IMC I've had to work out how all the various planar travel spells and effects work. For most of them I translated travel to the Ethereal or Astral as the Shadow World, but the one possible exception was the Gate spell, which creates a direct portal. For a travelling (or summoning) Gate, I think travel to any plane or dimension should be possible, bypassing the SW entirely, but this of course relies on knowledge of any places beyond the SW, which is mostly (if not entirely) lacking in Cerilia. However, arcane/religious scholars have surely asked, "Where do fiends, celestials, and elementals come from, anyways?"

I once had a Birthright PC, Alec Darkstar (a halfling arcane trickster), get randomly transported to a random plane via a Prismatic Spray effect...he ended up in Ysgard, and I concocted a little solo mini-adventure for him in which he eventually made his way to Asgard, and with the help of Odin himself, managed to gate back to Cerilia...though Odin was quite curious about this Cerilia, particularly the Rjurik folk Alec described...

A nice little can of worms, I thought - just opening the door for an alien yet similar deity to probe Cerilia for potential converts. Wouldn't that be interesting...a Norse cult starting in Rjurik or Vosgaard? Cerilians have never really been challenged by outside pantheons before, at least not human ones.

All of this brought up the metaphysical issue of the Shadow World being a sort of barrier or shield between Aebrynis and the rest of the multiverse, and the question of how outsiders would or could penetrate such a barrier. I was thinking that if some worshippers began to follow a foreign deity, it might create a sort of window through which that deity could become connected to Aebrynis through the SW...I figure this is how the non-native demihuman and humanoid deities (like Moradin or possibly Yeenough) have worshippers in Aebrynis.

Osprey