The Shadow & the Seeming....Revealed???

[MatanThunder]

I would disagree on this quoted point, but would gladly accede to whatever way you see the subject of debate. Each to their own. I am working up a comparison of the Plane of Shadow and the Shadow Realm as rendered by the Games Controllers.

The Quote:

That`s why most arcane magic is so difficult to cast (and
requires some sort of divine/spiritual connection to employ.)

I would say that wherever you picked up this "idea" that you somehow May...just may have misunderstood magic on Cerilia.

Quote from the Book of Magecraft.....Page one, paragraph one,

"Cerilia is a land touched by magic-- from the air breathed by the peasants and regents to each grain of sand jostled by crashing waves" (A reference to the magics weave/fiber being bound to the land), "The continent possess great expanses of territory where enchantment lies soft as a child's whisper; deep canyouns where arcane energy thunders strong and vibrant through the earth".

Para 2

Most of Cerilia's people look upon these energies with awe and respect--mixed with fear, superstition, and confustion. A few individual's, however, understand the continent's mystical forces, their intricacies and nuances, their place in nature. And fewer can command these forces--channel them into flashing bursts of energy that fill the night sky, form them into crackling bolts of lightning that fell monsters, fashion them into invisible barriers that keep foes at bay."

It goes on after that to describe their powers of rulership with the magic. So it isn't that magic is harder to cast or use, it is the fact that few can cast the magic. That finding a teacher may be harder to do. That townfolk will see the caster as a threat to be banished or destroyed.

It is a matter of gaming style so if you personally want to make magic harder to cast then feel free to exercise your right as a DM. It isn't inherently more difficult though under the rules.

I am working on the word for word comparison of the Plane of Shadow vs. the Shadow Realm. The descriptions are very similar and I know not everyone has access to such details or minutia. I am just trying to support my point that the realms have an extreme amount in common when it comes to their description.

Later

[irdeggman]

It goes on after that to describe their powers of rulership with the magic. So it isn't that magic is harder to cast or use, it is the fact that few can cast the magic. That finding a teacher may be harder to do. That townfolk will see the caster as a threat to be banished or destroyed.

It is a matter of gaming style so if you personally want to make magic harder to cast then feel free to exercise your right as a DM. It isn't inherently more difficult though under the rules.

I think that he was referring to the fact that in order to cast "greater" magic (in second ed "magic" refered to wizardly magic, in 3.x terminology it is arcane magic) a character had to either be blooded (have the essence of the old gods running through them) or have elven blood (again there is the connection to the Sie there).

[kgauck]

Just a question, if the Shadow Realm is your (way stop/transitional realm) in you game, how do you explain what happened to the dead before the schism.

The same as after the schism.

Before the schism, travels of spirits through the spirit world were untroubled. Afterwards, the spirit world became a shadow world, dark and menacing. Malevolent spirits attack and capture the dead now.

This is one of the reasons that battlefields and other places of catastrophe weaken the veil between the daylight and shadow worlds.

[Nameless One]

Maybe I'm joining the debate a little too late now, but here's how I plan to explain the Shadow World in my future game:

The canon is that before the Deismaar what is now known as Shadow World was a world of magic and wonders, a contrast of low-magic Aebrynis as we know it. Cosmology-wise, Shadow World and Aebrynis are parallel worlds, both part of the Prime Material Plane, but Shadow World is connected directly to other planes while Aebrynis isn't. Any connection to other planes must go through the Shadow World. That's why the Shadow World was the place rich in magic and Aebrynis the opposite. Unlike the "modern" Aebrynis, the magic in the world before Deismaar was much more like the magic of other settings. Travel through Shadow World was much less dangerous and summoning of extraplanars was much easier. When Azrai was destroyed a part of him fled to the Shadow World and corrupted it, tearing the barriers between the Shadow World and the Planes of Shadow and Negative Energy so parts of those planes spilled into the Shadow World. As a result, all Summon Monster spells can summon only creatures with Shadow Creature template (from Lords of Madness), elemental summoning is impossible as well as planar travel and planar summoning spells like Planar Binding. All spells that allow or affect planar travel are altered to work with the Shadow World. In addition, all Summon Monster and Illusion (Shadow) spells are available only to evil character.

I think that explaining the Shadow World through traditional D&D view is necessary because of the effect it has on magic in Birthright setting. If I won't allow my players to summon outsiders then I have to come up with an explanation.

[MatanThunder]

Here is that added information that I was going to post. I was going to post the comparisons side by side, but that seemed lengthy, and prone to misinterpretation of my drubbing home my point of view.

Instead I have opted for a source based listing that features where a description came from, which you can interpret as you see fit for your game or as a debate point.

For those of you who have defended another type of recognition of what the Shadow Realm is, do NOT take this as a personal assault on your belief system of what the Realm should be.

I am providing these detail (and their sources) to provide a number of points in order to support my beliefs about how the planes are connected, despite how Weenies of the Cr** failed to either connect or in better describing the differences of the two realm. I feel that they could be one and the same.

Pg 88 Cerilia Rulebook, “Cerilia has a dark counterpart—a parallel world of cold eternal twilight that exists when night falls over the land. The intangible border between Cerilia and the sinister twin can be breached only by powerful magic, but this border is weak and vulnerable in places where great evil has occurred, and on the darkest winter nights. Cerillians refer to this evil place as the Shadow World, and believe that any supernatural evils such as undead and fiends come from here.

Those few who have crossed over to the Shadow World report that it resembles a dark and distorted version of Cerila. Mountains and rivers stand where similar features exist in the daylight world, but the land is cold and empty. A musty, aged crypt may hold nothing but moldering bones in Cerilia, but if one were to enter the same cryps in the Shadow World—or eve on a night when the Shadow World was near—wights, spectres, or worse might be encounterd.”

And….”Time flows differently in the Shadow Land. Many dimensional magics such as dimension door and shadow walk use this property by creating short-lived passages through the Shadow World. Wizards must be extremely careful of using these spells; more than one mage has vanished while using such a spell and never returned from the Shadow World.”

Pg 9 Atlas of Cerilia; “This region (presumable of another dimension, we have surmised) seems to co exist with Cerilia and occasionally overlap into our land. The landscape is eerily similar to Cerilia, and events of Cerilia are mirrored in the Shadow World. This realm, however, is populated by undead creatures; skeletons and zombies serve as laboring peasants, ghouls run towns, and ghosts run town, and ghosts control entire kingdoms.

As you may know, it has been discovered that “weak spots” exist—something like oiled parchment in windows that allows light to pass but keeps out solid materials. These weak spots are almost always places of death and destruction, and they allow the Shadow World to press in on Cerilia. At these weak spots, undead can pass through to wreak terror on the living—but also the living may stumble through to a land of terror. Stull during the time of conquest that followed the war against Azrai, the Shadow World posed little threat to those who knew of its dangers, and no one saw an immediate way to destroy it, so the rulers continued on their quests for domination and ignored this strange discovery.

To this day, the Shadow World remains a place of mystery to everyone but the halfings who live scattered throughout Cerilia. A few souls have set about studying that realm, but most folk prefer not to talk about it. In some parts, mention of the Shadow World is strictly forbidden."



The Shadow Plane…..I am only including a little of the material here on the plane. It is several pages long, and if you really want it all you should snatch up a cheap 3.? Manual of the Planes and look into it.

Pg 59 Manual of the Planes;

Plane of Shadow: It is a toxic plane of darkness and power. It is the hidden place that hates the light. It is the frontier of worlds unknown. The Plane of Shadow is darkly lighted dimension that is both coterminous to and co existent with the material plane. It overlaps the Material Plane much as the Ethereal Plane does, so a planar traveler can use the Plane of Shadow to cover great distances quickly. The Plane of Shadow is also coterminous to other planes. With the right spell, you can use the Plane of Shadow to visit other realities.

The Plane of Shadow is a world of black and white; color itself has been bleached from the environment. It is otherwise appears similar (but not exactly identical) to the Material Plane.”

Here are excerpts from the following four paragraphs.

1) Black vault with neither sun nor stars, landmarks twisted and warped things, diminished reflections.
2) Plane of shadow is highly morphic, and parts continually flow onto other planes. Maps are useless despite landmarks…..precision is a lost cause.
3) The terrain of the Plane of Shadow is usually similar to the area where the traveler enters…….although it usually bears some resemblance to the corresponding terrain on the Material Prime.
4) Spells often draw forth parts of the Plane of Shadow, in particular for illusions that have the shadow descriptor. The Plane of Shadow is a monochromatic world, but shadow material pulled from it can be any color. The spellcaster usually colors, shapes, and shades of shadowstuff to make it more convincing. A shadow evocation that produces a fireball, for example, appears like any other fireball to those fooled by the illusion. (Fully listed for comparison to Illusion material of the Shadow Realm).



Shadow Traits, “The Plane of Shadow is in many ways the dark duplicate of the Material Plane (Cerilia in this case). Much is similar, but there are significant differences. The Plane of Shadow has the following traits.

NORMAL….Gravity, Time (but refer to shadow walk info below), mildly neutral & Infinite Size. (Time may be normal but your rate of travel is highly accelerated)

Shadow Conjuration & Shadow Evocation ….within the Planes of Shadow make them particularly useful for explorers and native alike.

I have listed the Elemental and Energy Traits section as part of my argument that the Cerillian Shadow Realms is somewhat different from the Plane of Shadow in some ways.

Shadow Links: The most common way to visit the Plane of Shadow is to use a shadow walk spell for fast travel from one point to another on the Material Plane. The spells moves its targets up to 7 miles per 10 minutes on the Plane of Shadow, regardless of one’s normal speed. Such travel happens entirely on the Plane of Shadow, so travelers don’t see much of the intervening terrain on the Material Plane. Ending the spell returns the travelers to the Material Plane, again in a shadowy location if possible.



In final analysis you might wonder what all this means. I would say a little or as much as you want it to in your game.

The idea is that there are a lot of similarities in the two regions, and the Plane of Shadow itself is said to leach into other planes……despite what is mentions somewhere (please someone help me out here and point me in the direction of the material about connections to the other planes/realms so I can review it) about Cerilia being cut off.

I would say that this is somewhat naïve. The inner and outer planes are interconnected to ALL prime material planes: Greyhawk, Faerun, Dark Sun (yes elementally at least), Spelljammer, Mystara, Dragonlance, Arduin, Midkemia, Home Brew, and every piece of planar fantasy fiction has some form of interconnection (like Midkemia).

To think that Cerilia is somehow cut off may not reflect what the planes mean to all prime material planes. Heck if you are saying Cerilia is cut off from the inner planes, then you still have to reflect on the facts that the dead can still reach their final resting place on the outer planes. If the dead can travel the Astral plane then outsiders (as 3.? Calls them) can also get in. A one way passage may exist in some gate features, but there is NO way that you can cut off the whole plane from something as vast as the Astral and its all encompassing nature of the cosmos.

Now remember you can see and play it as you want, but the The Shadow Plane and the Shadow World (Realm) are similar on a number of points. If the Astral has a connection then there should be NO reason why the inner/ethereal connection is not present, especially in the face of the fact that the Shadow connection is there.

More to come,

Later

[Trithemius]

For me, the Shadow World is the realm of potentiality and mutability as compared to the typically more stable mundane world. In this it probably resembles the Spirit World of OA, as some others have mentioned.

The Shadow World is a corrupt place though, tainted by the interest of Azrai and polluted by his essence after his defeat.

It is the place of magic; mebhaighl, which seeps into the earth and pools according to mysterious laws, is the remnant of the potentiality of the Shadow World that was trapped in the mundane world after the two lands were separated by creation of the Evanescence bythe immortals.

Azrai, before all, was interested in the powers of the Shadow World. The scope for change and the ability to absolutely impose his will and his creativity on the mutable substances of the world before the separation pleased him, and he perhaps resisted his fellows despite the novelty of their project? Vorynn too was intrigued by its powers, but supported the separation and became the guardian of the Evanescence and the patron of lesser magic - those powers that were sanctified by his deeds and made safe for mortal men.

The souls of the dead flow back to the Shadow World, their primeval font. There, now, they risk corruption and so Ruornil, Vorynn's Heir and the psychopomp of Cerilia, and leads the spirits of the departed through the murk to Neserie's Embrace, or perhaps to other places?

The sidhelien are fascinated with magical things, and the mysterious journeys their dreaming minds take into the Evanescence. Here they sidhelien sometimes touch upon the minds of their cousins - who lie trapped and forgotten on the other side even as they are. Perhaps the empires of the ancient sidhelien were merely to give them more time to explore these peculiar half-conscience journeys, or perhaps they were to recapture the barely-recalled glories of the time before time.

Those called the halflings by men know much of both worlds, and once walked between, crossing the Evanescence by some mysterious sleight. They are found more and more in the mundane world, claiming to those that earn their trust that they have fled a terrible evil. They refuse to speak about the source of their unusual powers though, or why they of all creatures can pass through the Evanescence.

[MatanThunder]

:confused:

The idea is that there are a lot of similarities in the two regions, and the Plane of Shadow itself is said to leach into other planes……despite what is mentions somewhere (please someone help me out here and point me in the direction of the material about connections to the other planes/realms so I can review it) about Cerilia being cut off.

1) Can anyone tell me what page states that Cerilia is cut off from the rest of the planes????

2) Does the affects of (It is the place of magic; mebhaighl,) allow for alterations in magic, magic rich areas, and other such affects??

3) Is there a connection to the Plane of Shadow.

Later

[Trithemius]

1) Can anyone tell me what page states that Cerilia is cut off from the rest of the planes????

Cerilia's "distance" from the other planes and its lack of portals is mentioned in "The Planewalkers' Handbook" (TSR2620); unsure of the page sorry, this is from memory since I sadly do not have a copy of that particular book. That's an AD&D2e resource, it might also be covered in the BRCS but I don't really spend a lot of time with the BRCS (not my cup of tea).

It's not as "distant" as Athas, although Athas has all kinds of crazy problems (the wrong elemental planes, wacky transitive planes, no god-supporting phytoplankton, etc).

2) Does the affects of (It is the place of magic; mebhaighl,) allow for alterations in magic, magic rich areas, and other such affects??

In Aebrynis or in the SW? It obviously allows for it in Aebrynis (caerbhaighlien, high magic potential provinces, etc). In the SW who knows? Magical power might ebb and flow and pool according to who is around and whether or not some powerful being is shaping the place.

3) Is there a connection to the Plane of Shadow.

Maybe in your game, not in mine.

...

[MatanThunder]

Thanks!

I couldn't remember what resource it was, I just knew I read it somewhere. I will check my planewalkers guide when I get the chance.

I also will have to look in spelljammer for any references to the Cerilian connection.

There are shells in the phlogiston that are out of the major flow areas that could well be beyond normal spelljammer technology to reach.

Later

[Trithemius]

Thanks!

I couldn't remember what resource it was, I just knew I read it somewhere. I will check my planewalkers guide when I get the chance.

I also will have to look in spelljammer for any references to the Cerilian connection.

There are shells in the phlogiston that are out of the major flow areas that could well be beyond normal spelljammer technology to reach.

Later

I don't know if you will find any. Rich Baker III did the Rock of Bral expansion for SJ, but I think by the time BR got going SJ was in decline.