An Introductory Look at the Green Peoples

Humble Allies in Arcadia and the City of Glass: vine and bulb, leaf and flower. Concrete cracks as life breaks through. The Peoples are the green tribes, and it is a foolish Psychonauts who does not respect the trees. For in the Shadowlands, the plants make known their preferences.

• The Five Clans
  •  The One Leaf People
  •  The Two Leaf People
  •  The Winter Leaf People
  •  The Water Green People
  •  The Blade Green People
•  The Stone Crack People
•  The Village Treaty People

An Introductory Look at the Wild Folk

The other Tribes of Arcadia, wearing fur and scale and Feather. The Folk know the Locust by his scorn. The psychonaut would do well to remember that the fox and game fowl are his friends. The whale and wolf are her sisters. The rabbit and the rat are his aunt and uncle.

The wild folk are you neighbours and rivals as you explore the Shadowlands, they are your foes and friends, they are your trading partners and the hated raiders in the night.

• The Seven Clans
  •  The Free Folk
  •  The Cold Folk
  •  The Silent Folk
  •  The Wise Folk
  •  The Swift Folk
  •  The Gentle Folk
  •  The New Folk
•  The Sea Folk
  •  The Old Folk
  •  The Constant Folk
  •  The Strong Folk
  •  The Clever Folk
  •  The Singing Folk
  •  The Dancing Folk
  •  The Ghost Folk

An Introductory look at the Gods

The Bankers of Vajra and Souls

Gods are composite beings. Incorporeal as Spirits, derived from concepts as Elders, and bearing anthropomorphic avatars as Fair Folk; Gods have one unifying factor. Gods require human belief, human prayer, sacrifice and offerings. Gods are empty vessels that cannot generate any power of their own. They are bankers or insurance brokers, absorbing the Vajra and Souls offered them from a multitude of worshipers and giving back some small measure to the occasional worshiper as a miracle.

Gods can be a source of great power, but the cost is high. And it is difficult for a Freepath Sorcerer to use the power of the gods without breaking the first of the four great laws and worshiping that god.

• The Dead Gods 

An Introductory Look at the Monsters

The Misshapen and Gargantuan

The neutral parties of the Shadowlands, predator and prey. The monsters are sometimes intelligent and sometimes not. The common feature of monsters is that they are not human in appearance, although they will often have human features. They grant few favors, either ignoring or hunting those humans they encounter, dependent upon their nature.

• The Abominations
• The Wendigo  (The Stillborn Army)
• The Giants (The Grigorim)
• The Chimera (The Bakumera, The Name Eater, The Story Hunter, )

The Lexicon

Even the least thorough reader is going to notice a lot of strange terminology. What is the Shadowlands? Who are the Psychonauts? What is an Outsider? How does one obtain and Avatar and how does an Avatar Shatter? And so on and so on. The Lexicon will help with this. Not, you know, a lot -if you don't read the rest of this- but some.

A

• Arcadia: This is not utopian or idyllic, but many mistake it as such to their pain and surprise. This is the land of the Free Peoples, and it is wild and independent, so be wary and be strong.
• Aura: The Aura is the energetic force field that keeps your avatar in the Shadowlands during an incursion. You invest your Avatar with Vajra activate the Aura, and if your Avatar is threatened by the stress of the story, the aura could waiver and even shatter. And then you could wind up on your ass back in the Bonelands while your team carries on.
• Autumn: The last season prior to the Dark. The Autumn months are the last months with regular lengths, compared to the variable lengths of the Dark Months.
• Avatar: Blood Red Dreaming is a game that takes place mostly in the realm of shared stories: The Shadowlands. But your body isn't made of story stuff. Your body belongs in the Bonelands. So you need to create a virtual body, a body for the realm of stories: your Avatar. Think about the Matrix and you got it. Your Avatar is you, but just a little bit cooler. Just don't take it into the Shadowlands naked and without an Aura.

B

• Becoming Dark: The variable month of the largest size. The Becoming Dark goes from the end of Autumn until the day of the dark solstice, commonly called the winter solstice in other calendars.
• Blood Feud, the: Used to describe the first conflict that split the Great Tribe in the ancient stories of the Painted Labyrinth.
• Bonelands, the: The so-called real world, the world of flesh and bone, the world of fact and science- the alien world so far beyond the capacity of the human mind that we created the Shadowlands again and again to escape it.
• Broken, the: The mighty giants which inhabit the Foglands, also the Giants and technically referred to as Gregorim. The Broken are mysterious and silent, but near invulnerable and enormous. They will generall ignore psychonauts, unless one breaks their arcane and labyrinthine laws- after which they are wrath and fury personified.

C

• City of Glass: The name of both the third Realm as one descends and also the capital city of the Hungry Empire. The land of the Locust King and his Hungry Empire, his false utopia that hovers- a castle city in the sky. Without secret knowledge of the Free Peoples, wanderers in the Shadowlands will be hard pressed to move deeper, beyond the grip of the False King and his Hungry Empire.
• Corrupt, the: Those who have been destroyed by the influence of the Grey Locust. Notable sub groups include the Wendigo and the Stillborn Army.
• Crescent Sun: a common term used to describe the 6 season lunisolar calendar used in the Blood Red Dreaming.

D

• Darkening, the: The last season of the Crescent Sun, consisting of The Becoming Dark and The Full Dark.
• Demon: Also called the Fair Folk. The keepers of the High Magick and the evil foes of the Locust King's propaganda.
• Denizen: Many beings delve into the Shadowlands on their ill thought out incursions. But many more beings make the Shadowlands their permanent home. These beings are born, live and die in the Shadowlands. The Bonelands is toxic to these beings, they are purely denizens of the Shadowlands and have no power outside it.

E

• Elder: 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.
• Expedition: These incursions are linked to locations in the Shadowlands and unlocked by reaching that location's counterpart in the Bonelands first.

F

• Fair Folk, the: The Greater Sorcerers of the Shadowlands - also known as the Demons. The Fair Folk are the mythic beings that wear human forms: Elves and Goblins and Gnomes. They are the keepers of Magick and will be teachers and patrons to human sorcerers. Often mistaken for Gods, the difference is that Fair Folk need no worship or offerings. The Fair Folk will normally trade or barter for their favor or their instruction. The Fair Folk may appear most human like, but they are not human. Like the Elders they are sympathetic to humans in the Shadowlands. But also like the Elders, their minds are alien and they do not see things as humans do.
• Foglands, the: The land of ignorance and obscurity. The first place everyone who enters the Shadowlands ends up in after they pass through (or bypass) the Ring. The Fogslands is the unformed land of the unconscious: Urizen and Eden, depending upon how the player enters and what happens. This is how people end up in the Shadowlands if untrained. This is always the first mission. This is the equivalent of the Astral Plane or the realm of dreams and many dreamers end up here.
• Free Peoples: Those who live by the Song of Seven and follow the Freepath are collectively known as the Free Peoples. They are, as one would expect of a group name as such, a very loose affiliation of many disparate groups. The Free Peoples are contrasted to the Locust Touched.

G

• Giants, the: Another name for the Gregorim, also called the Broken.
• God: The Bankers of Vajra and Souls. Gods are composite beings. Incorporeal as Spirits, derived from concepts as Elders, and bearing anthropomorphic avatars as Fair Folk; Gods have one unifying factor. Gods require human belief, human prayer, sacrifice and offerings.
• Great Tribe, the: This term pulls double duty, referring to both the first life to arise back in ancient times, and also for the brought alliance of all Tribes who follow the Freepath and the Song of Seven.
• Gregorim, the: Though they seem unable or unwilling to speak, legends of legends told by people long dead suggest that Gregorim is the name that the Broken Giants give to themselves.
• Greenlands, the: This is another name for the realm of Arcadia.

H

• High Magick: 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.
• Hidden Heart, the: Another name for the Hollow Heart, the secret Realm at the heart of the Shadowlands.
• Hollow Heart, the: The Secret Heart of the Shadowlands and the counterpoint to the Ring. The Hollow Heart is the bottom or the 'root' of the Shadowlands. A dimension of darkness. This is the source code of the Shadowlands and the cheat code of the realms.
• Hungry Empire, the: If there is a villain in this tale, it is the Hungry Empire. Lead by the Locust King, powered by Falsenight and guided by the Grey, the Hungry Empire spreads like cancer and consumes its host in the end.

I

• Incursion: When an avatar steps through the Ring and into the Shadowlands, they have made an incursion into the Shadowlands. Incursions can be divided into three types. The first type of incursions are unguided incursions with no intentional purpose or goal. More common are expeditions, and quests, which have goals set at the start of the incursion.

J

• Juggler: Once a psychonaut opens their inner eye and gains access to both High Magick and Low Magick. A psychonaut who specializes in Low Magick is called a Juggler.

K

• Kudavbin King, the: Associated with the legend of Mordred by the propaganda of the Glass City, the Kudavbin King is the older brother of the First Mother. The rebel son of the Locust Kings. He is the king who denies his crown and thus makes his father the Last King.

L

• Locust Touched, the: Those who have drawn their sustenance from the Grey are broadly defined as the Locust Touched.
• Low Magick, the: It stands in opposition to the High Magick. The Low Magick is the illusion of magic- sleight of hand and misdirection. But only a fool would discount the Low Magick and its powerful utility in the Shadowlands.

M

• Magick: Language and story, myth and legend, shaping perception and memory. This is magick. One does not hurl fireballs. Magick is more subtle and more powerful than that. Magick is divided into High Magick and Low Magick and the two cannot be used together. Choose your magick before your incursion and pray your choice is correct.
• Mirrored City: Another name for the City of Glass.
• Monsters: The Misshapen and Gargantuan. The neutral parties of the Shadowlands, predator and prey. The monsters are sometimes intelligent and sometimes not. The common feature of monsters is that they are not human in appearance, although they will often have human features. They grant no favors, either ignoring or hunting those humans they encounter, dependent upon their nature.

N

O

• Old Ones, the: Another name for the Elders.
• Outsiders: Another name for the Elders.

P

• Painted Labyrinth, the: The place of trials, the deepest part of the Shadowlands, a realm of initiation and the keeper of ancient mysteries. All who seek to become warriors must journey here, but have a care- the labyrinth devours the unwary.
• Poison Tree: A great limbless tree, bleached white by age, the Poison Tree is the version of the Glass Tower as it appears in the Foglands.
• Psychonaut: Those who venture into the Shadowlands are known as Psychonauts.
• Psychopomps, the: As the Shadowlands are the lands of fiction and story, so are they also they also the lands of the afterlife. The Psychopomps are the caravans and carriages between the Realms. If a psychonaut wishes to move between realms without braving the Glass Tower.

Q

• Quest: These story driven incursions enable Psychonauts to re-enact the legends of the old and thereby gain access of artifacts of legend and learn the secrets of various High and Low Magicks.

R

• Rains, the: The second season of the Crescent Sun, following Winter and preceding Spring, consisting of Cold Rain and Fresh Rain.
• Realm: The distinct but connected worlds of the Shadowlands. The Shadowlands are divided into six Realms: The Ring, The Foglands, The Mirrored City, Arcadia, The Painted Labyrinth, and the Hidden Heart. The non-liminal realms of the Foglands, the City of Glass, Arcadia, and the Painted Labyrinth are connected by the Glass Tower.
• Ring, the: The chamber at the end of universe, but is it this universe or the last one? The Ring is the permeable shell through which avatars enter the Waking Shadowlands and through which they must pass to use any gates to move from gate to gate. Think 'Event Horizon' or Nightcrawler's teleport ability. But it's a drug trip. This implies that drug trips dip people into the ring unprotected with their minds exposed.

S

• Serpent Lines:
• Shadowlands, the: Human minds cannot handle the cold reality of the Bonelands. And so humans built new worlds of fantasy out of their stories and fled their to protect their minds from running over. And these worlds of illusion are the Shadowlands. You will spend your whole life in the Shadowlands, but only by entering consciously as a Psychonaut can one take an active role in the shape of the Shadowlands.
• Sorcerer: Once a psychonaut opens their inner eye and gains access to both High Magick and Low Magick. A psychonaut who specializes in High Magick is a Sorcerer.
• Spirits, the: The personification of illness and disease, of medicine and of places. They are beings without a form or body, though many bear a ghostly image; humans in the Shadowlands are unable to interact with spirits in a corporeal manner.
• Spring, the: The third season of the Crescent Sun, following the Rains and preceding Summer, consisting of New Spring and Warm Spring.
• Stillborn Army, the: Former humans, these are victims of the shrapnel of the Hungry Empire. The Wendigo Hordes and other Locust Touched unaligned with the Hungry Empire formally.
• Storyteller: When people invest their auras and launch an incursion into the Shadowlands, one must remain behind and guide the incursion. This person is the Storyteller and since magick is story, the storyteller's role is sacred. Groups should swap Storyteller duties regularly.

T

• Tribe: A group of people not yet beholden to the Hungry Empire.

U

V

• Vajra: The fuel on which the Avatars function. Vajra is the mystical energy of the human will and of story.

W

• Wendigo: a type of Corrupt who are always hungry, and always starving. Their hunger has warped their senses and a psychonaut will be hard pressed to communicate with any of the corrupt... unless one considers the sounds of digestion to be communication.
• Witch: Resistance to the Hungry Empire, and mentors to Psychonauts. It is through the teaching of the Witches and Wizards that Sorcerers learn Magick, both High Magick and Low Magick.
• Wizard: Like the Witches, the wizards are the guerilla war against the Locust King and the Obi-Won to many Sorcerers.

X

Y

Z

• 
  

An Introductory look at the Spirits

The Clean and Unclean, The Pestilent and the Guardians
 
The spirits are the personification of illness and disease, of medicine and of places. They are beings without a form or body, though many bear a ghostly image; humans in the Shadowlands are unable to interact with spirits in a corporeal manner.

• The Old Spirits (The Quiet Ones, The Sickly Ones)
• The Miscreated
• The Psychopomps (The Iron Horses, The Rust Vultures, Ghost Bears, Stone Turtles, Stellar Jays)

An Introductory look at the Tribes

The Hungry Empire erected the City of Glass. But people refused to fall in line. Some people survived in the shadowy margins. Before that, for 666 generations the tribes lived by the Song. Before the rise of the Hungry Empire. Now they call the stories of Arcadia home. These free peoples, both in Arcadia as they were in days of old, and in the City of Glass as they struggle for survival, these people are the Tribes.

An Introduction to the Law

There's nothing more reassuring than realizing the world is crazier than you are.

Thor: The Dark World

The Storyteller

The Storyteller is the player who agrees to open the way into the Waking Shadowlands, so that the other players may send their Avatars through the Ring.

The Avatars and Auras

The Personal Projection of a psychonaut sent into the Waking Shadowlands to achieve victory in grand adventures and quests.

The Aura is the psychonaut's ability to maintain their Avatar in the Waking Shadowlands

Tools

Tools of the Psychonaut profession, their tricks of the trade: Magick and Artifacts and their related skill trees.

The Deck and Action Resolution

Actions are resolved first by asking if the psychonauts HAVE previously done the action in the Bonelands.

Vajra

The energy built between sessions and used during incursions.

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

The Bonelands

The so-called real world, the world of flesh and bone, the world of fact and science- the alien world so far beyond the capacity of the human mind that we created the Shadowlands again and again to escape it.

The human mind is a small thing, and fragile. The universe on the other hand is vast. Indeed, the universe is vast beyond human imagining. To say that the universe is beyond human comprehension is to undersell the scope of things quite spectacularly. The human skull runs over trying to hold the seemingly impossible scope of the universe. The concept of zero drove men mad. The idea of an infinity universe terrified the wise. The Catholic Church was so threatened that it declared heretical idea of earth as a tiny speck in a small galaxy in an insignificant corner of a universe so vast that light could only trek across it slowly.

What is the Shadowlands?

We don't live in the real world. We live in a fantasy world constructed by our mind.

How can this be?

Because we can't access the real world. Our senses are ridiculously limited in their perceptions. Sight is limited to the so call visible spectrum, unable to see infrared or ultraviolet, radio waves or x-rays. We see thirty  frames per second, making the very fast and the very slow virtually invisible to our senses. Our hearing is likewise limited, and our sense of smell fails to notice all kinds of deadly vapors. We can't perceive radiation, except when it sickens or kills us.

In addition, the idea that our sense will function properly is something frequently disproven, near-sightedness, far-sightedness, blindness, deafness, colorblindness, hallucinations and much more reduce our already limited knowledge of the real world.

And what of our assumptions? Humans don't come hardwired with the knowledge that an adult possesses, and no two adults accumulate the same body of knowledge, the same cultural baggage, the same heuristics and contexts, stories and biases and on and on.

Introduction to the Ring

The Ring is the place where everyone begins their quest into the Shadowlands. People wander through the Shadowlands in a haze before awakening and beginning their lucid dreaming endeavors into the Shadowlands. The Ring appears innocuous to most travelers, who remain ignorant of where they truly reside when they step into the ring. The Ring is the refuge of a dying universe in the Dark Era. It may be a shadowlands future for our universe. It may be the universe preceding our own, the universe from which the Man of Void and Lady of Fire sent their message, which guaranteed their rebirth in the new universe- through message, through story.