What follows is an exacting, detailed description of The Shadowlands, as used in Jodiah Ayreg's storyline. This has been posted here not because I feel that it failed to live up to my standards, but because my PM Sentbox needed to be emptied out. Since I didn't care to lose this particular bit of information, I'm sending it to the Butcher Shop's Floor to remain until I need it.
This particular piece of writing was created in anticipation of Jodiah and Talomar going into the Shadowlands to raid a soulforge, so there's a few references to that.
The Shadowlands is almost in its entirety the property of White Wolf Games Ltd., citing from the table-top role-playing game Wraith: the Oblivion. I changed a few things to mesh it better into Rhy'Din, but generally it's not my own creation.
Without further ado:
__________
__________
The Shadowlands is a dark, lightless, lifeless world. Everything is gray-scale, like an old black-and-white movie, due to the natural entropy that exists in the world of the dead. Though no sun exists, per se, there is always ample light. A kind of omnipresent thing; there are no days and nights in the Shadowlands.
Wraiths watch the living world, what they call the Skinlands, from behind a barrier called the Shroud. The Shroud varies in thickness by how ?death-oriented? a place is; a graveyard has a thinner Shroud than a shopping mall. The Shroud is not only a metaphysical barrier, however: there are rules against crossing it. By and large, most wraiths are incapable of crossing the Shroud, though some do. They can materialize as a shadowy spectre (the traditional ghost), make limited contact with items in the Skinlands (lighting candles, extinguishing flames, knocking over cups; the whole poltergiest kick), or even speak in hushed whispers to the living. It's an uncommon power, and one extremely limited by the local government (see below).
The strange ?in-between? place that wraiths haunt is called the Shadowlands. They appear as mirror-images of the Skinlands, but death and decay are highlighted. Wraiths see death in everything; a heavy smoker might exhale yellow, sickly fumes with every breath even when not smoking, and buildings look run-down, covered with cobwebs (though with the strange absence of spiders; there are no animals in the Shadowlands).
More on buildings: Anything built in the Skinlands is there in the Shadowlands. The difference is that even a wholesome building in the Skinlands looks run-down and decrepit in the Shadowlands. Foundations and walls are cracked, windows are shattered, ect. Even if the building is tore down and replaced by a new one in the Skinlands, the reflection remains in the Shadowlands. As a result, the buildings in Stygia (the reflection of Rhy'Din City, obviously~) are incredibly tall (the shadow of the new building simply constructed atop the shadow of the old), and a twisting mix of archetectural styles through the ages.
In brief, there?s a Hierarchy that oversees wraithly existence and forbids contact with the Skinlands. The Hierarchy is ruled by seven Deathlords, all of whom oversee a legion of wraiths divided up by their causes of death (violence, disease, despair, etc.). The Shadowlands includes a city ? Stygia ? where the Deathlords meet and the seat of power resides. Wraiths of the Grim Legion (those dying of murder and violence) enforce the Law of Charon -- the first wraith, and founder of the Ferrymen.
The Ferrymen are extraordinarily powerful wraiths, numbering twelve in total. They have an agenda, but for the purposes of Jodiah and Talomar's trip to the Shadowlands.. they won't make an appearance. Charon, himself, has not been seen in many, many years and it is secretly believed he has passed on.
Wraiths remain in the Shadowlands after death, locked because of unresolved issues, and driven by passion. The issues they're tied up over are inconsequential to the scope of the time we'll spend in the Shadowlands, but their passion is not -- Wraiths locked over passions like love, gratitude, and mercy will be typically avoiding interacting with Jodiah and Talomar. Those driven by hate, greed, envy, or spite may either attack them (meta?)physically, or alert the Legion.
Wraiths of the darker kick (hate, greed, envy, spite, lust, ect) will attack not because they're outright hostile, but they despise those still of the Skinlands. Their envy of the living (or unliving, in Tal's case) overrides any fear they might have.
Jodiah and Talomar, themselves, will stand out. Wraiths are dull, lifeless, and gray, and can be marginally seen through since their bodies are made up of a kind of cohesive plasm instead of flesh. Jodiah and Talomar, by contrast, are extraordinarily solid.
The Grim Legion's basic unit is a group of six Legionnaires, led by a Praetor. Larger formations are possible, of course. Twenty-four Legionnaires and their associated Praetors are led by a Centurion, and groups larger than the command of a Centurion (formations in the hundreds) are led by Overlords. Armies of Stygia (thousands) are led by Dreadlords, commanding the multiple Overlords who command the Centurions, who command the Praetors, who command the Legionnaires. Deathlords (the highest rank) fill a more political role, but in the recent war between Stygia and the Jade Empire (the other great necropolis, existing on a different continent than Rhy'Din City -- and inconsequential for the purposes of our scene), the Deathlords of two Legions went to the war themselves.
The standard appearance of Legionnaires is a swirling black cloak, and a weapon. Some have spears, some swords, some combining with shields. The weaponry isn't universal.
Preators appear much the same, only their faces are covered by soulforged masks. Centurions have soulforged cuirasses, and carry higher-quality weapons, usually soulforged as well.
The older the wraith, the more death-like they appear. Newly deceased wraiths appear much as they did at the time of their death -- including the wounds that killed them, if applicable. Someone dying of a slashed throat will have a long, gaping tear in their neck; someone who died from hanging will most likely have the noose still around their neck, and some kind of constructed device (like a brace) used to keep their heads up, since their necks will most likely be broken.
Extremely old wraiths appear as little more than skeletons, but these only account of the Deathlords of the Legions, and a very few Overlords. Rank is designated by masks, however, and so most of the time the truly dead in visage are not known.
A powerful artifact, Charon's Mask, resides in the Shadowlands. In the center of Stygia is a large iron tower, guarded by two Praetors and their Legionnaires at all times. The Mask rests in the tower, awaiting the future return of Charon.
Wraithly laws, the Law of Charon, forbids interaction with the living. Legonnaires are dispatched to quell wriaths attempting to reach back across the Shroud to the Skinlands, and repeat offenders are often sentenced to one of the soulforges where they will likely become a paperweight on some Overlord's desk.
The soulforges themselves are not a state-run operation, though they are contracted quite often by the government of Stygia. Heavy hammers and anvils, enchanted and special in their own way, are the centerpiece of any soulforge, along with the black furnaces used to melt a wraith's "body" in preparation for being crafted.
Wraiths so sentenced to the forges are not destroyed in the process. They are painfully aware of their new position in death, having no power whatsoever to interact with anything else. Some psionics can communicate with soulforged items, but the gibbering mish-mash of words, banter, and unintelligible screams usually makes them never to want to try talking to a soulforged ashtray again.
Soulforged weapons are the only exception, though the wraiths used to create them go insane in their own way. The more a soulforged weapon is used, the more it craves to be used. A truly ancient soulforged weapon used extensivly over the many, many years a wraith exists locked in limbo in the Shadowlands can have a very negative impact on its wielder, to the point of imprinting its own bloodlust on the user. Eventually, soulforged weapons are cast into Oblivion, and are thought to be destroyed. Using such a weapon past that time (typically hundreds and hundreds of years of constant use) will turn the wielder into nothing more than a cold, hardened killer.
Wraiths of a decidedly evil intent are known as Spectres. They are in service to the Lords of Malfeas (Malfeas is another great city, made up of those wraiths consumed by their shadows to become spectres. The Malfeans themselves are not gods as Jodiah sees them, but incredibly powerful spirits embodying the pure scope of different emotions. Hate, sloth, greed, envy, lust, ect), and the natural habitat of the spectres is The Tempest (see below). They are uncommon in the Shadowlands, but when they do show up the local populace are quick to alert the Legion, who then quell them.
Wraiths are dead, already, so they cannot die. They have no internal organs to rupture, and no muscles to sever. Wraiths fight full-tilt up to the very end. When their plasmic bodies can no longer sustain any more damage (usually only when referring to bashing damage; relic, soulforged, and artifact weapons do an extreme amount of damage to the plasm of a wraith's body; a single, good slash with excellent connection from a soulforged weapon is all it takes to dissolve a wraith), the wraith is expelled from the Shadowlands, and into the Tempest.
They eventually can return if they are not swept into Oblivion, but where they go and the trial awaiting them there is beyond the scope of our trip into the Shadowlands, and I will not go into the details of it.
Wraiths know any languages they spoke in life, and the common tongue of Stygia -- Enochian -- is known in the Skinlands as well, but usually only by Necromancers and extraordinarily powerful mages who have spent much time traveling the different planes of existance.
Money exists in the Shadowlands, as well. Souls hammered in the soulforges are sometimes used to make Enoi -- the coin of the realm. A single soul makes a single coin.
As you can imagine from the sheer number of soulforged items, quite a few spirits never make it to wraithly status. When "born" in the Shadowlands, new wraiths are encased in an inescapable shroud known as a caul. They will eventually be found by one of three types of spirits:
Harvesters roam the land, looking for new wraiths in cauls. They take them strait to the soulforges where they are harvested and hammered by the soulsmiths into whatever need the dead society has of them. By and large, almost 60% of the newly dead are found by a harvester.
Reapers roam the land as well, freeing wraiths from their cauls. Once thus freed, it is illegal against the Law of Charon to hammer them in the soulforges unless so sentenced by the government of Stygia. 30% of all newly deceased are found and freed by a Reaper. Since the population of Stygia remains stable, they offset the population growth by simply having more Harvesters than Reapers. Wraiths already number in the millions.
Harveters and Reapers both are employed by the government of Stygia, and the two come to blows often when they find a newly-created wraith at the same time.
The third type of spirit to find a newly-born wraith in a caul would be Spectres. The Spectres usually drag the wraith, screaming in his caul, back down to Oblivion where he will be used as food for the Malfeans, or twisted in the Labyrinth to become a Spectre himself. Spectres being generally limited to existing in The Tempest, and the police actions of the Legion, usually limit the amount of doomed wraiths who never see the Shadowlands outside their caul to 10% of the total deceased.
The process of twisting the spirit of the entrapped wraith, and the Labyrinth in general, are beyond the scope of this PM.
Not everyone who dies goes to the Shadowlands to exist as a wraith. By and large, most people move on to whatever afterlife awaits them, or simply dissolve into Oblivion. If one walks far enough in the Shadowlands, they can reach the Far Realms -- too numerous to count, the Far Realms embody the afterlife of different faiths and religions and beliefs. Hell exists as a Far Realm, as does Heaven, and Valhalla, and so forth. Laws of reality become warped inside the Far Realms, resembling more the myths surrounding them. Wraiths cannot enter the Far Realms, but can look into them the same as they look into the Skinlands. Beings inside a Far Realm, much as (normal) beings inside the Skinlands, cannot see to the Shadowlands.
The Shadowlands themselves are simply one of any hundreds of altering planes of reality, alongside horizon realms, shard worlds, and alternate dimensions. People dying in the living world do not go to the Shadowlands as a type of all-inclusive afterlife. Only about 30% of the people that die on a daily basis will end up in the Shadowlands, and only then if they have the passion to cling to existance, the ties that bind them to the living world, and the lack of faith to go anywhere else.
This particular piece of writing was created in anticipation of Jodiah and Talomar going into the Shadowlands to raid a soulforge, so there's a few references to that.
The Shadowlands is almost in its entirety the property of White Wolf Games Ltd., citing from the table-top role-playing game Wraith: the Oblivion. I changed a few things to mesh it better into Rhy'Din, but generally it's not my own creation.
Without further ado:
__________
__________
The Shadowlands is a dark, lightless, lifeless world. Everything is gray-scale, like an old black-and-white movie, due to the natural entropy that exists in the world of the dead. Though no sun exists, per se, there is always ample light. A kind of omnipresent thing; there are no days and nights in the Shadowlands.
Wraiths watch the living world, what they call the Skinlands, from behind a barrier called the Shroud. The Shroud varies in thickness by how ?death-oriented? a place is; a graveyard has a thinner Shroud than a shopping mall. The Shroud is not only a metaphysical barrier, however: there are rules against crossing it. By and large, most wraiths are incapable of crossing the Shroud, though some do. They can materialize as a shadowy spectre (the traditional ghost), make limited contact with items in the Skinlands (lighting candles, extinguishing flames, knocking over cups; the whole poltergiest kick), or even speak in hushed whispers to the living. It's an uncommon power, and one extremely limited by the local government (see below).
The strange ?in-between? place that wraiths haunt is called the Shadowlands. They appear as mirror-images of the Skinlands, but death and decay are highlighted. Wraiths see death in everything; a heavy smoker might exhale yellow, sickly fumes with every breath even when not smoking, and buildings look run-down, covered with cobwebs (though with the strange absence of spiders; there are no animals in the Shadowlands).
More on buildings: Anything built in the Skinlands is there in the Shadowlands. The difference is that even a wholesome building in the Skinlands looks run-down and decrepit in the Shadowlands. Foundations and walls are cracked, windows are shattered, ect. Even if the building is tore down and replaced by a new one in the Skinlands, the reflection remains in the Shadowlands. As a result, the buildings in Stygia (the reflection of Rhy'Din City, obviously~) are incredibly tall (the shadow of the new building simply constructed atop the shadow of the old), and a twisting mix of archetectural styles through the ages.
In brief, there?s a Hierarchy that oversees wraithly existence and forbids contact with the Skinlands. The Hierarchy is ruled by seven Deathlords, all of whom oversee a legion of wraiths divided up by their causes of death (violence, disease, despair, etc.). The Shadowlands includes a city ? Stygia ? where the Deathlords meet and the seat of power resides. Wraiths of the Grim Legion (those dying of murder and violence) enforce the Law of Charon -- the first wraith, and founder of the Ferrymen.
The Ferrymen are extraordinarily powerful wraiths, numbering twelve in total. They have an agenda, but for the purposes of Jodiah and Talomar's trip to the Shadowlands.. they won't make an appearance. Charon, himself, has not been seen in many, many years and it is secretly believed he has passed on.
Wraiths remain in the Shadowlands after death, locked because of unresolved issues, and driven by passion. The issues they're tied up over are inconsequential to the scope of the time we'll spend in the Shadowlands, but their passion is not -- Wraiths locked over passions like love, gratitude, and mercy will be typically avoiding interacting with Jodiah and Talomar. Those driven by hate, greed, envy, or spite may either attack them (meta?)physically, or alert the Legion.
Wraiths of the darker kick (hate, greed, envy, spite, lust, ect) will attack not because they're outright hostile, but they despise those still of the Skinlands. Their envy of the living (or unliving, in Tal's case) overrides any fear they might have.
Jodiah and Talomar, themselves, will stand out. Wraiths are dull, lifeless, and gray, and can be marginally seen through since their bodies are made up of a kind of cohesive plasm instead of flesh. Jodiah and Talomar, by contrast, are extraordinarily solid.
The Grim Legion's basic unit is a group of six Legionnaires, led by a Praetor. Larger formations are possible, of course. Twenty-four Legionnaires and their associated Praetors are led by a Centurion, and groups larger than the command of a Centurion (formations in the hundreds) are led by Overlords. Armies of Stygia (thousands) are led by Dreadlords, commanding the multiple Overlords who command the Centurions, who command the Praetors, who command the Legionnaires. Deathlords (the highest rank) fill a more political role, but in the recent war between Stygia and the Jade Empire (the other great necropolis, existing on a different continent than Rhy'Din City -- and inconsequential for the purposes of our scene), the Deathlords of two Legions went to the war themselves.
The standard appearance of Legionnaires is a swirling black cloak, and a weapon. Some have spears, some swords, some combining with shields. The weaponry isn't universal.
Preators appear much the same, only their faces are covered by soulforged masks. Centurions have soulforged cuirasses, and carry higher-quality weapons, usually soulforged as well.
The older the wraith, the more death-like they appear. Newly deceased wraiths appear much as they did at the time of their death -- including the wounds that killed them, if applicable. Someone dying of a slashed throat will have a long, gaping tear in their neck; someone who died from hanging will most likely have the noose still around their neck, and some kind of constructed device (like a brace) used to keep their heads up, since their necks will most likely be broken.
Extremely old wraiths appear as little more than skeletons, but these only account of the Deathlords of the Legions, and a very few Overlords. Rank is designated by masks, however, and so most of the time the truly dead in visage are not known.
A powerful artifact, Charon's Mask, resides in the Shadowlands. In the center of Stygia is a large iron tower, guarded by two Praetors and their Legionnaires at all times. The Mask rests in the tower, awaiting the future return of Charon.
Wraithly laws, the Law of Charon, forbids interaction with the living. Legonnaires are dispatched to quell wriaths attempting to reach back across the Shroud to the Skinlands, and repeat offenders are often sentenced to one of the soulforges where they will likely become a paperweight on some Overlord's desk.
The soulforges themselves are not a state-run operation, though they are contracted quite often by the government of Stygia. Heavy hammers and anvils, enchanted and special in their own way, are the centerpiece of any soulforge, along with the black furnaces used to melt a wraith's "body" in preparation for being crafted.
Wraiths so sentenced to the forges are not destroyed in the process. They are painfully aware of their new position in death, having no power whatsoever to interact with anything else. Some psionics can communicate with soulforged items, but the gibbering mish-mash of words, banter, and unintelligible screams usually makes them never to want to try talking to a soulforged ashtray again.
Soulforged weapons are the only exception, though the wraiths used to create them go insane in their own way. The more a soulforged weapon is used, the more it craves to be used. A truly ancient soulforged weapon used extensivly over the many, many years a wraith exists locked in limbo in the Shadowlands can have a very negative impact on its wielder, to the point of imprinting its own bloodlust on the user. Eventually, soulforged weapons are cast into Oblivion, and are thought to be destroyed. Using such a weapon past that time (typically hundreds and hundreds of years of constant use) will turn the wielder into nothing more than a cold, hardened killer.
Wraiths of a decidedly evil intent are known as Spectres. They are in service to the Lords of Malfeas (Malfeas is another great city, made up of those wraiths consumed by their shadows to become spectres. The Malfeans themselves are not gods as Jodiah sees them, but incredibly powerful spirits embodying the pure scope of different emotions. Hate, sloth, greed, envy, lust, ect), and the natural habitat of the spectres is The Tempest (see below). They are uncommon in the Shadowlands, but when they do show up the local populace are quick to alert the Legion, who then quell them.
Wraiths are dead, already, so they cannot die. They have no internal organs to rupture, and no muscles to sever. Wraiths fight full-tilt up to the very end. When their plasmic bodies can no longer sustain any more damage (usually only when referring to bashing damage; relic, soulforged, and artifact weapons do an extreme amount of damage to the plasm of a wraith's body; a single, good slash with excellent connection from a soulforged weapon is all it takes to dissolve a wraith), the wraith is expelled from the Shadowlands, and into the Tempest.
They eventually can return if they are not swept into Oblivion, but where they go and the trial awaiting them there is beyond the scope of our trip into the Shadowlands, and I will not go into the details of it.
Wraiths know any languages they spoke in life, and the common tongue of Stygia -- Enochian -- is known in the Skinlands as well, but usually only by Necromancers and extraordinarily powerful mages who have spent much time traveling the different planes of existance.
Money exists in the Shadowlands, as well. Souls hammered in the soulforges are sometimes used to make Enoi -- the coin of the realm. A single soul makes a single coin.
As you can imagine from the sheer number of soulforged items, quite a few spirits never make it to wraithly status. When "born" in the Shadowlands, new wraiths are encased in an inescapable shroud known as a caul. They will eventually be found by one of three types of spirits:
Harvesters roam the land, looking for new wraiths in cauls. They take them strait to the soulforges where they are harvested and hammered by the soulsmiths into whatever need the dead society has of them. By and large, almost 60% of the newly dead are found by a harvester.
Reapers roam the land as well, freeing wraiths from their cauls. Once thus freed, it is illegal against the Law of Charon to hammer them in the soulforges unless so sentenced by the government of Stygia. 30% of all newly deceased are found and freed by a Reaper. Since the population of Stygia remains stable, they offset the population growth by simply having more Harvesters than Reapers. Wraiths already number in the millions.
Harveters and Reapers both are employed by the government of Stygia, and the two come to blows often when they find a newly-created wraith at the same time.
The third type of spirit to find a newly-born wraith in a caul would be Spectres. The Spectres usually drag the wraith, screaming in his caul, back down to Oblivion where he will be used as food for the Malfeans, or twisted in the Labyrinth to become a Spectre himself. Spectres being generally limited to existing in The Tempest, and the police actions of the Legion, usually limit the amount of doomed wraiths who never see the Shadowlands outside their caul to 10% of the total deceased.
The process of twisting the spirit of the entrapped wraith, and the Labyrinth in general, are beyond the scope of this PM.
Not everyone who dies goes to the Shadowlands to exist as a wraith. By and large, most people move on to whatever afterlife awaits them, or simply dissolve into Oblivion. If one walks far enough in the Shadowlands, they can reach the Far Realms -- too numerous to count, the Far Realms embody the afterlife of different faiths and religions and beliefs. Hell exists as a Far Realm, as does Heaven, and Valhalla, and so forth. Laws of reality become warped inside the Far Realms, resembling more the myths surrounding them. Wraiths cannot enter the Far Realms, but can look into them the same as they look into the Skinlands. Beings inside a Far Realm, much as (normal) beings inside the Skinlands, cannot see to the Shadowlands.
The Shadowlands themselves are simply one of any hundreds of altering planes of reality, alongside horizon realms, shard worlds, and alternate dimensions. People dying in the living world do not go to the Shadowlands as a type of all-inclusive afterlife. Only about 30% of the people that die on a daily basis will end up in the Shadowlands, and only then if they have the passion to cling to existance, the ties that bind them to the living world, and the lack of faith to go anywhere else.