home, the Hollow, is governed by a council that meets in a dark chamber under a single harsh light, with Old Todd among its members. It turned out the council had long ago sent a worm to kill the Arbiter: Thea. When she seemed to have switched sides, they built mech suits, and Thea’s brother Theo volunteered to go and find her. Worms have no bones, and everyone in the Hollow is fascinated by the breaking of them. They also eat the dead. The revenge ended in a deal. The Arbiter admitted the Fortress had destroyed their cities and “that big door,” and had ground their sacred crystal into salt and eaten it. He handed over Strako, gave the worms front-row seats at every Deathmatch, agreed to pay royalties back to the Ether Drifts, and made Thea his ambassador to the worms. Old Todd thanked Thea for her service, but once she and Theo had left, he called them “handed traitors” and opened Mayor Timothy’s plan to step 20: “Call Fil.”
The first Deathmatch of the new era
The deal made the Drifts a Deathmatch venue again. Under it, the first Deathmatch of the new era had to be held there, and S7E11 was it: Zhora Bloodfang against Bezil, with the worm council and the delegation of worms, Old Todd among them, as sponsors and front-row guests. The Grandmaster raised the Acolytes over shifting sands, the giant purple planet and a setting sun. Thea, whose home it is, wanted the champions to see the Drifts before the Dread Fortress so they wouldn’t think it less cool. The arena brought a chaotic event of its own, the dehydration bug, which drained the moisture out of everyone fighting. The worm delegation writhed with excitement when Bezil clawed Zhora’s butt. Zhora won, after being killed once and duct-taped back together.
Notable Figures
- Mayor Timothy: the worm mayor of Wormtown, killed by Strako.
- Strako: the champion who killed Wormtown’s mayor, handed over to the worms’ revenge in S7E10.
- Thea: a worm of the Hollow, now the Dread Fortress’s ambassador to the worms.
- Theo: Thea’s brother, sent by the council to bring her home.
- Old Todd: a member of the Hollow’s council, who watched S7E11 from the front row.
- Zhora Bloodfang and Bezil: fought the first Deathmatch of the new era here; Zhora won.
- The Arbiter: sent Team A to the Drifts on the mining mission and opened the portal for their Deathmatch.
- Atlas, Robbie Clark and the Hunger and Copycat: fought the Ether Drifts Part 2 Deathmatch here.
- Jinx: fought Akumu on the orange asteroid; the worms dragged Jinx’s body underground.
- Agatha Middlebrooke and Lug Hardblock: co-champions of the fight that crushed sixty worms, with Lug planning condos on their land.