((In Character (IC) Document:
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Chronicles of Darkness - Mage: The Awakening (Fallen World Chronicle)
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Cannibalized from multiple sources such as the Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Ed and the Chronicles of Darkness Corebook))
THE SHADOW REALM
A Pentacle Academy lecture series by Anton (MD), Dean of The Adamant College.
Part Two: Topology
SIGHTS, SOUNDS, AND SMELLS
To an unfortunate Sleeper who crosses over, the Shadow feels eerie and unnerving. The Shadow lives up to its name; light seems pale and thin, even at noon. Sounds echo and carry much farther than in the material world, and the sky is perpetually roiling with gray clouds that only occasionally part, allowing a glimpse of Luna or Helios hanging in the sky. The atmosphere has the charged feeling of an approaching storm. When the overcast sky changes it does so dramatically — flash floods, dust devils, and torrential downpours accompanied by multicolored lightning send most spirits hurrying for shelter.
Under Mage Sights while in the Shadow, colors shift subtly, and the Essence can make you feel alive and vital, as though every step has purpose. Scents are stronger and, like sounds, carry further. The senses under Spirit Mage Sights may interpret the varied nature of spirits as scent and taste, sometimes to the point of synesthesia. Explorers have reported that they can smell the euphoria in joy spirits, and taste the anger of a murder spirit by its leavings.
DAY
When the purpose of the visit is to cover ground rather than study the wildlife, I advise young Mages restrict visits to daytime, under the gaze of the great Sun Spirit Helios. The first thing travelers notice is that the Gauntlet is harder to cross in the day, at least, when entering the Shadow. The Gauntlet has a current to it, pushing away from the Hisil. Once they’ve arrived, experienced travelers will note that the Shadow seems subdued. Fewer spirits are active, and those reflecting nocturnal creatures are sluggish. Gaps in the cloud cover are marked by great shafts of pale sunlight — and where they touch the surface, the Shadow’s gravity increases, making spirits and travelers alike feel heavier. The effect grows stronger the higher up you are, but passes immediately once the moving clouds obscure the sun again.
NIGHT
At night, the Shadow comes alive. Essence flows a little more easily, dormant spirits twitch and stir in their sleep, and the changing face of the great Moon Spirit Luna casts her light into the darkness. Mages enter the Shadow at night to track down an active spirit, bargain with spirits, perform rites and summon nocturnal spirits. Lunes, Wolf Spirits, and Werewolves are especially active in the Shadow at Night while their patron’s face is in the sky.
While Helios drowns out all other powers in the Shadowed day, the sky glimpsed through the clouds in the Shadowed night is washed in color and light. More stars than human eyes can see in the material sky decorate the void around Luna, and in Northern and Southern skies, the auroras constantly dance, casting the Shadow in ever-changing color. It is a sight to behold.
The Moon, the Sun, and the Wolf
A side about fundamental forces in the Shadow, the spirits of the sun and the moon are vital in the very cycle of the Shadow Realm itself. The current in the Gauntlet during the day and the effect of Shadow-sunlight have the same cause. While Luna is ever-changing and protean, guarding the earthly Shadow from alien void spirits, her brother Helios is steadfast, unchanging, and pushes everything within the lunar sphere “in,” forcing Essence to ground, fixing spirits in place and creating the Shadow’s “gravity.” Mages who convince aerial spirits to carry them into the sky discover that they can’t reach the Planet Court no matter how hard they try — the increasing pressure of Helios’ solar winds force them back long before they reach the void. Thyrsus who’ve dealt with Helios or his Helion Spirits know all too well that Helios hasn’t forgiven slights on a time scale we can perceive. Mostly, that is because it’s not in Helios’ nature to change his mind about anything, but partly, it’s because of the Sundering.
Just as Luna gives the Shadow its ever-changing, reactive nature, Helios provides the impetus for spirits attempting to leave. By his nature, he forces everything away. It is said in legend that before his death, patron of the Uratha, Father Wolf hunted the spirits fleeing the Shadow, complementing both Luna and her brother. By killing him, the first pack of the Uratha destroyed that harmony and made Helios the unwitting cause of the material world’s woes.
THE URBAN SHADOW
If the Shadow is shaped by perception, then human beings shape and twist it out of all proportion. People dwell on pain and cling to happiness, they feel nostalgia for places they used to know, and they wonder about places they haven’t been. The Shadow of a town or city is warped by all the conflicting viewpoints, birthing a horde of spirits organized (loosely) into a discordant collection of umia (Choirs), ilthum (Descants), and spirit courts.
Counter to many expectations of young mages, it’s the edges of human civilization that pose the most danger in the Shadow, not the centers. The hearts of cities are usually old enough to have established courts. While the Shadowed landscape still changes more rapidly than in the wilderness, the largest and most powerful spirits are relatively stable and easier to deal with than their cousins in the mountains and deep forests. Outbursts of strong emotions upset the order of things as new. Hursihim (Rank 1-2 Spirits) burst into life, but at least, the spirits of buildings and roads understand human perspective. For a new suburb, however, the land clearance may be the most traumatic change for a thousand years. New builds and demolitions orphan the spirits linked to the former landscape, often waking them from centuries of slumber, and they take out their rage on their surroundings. Those that don’t starve find alternative sources of Essence, some becoming the twisted hybrid spirits, which are called magath in First Tongue, in the process.
In the city proper, the established courts of long-standing spirits preside over countless Hursahim and Ensihim (Rank 3-4 Spirits) spawned by the ever-changing resonance of humanity. Cabals must keep abreast of spiritual politics, not only maintaining relations with the courts but tracking the changes to lesser broods. The majority of urban spirits and the members of most courts are from the artificial Choirs like buildings, roads, and vehicles. The most powerful spirits in a city are those of landmarks, with rarer spirits of famous roads and even notable objects making up the remainder. Cities built on or near to a famous natural feature often also include its spirit in their politics, often one step removed from the other courts. The spirit of the Thames, for example, holds herself aloof from London’s artificial Choirs, but all the spirits of the city know not to anger her.
The true wildcards of the urban Shadow are the conceptual spirits, born and fed in response to unpredictable stimuli. Wise magi make note of murders, disasters, terrorist threats, and festivals, preparing for the inevitable upheavals in the Shadow that they herald. Even something as innocuous as a major concert or sporting event can keep Spirit Mages busy for months after all the revelers have gone home — the Cabals of Beijing, Athens, and London are still dealing with the aftershocks of hosting the Olympics.
Despite humanity’s overwhelming resonance, the Shadow isn’t only shaped by man even in the heart of the city. Parks, zoos, urban farms, botanical gardens, and even animal research centers are all enclaves of animal- and plant-sourced resonance. The slow, wasting, madness from imprisonment in badly kept zoos breeds potent spirits, while the spirit of a famous park may be in a nature Choir, but can still dominate the Shadow on its (literal) turf.
THE RURAL SHADOW
Away from man’s touch, the Shadow has a longer memory and a simpler, more straightforward nature. Rural spirits fit into umia (Choirs) and ilthum (Descants) more cleanly than their urban counterparts, and spirit courts can be centuries or even millennia old — sometimes even older, in especially untouched parts of the world. The resonance from animals and plants is less complex than that churned up by humanity, and rural spirits are more likely to look like the phenomena they feed on than their city cousins. The combination of blunt simplicity and old, powerful spirits of natural features makes for simple spirit courts — in the Hisil wilderness might makes right, with spirits establishing a clear pecking order of personal power.
That presents its own challenges to rural mages that interact with spirits — the rulers of the wild courts are often very old and powerful, old enough to bear grudges for perceived or real slights by mankind in ages past. The very eldest remember the Fall, although not always with anger.
The Shadow changes very slowly in the wilderness, and spirits can hang on long after the features they represent are destroyed. A forest destroyed by fire or a dried-up lake may still be present in the Shadow. Distances can be deceptive, as the simple viewpoints of animals conceive of their ranges as the whole world and the Shadow equivalents stretch in response.
Special Topology
The Shadow encompasses many powerful sites and dangerous locations, each a boon or burden to a Cabal claiming it in its territory. The Wise take note of these places and make plans with these features in mind.
PLACES-THAT-AREN’T: Shadow Pockets, Deep Shadow or Deep Umbra
In most places, the Shadow conforms to the same proportions as the material world — if it would take a person three hours to walk from one place to another through a material forest, walking through its spiritual reflection will take about as long. If a location is regarded as larger or more important than it actually is, the spiritual version usually grows in response — and conversely, if two places are thought of as close together, the distance between them shrinks. For the most part, these changes are minor details noted by experienced Thyrsus and used as shortcuts or advantageous travel routes.
Places-That-Aren’t are locations which bend distance out of all semblance of the material world. The murderer’s basement may be 500 square feet in the material world, but in the Shadow, it’s a vast space the size of a warehouse, filled with gore and the spirits of pain and blood attracted by its resonance. Some Places-That-Aren’t are entirely apocryphal — if enough people hear that there’s a mysterious island in the Great Lakes, or that a building on the edge of town hides a secret nuclear bunker, and the spiritual Resonance is strong enough, then the Shadow might include those locations even if the material world never did.
Places-That-Aren’t make excellent fortified locations in the Shadow for spirits and mages alike. Many powerful spirits desiring privacy inhabit them, and Mysterium LoreKeepers tell stories of the Ilusahim (Rank 7-8 Spirits) dwelling in vast, shadowed palaces that don’t have physical reflections and can only be entered by secret routes.
SHADOW VERGES: Holes in the Gauntlet
More common than the other special topographies but far less common than Loci, a Shadow Verge is a place in the material world where the Gauntlet has become so thin that a seamless hole is created in which spirits, people, and things can travel back and forth freely. These can be highly dangerous as they can let any spirits over and those that unknowingly wander into them don’t tend to return. One of the most dangerous things about Verges is they are hard to perceive without Mage Sights and won’t know you’ve crossed into the Shadow until you have arrived. They are essentially invisible holes that may “flap” open and closed based on any temporal or external stimuli. Where Loci are very similar to Verges in that the Gauntlet is always thin in both places, a Locus is a doorway or opening through a very thin Gauntlet and a Verge is somewhere where the Gauntlet vanished like holes in cheesecloth. The Beshilu or Rat-Hosts are known to gnaw holes in the Gauntlet, creating thin places and Verges.
SHOALS: Complete subluxation of the Shadow from the Material
Some upheavals in the Shadow are so terrible they injure the very fabric of the Shadow and disrupt its connection to the material world’s resonance, forming a wasteland of nihilistic emptiness called a shoal. This is different than the result of the Gauntlet becoming too thick for Resonance to permeate it (a Barrens). Rather the Shadow and Gauntlet have been “pushed” out of an area completely. With no spiritual side to a physical analogue supernatural and living things are drained of their Resonance. Within a shoal, listless and withdrawn spirits lurk in a colorless, fragile landscape. Travelers feel their emotions and interests draining away the longer they stay until they can’t muster the willpower to leave and the shoal claims another victim. Brave packs of Werewolves have been known to trick prey into shoals as part of their hunts, like driving an animal into quicksand, and trust to their own strength of will to let them enter, make the kill and leave without being trapped themselves. Shoals are usually created in remote areas where the Gauntlet is already thinner and triggered by a very potent real-physical world event. There is no hard formula for creating these places and sometimes the event is triggered on the dark side of the Gauntlet. Shoals may grow or shrink as they are “fed” large amounts of Resonance and all spirits avoid them lest they be absorbed over time. Feeding them Resonance counter to the event that created them can disrupt the Shoal and start to bring it back to normal over an extensive healing period. Shoals results in a material plane with no spiritual side, and all Resonance is bleached away, all essence drained away. This is the opposite of a Barren (see below).
GLADES: Beneficial Resonance domains
Some parts of the world are so blessed that their Shadow reflections are idylls of peace and harmony, filled with the resonance of growth, healing, safety, and friendship. Glades are rare and prized by the Cabals who claim them — within a Glade, the clouds are always parted allowing the light of Luna or Helios to shine on those inside and violence seems unthinkable. Some supernatural beings attempt to create Glades, but provoking the needed changes in the material world to have somewhere known as an oasis of peace is extremely difficult, so most don’t succeed. These are not to be confused with Supernal Verges with similar Resonance but with the addition of Supernal Magic.
WOUNDS: Infected Shoals
Some shoals become so damaged the Shadow ruptures, opening holes to somewhere else in the midst of tortured landscapes filled with the most negative, destructive spirits. Wounds open at sites of atrocities and prolonged cruelty, suffering, and hatred — gulags, torture chambers, or sites that have seen genocide and ethnic cleansing. Spirits of pain, hatred, violence, and every other sort of malevolent conceptual spirit flock to Wounds, but the resonance flowing from the wound itself is not that of the material world. There have not been conclusive studies on what extradimensional are leaking in. Some have claimed Abyssal manifestations, others insist the nature of wounds is the result of Infernal sites of Desecration or stranger things from the Lower Depths. Spirits of any sort feeding on a Wound become tainted, twisted, and violent, overcome by the negative energies found within. In general, it is wise to avoid Wounds unless you have to but they can be very very dangerous. Knowledge enhanced by Adamantine Arrow doctrine suggests that if the center of these wounds, usually powerful spirit lairing inside, is destroyed or banished it can go a long way to counteract and heal the Wound. Scorched earth policy is the best way to go but you may also be able to counteract the wound by drastic changes the material world, like destroying the site of the atrocity that infected it.
BARRENS: Gauntlet too thick
When the Gauntlet grows unnaturally thick, choking the Shadow of Essence, or the Shadow has been so scoured of Essence by devastation, the rampage of an idigam or the presence of an Ilusah, it results in a spiritual desert called a Barren. Barrens only contain Essence in faint traces around the edges, forcing spirits to evacuate or starve. They’re so spiritually dead that even using Gifts is difficult. Some Barrens slowly heal over the course of decades or centuries. A few packs have succeeded in weakening the Gauntlet and using rare rites to flood the Shadow with Essence, jump-starting the process of recovery at great cost.
In the Shadow, a Barren seems bleached and sterile, the bare landscape made more pronounced by the lack of spirits. In the material world, animals flee and plants wither, while humans living in the vicinity feel passionless and apathetic. The Azlu, or Spider-Hosts, are known for weaving spiritual webs in the Gauntlet, thickening it and creating Barrens.
LORE OF THE MAELJIN
The little-understood Lords of Wounds, or Maeljin, are the Diharim (Rank 5-6) ruling ilthum (Rank 7-8) of negative concepts and emotions, demigods of vices and evil. Collective lore name dozens of Maeljin but some names seem to belong to the same entities, and the no one has a comprehensive list. Also, these monstrous beings don’t seem to be entirely spiritual. They’re either invading entities from whatever lies through the Wounds, or the Incarnea of humanity’s dark impulses that have been infected by that other place. Again, the speculation that these entities or infections are from either the Abyss or the Lower Depths, specifically the mysterious realm of Abaddon where the mysterious Infernals reside. We aren’t sure which would be worse, but the Adamantine Arrow can’t allow Archdemons such as the Maeljin to spread their influence in the world.
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