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.

Depressions

A depression happens when you have a Other with an excessive amount of power, that power has weight to it and starts warping the area around it. This warping diverts normal spirits and creates a dip in the area around them, allowing the Other in question to create an equivalent of a demesne.<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>

Known Realms

Reality

Also known as the Real, real world, etc, this is the normal material universe inhabited by humans and many Others.

Sub-Realms

The city the forest and all of the other sub places in the real world are realms onto themselves.

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>

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.

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" />

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.

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" />

Warrens

Main Article: Warrens

A strange underground realm inhabited almost entirely by Goblins.

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

Paths

Main article: Finder#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 appearence depending on the observer, drawing on their mind for substance.

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.

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>

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>

Other Realms

Many of the most powerful Others create their own minor Realms around themselves as their weight and power warps the world around them.<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>
- 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.
- 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>
Fettered Realms - The pocket realms that certain Others ensconce their source of power; a Significant Other that they have lured there by various gifts favors and other blandishments. The human acts as a keeper and power source for the realm and thus the Fettered.<ref>Fettered

Much as the Jockey reflects a troubling side of the Host relationship and possession, the Fettered are Others of a general class, often spirits, who exploit and face off against the bonded relationship. Some seek marriage, others familiar relationships, and yet others seek familial ties. By picking those of any importance or power and convincing or forcing them to bond themselves to the Other by some tie or agreement, they can draw that individual to a private or secluded world where they act as a power source.

Most Fettered are Deals-type Others and operate by two very different dichotomies, depending on whether they are seeking their partner or if they have their partner. The seeking Fettered is often personable or a force of personality, offering power, favors, gifts, or subterfuge on the potential partner's behalf, tormenting bullies or acting against unfair parents. They may offer limited access to a realm as a form of escape.

Once they have their target by one fashion or another, however, they reveal their true strength and influence - often pocket realms that are hard to leave, surrounded by bramble patch mazes, doorways out of a painted world, or some such. They may have domineering personalities, or a cohort of subordinate Others in a subordinate realm who occupy the new partner with activity enough they can never truly devote themselves to the task of riddling or persevering their way free of the kingdom. Often the pocket realm will be an estate in decline, reflecting the Fettered's need for the partner; without a partner they lose power, but when they have one, they have their other half and the kingdom starts to flourish. At least, until the child bride grows too old or the Self of the naive young man falters and he falls to madness and frailty before crumbling altogether. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> Somewhat similar to their fellow Deals-Based Other parasites; like Jockeys.
Garden - Others that are associated with Realms tend to manifest small pseudo-realms around them, changing rules, effects and similar.<ref>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>
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" />
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" />

References