The Paths

The Paths, also known as the far places or the Reaches,<ref name=":1">The places a Finder explores are typically categorized in two ways. The first are termed the far places, the Reaches, or, most commonly, the Paths. These are the places that have been explored and are mostly understood. The key thing to keep in mind is that all have a logic, even if that logic isn’t yet known. Finders work to codify the rules of a place, and the rules for interacting with Lost Others, and the Paths are more or less codified.

The other places are entered either by misstep or after exhaustive preparation and the collection of an assortment of tools and allies. They are known as the Lost Rooms, the Forgotten Places, the Dark Reaches, or the like. Once a path has been walked three times three times, by at least three separate practitioners, using the rules outlined, then the greater finder community will generally allow them to be entered into record and distributed, often to the great benefit of the Finder in question. Until this point, they are considered exceptionally hazardous. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> are realms which have become untethered from pretty much everything - unrecoverable even by the Abyss. They may once have been a part of the Abyss, ordinary reality, or even the collective unconscious.<ref name=":2">The reaches are realms which may have been a part of reality, a part of the abyss, or a fragment of collective unconsciousness, which has come untethered from just about everything. Without history, human attention or human logic to help pin them down, these places and their denizens unspool. A lesser god with no connection to reality will fall to the Abyss. When she is entirely unrecoverable, she may find herself drifting across the Paths, where sustenance is so little and so far between that she is forced to hibernate for centuries at a time, insofar as time has any meaning in those places. Beings such as this once-god often wake only when practitioners approach. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> They are dreamlike in nature, with fluid reality and passage of time, and filled with the sorts of wonders rarely found in the real world.<ref name=":0">Finders were originally known as Dreamers, working under the assumption that the realms they explored were dreamscapes or the dreams of now dead gods. Many aspects of dreams run through the places and routes a Finder travels; time doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning, continuity is questionable, and areas and denizens of the far-flung realms can be sublime and fantastic in a way reality rarely matches.

This notion of dreams and dreamers is something Finders have been working hard to dispel. In reality, it’s a dangerous sentiment, because it leads some to let their guards down, and worse, it allows Others who dwell in the far places to hitch a ride back with the unwary.- FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> Every Path has it's own rules, but even knowing those rules, it's easy for them to shift and trap a Finder.<ref>The Paths are exceptionally dangerous, and for the majority of Finders, new areas are only explored by accident or with heavy investment. Even with a set of instructions, the intersection of two areas or the passing of a Lost Other can throw one far place into upheaval. Many a Finder has misstepped and found themselves trapped on a staircase that has ceased to have a beginning or end, in a room with no exit, or turned around to find the path had changed behind them, and that they had no way home. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref>

Newly-discovered Paths are known as the Lost Rooms, the Forgotten Places, the Dark Reaches etc, and are considered especially hazardous. To be considered among the known Reaches, a Path must have been walked at least 9 times by at least 3 Finders.<ref name=":1" />

New Finders will often be escorted on several trips by their family or circle before walking the Paths alone. A common initial and initiation Path in North America is the Forest Ribbon Trail.<ref>A family or circle that is inducting a new Finder will often escort that Finder on several trips before sending them on their first finding alone. This typically involves walking a path the family has thoroughly worked, or walking one of the more commonly traveled paths.

The most commonly recommended path to new North American Finders is the Forest Ribbon Trail, as it is the least hazardous, is very commonly traveled to the point it is well proven, and it is, by the logic that serves it, relatively straightforward. - FINDER document, The First Finding: The Forest Ribbon Trail</ref> This can help to mark them as a Finder and improve their ability to interact with the Lost.<ref>Because it is a beginner path, there is a degree of inclusion or indoctrination that comes with walking it. Walking the path as one’s first true ritual as a practitioner is common for a North American Finder, and being a Finder makes interaction with the Lost and Lost things or places easier. Landmarks will be clearer, the Lost may be less hostile or more open to communicating, and journeys may be shorter or less taxing. Successfully walking the path on one’s first visit without using the prey animal escape clause for something other than the conclusion of the ritual enhances this effect. - FINDER document, The First Finding: The Forest Ribbon Trail</ref>

Note that these Paths are the ones walked by Practitioners Others also use the Paths and can expect different effects.<ref>“I am located at four-one-one-one-one-eight-eight-three-four-five-six-two-four Oak Avenue!” she called out.  “May I please request an operator!?”

The trajectory of her fall shifted to a right angle, plunging her into bright daylight.  The remnants of a neighborhood with brightly painted houses tumbled through the air with her.
[...]
“I’m sorry this reunion is so short.  I can’t go back home to the stairwell, and this place only deposits humans on an Earthly Oak Avenue.  It would send me back.  Can you give me a hand?” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref>

In addition to the Lost, the Paths can hold certain abstract beings when they aren't currently manifested.<ref name=":3" />

Boons and Trinkets

Going through a Path is like going on a amazing journey.

One needs to be a finder to get the full benefit of a Path.<ref name="vp8.7"/>

Known Paths

Paths exist in a sea of nothingness.<ref> - [9.3 Spoilers] Path Practicalities</ref>

• The Amaranthine Conundrum - A place where everything's purple and one has to paint themselves purple to enter, which was used as a prison for tricky or problematic Others.<ref>“The Amaranthine Conundrum. Everything’s purple. Purple place balanced on a purple animal’s back. We’d have to paint ourselves to blend in,” Avery said.
  
  “Doable with glamour,” Verona said.
  
  “The place was used as a prison for some Others that aren’t strong enough to break free, but are tricky or problematic. Stuff like close this one door, another two open. Move an object and doors disappear, and things move, accordingly. They filled it up, then sold the instructions for visiting, with specific instructions. Looks straightforward.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.10</ref>

• The Blade's Length<ref name="TBL">

A path that extends down the flat side of a massive blade (knife, sword, etc), which serves as a road.
[...]

• Blade's Length suggests confrontation (esp. given the meaning of the blade/sword/knife in the Otherverse), so perhaps it's a relatively narrow path with a series of Others at set intervals, to be fought in wordplay/riddle or physical confrontation.

[...]
The Blade's Length

• Each meeting with a Lost will be unique. There are a couple thousand possibilities and each has their own approach, offering a test of battle or a test of words, and some may be as easy as asking for the punchline to the same joke every time, or a fight against a literal six year old with the face of a mouse, or it might be as difficult as fighting a gunman who can move and react as fast as any human and who never misses, with bullets that cannot be prevented from doing harm. Each contest allows asking three questions about the upcoming contest or the Lost in question, and then the practitioner must decide. On success, they get offered a Lost item or boon, and they get the choice of taking it or continuing on. Each subsequent item/offer is better than the last. The contests are purely random and it's possible to have six incredibly easy ones... or get a nigh-impossible on on the first round.
  
• Depending on how many contests one faces, one loses or rises in station. Leaving this Path without facing anyone can lead to one finding themselves destitute soon after they return to reality, while facing the final contestant can result in quickly finding out you're destined from royalty or that a long removed family member has left you a fortune.

[...]
The Blade's Length is a little unsatisfying so something could be tacked onto the end. I like the notion, also, of a certain breach or failure (perhaps to answer a riddle, or waiting too long to give a response/exchange blows in the fight) causing the blade-shaped path to turn 90 degrees and slice anyone who was standing on it in twain, perhaps turning them into Lost with parts missing. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> - Walking along a massive weapons blade, with the with the wrong question the clade will cut the Finder.

• Cinderella's Run<ref name=CR>
• A Path themed loosely off the Cinderella tale - glass slippers as a concept and clocks. The Path means navigating the clock faces and gears on a downward slope. The plants at the edges, the clocks, and the glass can vary depending on who walks the path, the glass could be stained glass or stacked champagne flutes, eyeglasses or windows. The clocks can vary in style.

[...]

• For Cinderella's Run, the theme of the glass slipper provides the hazard, as does the clock-based path, a number of giant clock faces touching or arranged near one another. The hands of the clocks move at different speeds and generally speaking will bludgeon or slice anyone who they come into contact with. But if you jump or make hard contact with a surface in this path... something on your person shatters. It could be an article of clothing that turns to glass and cuts. It could be that your face shatters and you're Lost.

[...]
Cinderella's Run

• Finishing Cinderella's Run grants a boon where, twice a day, you get some powerful effect for a very short time. A common one is to become invincible for 3-6 seconds at a set time of day or night, decided at random. During this time you'll shrug off hostile practice and attacks. You also get another effect that tends to be more double-edged, at another time of day. Like, say, not existing for all intents and purposes for five seconds at 5:04am. Stuff very closely tied to you may be affected. (Ties to the 'fragility' theme of the path and the time element)
• Five Others appear on the path, randomly assorted from those who need help, hostile Others, and bystanders.
• Of those who may need help (not all clocks are perfectly flat, some sit at a steep angle that make it easy to slide off, some Others may be hanging from clock arms, others may be in the process of being attacked by hostile Others). They can be rescued; if they are, they will tether themselves to the practitioner. They'll appear in the practitioner's vicinity in reality, often with a positive bent. Rescuing an Other three times across three separate visits lets it return to reality in full. This is very much a judgement call type of thing, but a family of Finders could use this to accumulate helpful Lost who could then help manage open doors to Paths and keep Paths afloat.
• Bystanders may offer trade, advice, or warnings.
• Hostile Lost try to screw you up. They're obligated to follow the 'no hard impacts/no jumping' rule of the Path, though, making for tense fights with lots of maneuvering.
• Cinderella's Run has a diplomacy related effect with other Paths. There's no special rule regarding entry or departure, but careful attention about the disposition of the Others is important: If most of the Lost on Cinderella's Run are hostile, then Others on the next Path(s) the Finder runs that would be hostile are more likely to be nice, and vice-versa.

[...]
Cinderella's Run is fairly robust and the difficulty feels fairly even - descending is necessary and probably means stepping onto the right clock hands, the risk is high, but if we draw out the rule about how something random on you or about you breaks, then people are incentivized to carry a shitton of individual items with them (1000 baubles and doodads = 1000 things that could break. Past a certain point (more by quantity than weight), we might provide the path a rule that carrying 100 or more individual things just means every step you take will break something. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

• Crash Course - where things implode with regularity then dumps those who walk it somewhere worse.<ref>Elizabeth Narcisse and her apprentice are experts in the Crash Course, a path where, from the moment the first step is taken, the world implodes. Flying dishes, knives, explosions, collapsing building, dam giving way to floodwater, car collisions with vehicles flipping through air- but there are places to stand at key times that let you navigate the disaster in progress, with arrangements and positions getting more complicated as more people are on the path at the same time. The Crash Course dumps people into deep Abyss or the Warrens, depending, after they finish walking the course, at least for a little while, but after they fall down or jump down once they'll find themselves at home again. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> There is an amazing party in a number of clocks, hope you bring enough gifts for all the guests.
• Spadafora family<ref>The Spadafora family focuses heavily on the Cinderella's Run path,
• The Forest Ribbon Trail, a initial and initiation regularly used for nascent Finders, a wood strewn with ribbons and treasures you get an animal companion but beware the wolf at the end.
• Falling Oak Avenue - a broken-up street in the middle of a clear blue sky. Intermediate path used to travel from any Path to any street named Oak Avenue, Oak Road etc.<ref>Description by Wildbow</ref>
• Stairwell Web - keep at least one foot on the stairs at all time, or something else might put their foot down in your place.<ref name=":6">“Were you there, once? Were you a Wolf?”
  
  “No,” Miss said. “I was by the wayside. A memory without anyone to have it, or a person forgotten even by the Abyss, or an echo forgotten even by the Ruins. I waited by a place called the Stairwell Web. Someone made a wrong turn, they panicked, they ran, and for a moment, neither of their feet touched a stair. I put my foot down before they did. I took their place, they took mine. I walked the various Paths for a long time before I made my way to this world. I was trapped for a long time in the Yellow Flower Spiral, and I walked the Forest Ribbon Trail by instinct alone.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.8</ref>
• Hangman's Hall<ref name=HH>
• A path of furniture suspended over the void, ropes and cords tied to legs of chairs, tables, beds and couches.

[...]

• For the Hangman's Hall, you could say well, there's different varieties of acceptable for what furniture you're permitted to stand on, given etiquette. What if walking on a chair was more okay than walking on a table? What about a table that's nicely set with a feast on it? We could say that every step ramps up the tension somehow, to a degree based on the severity of the etiquette breach. For example, stepping on a chair could mean one rope somewhere in the Hall snaps. You may not want to hang off the ropes themselves, though - could be they just stop holding things up and you're falling as you hold onto a limp rope.

[...]
Hangman's Hall

• The path is littered with primarily consumable (that is, one use or limited-use) items with various effects. Getting caught stealing is an etiquette breach, though. Napkins and papers around the path will, if written on or scribbled on, produce writing that explains the nearest relevant item. These papers themselves can be valuable, if inconsistent, if taken away from Hangman's Hell. Tone & nature of explanation ranges from succinct typewriter font to doctor's note scribbles. Items not wrapped in (the same) paper may not leave the path with the practitioner. Getting caught writing or scribbling on paper is an etiquette breach.
  
• Lost may invite the practitioner to sit and talk with them for a while. This requires time - sometimes hours of talking, but depending on the Other (with something of a system that can be worked out), they grant a benefit at the tail end. This is something of an ongoing cost and test; sitting in a chair and maintaining the wrong posture, interrupting, not talking enough, not eating enough, eating too much, and such all count as etiquette breaches, which snap random ropes all down the path, at a rate depending on the practitioner's discipline and social graces. It's inevitably a slow and steady rate of rope snaps over time, which become the cost of entertaining the Other. Rewards here could include hints about a random path (might not be one the practitioner ever sees), help locating something (with answers ranging from 'in the western hemisphere' to 'in a drawer of a desk belonging to man named Aaron Peter Markham'), answers to a question, or give the answer to a riddle.
• Completing the path provides a boon that saves you from one fall per day in reality or once per path (either use voids the other) - you could jump off a high building and be fine, or fall from the Forest Ribbon Trail. Can be completed multiple times, but each full piece of furniture that drops with no rope to hold it up will equal one snapped rope on each future run.

[...]
Hangman's Hall could use a bit more difficulty, so maybe throwing in something like a rule of, "If an Other insists on something, you have to do it, or it's a severe breach of ettiquette", and some incentives to travel to side paths. Each area might have a theme and that could be elaborated on, both in the types of item found there (the main concourse could be things you eat & drink, bathroom could have soaps and oils, sitting room could be music or books you can only listen to or read once). - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

• Stuck-In Place - A place that Miss was nearly "defined" in. Consists of a building and a large field.<ref> - Excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref>
• Mug Mile - A footpath made of heads and faces of a bunch of people crammed in. There are redecorating crews on the path which one has to walk between, with a few spots where one can ask certain faces certain questions.<ref>“Mug Mile. The footpath is heads and faces, from a bunch of people who are all crammed in, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest, back to back. You walk on their up-turned faces. There’s a system for timing it. Apparently a redecorating crew sits a certain distance up the path, and a crew sits behind. You don’t want to get redecorated, so you have to stay between the crews.”
  
  “I like how casually that’s said,” Verona said. “Get redecorated.”
  
  “A lot of the time you get Lost. Other times, you might get transformed. Depending on the crews, a lot changes. One puts masks on every face and paints the walls red. The masked faces try to bite you while you walk. Another washes the walls and drowns a lot of the faces, giving you really limited time because the water level rises faster if you’re far enough back.”
  
  “I don’t know why you like these,” Lucy said. “I get crazy anxiety imagining this.”
  
  “There are a few spots where you can ask certain sfaces certain questions. The treatments of the redecorating crews change how they behave. If you can deal with the hazards and bystanders… it looks like Mug Mile has a lot of bystanders, huh.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.10</ref>
• The Shining Bridge- Takes one from their world to an adjacent reality. Light in the Path is elastic and tactile, allowing one to walk on it. There's no ground below, but a lot of things to grab onto if one falls.<ref>“The Shining Bridge. Apparently it either takes you from our world to an adjacent reality, or an adjacent reality to our world.”
  
  “Not exactly what you’re looking to do,” Zed said.
  
  “Share the grisly details,” Lucy said.
  
  “Light in that area of the Path is elastic and tactile, at least for visitors. There are a few paths to take, but they recommend the one where you tightrope-walk on the thin beams of light. It’s apparently very kid-friendly, except for the part where you kinda have to get there by going through some scarier places, or it dumps you in one of those scary places, and there’s always some Lost hanging around.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.10</ref> also called the tightrope of lights.<ref name="vp8.7">The Tightrope of Lights path had given her a minor boon of balance.  It had blessed Lucy and Verona with the same, but less, both because they weren’t Finders and because she’d done the ritual and led the way.  There were ways to do that ritual and take away trinkets and boons but they’d mostly just wanted a way home after a long night - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.7</ref>
• The Station Promenade - Path with around 200 Lost on it, trains regularly arrive and take them onto other Paths. The floor is tiled and Lost move from tile to tile based on the time.<ref>9.3 Path Practices</ref>
• The Watched Way - <ref name=WW>
• A path that takes you through a major street of a town at sunset. The town is empty but on the rooftops animals gather in large (by the thousands) numbers, watching the person on the path. Depending on the person walking the path, they could be crows, cats, rats, or anything else large enough to be recognizable from a distance, black in color, and capable of gathering in large numbers. Lost may peer from the windows or doors left ajar.
  [...]
  
• The Watched Way is intended to evoke the feeling of being monitored and watched, and mixing some consequences or threats tied to that (say, don't make eye contact with any of the 6000 crows that are perched on rooftops and such) with other distractions and little things you need to figure out, akin to the Forest Ribbon Trail.

[...]
The Watched Way

• We draw on the notion of the multitude of watchers. Finding the right landmarks and collecting the animals who don't match the rest grants minor boons for the purposes of information and information gathering. A cat with a white tuft at its chest hacks up a piece of paper. Once uncrumpled, it gives details. Crumpled up again, it can provide new intel every day, about a target or thing. A small spyglass, given to any mundane animal with the capacity to hold it (rigging a hat with the spyglass attached and having them wear it works) will see that animal take the spyglass, go to do their best at spying on the target, and then wait for instruction - a single word or name, ideally. They'll slip notes under the door and stop in once a week to return the spyglass or take new instructions. More nuanced instructions can be given but the chance the animal turns traitor increases over time with excess words.
  
• More items may be found along the way. Care should be taken for both the sentinels and the fact that most items on the Watched Way generate pathological paranoia, or justify paranoia. A fireplace poker that protects things on the practitioner's person from breaking, and makes their enemies' things break more easily, so long as it's held, doubly so if held two-handed, but each time it is touched, the practitioner is treated to any hostile whispers, disparaging thoughts, suspicions about them, and insults, either thought, spoken behind their back, or whispered. If there is nobody around to provide these thoughts, the 'best of' list of prior thoughts and comments repeat ad nausuem. A knife that creates wounds that reopen & become fresh wounds again the next three times the subject contemplates the prospect of dying, but also makes suicidal individuals in the knife-bearer's company want to murder-suicide with the wielder instead, oftentimes abruptly - dragging the target and themselves into the way of traffic or off a ledge.
• The Watched Way can deposit someone right in the middle of any area with heavy surveillance. It cannot necessarily get them out.

[...]
The Watched Way could use a final boss or something to really drive the finale home. I'm picturing that as you walk down this street with houses and white picket fences on either side, one rat or one blackbird will scale improperly and seem to grow, until they dominate the horizon, peering over it. A King of racoons or a lord of crows. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

• Yellow Flower Spiral - details unknown. Visited by Miss.<ref name=":6" />
• Zoomtown - a path where one jumps from house to house as they zoom towards the horizon, used primarily for travel.

Trivia

• Wildbow has given advice on making your own Path.<ref>Pale gets into finders in more detail. This page has some background concepts and practices but does include minor spoilers & character mentions from partway into the story.
  
  A path is gong to have a startpoint and an endpoint. For each visitor, there are going to be some things that are locked in, both aesthetically and for rules, and there's going to be stuff that, much like the Sight, changes for each beholder.
  
  Paths tend to have some kind of precarious arrangement, where movement is tricky or has certain conditions, and gets arranged this way. So, to start with, think of the basic premise and/or why it's difficult.
  [...]
  From there, you can look at the hazard or theme and decide ok, well, how do we take that and make it a proper hazard or scenario?
  [...]
  Work out possible rewards. You've hashed out the risks to some degree. If you've reached the basic point of "Oh god, why would someone want to risk doing this?" then you can try answering that question. Boons may be tied to some aspect or theme of the path, and items tend to have function that's a bit divorced from what they actually are. Finally, the Path itself may serve a function that relates to entry (Falling Oak avenue as a dangerous escape route from a bad path), ways it ties to or impacts other Paths, or where it deposits you afterward (allowing paths to serve as a fast travel system or way of accessing places you shouldn't).
  [...]
  Finally, fine-tune. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

References

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