Kal
Whispers
- Intent: A chaotic region of the Netherworld where even the most implausible of events are quite possible.
- Image Credit: Dreamcatcher, 解神者PV2, Goluptious meal, Old stuff, and The birth of cosmos by yingyi xsu; Decay by ShebabAlzadeh.
- Submission Headers by Srina Talon - sourced from Netherworld Codex Contest.
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Landmark Name: The Dreamlands
- Classification: Malleable Area of Reality
- Location: The Netherworld, currently Oblivion.
- Affiliation: Various Dreamers, many of them Shadows.
- Size: Massive; the Dreamlands are unfathomably vast, for while there are entrances and exits few find its borders - and fewer still do the same for the Inkwell that lies "below and beyond". Some have speculated that it is infinite, restrained only by the number of minds present and the strength of their wills, while others allege that the realm folds in on itself in strange, non-Euclidean ways to appear larger than it truly is.
- Population: Moderate; Pawns are plentiful, but the concentration of "real people" is somewhat more unpredictable. It is equally possible to encounter friendly Visitors aplenty or to find oneself in a barren wasteland surrounded by nought but one's own fears made manifest.
- Demographics: The Dreamlands are populated by Pawns, Visitors, and Dreamers; Pawns are beings willed into existence by Dreamers or the very land itself to serve a specific function, Dreamers are the beings able to exert significant influence over the nature of the Dreamlands, and Visitors are everyone else, including flesh-and-blood visitors, sleeping minds, and the spirits of the dead. Many Dreamers are Shadows.
- Accessibility: Finding passage to the Dreamlands is easy - so easy, in fact, that it is entirely possible for one's mind to end up here while one is sleeping, thus the name. Notably, Masque holds several stable passageways, though most of these are under guard or in private hands.
- Description: Chaos made manifest, ideas and desires given physical form, madness and magnificence bundled together into an amalgamated whole that is neither good nor bad, but decidedly interesting. The Dreamlands are this and more - within their boundaries anything is possible.
- Lucidity: Notoriously incoherent in its nature, the Dreamlands are malleable to the will of the Dreamers - and, on occasion, literally any visitor with the will to influence it. The laws of physics apply sporadically and inconsistently, time passes at a stuttering, unpredictable pace, and the Narratives that shape it and its Pawns are prone to sudden changes at the whims of its creators and/or participants.
- Hostility: The Dreamlands is, as a whole, neither welcoming nor hostile. Those with the potential to become a Dreamer would likely be able to reshape it to a sufficient degree to live in comfortable luxury, while those unlucky enough to stumble onto Mania are less well-positioned.
- IC Rules: The rules of the Dreamlands are eternally shifting (outside certain local peculiarities, as listed in Points of Interest) but one thing has remained constant since its inception - here, thought is reality and the sufficiently skilled or strong-willed can bend it to their will, reshaping the very world that surrounds them as the potter does clay. At times, greater Narratives emerge as a result of many minds following the same idea or as a consequence of an especially potent Dreamer exerting their will - the effect they have on the realm is even more invasive.
- The Dreaming Wastes: Within the Dreamlands reality is as clay before the potter and nowhere is this more true than in the Dreaming Wastes, the single spot in which influence is most easily exerted. In other words, everyone is in control - and because everyone is in control, no one is. It is entirely possible to stumble upon a giant floating shrimp reciting the Old Republic's constitution in Huttese if you're particularly "lucky", though most parts are less insane for the simple reason that the gestalt of people's ideas tends to be more down-to-earth.
- The Citadel of Mania: No one in their right mind goes to Mania, unless they have to. A monstrous fortress erected from alien geometric and the twisted fears and desires of insane spirits - many of them Sith - it is infamously hostile to life. Even standing within its grounds has been known to shatter previously sane minds and reduce the weak-willed to empty vessels, glorified Pawns in some twisted Narrative or another.
- The Pillars of Ruin: Less overtly hostile than Mania but no less dangerous to the uninitiated, the Pillars of Ruin are despair and hopelessness made manifest. Entropy applies with unrelenting force, rusting metal, draining batteries, and on occasion rapidly ageing the unprotected. To enter and reemerge is to have faced existence at its lowest point and survive, or so the locals say - though the Dreaming Dark is far worse.
- The Floating Isles: Rising high above the Dreaming Wastes are the Floating Isles, crafted by Dreamers or fickle chance and removed from the anarchy below. More often than not they are the personal demesne of some being of power or another and thus obey their whims above all others, though control can be wrestled away with effort. Over time, some have combined into massive - often hotly contested - chunks.
- Leviathan's Spine: Even in the chaos of the Dreamlands there is civilisation - Leviathan's Spine. As its name indicates, the town is nestled atop the impossibly large skeleton of a great beast of some kind, with some hollowing out homes and businesses from the bone itself. Most of its residents are occultists, self-aware ghosts, and the like, though Hadeans, Varzigs, and the occasional lost person also make their home there. According to the locals it is ruled by a legendary Grey Varzig known as the Grey Baron, though his reign seems to be exceptionally hands-off.
- The Inkwell: "Below and beyond" the Dreamlands lies the Inkwell, the raw stuff of creation from which this most malleable of realms is made. It is "caustic in its uncaring potency" to those without the will to mould it, but with time it can be formed into new forms, including especially potent Pawns (or "Inkmen") and hidden sanctuaries buried away from the gaze of all but the most potent Dreamers.
Fickle by its very nature, attempting to record the history of the Dreamlands is a lesson in futility. Some broader assumptions can be drawn, however.
It is commonly accepted that the presence of living, breathing beings was all but unheard of in this realm of thought and ideas until the semi-recent Netherworld Crisis drew uncounted beings into the realm of the dead without necessarily killing them in the process. Of those who ended up in the Dreamlands, some perished, some escaped, some found a home in Leviathan's Spine, and some few found themselves exerting control.
It is unknown if these new flesh-and-blood Dreamers bothered the current powers that be, but no major confrontations seem to have taken place. The Dreamlands might be chaotic and fraught with strife, but resources are anything but scarce, for those with the power to will them into being.
It goes without saying that beings attempting to make a profit by exporting valuables tend to be quite disappointed - the nebulous stuff from which much of the Dreamlands and its Pawns are made does not tend to hold up to firmer realities for long, inevitably collapsing into ectoplasmic goo.
