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.

Some locations of the Southwestern Foglands

The Hart Stones

Venturing to the west in the Lowlands, psychonauts will enter the Skylines. And at the head of the great expanse of the Skylines, psychonauts will inevitably stumble upon the Hart Stones. A collection tall patterned stone menhirs which point travelers in the direction of City of Sleep to the south and the Skylines themselves to the west.

The Western Ruins

Past the skylines, carved into the earth across the great tractless lands, stand the Western Ruins. A series of monuments survive, but any metropolis associated with those monuments are all that remains.

The Broken Statues

The first of the ancient landmarks that the path marked by the Hart Stones that a traveler will find is the Broken Statues. This pair of enormous hollow statues are not in good repair, but psychonauts and scavengers can still dig around in the gigantic structures and risk the ire of the vermin that call the cracked colossi home. 

The Broke Stones

Two circles of massive standing stone stand just south of the Broken Ruins. As large as two men high, the stones are mostly still standing, although several have settled at angles or fallen entirely. On the Summer Solstice, the light of the setting sun will shine will mark a line between the two stone circles.

The Barrows

On the western border of the Sinister Valley stands a pair of earthen mounds raised above a pair of graves. Nature has reclaimed the mounds to such a state that unless one knows where to look, the Barrows can be quite hard to find. Grass has grown back across the earth, bushes and brambles have sprung through the rise in the dirt. 

The Dolmen

In the southwestern reach of the Skylines Region stand a pair of Dolmen: megalithic stone tombs that appear much more ancient that the other ruins in the west. Psychonauts who venture into the tombs will find that the two tombs are connected by a series of catacombs. But though the dolmen are ancient, the catacombs beneath are not empty. 

The North Central and Northeastern Region of the Foglands

The Spine of Glass

There is a version of the Glass Tower in all of the major Realms of the Shadowlands: The Foglands, the City of Glass, Arcadia and the Painted labyrinth. In the Foglands the tower is a twisted tower of malformed Glass bursting forth from the land like a boil and stretching into the sky. The surface of the Spine seems to be composed of glass formed when lightning strikes beach sand, opaque and marred by imperfections and pock marked holes that bore deep into the surface.

The Poison Tree

The Poison Tree coils around the Spine of Glass like Jormungand round the world tree. The fruit of the poison tree is sought by psychonauts of all stripes.

The Cave of the Cryptkeeper

The cliff that separates plateau from lowlands also divides the Canyon, with the Hollow Mountain marking the line between North and South. If Psychonauts wish to access the North of the Canyon, they must pass through the Cave of the Cryptkeeper.

The Drowned City

Surrounded by the Circle of Rust stands a vast inland Salt Sea, under which sits the great Drowned City. inhabited by slavers and scavengers, Wendigo and wanderers, the Circle of Rust is one of the few areas that welcomes outsiders and psychonauts, in much the same way that a spider welcomes a fly.

The Grave of Brine

A vast stagnant Salt Sea dominates the landscape of the Northeastern portion of the Foglands. Ancient rust encrusted towers push up from the black surface of the water, salt crystals crawling up their metal skins. Beneath the waters lurks the drowned city, and the things that make their home within the sunken ruins.

The Drowned City

If crumbling Babylon City marks the remains of the Capital of the Hungry Empire, the Drowned City is the gravesite of the once great economic center of the Hungry Empire. The rusted spires of antique towers peak from the oil waters like monsters hunting for prey.

The Circle of Rust

Not all of what is now called the Drowned City was engulfed by the grave of Brine. Some of the structures still stand upon dry land, though layered in several strata of salt. Scavengers continue to pick at the remains of this urban husk and sell their wares at the Salt Market.

The Asylum

The Last King has the Dead Forest and the Iron Gallows with which to dispatch those who displease him. The Salt Market uses the Asylum; a decaying old building that perhaps once served as hospital or prison, but which has deteriorated so far that the truth will be lost forever. Half submerged in salt crusted shores, the Scavengers of the Salt Market lower those deemed guilty or just unlucky into the Asylum to die, go mad or devour each other as a horde watches from the roof and gamble on the outcome.

The Salt Market

Seedy and dangerous, the Salt Market is the best place in the Foglands to obtain secret knowledge and dangerous goods. Little more than a sprawling colony of tents and shanties scavenged from the corpse of the Drowned City, the Salt Market is nonetheless the living heart of the Plateau.

The Burning Lands

A strange Collection of buildings Stands on the northwestern shore of the Brine, The plants there are locked in withered states, and creatures there are distorted dark mirrors of their intended forms. The Three-petal Flower design marks signs and buildings all through the the Burning Lands, and those who tarry too long there fall ill and do not recover.

The Last Daytower

Anomolous amongst the rusting structures the make of the bulk of the Circle of Rust and the Drowned City, stands the last Daytower. Build of sandstone, the last Daytower is a thin cylinder with a domed parapet at the top. A Polished metal mirror is aimed to catch the dawn's first light at winter solstice.

Jawbone Ridge

Inhabitants of the Plateau insist that Jawbone ridge, with its white protruding outcroppings, is the actual jawbone of the great being whose ribs stand over Ribcage Castle. But while the ribcage is clearly the remains of some great being, the ridge is less clearly part of any corpse. But still, the wind whips across the ridge in strange ways and wanderers and psychonauts alike will hear strange voices whispered on the cutting cold winds at the edge of the plateau.

A Few Brief Descriptions of Foglands Landmarks

Location: Foglands, Northwest Plateau, Ribcage

The Ribcage Castle

A vast monolithic ribcage rests upon the Northwestern edge of the plateau. The inhabitants of the plateau have made guesses at the origin of the enormous bones, some ancient kaiju father or mother of the Giants is a popular theory. In any case, resting in the embrace of the enormous ribs is the moldering ruins of Ribcage Castle. The last resting place of the line of the Locust King, the castle is largely abandoned in the era of the Foglands, inhabited only by scavenging monsters a few loyal locust-touched and the Last King himself.

Babylon City

During the Ten Thousand Years of Darkness, the City of Glass extended nearly across all the arable land of the known world, the remaining Free Tribes pushed to to the edges and the margins and the miserable places to survive with the independence intact. In the era of the Foglands, this has changed and all that remains of the expansive devouring City of Glass is a scattering of scavengers and refugees huddling in the remains of the Capital: Babylon City.

The Empty Quarter

Babylon City contracted during the declining years of the Ten Thousands of Darkness, drawing in resources and focusing upon the survival and illusory prosperity of the Capital. The Nobility spoke about making the Capital glorious once more, returning it to a previous golden age. But in the end, the Nobles merely drained the surrounding areas in monstrous parasitic fashion. And while most of the Old City of Glass has fallen in to such disrepair that a traveler might not realize they walked through ruins at all, the Empty Quarter still stands in the shelter of the castle walls as testament to what once ruled the known world.

The Dead Forest

Nobody survives who knows if the lines of metal poles outside the walls of Ribcage Castle were once used for different purposes. They now stand as a means of displaying the perceived traitors whom the Last King has had executed and then stuck on these steel poles for all to see. Travelers are warned that any who pass too near the Ribcage risk running a foul of the King's entourage of loyalists and being branded a traitor, for torture and execution of 'traitors' is one of the few indulgences left to the rotting court of the Last King.

The Iron Gallows

Among the forest of iron spikes rising up before the walls of Ribcage Castle is an enormous metal structure now used by the surviving Nobles as a gallows. Likely used for something other than execution during the heyday of the City of Glass, the structure is now a place of execution, perhaps a sign of the fall of the Hungry Empire which feeds upon itself in the era of the Foglands. 

The Gates of Sorrow

Babylon City and the Empty Quarter sit within the walls of Ribcage Castle, as does the Castle Keep itself. Even during the era of the Foglands the walls still stand tall, when the Hungry Empire has disintegrated and the Locust forces have been scattered and turned to scavenging and cannibalism. The only way to enter within the wall of Ribcage Castle is to enter through the front door: an enormous colossal thing known now as the Gates of Sorrow.

Locations of the Foglands in more depth

After leaving the Ring for the first time, the Foglands are where rookie psychonauts will end up.

 

The Plateau

The lands to the North stand upon a great shelf, rising above the rest of the landscape.

The Ribcage

In the Northwest stands the ruins of Ribcage Castle and the remains of Babylon City.

• The Ribcage Castle
  • The Ribcage Castle
  • Babylon City
  • The Empty Quarter
• The Dead Forest
  • The Iron Gallows
  • The Gates of Sorrow

The Canyon

A canyon runs North to South, a vast scar across the horizon.

• The Ghost Station
  • Inbound Station
  • Outbound Station
• The Spine of Glass
  • The Spine of Glass
  • The Poison Tree
• The Cave of the Cryptkeeper
  • The Upper Cave

The Drowned City

Surrounded by the Circle of Rust stands a vast inland Salt Sea, under which sits the great Drowned City.

• The Grave of Brine
  • The Drowned City
• The Circle of Rust
  • The Asylum
  • The Salt Market
  • The Burning Lands
  • The Last Daytower
• Jawbone Ridge

The Lowlands

To the South are the lowlands.

The Skylines

Amidst a stretching rocky desert are carved strange designs in the earth visible the sky: the so-called Skylines.

• The Hart Stones
• The Western Ruins
  • The Broken Ruins
  • The Broke Stones
  • The Barrows
  • The Dolmen
• The Buried Maze
• The Sinister Valley
  • The City of Sleep
  • The Boar Temple

The Canyon

A canyon runs North to South, a vast scar across the horizon.

• The Hollow Mountain
• The Odd Cemetery
  • The Great Cemetery
  • The Mausoleum
  • The Old Cemetery
  • The Cave of the Cryptkeeper
    • The Lower Cave
• The Ghost Station
  • The Southern Station

The Wastelands

The vast marsh and the Altar Stone: a strange monument sacred to the Giants, fill the Wastelands of the Southeast.

• The Marsh Wastes
  • The Haypenny Camp
  • The Witch Hut
  • The Fading Lake
    • The Stilt Shrine
    • The Glass Altar
• The Altar Stone
  • The Altar Stone
  • The Thinking Stone
  • The Weeping Stone
  • The Screaming Stone
• The Womb
  • The Torii Gate
  • The Kiva Hole
  • The Womb
    • The Cave of Joining
    • The Hidden Passage
    • The Innermost Cave
    • The Cave of Unborn Elders
• The Eastern Reach
  • The Totems
  • The Sky Altar
• The Tailbone

Rough Bits of the Foglands again

After leaving the Ring for the first time, the Foglands are where rookie psychonauts will end up.

The Plateau

The lands to the North stand upon a great shelf, rising above the rest of the landscape.

The Ribcage

In the Northwest stands the ruins of Ribcage Castle and the remains of Babylon City.

The Canyon

A canyon runs North to South, a vast scar across the horizon.

The Drowned City

Surrounded by the Circle of Rust stands a vast inland Salt Sea, under which sits the great Drowned City.

---

The Lowlands

To the South are the lowlands.

The Skylines

Amidst a stretching rocky desert are carved strange designs in the earth visible the sky: the so-called Skylines.

The Canyon

A canyon runs North to South, a vast scar across the horizon.

The Wastelands

The vast marsh and the Altar Stone: a strange monument sacred to the Giants, fill the Wastelands of the Southeast.

A First look at the Map of the Foglands

The Sold Ones

The Hungry Empire expands across the land, spewing new gods and conquering lands and denizens, people and stories and mind, The Sold Ones are Fair Folk corrupted by the Locust.
 
The Wheat Goblin
(A Corrupted Gobn)

A small yellow goblin with a beard of wheat stalks and huge long floppy ears that look like leaves on a stalk of wheat. It can shapeshift but will always have a long braided beard or braided hair and it will always have it's ears. It tries to sell or offer freely wheat cakes that, if eaten, will render the victim unable to survive on anything but the wheat cakes or (just barely alive) on normal wheat products. Easy to fight and kill, they are not warriors.

But the wheat cakes will give temporary strength and speed to the Wheat Goblin itself and others who eat it. Foolish warriors will occasionally become willingly addicted to the wheat cakes.

The Rice Spriggan
(A Corrupted Bogn)

An amorphous spirit that lives in any stagnant water, but especially loves rice padi water. It can form a body out of the muck and vegetation and fish bones in it's home to fight if it needs or wants to do so. However, it's preference is to use fish teeth and bones to cut curse sigils onto the exposed feet and ankles of people who tread in the padi water.

The sigils render the victim week against cholera and malaria and Typhus spirits that will attack the victim every night for weeks (depending on the strength drawn for the curse and the strength drawn for the spirit itself). A Rice Spriggan can only be destroyed by draining it's watery home or purifying the water.

The Mirrors in the Sky

The Glass City is the land of the Locust King, his false utopia that hovers- a castle city in the sky.

The Wards of The City of Mirrors

The City of Mirrors is modelled after the city of old London and Prague and Paris. The place has a glamour of shining crystal towers and skycastles. Beneath the Glamour is smog filled, ash stained, dirty old Londontown from the tales of Charles Dickens. A Grimdark Gaslamp Fantasy world. The City of Mirrors is composed of Wards built from the corpses and sacrifice of the Dead Gods after whom they are named.

• The Ward of Gildguld (God of Tax Collectors- The Merchant District)
• The Ward of Mitchuas (The Son of Ash- The Church District)
• The Ward of Gaibrus (The Birdgod of the Dawn- The Palace District)
• The Ward of Zeudin Vashas (The Six Faced Lord of Thunder- The Court District
• The Ward of Lamris (The God of Obedience and the Underworld- Graveyard District)
• The Ward of Friedites (The Goddess of Sin and Purity- The Red light District)
• The Ward of Valstaris (The Goddess of Love and war- The Barracks District)
• The Ward of Xerfer  (The Goddess of Jealousy and Greed- The Guild District)

Charge Bonuses (Vajra Accumulation)

The Vajra totals are accumulated and spent separately. As psychonauts progress through the lunisolar year, their achievements will earn them progress points which will translate into Vajra (of the appropriate type) at the end of each month. Vajra from the previous month (and only the previous month) can be spent as progress point in order to help warriors maintain streaks and obtain Charge bonuses.

The Charge bonus is how we encourage people to keep achieving and to make a habit out of their own successes. Each Vajra has a Threshold. Earning three Vajra of any type is considered a 'Charge'. Players can
build their charge by continually earning charge status month after month. The first month that a player charges a Vajra type, they earn 1 additional Vajra of that type. Each successive month that they earn the charge the charge pays out an additional Vajra to a maximum of 3 (ie. the sixth month that a player charges a Vajra type, they will still receive 3 Vajra, and so forth).

Theoretically, this means that a player could earn an additional 12 Vajra each month (3 Ether Vajra, 3 Air Vajra, 3 Water Vajra, and 3 Earth Vajra) by the third month if they area able to generate enough progress points to charge all Vajra types.

Vajra can be burned (as stated above) on a one to one basis to fill in blank progress point slots in any Vajra category in order to earn the Vajra necessary to maintain charges. This can be instrumental in allowing players to maintain their Charge Vajra on busy months so that they don't lose their three bonus Vajra.

An Introduction to the Ghostlands

The Ghostlands are the most familiar and most bizarre of the Shadowlands. When you sleepwalk through your daily life, you are not living in the 'real' world. Your body may inhabit the Bonelands, but that psychically hostile place is toxic to your fragile human mind. And so while your body cannot escape the Bonelands, your mind has already fled into a psychic spacesuit- it's own unconsciously built Shadow Realm. And all of these realms, these micro kingdoms for 7 billion sleepwalkers, are stitched together into a collective whole called the Ghostlands.

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

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An Introduction to Artifacts

Artifacts are empowered items that inhabitants and psychonauts can wield to extend their capabilities in the Shadowlands

How Artifacts Work

To use the High Magick, a psychonaut must seek out the representatives of the Wild Folk and the Green People as they are in the Bonelands. But this works only once the Psychonaut Sorcerer has first met with the appropriate Witch or Wizard and through their guidance met and made their pact with the Demon which grants the use of that spell.

As such, the spells of the High Magick are hard to obtain and hard to obtain the fuel needed to use them. But the pay off of this high cost is that the High Magick is impressive in its power. By contrast, the Artifacts are relatively easier to obtain and relatively easy for which to obtain fuel. Of course the cost of being easier to obtain and use means that the power contained in the Artifacts is less impressive than the effects of the Spells of High Magick.

Types of Artifacts

If you've played other tabletop or computer based Role-playing Games, you'll be familiar with the concept of magic items. A key difference here however, is what items can be enchanted and imbued with magic. In most other games, the most common types of magic items are weapons and armor.

In the Shadowlands, weapons and armor are immune to the enchantment process of creating Artifacts. It is important that a Sorcerer (and especially the Storyteller) realize that this is not a technical limitation with textual loopholes. Something cannot be made an Artifact if it is intended for use as a weapon or armor, intended to attack or injure another, intended to protect the bearer or another.

The only way that this prohibition can be worked around is if the sorcerer finds a way to indirectly use the artifact offensively or defensively. Anything designed to directly attack or defend will simply fail to function.

Find Artifacts

The Shadowlands are littered with the legendary artifacts of story, ready to be re-enchanted by the Wild Folk and Green People in their role as the protectors of the Artifacts. The Artifact will be found either in a Quest that retells the tale of a previous user's acheivement, or an expedition to a location associated by myth to the artifact itself (typically its creation or destruction or greatest use).

Enchanting Artifacts

An Artifact is always found 'in the rust', its power drained and abilities depleted. In order to be used, the artifact must be re-enchanted. The process of re-enchanting the Artifact is identical to the process of charging a Spell of High Magick. The appropriate animal must be found and marked (typically photographed) by the Sorcerer. The important difference is that the Spell require a new charge before each Incursion use, while the Artifact need only be re-enchanted for each new user.

Charging Artifacts

Whereas the Spells of High Magick needs to be charged between Incursions and uses, Artifacts need only be re-enchanted. A probably enchanted Artifact can be used once per incursion.

List of Artifacts

• The Five Clans
  • The Magus - The One Leaf People 
  • The Scroll of Truth
  • A rolled scroll that, when a yes/no question related to the Incursion objective with burn to a cinder if the answer is no, and crumbles to dust if the answer is yes. The scroll will be whole upon next incursion.
  • The Scholar -  The Two Leaf People 
  • Incense Oil
  • A vial of Oil (ever full once re-enchanted) that, when lit, enables normal automatic success on a single Mind oriented action. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Mediator - The Winter Leaf People 
  • The Hunter's Hook
  • A bone and cordage hook with a cordage line that, once per incursion, if thrown and hooked to a denizen prevents the denizen from fleeing the area.
  • The Messenger - The Water Green People 
  • The Message Trap
  • A Fish Trap that allows a psychonaut to leave a verbal message of 25 words or less. The trap returns to the psychonaut upon activation. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Fortuneteller - The Blade Green People 
  • The Digging Stick
  • A wooden root digger, that allows the psychonaut to pierce the earth once per incursion and see an important event that happened at this spot previously.
• The Caretaker - The Village Treaty People 
• The Aura Basket 
• Once per Incursion this prevents shattering of aura, psychonaut can't take other actions beyond moving.
• The Locust - The Stone Crack People  
• The Fire Seed
• Although it does no damage or injury to any living thing (Other plants included), the fire seed will grow explosively into kudzu vines that shatters all cracks and weak spots in the surface that it is dropped/planted upon. This can be used once per incursion.

• The Seven Clans
  • The Magus - The Free Folk 
  • The Pendulum Compass 
  • Points towards Incursion objective at all times.
  • The Scholar -  The Cold Folk 
  • The Seeing Lens 
  • Translates written words in any language found in the Shadowlands. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Mediator - The Silent Folk 
  • The Soft Moccasins 
  • Removes sound made by the psychonaut, including voice- must remove moccasins to speak.
  • The Messenger - The Wise Folk 
  • The Crystal Bee
  • Delivers non-verbal message to target instantly, message delivered by motion of the bee. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Fortuneteller - The Swift Folk 
  • The Climbing Claw
  • A pair of gloves decorated with wolf claws, which enables climbing up any vertical or near vertical surface. Psychonaut must remove gloves to hold any object or manipulate anything with the hands.
  • The Caretaker - The Gentle Folk 
  • Spine Bone Ring
  • A bone ring carved from a single piece of spinal column of an ungulate, which enables normal automatic success on a single Hands oriented action. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Locust - The New Folk 
  • The Salt Charm
  • Acts as bait and draw a particular type of denizen, must have some piece of something related to prey. This can be used once per incursion.
•  The Sea Folk
  • The Magus - The Old Folk 
  • The Scaled Bracelet
  • A beaded bracelet decorated with large fish scales. Once per incursion it grants a normal success on the next Scoundrel action attempted.
  • The Scholar -  The Constant Folk 
  • The Blood Bowl
  • If the character fills the bowl with salt and water (or salt water), and then bleeds into it, they can ask any one question and see a vision within the same realm of the Shadowlands that best answers the question. There is no audio and no context provided. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Mediator - The Strong Folk 
  •  The Peace Pipe
  • Can be used once per Incursion to to remove oneself from any conflict by smoking the pipe.
  • The Messenger - The Clever Folk 
  • The Charmed Vambraces
  • A set of leather vambraces worn on the forearms that enables normal automatic success on a single Body oriented action. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Fortuneteller - The Singing Folk 
  • The Pig Bone Pan Flute
  • Playing the Pig Bone Pan Flute before an open flame will cause the smoke from the fire to form into the shape of the chief opposition for the current incursion. 
  • The Caretaker - The Dancing Folk 
  • The Shaman Drum
  • Playing the Drum grants a normal success on the next Hero action attempted. This can be used once per incursion.
  • The Locust - The Ghost Folk
  • The Oil Lamp
  • Lighting the Oil Lamp grants a normal success on the next Villain action attempted. This can be used once per incursion.
   
  

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

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.

Design work for Character sheets to be used during play

Early design work for the character play sheets for gaming. The idea here is to make gameplay quick and intuitive, to not require massive reference books to take each action.

A quick collection of photos of the first draft of the Book of the Crescent Sun

 The Book of the Crescent Sun is the record book used to keep track of activities used between games to generate Vajra for use in gaming session and the Incursions into the Shadowlands.

Other Book Cover Designs