Realm

This page is about alternate planes of existence. You may be looking for the school of Realms practices.

Realms or Other Places are parts of the world with different laws of physics, inhabited by Others. Their relationship to normal geography varies.

Common Effects

Items that exist within a Realm for a long time tend to have their very nature altered into a Magic Item, as a sort of natural diagram is carved into their spiritual nature by the ambient forces.<ref name=":3">It points definitively toward war and less heavily to nature. A kind of natural diagram came into being here & Zed stepped in to comment, saying that realm-focused Others who are tied heavily to an area or bring the area with them (Abyssal Beast?) can act as moving ‘gardens’, altering items that are kept in their possession over time. Effect is small, simple, but gets stronger as the Other does. Usually they are humanoid & can carry stuff (so not Abyssal Beast). The ‘diagram’ that is worked into the knife is like a river carved out by the flow of water over time.
[...]
Zed: “The realm part of this sorta neat. It came from an artificial garden (a walking Garden) and it acts as a mini, super-weak realm influence on its own. While holding it, rain takes a tiny bit longer to go away and water elementals & spirits will listen to the holder more.” - (9.z) Magic Item Identification</ref> This is even true in reverse to a degree; items from Earth which still retain some of their normality are considered extremely valuable on the Paths.<ref>There are some others that might interest you, once Lost, now called Found or Founders. They gather up mundane objects on the Paths that aren’t entirely Lost and that have traces of Earth on them, and like someone tied to a thousand balloons that picks up enough heavy stuff they can start drifting to solid Earth. Some make craters on impact, and craters can be like depressions. “Imagine Snowdrop landing in some hard to reach place, creating a depression, and filling it up with her special rules about truth. It gets knotted, because of course, it filters for certain types of Other, innocent or Aware, the knotting gets worse, and as it does, the rules do too.” Because there’s a narrow band of places that fit the bill of being remote enough but not too distant from humans + human sentiment, they tend to cluster. This can give us Founder-inhabited island chains where each island has a rule, or areas with rules that overlap. Founders aren’t always powerful but you usually have to deal with them somehow as part of dealing with the knot. Can be true for Others tied into knots.

“When using the Gate of Ivory, our view of Paths changes. If you notice an object isn’t changing, it’s probably one of those earth-touched things a would-be Founder prizes. Keep+ trade.”

- Bonus Material: Knots & Depressions</ref>

It's not safe to mix practices from different realms, for example trying to open a doorway to the Warrens and the Ruins at the same time. If you do you can have your body broken as space folds in around you or end up streached across two seperate places at once, worse still your self can conrugate permantly deforming your spirit. It is also one of the ways horrors and plicate spirits are formed.<ref>“In case they didn’t tell you, don’t mix realm-type practices.  Any rituals or powerful items that open doors to the Warrens, don’t blend that with doors to the Ruins.  Or paths you make with technomancy.  Or Avery’s Lost stuff.  That’s 101 type Realm stuff, front of the books for beginners, in the Essentials text that any family dealing with that stuff would get when they come of age.”

Verona glanced at the others.  “…why?”

“Gets gnarly,” Zed said.

“Gnarly,” Lucy said, “That doesn’t explain a lot.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to put it gently,” Zed said.

“Don’t be gentle.  Not with this,” Jessica told him.

“Plicate spirits!” Verona exclaimed, snapping her fingers a few times.  “Messing with forces of an area and messing up the spirits?”

“Montague,” Avery said.

“Yeah, like…” Verona lost her momentum.  “Oh crap, like Montague.”

“I think you’re jumping straight from 101 to fourth year, special topics stuff,” Zed said.  “But yeah.  Horrors and derivative things.  That’s a good way to go from being a practitioner who’s trying to make a quick portal to Paris or wherever, to having your arms and legs broken as space folds around you.  If you’re lucky.”

“And if you’re unlucky?” Lucy asked.

“Being a broken creature stretched out across two realities at once, infused with aspects of both.  If you’re really unlucky, your Self or the spirits that drive you, uh, corrugate, at the same time.”

- Excerpt from Summer Break 13.1</ref>

Known Realms

The Abyss

Main article: Abyss

Located outside or underneath reality, this realm has many sub-areas with different themes. It serves to break down objects, places and people which have lost their connections to the rest of the world. Some speculate that it will eventually subsume the real world entirely.

The pseudo-spirits of the Abyss make things that they taint both more resistant to change, and the changes they do undergo or inflict more permanent.<ref>are there other potential uses for this portal?
Yes.

For example, if the practitioner can also pass through the portal, there are probably a significant amount of non-quite-bogeyman and other unfortunate ex-people who would love to negotiate for a way to exit
Yes. But you just sacrificed something valuable to get there. One could argue that overall, given a longer period of time, you're probably going to break even or fall short when it comes to finding useful Others and people in the Abyss. Some of them will backfire on you, because even if you're not specifically selecting Bogeymen, you're picking people who are at least a few steps closer than normal to being Bogeymen. By and large, you're probably only going to get more than your money's worth if you're interested in violence and terrorizing or if you need very desperate individuals for something. Think in terms of like, "For this job, we're going to have to limit ourselves to the ex-con homeless" somethings. Filling out the roster with ask-no-questions, doesn't-matter-if-they're-pretty people for your out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere pyramid of sacrifice? Good stuff, go shopping for your dredge cultists in the Abyss. Bank robbery? Probably not, unless the 'robbery' is more on the bloody side.
If you're good at negotiating and finding talented individuals, you might do better than break even for a while, until you get burned a few times, at which point you're only breaking even.

Or, if you're a Nomad/City Mage, could you communicate with the Abyss for favors and whatnot?
You can communicate. For favors? Well, you'd be talking with a personification/representative of the Abyss, and the Abyss eats up and digests people and spits out monsters. You're not going to get a wholly civil conversation here, and it's not necessarily going to be on a level playing field. So... you open a door or tap a door you've already made, you venture into The Abattoir, and you find a clearing big enough to open a discourse with the embodiment of that specific region of the Abyss. Chances are this conversation is going to happen with a very hostile, intractable, abrasive personification of this very hostile, intractable place. It may happen with a time limit, a horror movie deathtrap slowly setting itself up around you as you try to establish terms and talk, or it might be that Others are on the approach, reacting to unconscious signals from the Abattoir personification- the Ram-headed Man, the Milkmaid, the Calfbone Child, and the Font of Meat converging on your location while you talk.
Is it doable? Yes. But probably for very specific purposes. More often it'd be to broker passage or establish a place-as-an-ongoing-ritual scenario, one that would involve feeding the Abyss. More of an endgame play for a specific scenario than something one would set up for later gains.

Are there even regular spirits in the Abyss, and if so, are they subject to the "cosmic in-sink garbage disposal" effect?
Not regular spirits. Something spirit-like is in effect, but it's colder, more detached and self-referential, and tends to follow its own rules. Brought elsewhere or allowed to leak elsewhere, it would manifest in leaking effects from the relevant area. Corrosion, persistent ulcerous rust, bloodstains where there shouldn't be any, and an insulation effect, where things become both changing and stubbornly resistant to outside factors - spirits would have a harder time affecting a door that refused to close properly or lock, that creaked loudly as it swung open and closed, banged violently at the slightest brush of wind, and seemed to get more troublesome over time... but spirits would have a harder time affecting it. To an extent, you'll have a harder time affecting it too... this means connections to these things may not form, they may slip out of one's possession very easily, or not get any easier to use with time. Of course, that gets easier if one becomes more like them, meeting them halfway.
Around areas where the Abyss is closer to the surface (which happen to be areas which are less linked in to the rest of the world... and areas that are less likely to call news stations and say "Hey, I've got this weird thing!"), these things tend to find a way in. It's usually a harbinger (though not Harbinger) that a specific place is on the way out. People and animals can collect these traits too - family generations with more mutations or stubborn health issues (physical or mental), that somehow prove very long-lived and more and more detached from the rest of the world. Scourges may collect or extract that essence for use or fashioning crooked things, but it's a tricky process that requires more of a biopsy and then nurturing of the biopsied part, or a more complete extraction, but then with a 'it has no connection to you so it slips from your grasp' limited time as the metaphysical pocket has a hole in it and that essence is steadily lost over time until spent. - More Abyss Questions (Wildbow, Reddit.com, 2018-10-23)</ref><ref name=":2" />

Alcazar

Main article: Alcazar

Created by item-focused Practitioners, such as Collectors or certain Technomancers, this is a magical item that has been "expanded" into a location which can be entered. This may be used to extract knowledge or things that the artifact has consumed.<ref>With a major ritual in this line, the Alcazar, one might turn an item into a place the practitioner can enter, so they may explore it, its history, or diagnose problems. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref><ref>Hazel was nine when she saw her little sister get devoured by a fox statue in her grandmother’s garden.  Her research into statues led to her collecting statuettes and storybooks, and when she inherited her grandmother’s house and the statue in the garden sixty years after her sister’s death, she began to decipher the statue itself.  She knows enough practice to draw out a diagram and set up the other statues crafted by various Others, and is periodically turning the fox statue into a gateway to the statue’s interior, where she can explore old stories and histories, and try to find a trace of her sister.  Every statue she collects is power for her and a tool she can use to dive further in. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref><ref>–Immaterial Realms – Visting Ruins, Storm, creating an Alcazar for diagnosis.

[...]

Stickemup: realms are interesting to me
what’s an Alcazar?

A Literal Cat: a wooble search says it’s a kind of castle. - 4.1 Bonus Material</ref> Can be seen as the Realm of the Self as it can be used on living creatures.

Courts

Main article: Faerie Courts

Also known as the Faerie Courts or simply Faerie, this is the home realm of the Fae. Most Faerie dwell here, with only the failures being sent out into the real world as exiles or Familiars.

Currently (like the Faerie themselves) divided into seven Courts.

Crossroads

Spaces where two or more Realms overlap, including spaces where Earth overlaps with another Realm.<ref>For this particular project we’re doing writeups on various crossroads, places where realms meet.
[...]
The residents are primarily crossroads people, with animal features and qualities, most too close to humanity to be in the scope of the Seal. - Pate</ref> It is not uncommon for the Faerie Courts to have some involvement in these spaces.<ref name=":7">There were places that were often called crossroads.  The realms frequently overlapped Earth, or overlaid it, in layers visible to only those who could see the right frequency, with the right Sight, or from the right angles, coming from one place to another. [...] And, of course, realms themselves could overlap.  Abyss crossed Ruin in places.  Warren overlapped Faewild.  Digital Aether intersected Demiurgic domains.

The Fae liked to establish bases of operation at crossroads.  Even small ones.  The Spring courts liked to mark out a space of prominence. The Summer courts might establish outposts, to guard the Fae realms, wild and otherwise, against incursion from the Abyss or Warrens.  And the Fall courts… markets. [...] Monstrous, gnarled, and odd Fae milled around, alongside those who were almost human, almost Other, but neither or both.  The Names and Heroes watched and managed, or they thought they did.  The Fae were the true managers. - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.z</ref>

They can have populations unique to them due to how the realms cross. Brownies originate from the crossroads of Goblin and Faerie,<ref>Brownies come from the crossroad Goblin and Fae, Summer and Fall.  That’s the reason for their cross-eyes, you see. - Excerpt from False Moves 12.3</ref> while wild Fauna Ephemera may inhabit the Faewilds at the border between Faerie and wild places on Earth. There can be near human populations that don't quite fall under the Seal of Solomon.

Demesnes

Main article: Demesne

Practitioners create these realms by claiming spaces for themselves. Although generally a physical space within normal reality, the Practitioner can warp the rules and layout, including making them larger than they are on the outside. Many varieties exist.

Depressions

Many of the most powerful Others, artifacts, or major workings will create their own minor Realms around themselves, as their weight and power warps the world around them and seeps into the landscape.<ref>Raquel’s eyebrows went up.  “Oh, you missed that one.  Uhhh, so like, the biggest, most serious Others, including Incarnations, gods, great spirits, and whatever.  They have a weight to them.  He had this visual demonstration.  Put something heavy down on a sheet of fabric, and it creates this dip.  I might be explaining this badly.”

“Finish explaining and we can tell you if it’s a bad explanation,” Lucy said.

Yadira jumped in.  “Big things, metaphysically, can create their own realms, just by being.”

“Like gravity?” Avery asked.

“More like the world’s a plastic bed,” Raquel said, “and you sit on it and it makes a dip, and if you pour water onto the bed it’ll settle in around your butt where the dip is.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.3</ref><ref>This power has a weight but it’s not a physical, real-in-our-world type of weight. It’s about being able to make the rules or influence things. If the spirits pay a lot of attention to you then you can say ‘screw you mother Nature, I’m going to do my thing’ and she’ll say okay, sure. The rules start bending, the spirits start doing the equivalent of walking on the other side of the street instead of messing with you, and the ground basically dips under the weight of your ovaries/cohones.

These dips fill in with the excess power of whatever is making them, and that’s how a lot of Others make spmething that’s very similar to a demesne. This can be a natural defense, creating a mini-personal realm that the Other carries with them, making practices harder to apply to them because those practices are working on their turf for the last few inches, feet or miles.- Excerpt from [12.7 spoilers] Knots and Depressiosn</ref><ref name=":4">What gets interesting is when you have someone powerful. Can be anything: a dragon, a god, a Carmine, a practitioner. The important thing is that they’ve got power to spare.

This power has a weight but it’s not a physical, real-in-our-world type of weight. It’s about being able to make the rules or influence things. If the spirits pay a lot of attention to you then you can say ‘screw you mother Nature, I’m going to do my thing’ and she’ll say okay, sure. The rules start bending, the spirits start doing the equivalent of walking on the other side of the street instead of messing with you, and the ground basically dips under the weight of your ovaries/cohones.

These dips fill in with the excess power of whatever is making them, and that’s how a lot of Others make something that’s very similar to a demesne. - 12.7 Bonus Material: Knots & Depressions</ref> This is often compared to Demesne of a Practitioner,<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5">Our judges have a territory that covers a lot of western Ontario + eastern Manitoba. This actually backwards from what we just established. Instead of getting powerful, having spirits move out of the way, and having rules start bending, there’s a kind of big, prearranged deal where the spirits and karma and everything will cooperate with anyone who takes the seat. So you don’t go from powerful to gradually becoming influential & having a demesne-ish space you carry with you, you take possession of the throne that’s the helm of this massive depression and you then get the power.

You don’t technically have to be strong to make a claim for the seat, but it’s hard to make a play for one of the fours seats if you aren’t. - 12.7 Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref> although this isn't entirely accurate; the chances may be more universal and dramatic.<ref name=":6">“Please watch your step, and do keep moving.  Lingering can expose you to other effects here.  So can a misstep.  Things broken here do not always mend as you hope they would.  You can hastily patch up a wound that may take a lifetime to heal, or you can allow things to become something else altogether, after the breaking.  I doubt you want to do either, if you happen to fall through the floor and break a leg. [...] To be in Conquest’s domain is to be in a constant state of transition.  Emotions rise and fall, there is fire and rebellion at first, then we make peace with the state of things.  Broken things erode away, and then there is only defeat.  But to be the Conqueror is not a simple thing either.  They either take on a different role, which my lord cannot do, or they find new territory to seize, people to subjugate.  The territory changes as he finds new ground.”

“I didn’t know a demesne could be this… out there.  I mean, I read about apartments covered in flesh, but…”

“This isn’t a demesne, as you understand the term,” he said.  “Some beings are strong enough to influence their surroundings simply by residing there.” - excerpt from Collateral 4.2
[...]
“It’s this place,” I said.  “It’s an extension of him, not a demesne.  It bends rules, to be generally uncomfortable.  To conquer us physically and mentally, by steadily wearing us down.” - excerpt from Collateral 4.3</ref>

These twisted places vary widely; they may be static or follow the being around, they may be radically or subtly warped, they may be small or large, etc.<ref>Different types of power mean different types of influence in a depression. The Judges seem to have a lot of shallow influence over a wide area, and some major influence in terms of things they focus on: karma, deciding whether someone’s forsworn, the creation of new Others that they have affinity for, yadda yadda. - Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref> In some cases a depression is tied to a seat or role, rather than an individual, meaning that even a personally weak being could take control of it, although generally one has to be powerful in order to manage it.<ref name=":5" />

• The Judges tend to have small realms reachable by travelling for a day, then by following things like a wounded animal which would appear on the edge of the road. They also have a large territory tied to their role within which they have a lesser, but still significant, influence over everything.<ref name=":5" />
• Trussed and variants have a weight of their own, making the places they're situated in hard to find for anyone be they Innocent, Practitioner or Other.<ref>Because they take on a particular weight, Trussed have a way of making accessing their location hard; they create a depression of sorts, which acts as an extension of themselves and their realms, and the way in may be dark, hazardous, labyrinthine, and exceedingly difficult for the Innocent.  Entire forests may gently deflect entry, getting less gentle as one bears deeper in.  Specific Others may be inclined to set up shop nearby.  A strong and alert Trussed may wear opponents down with a kind of attrition.  Those who reach the final chamber may be cold, wet, starved, or bewildered as they face this time-worn goliath. - Trussed</ref>
• Others which are heavily tied into a particular Realm may bring that Realm with them as a sort of private "garden".<ref name=":3" />
• A Wraith which grows powerful enough to have a temporary realm form around it becomes known as a Wraith Prince; if it grows powerful enough for it to be permanent, it is known as a Wraith King.<ref>And then there were the situations where a wraith picked up some brains along with the power, or got power of a sort that scared others off and wasn’t easy prey.  In those situations, they could get very big and they could start to get heavy.  Same idea as the Carmine Beast, same idea as a god.  If they got big and heavy enough that the fabric of reality started to crater below them, then that crater could fill with power, and the wraith got its own little pocket demesne or pocket dimension with its own rules.  Wraith Kings.
  
  Or queens? Verona thought.  But that might be its own thing.  They were princes if the pocket reality was temporary or conditional and there might’ve been something about wraith princesses, but that was weird when she mixed it up with Goblin Princesses like the Tedds.  Stupid gendered language… - excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.6</ref>
• Conquest had formed a personal domain in this way in form of a tower.<ref name=":6" />

Digital Aether

Also known as the Electro Radio Aether,<ref>the Electro-Radio Aether slowly overtaking this particular area in the handling of memory, principles, and the dead.  It is an imperfect adaptation thus far, and the scrap escapes both Ruin and ERA. - Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.a</ref> this realm is related to technology and technomancy.<ref name=":7" /><ref>Crossed with Silver 19.4</ref> Technically a network of subrealms related to technology,<ref name="TecAe">“The way technomancy Others tend to work… Technomancy’s usually classified as a realms practice, like studies of the Abyss, Paths, Ruins, whatever. That’s because distance takes on different meaning when you’re talking about wires and signals traveling at the speed of light. It becomes about territory, all around the world, and the connections that tie them together.”
[...]
“So the server farm in Lucy’s reach isn’t always going to be a good choice for certain Others.  But the same setup in Judge Verona’s reach? Yeah.  Certain technomancy will or won’t work, depending.  Older, retro stuff is more consistent.  Which makes the Digital Aether a patchwork of territories where different Others exist on different levels and comfort zones, which we term channels, and again, distance doesn’t matter as much.  Usually. [...] but if they meet the right conditions, they can ride the lightning and zip over somewhere else. But they might have a preferred channel they like to operate in. They might like to go between here and there, but over there, the Lord might be more restrictive with letting anything happen, after a Bugge incident, for example. So they just end up hanging out here, where there’s a cluster of workable things they need, local power isn’t interfering with them. [...] you can run into situations where they move so fast between spots they can seem to exist in multiple places at once. The nightmare scenario is a dangerous technomancy Other hits a critical mass where they exist at full power in too many places at once, and reality starts to break down. [...] We use the terminology of zones and channels and other stuff because we’re playing a game that’s unfair. You can’t outrun an Other that may be able to move from one key tactical point to another like they’re flicking a light switch. You have to anticipate, you have to plan ahead, cut them off.” - Excerpt from In Absentia 21.8a</ref> on the order of hundreds, <ref>:Lotus Screeners are a subtype of Lotus Eater that only appeared a few years ago, but as with many things technomancy, spread very aggressively across hundreds of interconnected technomantic sub-realms in a frighteningly short span of times. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> with specific Others at home in a selection of these sub-realm "Channels".<ref name="TecAe"/>

Hollow

interstitial spaces where the various realms don't quite meet but can be vast all the same.<ref>In contrast to the crossroads, which are the places that realms overlap, there are places known as hollow realms, which exist between more structured realms with defined borders. Given the scale of many realms, a hollow place can be vast, even if it is, to draw a parallel to our own world, the equivalent of the wall space between one room in a house and the other. - Wildbow on discord</ref> Known to house Star Fathers.<ref>“Most of the time, when a ritual goes bad like that,” Avery murmured, “the Star Father or Star Mother or Star Parent will recognize that Innocence and the other forces of the world around it, like Judges and Lords, will push back, senses that resistance, and puts power into secluding itself in a pocket world or escaping into some convenient realm with a lot of elbow room. Sometimes they’re places between realms, the gaps when two adjacent realms don’t fit well together. - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.z</ref>

Knotted Places

Main Article: Knotted Place

A Knotted Place is an area that has become a Visceral Knot, twisted by power. This often overlaps with being in the Depression around a powerful entity (see above.) The flows of Spirits, possibly Karma and/or Incarnate forces, are unbalanced and distorted. <ref>Knotted Locales are areas that for some reason or another are being twisted up or the usual rules aren’t working. As a typical consequence, a knotted locale tends to also be harder to get to. This seems to work along similar lines as being Aware. To protect the innocent and innocent society, the weird stuff gets shoved off to the side with built in protections against casual access.

There’s a degree of knotting happening when it comes to stuff like depressions, because we’ve got that thing I mentioned where the ambient spirits are being filtered out, or discouraged, or they pause, or any number of other things. Then there’s a shift in traffic, spiritually, and this changes how things work.

- Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref> Mildly knotted places are common, the sorts of places where even Innocents will notice e.g. the layout is confusing or time seems to pass oddly.<ref>Knots are natural, common, and everyday, we just don’t notice them a lot of the time. Even the innocent might notice time flows differently in some places, or it’s weirdly easy to get lost in other places. - Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref>

Normal spirits will avoid the area, and Innocents will generally be discouraged from entering. Geography or events may distort to ensure this; the area may physically move into a less acessible location in some cases, or journeys in may mysteriously take longer than journeys out. In the opposite way, certain individuals (even total Innocents) may find themselves naturally drawn to the knotted area if they are in tune with the particular unbalance taking place there.<ref>s I mentioned with the guards on the last page, these places can naturally draw in & filter out certain types. Certain stripes of Aware can find it hard to avoid getting into places when your usual innocent would have to drown without being seein in certain connected currents under moonlight before they could wake up sputtering on those strange, knotted shores.

Innocents might also find it easy to end up there, if their mindsets are right. A kid with terminal cancer might find it easier to get to that place where nobody can die. The kinds of people who get filtered for are also the sorts of people who stay or reinforce the knot. At least until they stop being a great fit. If that kid comes to terms with his mortality, he might find his way out. Or he might get offed, like how Peter Pan apparently killed the kids in Neverland who grew up.

- Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref>

Major knots may reach the point where life is physically impossible,<ref>The Knotted Noose – spirits or forces conducive to healthy life and survival bail out and we get flooded with negative influences. This is really common and Zed estimates about 75% of knots a practitioner deals with go this route. Sometimes it’s intentional, to get humans out of an area. Bad goes in, good goes out, things get unsustainable, so humans leave. Zed’s recommendation: get the innocents out and then burn it down or let it burn itself down. - Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref> or some or all of the area may collapse and some of it's rules and layout invert.<ref>Inversion – Strong pressures from the knot’s flows and forces push at the location, but the locations is strong enough to withstand it. There’s nowhere else to go in the face of the pressure except… in, or across, or down, or up. Things flip around.

Sometimes this is piecemeal and we get a few areas inverting and absorbing whatever it is that’s causing the pressure. Sometimes it’s the entire city. (Bristow talked about places like this, and Tashlit has a crime boss brother who lives in one). Transgressive with a lot of usual rules and conventions upended, sometimes depending on the forces that helped make ’em. Can be a collection point for Aware, those on the border of human & Other, + those who fall through the cracks. - Bonus: Knots & Depressions</ref><ref>There are twisted places where the natural things a place needs are upended.  There are places where things are inverted, undercities and mirror cities. - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref>

Mirrorverse

Main article: Mirrorverse

The world on the other side of mirrors. May be created by mirror-dwelling Others on an ad-hoc basis as they take over mirrors.

Paths

Main article: The Paths

A set of dreamlike places outside reality, filled with things that are totally Lost. Explored by Finders. Paths tend to have their own strange rules, and to vary in appearance depending on the observer, drawing on their mind for substance. While whimsical they are also dangerous.

Reality

Also known as the Real, real world, Earth, etc, this is the normal material universe inhabited by humans and many Others and should be considered a realm in itself.

Ruins

Main article: Ruins

The realm of destruction. Serves to "break down" immaterial things such as ghosts and complex spirits, just as the Abyss breaks down material things.<ref name=":0" />

Spirit World

Main Article: Spirit World

An impressionistic realm layered over the real world. Normal geography applies, but it shifts somewhat according to how people think about things. Contains plant/cloud/fungus things known as "manna" which Spirits eat.<ref name=":0">[2.7] Location Diary</ref>

Items which have spent time there often become natural Hallows.<ref name=":2">Saturated; items that have spent a time away from our reality may pick up properties of the place they were set.  Includes…
Warrens - Often have properties of disease, disruption, violence.
Abyss - Items that endure the abyss tend to be durable and inflict enduring effects.
Spirit - Time in the Spirit makes an item a hallow, then shapes it according to the spirits that have habitually used that hallow.  Then the item is saturated and the spirits become inextricable.
Ruins - Tie into emotion, soul, and are peripheral to Incarnations.
Paths - Weird uses only tangentially related to the ‘idea’ of the item.  High utility, often with sharp and unrelated drawbacks.

Again, may be latent. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref>

Storms

The Realms of the Elementals. Short-lived and very dangerous, but valued by Elementalists, who seek to harvest them for the immense power they represent (often after the Storm has faded, when it's safer, though less rewarding.)<ref>“Those of you who have been attending for a while may remember me from two years ago, I did a week-long series after a Storm not too far from here. [...] if we’re talking about the background parts of an elemental, we need to talk about realms.  The realms we assign to elementals are known as capital-S Storms. [...] Like elementals, the Storms are fleeting, intense, exceedingly valuable and powerful, and very hard to deal with. [...] It takes preparation to survive even a few minutes in a real, un-simulated Storm.  They tend to emphasize one element, they arise when a great many elementals gather and die at once, or when a powerful elemental comes into being.  Then they pass.  You could draw comparisons to a hurricane.  When they last for any meaningful length of time, they often, like elementals, have something they root themselves to.  One tree that’s been struck by lightning enough times, one building, one object.  In an ideal case, an elementalist will want to get to the Storm itself, well prepared, and harvest it for power.  If achieved, this can elevate a family dramatically.  Most often, we harvest the power after.  Tapping a storm, a few good harvests, or one strong elemental caught like lightning in a bottle are things great elementalist families and circles have managed.” - excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.4</ref>

The greater elementals who can be found there are akin to Deities in power, but mysterious, either living for less than a day or somehow travelling on to other Storms after a short time.<ref>Storms will keep going because they turn inward.  Winds will loop inward instead of venting out, fires will focus toward the interior of a structure instead of spreading.  They can cover wide areas, enough to occlude a small settlement, but they can be as small as a single building.  It often requires something catastrophic.  This is, at the most extreme end, the uppermost tier of elemental power.  The things that live and are comfortable in storms are akin to deities, but as fleeting as their storm.  We don’t know how many live for a few hours or a day, and how many recede into other territories or realms, waiting for another storm to wake them, before they emerge there. - excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.4</ref> Echoes in the Storm may be infused with potent elemental power.<ref>The storm grew more intense as she talked.  Figures as tall as the skeletal structures holding up the power lines remained like electrical giants in the wake of some of the blasts, darting around. [...] Echoes entered the area and ignited, taking on power like the night security guard had.  Growing in size, ferocity, with energy burning within.- Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.4</ref>

Warrens

Main Article: Warrens

A strange underground realm inhabited almost entirely by Goblins but can house creatures such as Fleshmonglers.

Items retrieved from there may have picked up some of it's unpleasant nature.<ref name=":2" />

Other Realms

• Estates are fragmentary Realms tied to Heroic Practices, populated by half-real historical Names who inhabited the location.
• Shackled Realms - Certain Others, known as Shackled, will trap those that they have bonded with in a pocket realm as a source of power. Like Jockeys, this is a recurring pattern in Deals-based Practice.
• The Memory - Said to be rife with ghosts.<ref name=":1">While an Astrologer typically has a well-rounded list of ways they can go to other realms with heavily specific times or locations (read: time and space), the practitioner’s base of knowledge is especially useful for finding their way into abstract spaces- this generally requires a set of specific marks to be laid out and set down on a surface in either natural light surrounded by darkness (with the markings visible), or by darkness surrounded by natural light, and creates a door.  Pocket abstract places serve as good hiding places (though the runes or markings may be found - a rectangle of chalk, or four norse runes), or if one is both brave and has enough puissance and longevity, they can try to venture through whatever abstract space they entered.  These places can include the memory (rife with echoes/ghosts), the dream (influenced by the public unconsciousness and the chaos of the Finder/Chaos Mage dream both), the ruins (influenced by destructive forces, a realm where the worst has happened), and places that are devoid of forces or spirits, like the dark, after hours, and so on.  These places tend to be fairly inhospitable and abstract, leaving lingering and cumulative traces on the Astrologer that naturally fade (paleness, redness around the eyes, welts, veins), and most families or practitioners have one place they prefer. - Pact Dice: Astrologers</ref>
• The Dream - A mixture of the collective unconscious and The Paths,<ref name=":1" /> used by mares and similar.
• The Dark - Said to be a realm devoid of spirits.<ref name=":1" />
• After Hours - Said to be a realm devoid of spirits.<ref name=":1" />
• Pocket abstract spaces - created or accessed by Astrologers to store items.<ref name=":1" />
• The Pit - A realm mentioned by the carmine beast, not expanded on but likely a realm akin to the Ruins and Abyss<ref name=":8">"For a day, she’d been bitten and chewed on.  She’d shaken, but she existed simultaneously in Ruin, in Spirit, in Abyss, in Pit.  She existed in the celestial and the mundane, the astral and the roiling chaos.  She, by her nature, needed to extend into every realm and they came at her from all of those realms." - Excerpt from Summer Break 13.3</ref>
• The Celestial - A realm mentioned by the carmine beast, not expanded on but likely a realm contrasting the Real<ref name=":8" />
• The Astral - A realm mentioned by the carmine beast, not expanded on<ref name=":8" />
• The Chaos - A realm mentioned by the carmine beast, not expanded on<ref name=":8" />

Trivia

• The idea of places other then earth, or the material world, that can never-the-less be accessed from earth is a stable in mythology literature, and frankly all of Fiction.

References

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