The Question of the treaty

The tribes and clans of wild folk and the green peoples will nearly all speak of the treaty if question about law by a psychonaut. Any one of these folk or people may give the treaty and the Psychonaut's lack of adherence to it as a reason for not speaking with or assisting the psychonaut. A member of the treaty peoples might explain it briefly if pressed. Such an explanation would likely point out that the wild folk contains both predator and prey and that even those amongst the wild Folk who are prey themselves do in fact prey upon the green peoples. The treaty is the agreement whereby the tribes and clans of green peoples and wild folk might deal honorably with one another while still allowing room for natural predation. A fox will hunt a grouse. A goat will feed upon the bushes of many species. But despite this, through adherence to the treaty, goat folk may trade with fox folk and berry persons. The Psychonauts will naturally wonder; may they sign the treaty? And Yes, they may, if they have passed the initiation and endeared the rites of passage and earned the right to call themselves warriors under the Freepath. And foremost Psychonauts fresh to the foglands, is the primary goal.

The Path of the Grey

The Path of the Grey through Myth and Culture

The Grey begins its time in any new Shadowlands as nothing more than whisper of being. Fear of disorder. A desire for control. A flash of red or a reflective shine to the eyes of those who listen to the Grey as it whispers- first in their dreams and then during waking hours. The Grey prefers the dark and the cold. The grey prefers high altitudes and thin air and open spaces. And in these spaces one can hear the Grey more clearly.

And as one's story spins darkly out control, as impending doom approaches due to impersonal forces beyond one's control; then the Grey can sense one's mind and make its offer.

Grey Aliens

Assuming a physical form is possible for the Grey even in its weakest stages of development in this world. In its embryonic form, the Grey appears not unlike a Grey Alien: smooth grey skin, with an over sized head not unlike a Mayan Mummy. The eyes are black upon first inspection, but prove an impossible deep red if light its the eyes at the correct angle. The Grey will move itself as though gravity did not affect it, and without moving any of its body- levitating in total stillness with not limbs moving. Even as it grows in strength, the Grey will still assume this form in many dealings. It appears fond of the form.

The Grinning Man

A horrible precursor to the arrival of the Grey's more powerful Forms. The way will be paved for the Grey by a series of strange homunculi called the Grinning Men. They appear almost human, but their faces have no eyes, merely skin sunken into empty sockets with rictus grins cause by mouths with no lips. The Grinning Men speak without moving or opening their mouths, directly into the minds of the listeners without fail. They dress in anachronistic though formal clothing, ten or twenty years out of date. They do not walk, rather they simply appear in a different location when one blinks or looks away.

They act as evangelical ministers, spreading the word to those willing to hear the Grey's message. They offer warnings of impending real danger. They make promises of safety and good will. And they will insist that they "breath and eat and bleed as men do".

As people begin to listen to their warnings, and people will, despite their terrifying visage; the Grinning Men will begin to speak of a coming danger. And they will offer solace and safety through allegiance to their Elder: The Grey.

The Mothman

The Grey, like most elders, can assume an approximation of a human form once it has sufficient strength. Said form is a tall thin grey figure with reflective grey eyes. The Face looks like a strange mixture of insect and owl-like features- although without features or chitin. The avian/insect hybrid features are cast upon pallid grey skin stretched across a skull which appears overly large and elongated like a classic alien or a preserved Mayan mummy. The Grey wears a grey leather or skin cloak or overcoat which appears to merge with the body of the figure. The Interior of the coat is colored brown and umber and dusty ochre, in patterns which strongly suggest the wings of a moth. Sometimes, the figure will have hands separate from the cloak, sometimes the hands and arms will merge with the cloak. The cloak will move and spread like wings if the figure moves into the air.

The Grey makes sounds, but they are out of sync with it's movements. If it speaks, the mandibles in it's mouth will move after the words have been heard. The sounds of beating wings or scratching claws will come before or after the movements that should produce said sounds.

Ancient Astronauts theory

Stories have power, and the Grey and its homunculi will tell stories claiming credit for human advances int he Bonelands. They will claim increasing influence of the events depicted in recorded history. For as stories are retold, so does history change. As people come to revere the Grey, so does it's power grow. It devours the histories of other cultures and other gods to make itself strong. It will start with rumors and whispers, to make people talk about it. Then it will transform that talk into reverence. Then it will transform that reverence into religious fervor. And finally it will anchor that religious fervor with fear. And it will use that fear to institute control. And through control of the stories told, the Grey makes itself into the Elders and Gods and Demons and Spirits from other older stories. It travels back in time through the minds of those who believe its stories and remakes the history that they know.

And the world that these people live in becomes one where the Grey was always the one true God, and all other supernatural beings which survive in the cultural discourse are demons or evil spirits. The world becomes the story which people tell, and being born of fear becomes a god who rules through fear.

The Grey in more Depth

Fear is inescapable. Fear is inevitable. Heroes use fear as their sword and shield, as their drive and fuel. But some use fear as a cage within which they capture everyone, including themselves. In the hopes of total control, the Grey inspires the Locust King to cage and devour the world.

The Grey is a kidnapped infant demiurge. The grey as a reverse alien abduction. 'God' as an accidental prisoner from another story. Always an outsider to the story they infect. The Grey is an infant old one dragged into each new shadowland as an embodied hypersigil thoughtform by the desperate magick of the Locust and the Lion. The child godhead has been driven mad by fear and sensory overload in the new world. He is pain and fear and simple morality and id urges. Because demons and gods live in stories, the bootstrap Paradox is a viable option. The Lion and the Locust are faced with a Wendigo invasion. Wendigo are caused by the Locust touch and thus the Grey, but the paradox can eliminated if the Locust and Lion make the right choice in this retelling.

The Grey Locust/King and the Grey always start as Dead Gods from somebody else's story. They infect new stories. Pulled in when somebody else invokes and embodies their story as a means of power and/or survival. The Grey is anti life. It seeks silence and stillness and order. It seeks to make the world still . Because it is afraid. It is a being from the dark Era of the universe... when entropy has made everything uniform and dark and still. It can't handle the chaos and messiness of the Stellaferrous Era. And so it seeks to enforce order. It is a creature from the end of all stories. It does not understand middles.

Thus the Grey is not evil. The Grey is applying a morality that does not function in this story. It is not evil. It is alien. It is applying tools not appropriate to this world.

All of us stories

In the end, we're all stories.

If there's an afterlife, which I disbelieve, then there are precious few ways of reaching back from afterlife to life with a status update. Once breathe is gone from our lungs, and the fire out in our brains, synapses still; there is nothing left of us among our friends and family other than our stories.

Or rather their stories. Their stories of us.

And that's the only thing anyone can guarantee as an afterlife. We will be the stories told by those who choose to remember us.

I do not know my great grandfather's name. But I know he fled from his home in Finland during the first World War. Finland was under Russian occupation and Finnish boys were being conscripted to the front lines to die for glorious Mother Russia. My great grandfather borrowed a Swedish friend's passport (this was the days prior to photo ID) and fled Finland under a false name. He entered the United States through Ellis Island, and then mailed the passport back to his friend, changed his name and moved to Western Canada and started a new life. And he did this all, knowing only two words of English: 'Yes' and 'No'.

I have no idea how accurate or inaccurate this story remains. The story was told to me by my mother. She based her understanding of it on her mother's story and the other details she could unearth. My grandmother based the story upon the tales told to her by her father, my Great Grandfather.

I do not know how much of the story has changed. I do not know my Great Grandfather's name. But I know his story. And I have told it countless times to friend and family. This is his afterlife, his story continues on because I tell it.

I hope that when I die, I will have left a story- even if only one- worthy of being retold across generations.

This is the engine that drives Blood Red Dreaming.

A Quick Look at the Elders

The Old Ones and Outsiders - The Eldritch Abominations
 
The Elders are the greatest denizens of the Shadowlands, beyond everything else in the Shadowlands. The Elders have many forms, although none of them are able to fully approximate human form with any skill. They are sympathetic to humans in the Shadowlands, but think in such alien ways that they are very dangerous to deal with directly or from whom to seek aid. The Elders are the personification of concepts, and only Man of Void/Lady of Fire might ever have a connection to some actual human.

• The Three (Mystery, The Great Serpent, The Weaver)
• The Four (The Survivor, The Shepherd, The Primal, The Sleeper)
• The Fear Touched (Man of Void/Lady of Fire, The Hound, the Grey)
• The Guides of the Fallen (The Little Green Man, The Rainbow Moth)

Introduction to High Magick

High Magick is the raw essence of the Shadowlands; a weaponized essence of story. High Magick is learned through the Witches and Wizards. When High Magick is used, the caster is channeling the power of the Demons known as the Fair Folk.

Learning Magick

Magick is learned from The Witches and Wizards. Once learned, a spell must be synced to the Player's Avatar by meeting the Requirements of the Fair Folk in question. Each member of a particular court has two spells to teach: one from the relevant witch and one from the relevant wizard.

The Demon Courts

Magick in the Shadowlands is controlled by a group of Fair Folk or Demons, divided into six courts with six roles within each court.

• The Courts of the Solar Year
• The Twilight Rebellion
• The Midnight Court
• The Midday Court
• The Darkened Court
• The Courts of the Hidden Wood
• The Bone Shrine Court
• The Bone Forest Court

Spell Structure

There are 6 spells per Court. One per member of the court. Each spell has two broad focuses - Internal and External. Internal is taught by the witches and external is taught by the wizards. Each spell has three variations: Fire (critical thinking), Rose (self Sufficiency), and blade (self defense).

• Magus Spells: The Magus spells are meta spells (manipulating the rules of the world itself)
• Witch (Internal): Manipulation of the rules of the Avatar.
• Wizard (External): Manipulation of the rules of the Shadowlands. 
• Caretaker Spells: The Caretaker spells are protective spells (safeguarding what is)
• Witch (Internal): Safeguarding your own Aura and Avatar.
• Wizard (External): Safeguarding things in the outside world.
• Messenger Spells: The Messenger spells are communication spells (sending information from one party to another)
• Witch (Internal): Receiving information into the self that others are trying to send.
• Wizard (External): Sending information to others.
• Mediator Spells: The Mediator spells spells to facilitate negotiation (building connections between people)
• Witch (Internal): To build a connection between a party and yourself.
• Wizard (External): To connect to outside parties (not yourself). 
• Scholar Spells: The Scholar spells are divination spells (discovering what is unknown and hidden)
• Witch (Internal): Discover something internal to the self: remember lost information, learn things about the self that is unknown, etc..
• Wizard (External): Discover something external to the self, something about the world.
• Harbinger Spells: The Harbinger Spells are prophecy and summoning spells (bringing 'something' from elsewhere)
• Witch (Internal): Bring something external into the self (self possession/channeling). 
• Wizard (External): Bring something external into the present (prophecy of some sort).

An Introduction to the Denizens

The beings of the Blood Red Dreaming are all fictional, which is to say that they live inside stories. Some began life as real people, sometimes more than one real person merges to create an archetype. Some beings are ideas incarnate. They exist as personifications of concepts or seasons, times or places. These beings live in the Shadowlands, because the human mind more readily remembers stories and more readily remembers characters. And so within the human mind, within the Shadowlands, we find many strange denizens- monsters and fair folk, spirits and gods, and eldritch abominations greater and older than any god could hope to be.

The Denizens are divided into several broad categories: The Others, The Inhabitants, and the Archetypes.

The Others

The Others are also divided into several order (arranged here from most to least powerful): Elders, Spirits, Gods, Fair Folk, and Monsters.

All the denizens will assist Sorcerers in the Shadowlands, but all have a price. Elders demand stories. Spirits demand attention. Gods demand worship. Fair Folk (Demons) demand payment. Monsters demand blood.

The Inhabitants

The Ancient Tribes, the People and the Folk: the inhabitants are just that- they are the beings that inhabit the Shadowlands. Not possessed of any great supernatural powers in the universe of the story, the live and get by as they can.

The Archetypes

Arguably the strangest of the Denizens, the Archetypes are Avatars of beings from the Bonelands. But these are reusable hollow avatars and many people will step into the roles of the Archetypes and play the parts of hero and scoundrel and villain.

The Archetypes are Divided into several Groups, which can easily divided into Freepath and Locust Touched.

I am for that thing in your genome that demands it. I am for that thing which keeps you animals alive. I am, at most, a slice of monkey suspended within the stuff of universal intelligence. You are a monkey in nice clothes.

In the harsh environment you refer to as a habitable planet, group behaviors are required to survive long enough to procreate. Since you are stupid monkeys, you have no natural affinity for group altruism.

And so you have evolved a genetic pump that delivers pleasant chemicals to your monkey brains. One that is triggered by awe and fear of an anthropomorphism of your environment. Earth mothers. Sky gods. Bits of bush that catch fire. Interesting-looking rocks. An oddly-shaped branch. You’re not fussy.

When your brain does this idiot work, you stop in front of that bump or stick and consider it fiercely. Other monkeys will, like as not, stop next to you and emulate you. Your genetic pump delivers morphine for your souls. You have your fellow monkeys join in. Perhaps so they can feel it too. Perhaps because you feel it might please the stick god to have more monkeys gaze at it in narcotic awe.

The group must be defended. Because as many monkeys as possible must please the stick god, and you can continue to get your fix off praying to it.

You draw up rules to organize and protect the group. Two hundred thousand years later, you put Adolf Hitler into power. Because you are, after all, just monkeys.

I am your stash.
— Morrigan Lugus, Supergod #3

First Thoughts on Your Avatar

From Wiktionary

Etymology

1784, Borrowing from Hindi अवतार ‎(avtār) or from Urdu اوتار ‎(avatār), both borrowed from Tamil and Sanskrit अवतार ‎(ava-tāra, “descent of a deity from a heaven”), a compound of अव ‎(ava, “off, away, down”) and the vṛddhi-stem of the root तरति ‎(√tṝ, “to cross”).

In computing use, saw some use in 1980s videos games – 1985 online role-playing game Habitat by Lucasfilm Games (today LucasArts), by Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, later versions of the Ultima series (following religious use in 1985 Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar), and 1989 pen and paper role-playing game Shadowrun. Popularized by 1992 novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

Noun

avatar ‎(plural avatars)

(Hinduism) the incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu.

The physical embodiment of an idea or concept; a personification.  

(computing or gaming) A digital representation or handle of a person or being; often, it can take on any of various forms, as a participant chooses. i.e. 3D, animated, photo, sketch of a person or a person's alter ego, sometimes used in a virtual world or virtual chat room.  

THE EARTHLY INCARNATION OF A DEITY, PARTICULARLY VISHNU

THE PHYSICAL EMBODIMENT OF AN IDEA OR CONCEPT; A PERSONIFICATION

A DIGITAL REPRESENTATION OF A PERSON OR BEING

---

Every role-playing game out there uses an avatar. Normally the avatar is described as being your 'character', like actors taking on a role. But this game uses the older form, more like performing Shaman and witch doctors taking on the essence of a god or demon or spirit. And also like astral projection, save that you are not projecting into the astral realm, but the fictional realm: the Mythic World- the Shadowlands.

And unlike most Role-playing games, you do not get to choose anywhere near as much about your avatar as you might like. You project yourself, dreaming, into the Shadowlands.

What the Shadowlands Are

The Dreamtime of the Australian Aboriginal mythology depicts the ideas that some things of spiritual dimension exist outside of regular time or 'everywhen', to steal from anthropologist William Edward Hanley Stanner. Traditional Australian spiritual practises include walking song lines and singing the necessary songs to hold the world together. The writer, Alan Moore, argues through much of his more esoteric writings that story itself is magic, quoting everything from the bible to hermetic writings of such occult figures as John Dee. Grant Morrison talks about his encounter with his own fictional creations that he invented to act as fiction suits for himself to transform his life by dragging the fictional version of himself into the 'real world'.

What does all this mean? Probably not much yet. But the short answer is: fiction is a place. 'Once upon a time' is an incantation to opena portal to a timeless land. When this book calls gods, or magick or demons and many other things fictional, do not for a second think that we mean something tricky or fancy. We do in indeed mean fiction in the classic sense of the word. But also do not imagine that just because something is fiction that means that it is not real.

Prelude

We cannot wait for a savior.

The story needs YOU, right now, to stand up and be a protagonist.

 

You must find the role that you can play and take up the mantle.

You must be First Mother or First Hero, the Witchdoctor or the Walker, perhaps the Dreamer.

You must be a Witch or a Wizard, join the Tenebrati or commune with the Primal One.

 

And you will likely fail. You may even die. But your efforts will not be in vain.

 

You will not be the whole of the story for the character whose role you played.

But together with hundreds or thousands of other First Mothers and First Heroes, Storytellers and more,

You will move mountains, you will turn pages, until the story is a circle and the world is whole once more.