So...
Haven is supposed to represent the top floor of the world while also being the very start to a journey to the center of the world.
It's built like a Fortress.
But...is that all that lies on the surface of cradle?
Surely there are more entrances into the worlds below that the mobs use to attack haven.
Maybe there's somesort of lost technology left on the surface? We were shot down by some sort of Planetary defense cannon.
The Grinchlin Mountain is also presumably on the surface of cradle.
Deserts and mountains, forests and plains, canyons and crevasses left where the tectonic plates meet revealing the whirring clockworks below.
Perhaps a colony of the elusive and migratory Gobblesnipes?
Maybe other gremlins living outside the realms of the Great Colony, free from the Nine's prying eyes but cut off from Emberlight?
The derelict husk of the Skylark, being picked apart by scavengers of gremlin, knight, and slime alike?
The possibilities could be as endless as the labyrinths below, but I'm doubtful we'll ever know.
ive seen the opening animation a few times and it looks like they shot out of a hole in the surface, not from the surface itself
Slimes and lizards.
Also bushes and bush-trees.
Hm.
We see parts of Haven in the newer Vanguard missions.