As the Psychonaut steps into the ring, They are bathed in the lights
from the spiraling galaxies that hang impossibly overhead. In the
Foglands, a perpetual blood red twilight washes over the face of any
visiting Pasychonauts. In the perpetual night of the Mirrored city
arcing currents of electricity and neon reflect off the smog and smoke
that threaten to drown the city and any unwary Psychonauts. In Arcadia,
sun and moon and firelight alone will light the Psychonaut's face. In
the Painted Labyrinth, phosphorescent fungi climb the walls and
bioluminescent creatures flit through air and stagnant pools of water,
casting eerie light by which a Psychonaut may navigate the dangerous
tunnels.
But in the Hollow Heart, there is no light.
Dark as the human mind from which the Shadowlands is birthed and in
which it the Shadowlands grow. Dark, but not still. The Hollow Heart
does thrum with what can only be called a heartbeat. The sense that the
Psychonaut receives upon arriving in the Hollow Heart, is that one has
been swallowed by some great creature. When Jonah was swallowed by the
whale or "greate fyshe," the sense he received would have been similar.
And perhaps Jonah had found a way into the Hollow Heart under its other
common name: the Hidden Heart.
The Hollow Heart is also the Hard drive of the Shadowlands. The
Shadowlands is procedurally generated like an unfolding fractal flower
from the stories encoded into the fractal mirrored rooms of the Hollow
Heart. A Psychonaut who manages to make the arduous and maliciously
concealed journey to the Hidden Heart will find themselves with the
entirety of the Shadowlands at their fingertips. The Universe of Stories
would be theirs to control and reshape, if they can master the manner
in which the Hollow Heart encodes and projects its store of tales out
into the world. And, while a Psychonaut who unlocks the secrets of the
Hollow Heart can reshape the Shadowlands, the stories and the archetypes
which underpin the universe and which are its basis are not changeable
from Hollow Heart.
And it is rumored among the veteran Psychonauts that the Hollow Heart
is actually the top most layer of a vast underground network of minor
realms. But what these are, a Psychonaut will have to discover
elsewhere.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Friday, April 6, 2018
The Hell Keys
There are numerous minor realms in the Shadowlands. None of them are so well established as the Realms of Fair Folk. Their realms connect to all the major realms and the liminal realms. And the doors to the various demenses in this realm are the Hell keys.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Death in Arcardia
The Guides of the Fallen
The concept of death to the Free Peoples would sound very foreign to the Civilized folk of the Glass City. The City of Mirrors sees death as a reaper, personified in various guises by the Broken, from Falsenight to Starheart and on. To the Free Peoples, death splits along two lines, neither of them an end but a beginning. As these are broad abstract concepts, they have been personified as a married couple: the Masculine Little Green Man and the Hermaphroditic Rainbow Moth.
The Little Green Man
The great instructor and the regenerator. The death of the Little Green Man is the death of green of the forest in face of cold of the darkening solstice. As autumn draws to a close, death creeps in and the world goes quiet. As Winter passes and the Rains come, life returns, regenerating from apparent devastation. The leaves are not the same leaves, the fruits are not the same fruits, but the pattern is the same. The Little Green Man does not pretend that death cannot reach us, but points out that death cannot stop us. What we have taught the next generation lives on in the next generation, they are the rains and the coming spring and summer, as their teachers are the Autumn and the inevitable cold of the Dark Moons. Death is merely a pause: breath in, hold, breath out.
The out shell looks different, but the pattern remains, the story continues to unfold. Death is merely an interruption. Do not fear it, prepare for it and the next generation will carry your tale for eternity and you will never truly be dead.
Death is the source of all life in Arcadia. Don't fear the reaper.
The Rainbow Moth
As the Little Green Man personifies death as a regeneration, so the Rainbow Moth personifies death as a transformation. From Larva to Pupa to Adult, the Rainbow Moth is the blossoming of something new and greater- death as a shedding of lesser form. Before death, the inhabitant was small and frail and merely physical in form. Now, in death, the inhabitant's greater form bursts forth: a powerful set of accomplishments and ideals that they have lived well enough to have added to the archetypes of the Freepath and the stories of the Tribe itself. Freed from the constraints of the body, the life that the inhabitant lives becomes more an greater than said life every could have been while the inhabitant was alive.
The Rainbow Moth also venerates sacrifice and legacy and may be a little too comfortable with the idea of dying well for a great cause, but when a warrior seeks to die gloriously to buy the tribe time to retreat as the Harvester and the Men of Black and White bear down upon a village, it is to the Rainbow Moth that said Warrior says invocations.
The concept of death to the Free Peoples would sound very foreign to the Civilized folk of the Glass City. The City of Mirrors sees death as a reaper, personified in various guises by the Broken, from Falsenight to Starheart and on. To the Free Peoples, death splits along two lines, neither of them an end but a beginning. As these are broad abstract concepts, they have been personified as a married couple: the Masculine Little Green Man and the Hermaphroditic Rainbow Moth.
The Little Green Man
The great instructor and the regenerator. The death of the Little Green Man is the death of green of the forest in face of cold of the darkening solstice. As autumn draws to a close, death creeps in and the world goes quiet. As Winter passes and the Rains come, life returns, regenerating from apparent devastation. The leaves are not the same leaves, the fruits are not the same fruits, but the pattern is the same. The Little Green Man does not pretend that death cannot reach us, but points out that death cannot stop us. What we have taught the next generation lives on in the next generation, they are the rains and the coming spring and summer, as their teachers are the Autumn and the inevitable cold of the Dark Moons. Death is merely a pause: breath in, hold, breath out.
The out shell looks different, but the pattern remains, the story continues to unfold. Death is merely an interruption. Do not fear it, prepare for it and the next generation will carry your tale for eternity and you will never truly be dead.
Death is the source of all life in Arcadia. Don't fear the reaper.
The Rainbow Moth
As the Little Green Man personifies death as a regeneration, so the Rainbow Moth personifies death as a transformation. From Larva to Pupa to Adult, the Rainbow Moth is the blossoming of something new and greater- death as a shedding of lesser form. Before death, the inhabitant was small and frail and merely physical in form. Now, in death, the inhabitant's greater form bursts forth: a powerful set of accomplishments and ideals that they have lived well enough to have added to the archetypes of the Freepath and the stories of the Tribe itself. Freed from the constraints of the body, the life that the inhabitant lives becomes more an greater than said life every could have been while the inhabitant was alive.
The Rainbow Moth also venerates sacrifice and legacy and may be a little too comfortable with the idea of dying well for a great cause, but when a warrior seeks to die gloriously to buy the tribe time to retreat as the Harvester and the Men of Black and White bear down upon a village, it is to the Rainbow Moth that said Warrior says invocations.
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