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.
