Story Context:

Origin: This AU took inspiration from Erasure by Fridurmus, Time Pressure by Evalka, and the fact that an OW Discord server had a “Draw everyone in dapper suits” event going on, thus beaming into my brain dozens of images of Hearthians in fancy modern clothes.

Ye who entered the Eye, shall now become the Eye.

A new world needs to be made; its laws trust your judgment.

_{(These lines are here because they kinda summarize what’s going on and they sound cool, but they are non diegetic. Nothing in this story happens because some greater entity knew or wanted it to, and the Eye is in no way conscious or sentient. It just is.)}

After going to the Eye at the end of FKNO, a new universe is created with its new rules inspired from Hal’s psyche and memories, their dearest wishes for the future… as well as their grief for a past cut short too soon. Hal slumbers with the lingering regret that Hearthians were not given the chance to prosper as a species, not only due to the supernova and the heat death of the universe, but even before then, because of the regular dangers of Timber Hearth which had continuously dwindled both the population of Hearthians and the planet’s biodiversity as a whole.

14.3 billion years later, the Hearthian solar system has reformed in a similar enough shape to how it used to be in the previous universe, albeit in a way such that it fits the new laws of physics introduced with this new universe — which are, on the surface level at least, pretty much the same as our own’s. As a consequence, the sun and planets are now much bigger and much further apart from each other, and planets are now capable of handling much larger, richer, thicker atmospheres.

Moreover, following Hal’s wishes for safety and prosperity, any source of natural disasters that couldn’t be tamed or avoided has been either erased or diminished in order to be far less deadly than they used to be. To quote this universe’s Firn upon learning about this: “…So you made it boring on purpose.”

This includes the following changes:

Though the Interloper did get captured by the sun’s gravity, ghost matter has been erased from existence, and therefore it is only a regular comet made out of good old ice and rock, with no exotic particles involved.
The “bramble” as a plant species does not exist; therefore, the fifth planet in the solar system is still intact, and it has been named “Distant Brine” (in order to keep the DB acronym for some semblance of clarity).
The geysers on Timber Hearth are no longer powerful enough to send objects and people into orbit. If only because they are, relatively to the size of the planet itself, much smaller.
Giant’s Deep’s cyclones are far less common and powerful.
The volcanic activity of Hollow’s Lantern is much more tame, if not entirely dormant.
Brittle Hollow… is boring. There is literally nothing else to say about it, anything that made it interesting in the previous universe is now pretty much gone lmao
Sort of a moot point, but it’s extremely likely that the Hourglass Twins’ sand exchange is no longer a thing. Not yet decided whether this means that Ash Twin is forever buried under piles of sand, or whether said sand does not exist at all. Leaning towards the latter.
Finally, the astral body which was once known as the Eye of the universe is currently absent from this solar system. This means that although both the Owlks and Nomai still exist out there, neither the Stranger nor Escall’s Vessel ever came to visit.

(That being said, just the one Timber Hearth being now populated with more than seven billion Hearthians with hundreds of cultures and subcultures means that this new universe has become far from boring — just, from a different perspective. Hal is going to have a field day with all those new Hearthian yet somehow still “alien” languages.)

With all this, Hearthian society has been able to develop and grow to a much larger scale than in the previous universe, with their daily lives being now close to stereotypical human 21st century Western culture. Some work has been put behind trying to make sense of some world order or something, but tbh I am not really all that interested in delving into advanced geopolitics worldbuilding (there are a lot of real world things I. do not want to think about fjdkslmgjmsqdk. I just want this AU to be about the slice-of-life shenanigans of Hearthians trying to live their daily lives in a world that has capitalism and Youtube. and a magic 14 billion year old fairy from a time long gone).

Generally speaking, Hearthian technology is more advanced in this universe than it was in the previous one; on the other hand, the absence of Nomai ruins to explore and tinker with (alongside the new scales of the planets and space between them) has ironically slowed down their spacefaring progress. Although Outer Wilds Ventures is pretty much the Hearthian equivalent of NASA, no living being has yet been sent into space (not for a lack of trying from Feldspar).

And with the context now fully given, the story can begin:

Hal, after slumbering for 14.3 billion years, awakens one day on this new Timber Hearth. They are already confused by the fact alone that they are somehow still alive, but this new universe has even more surprises to come. First and foremost, as they soon meet with this world’s versions of Firn and Hornfels, another discovery soon leaves them in shock:

According to this new Hearthian society, they never existed.

Story Context:

This stuff is for MUCH later