The Other-Lands: An Introduction

 Beyond the Gloaming Veil, Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Past your daydreams and nightmares, past your dreams so deep

Over the moon and half past Saturn, through the looking glass, straight on til morning

A land not of field and heat, particle and wave, matter and energy, but of Story and Song, Sigil and Symbol, Meaning and Message, Weal and Warning

Elsewhere lies these Lands-Another, For space and time do not rule these lands, merely brush against them flirtatiously.

 

    Readers are familiar with the waking world, and at least passingly aware of its physics, or nature. Perhaps not its depthful true nature, but of the natural patterns that govern its operations to some extent.

    There are Fields (Properties assigned to all points in space-time), Energy (Potential for work to be done) and Space-Time (The soft stage upon which the delicate dance occurs). Simply put, in the real world there are Properties, Event-Potential and Setting.

    There are also weird things, like how causality has a speed limit and things beyond the cosmic horizon functionally Do Not Exist to you.

    This isn't about that. Instead this is about another world.

     

The Treachery of Images, René Magritte, 1929

    Elsewhere

    Here there is no "here" in a contiguous connected way. Locations and even time are dreamlike and disconnected, requiring journeys through abstract Wilderness in order to reach. In order for things to make sense, one must first begin with a description of the fundamental Aspects of the world, as this is a world not of Field and Heat, but of Symbol and Metaphor.

• Glamour: Pure sense-data. The fundamental qualia that build the sensory experience of a thing. Appearance, shape, texture, smell, sound and yet stranger senses you may take for granted. This is what is closest to the objects of the Waking-World, and yet its not something of any true substance, hence the name.
• A dearth of this suggests a smaller, simpler or otherwise reduced sensibility. A total lack suggests no physical appearance or shape, and a fuzzier location.
• Something that is just Glamour is mere shape and appearance, little more than an illusion. 
• Shadow: Perception and Affect. If Glamour is the raw sense data, this is what it invokes. Dreadfulness, Beauty, Funniness, and so on. Subjective interpretations can of course exist, ones own Shadow picking up the slack and allowing one to perceive things as these things even if their own shadows are lacking, but it is considered rude to rely upon that.
• A dearth of this suggests an unremarkable or reduced affect, as well as a lack of ability to supply ones own affect. A total lack suggests no intrinsic affect, total conformity to the surrounding tone of things. This does not make you impossible to notice or target.
• Shadow by itself is pure affect, perhaps like a wandering mood, a storm of emotion or interpretation. 
• Wish: Drive and Desire. The quality of "realness" something can have. Most objects slowly adhere to the ambient Wish of their environment, much like how most objects slowly homogenize temperature and ultimately Heat. Most places in the Other-Lands do not have enough ambient Wish to properly sustain inhabitants, and so other actions are taken to harvest this. This is partially because wish is directed in many ways, and if one wants to take it they must misdirect it.
• A dearth of this suggests a dreamlike or dissociated quality or nature, while a total lack of this suggests a severance from the typical "reality" of the Other-Lands, now seen as possibly imaginary by even the fickle reality of the Folk (this is not an unrecoverable state...), though such things can still possess a passive kind of power to affect the world.
• Something that is Wish alone would be raw unfiltered reality, pure want and desire and drive, it is the other aspects that direct Wish to sustain itself and others.
• Personae: Self-concept and Identity. A story one tells oneself and the world about oneself. Qualities of Character and expressed facets of the self. It defines what you can Do in both concrete and abstract terms. Most objects hold simple Personae, but some objects hold stronger and more complex ones. Many things can even possess multiple...
• A dearth of this suggests a very basic or simplified personality, conforming more to some basic facts or descriptions than to a complex self. A total lack of this suggests no personality or identity is applied to something, it existing merely as an extension of some other thing, or as mere illusion.
• Personae alone is mere identity with nothing else. Title, self-concept with no history, fate or feeling. Pure "I Am" with no "You Are". 
• Wyrd: Fate and Chance. A story the world tells about oneself. A kind of narrative gravity well, or fuzzy non-local cloud of influence. Orchestrates synchronicity with respect to its target(s), usually the singular entity possessed of it. These interact in subtle and secret ways, orchestrating the narrative causation of the Other-Lands
• A dearth of this suggests one is more subject to the fortunes and fates of others than to their own, or suggests a very simple fortune with few moving parts. A total lack suggests one is swept up in the currents and wakes of others, with no fate or fortune of your own. A background character, essentially, but even more so.
• That which is Wyrd alone would be akin to pure fate or luck, a storm of events/causality that might wash over a place. Pure event-association. 
• Chronicle: History and Experience. Something between memory and actual personal timeline. The story that has been told, the prior pages. Gradually builds with time, naturally, as events transpire and are witnessed. All things are possessed of this, and they interact and entwine as events transpire between individuals.
• A dearth of this suggests little experience or history, while a total lack suggests a momentary, immediate existence. While this may be persistent, such a thing would seem to exist in one context only, with no history to speak of.
• Alone, Chronicle is only history, or story. Recorded events with no power of its own. 

Lacking these qualities is not a state that often lasts very long, barring strange structuring or quirks of the Other-Lands. If the void of an aspect is not filled by one imposed upon oneself, then their other aspects will often birth something to fill it. 

And some qualities that apply to all aspects to varying degrees based on context and perspective.

• Wildness: A subjective quality, different depending on the target. This defines how difficult it is to directly be affected by others or to directly affect ones own Aspects. Naturally high enough to be frustrating with respect to oneself and others. One should seek to tame ones own Wildness with respect to oneself, and embody extreme Wildness with respect to the world, while taming its Wildness in turn, if one seeks to affect and not be affected in turn.
• Sympathy: An interactive quality, expressing the integration of various aspects. At a baseline (two random objects), the only Sympathy they possess is the connections brought by Proximity, similarity, symbolic suggestion, Wyrd interaction and so on. Ones own aspects are naturally highly Sympathetic. One should seek to maximize ones own Sympathy if one wishes to remain a coherent whole, and this defense can be maintained through some degree of Wildness. All things are technically mildly Sympathetic to each other. Similarity, past contact and so on are all paths of Sympathy.
• Creativity: All aspects can birth one another to some extent. A Chronicle bereft of other aspects is merely a story, memory or history with no actual subject but such a thing can, if spread enough or potent enough, demand its subjects into being. Even a mere Glamour can slowly accrue Chronicle and so on as events transpire,
• Divisibility: Similarly, these aspects can split and sunder under their own weight, if their scope expands beyond their Potency. A vast Chronicle may fracture into many smaller ones, and an expansive Wyrd may catch or birth others into its influence.
• Potency: The weight or scope of these aspects. A Shadow cast by a mere pebble is tiny, barely a flicker of affect, while a Shadow cast by a legendary conqueror or by the stronghold it has built will be much greater indeed. The greater the Potency the more liable it is to Divide or Create other aspects. The Potency of Sympathetic aspects often slowly adjusts to accommodate each other, to a degree defined by the level of Sympathy. This quality is strongly tied to Wish, as said aspect acts as the fuel for the "reality" of things, but Potent aspects with little Wish exist.
• Proximity: Location, or rather, Distance but only in an abstract sense. Locations are dissociated to some extend, separated by an untamed Wilderness where Proximity begins to break. This is simply the quality of being "in", "adjacent", "around", "near", "far", "distant", "away" and so on. Somewhat subjective, it's merely the other-lands way of organizing the abstract fairy-tale geography. Quite possibly merely a function of Sympathy.

 So what does this all mean? What do the Other-Lands look like?

 

Fairy Tale, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, 1909

A Sea of Story, A Forest of Dream

The Other-Lands are akin to a sea, but also akin to a forest in many ways. The Mortal World is like an island, yet one somehow nigh-impervious to the effects of the other place.

Within the mortal world the Other-Folk are all glamour and shadow, wish and identity, story and history. They lack the substance of the real world, though may still in turn affect the real world if their Wish be ludicrously potent. Most would find it easier to convince (or coerce) mortals into doing their bidding however.

The physics and metaphysics of how the Other-Lands and Waking-World interact are not so important on the waking side of the veil at the moment, however. Within the Other-Lands, it becomes somewhat complicated.

Proximity can be measured from the abstract locality of the Waking World. Most of the familiar features of the Other-Lands are, while not strictly close, are at least within the orbit of the Waking World.

The Aspects, particularly the Wish that sustain the Other-Folk, flow from the Mortal World into the regions of the Other-Lands "Adjacent" to it, and slowly radiate and flow outwards from there along naturalistic pathways. This can be thought of as the influence of the sun, as nutrients flowing from the surface of the ocean downwards or carried by a river... With some important differences of course.

Often these aspects flow on the winds, the rivers, or are carried by the migrations of beasts. Think of them as nutrients, sustaining (or rather shaping) the local Other-Lands 

"Depth" or Proximity can then be measured, in reference to the Waking World, with five (six?) broad ranges.

• Neighbor-Lands: Those lands adjacent to the Waking World, the Neighbors to the world as-is. The Other-Lands here will be very familiar, influenced as they are so directly by the Waking-World that the wildness of these places often corresponds instead to the waking worlds own patterns and symbols. Geographies and locales may line up quite well with the Waking-World, but places that correspond to places not often visited in the Waking World are less formed and so will often be the homes of much stranger things. It is said that the Mortals (Folk of the Waking-Lands) may cast "Reflections" (sometimes confusingly called "Shadows") here, Other-Folk versions of themselves who's entire personae, weird and chronicle are merely cast from their own histories, a strange double in the Other-Lands.
• Near-Lands: From the stranger places of the Neighboring-Lands, or from simply traveling a while away from the Waking-World, one can find those lands still caught in its orbit. These places often correspond to "Lost Continents" or "Legendary Places", seeing as they are influenced by the Waking World but not beholden to its geography. Avalon, Tír na nÓg, Atlantis, Mu, Laputa, Lemuria and so on may be real places here, inhabited by strange folk and stranger beasts.
• Frontier-Lands: The very edge of the Waking-Worlds direct influence. Here, Wish, Glamour, and Shadow all trickle from the Waking-World, or else gurgle up from some deeper realm of the Other-Lands. The influence of the Waking-World breaks down here, and the beings start to take on even stranger forms than the above realms. Impossible things can exist in the Neighbor-Lands (and many do!) but this is where they are often considered native to. Dragons and Giants of truly stupendous size and anatomy, Hecatoncheires, and other terribly, terribly mighty and strange beings may dwell here, yet this is not quite the lands of the truly foreign.
• Faraway-Lands: The bottomless depths, the vast and infinite wilds beyond the scope of the waking-world. With no bottom, no "sea floor", this place is truly a place of incomprehension. Beings that dream themselves, Archetypal Almost-Gods, Lands divorced utterly from possibility and typical human fantasy. These are lands of symbol and narrative, extracted fully, or arising totally independent of, the material subject itself. Symbols dreaming symbols, possibly unaware of the existence of the Waking-World itself. The lands here are often awake and aware, jealously consuming the Aspects they find, seeking to understand and spread. Here is where the phenomena of the Other-Lands are churned into a seething sea of potentiality, or else inhabit a silent almost abyssal stillness, conserving what they have...
• Distant-Lands: Perhaps there are other Waking-Worlds? Either other planets in the waking-world thus described, or other realities entirely, with their own radiating influence shaping some small region. Such places would be influenced by foreign stories, unbound to the conventions of earthly norms.
• Lands-Betwixt: Between established lands there are the roads and paths that connect them, like lands themselves but established only as go-betweens. These are often more dangerous than the lands themselves, unless patrolled or managed by other powers, as many things can be found wandering them that would love nothing more than to gobble up an unwary traveler. Deeper still, it may be only Wilderness, stalked by entities that feel more at home among the untamed and uncontrolled. From Wilderness, one can go just about anywhere, as proximity begins to break down, though one can still vaguely understand ones position with respect to Major Lands (or the Waking World).

Within the Other-Lands itself, it goes without saying that of course the settings themselves, the locations, are defined by the Aspects and the Qualities that describe them.

Hence locations possess Wyrds that may be imposed on inhabitants or visitors, Personae that may shape its character, Chronicles of their history and the histories they partook in, the Glamours and Shadows of their components and even of the location as a whole and of course the Wish that fuels this all, gives it reality and supports the Potency of this.

Remember: All things are described by the aspects and their qualities in the Other-Lands. 

 

Any Old Fairy Tale, Arthur Wilde Parsons, 1919

The Abstract Physics of Story...

... are best understood through storied examples.

Take a blade, hold it in your mind and understand it. Know it. Tell its story.

Its Glamour is that of a blade of whatever make desired, its Shadow may be many things. Dreadful, beautiful, inspiring, terrifying and so on. It all depends on the goal. Harvest these from the lands you find most amenable to such extraction, pull the Glamour of iron from the earth, and the Shadow of fear and dread from the dark itself. Take the physical objects and reshape them, either in your forge as expected, or sculpt them like a sculptor, or weave them like a garment.

Fill it with Wish and make it real, harvested from the materials you gathered, but it needs more than just that. It will be only set-dressing without more Wish. Find more.

Tell its story. Its Persona is one of a blade. A weapon that deals death, forged from metals drawn from the earth and given the explicit purpose to harm and kill. As you make it its Chronicle begins, a small thing for now but it will grow in time.

Give it a Wyrd, a fate, or it will grow one on its own. Weave something into it. You could tell it that its Wyrd is one of bloodshed, and that others near it find being wounded comes easily, accidentally even, but simply telling it this will instill only a flimsy Wyrd. You must harvest what you desire. Take it to old and dreadful battlefields in the Other-Lands and pull from them the Wyrds you desire.

Note how you cannot simply "Do things" with these. There must be some symbolic root to them. Some core action. Some justification. With time and knowledge these justifications can become as vague as "I willed it", but such things are the dominion of the Reigning-Folk (Kings, Magicians, High Fairies, Gods, Noble Djinni and so on). Additionally, this process can be different... Remember the divisibility of these aspects. One could make a blade (or anything really) an extension of ones own aspects... Albeit this confers the risks of being targeted through such objects via their Sympathy.

Things have inertia. This is true even of the Other-Lands, though it be an inertia of purpose and culture, rather than of motion or lack thereof. 

Another example.

You wish to slay someone, for insulting you or your lover or whatever other excuse you have. Really you probably just want to kill them for no single reason in particular.

When you strike them with your blade, the Glamour and Shadow twist at the targets own, creating images and impressions of Wounding and Weakening. These would be easy to dispel... Were the blade not possessed of a not-insignificant amount of Wish that it uses to stamp these wounds into the reality of the targets Glamour and Shadow. Were it insufficient, the wounds might only exist for a moment, or might not occur at all. Wish is force and reality as much as it is desire and Wishing for things to be some way.

The Persona of the blade is that of A thing that Harms and Kills and thus, through this power its strikes attempt to impose the self-concept of being wounded upon the target, twisting its own Persona. The Wyrd of the blade is one that invites further bloodshed, and so while the wielder is also vulnerable to this aspect, the target is the one currently being struck and is suffering from greater effects than would otherwise be the case. The Wyrd does not actively contribute beyond this, but may (if phrased/structured in a specific way) "infect" the Wyrd of the subject.

All of this contributes to the final effect. The Chronicle of the target starts to contain having taken wounds. Recently in fact. If the blades own Chronicle were expansive, the Potency of that could contribute, but this is a new blade, and this is its first blood. The blades own Chronicle now remembers drinking this blood. A Sympathetic link forms, albeit one that is weak for now.

Note that these are all additive effects. Negative, for sure, but they are adding bad things to the aspects of the target. Nothing is being taken. This is important for the next part.

If you strike the target enough, the number of wounds may overwhelm them and they may die. This too is Additive. One that has died still persists! But their Chronicle now "ends" with their death, their Glamour and Shadow both express their deceased nature, their Persona now includes "Dead" in it, its a whole thing.

There are ways around this. Crafty Other-Folk will take on a Persona that includes I shall return to avenge myself, and restore myself to life within it. If their Persona is weak, then contradicting Personae will overpower the weaker ones. Sufficiently egotistical Other-Folk can thus simply ignore the effects imposed on them in some ways. Most instead have to work around such imposed restrictions. Haunting is popular.

Subtractively affecting something involves a process of separation. Sufficiently symbolically resonant actions fueled with enough Wish or by Potent enough other aspects can perhaps cut deeper, severing Sympathies and even twisting preexisting aspects in some way. Surgery of some kind is common, though the surgeon will start physically reaching deeper than the body should be (or else metaphorically cutting through into the actual aspects themselves). Poisons or medicines ingested in some way are another vector, since that can be seen as "taking it in" and that can be pushed further.

It is for these reasons that Other-Folk treat death more as an entertainment or inconvenience, though perhaps a very severe one if they are not particularly Potent. Killing is not a way to solve problems, and social norms are often very respected, seeing as the consequences of a misstep can last a very long time here.

Truly killing something of the Other-Lands may be impossible, but one can scatter and transform aspects. See baking berries into a pie to consume their Wishfulness. The go-to method of actual murder is a kind of metaphysical cannibalism, but thats only often seemingly permanent, and it does invite the consumed to attack from within, which can be an extreme problem. 

A rather fun example is that of Fashion. Other-Folk of all varieties are rather fond of fashion, as expectation, symbol and affect become far more important than the literal practical physical effect of an object. Everyone expects a Knight in Shining Armor to be crushed up and eaten by giants (barring exceptional specimens) but even a mighty Wyrm of the depths may be cowed by a truly outrageous fashion statement, possibly even blinded by the sheer Pizazz (woven from Shadow at the very least, and all aspects if one really wants to make an impact) radiating from the wearer.

Other-Folk in general are more separated by self-concept and mindset than by any actual separation. The term refers to human-like entities of the Other-Lands, and refers to such cultures as Fairies, Trolls, Djinni, Peri, Nymphs, Yaksha, and so on. Any mythological concept of "They are People but Strange" can fit.

If an Other-Fellow begins to identify more with another culture, or begins to form an identity independent of any culture, they will begin to change in accordance with their now nature.

The physics and metaphysics of the Other-Lands are built on story, myth, symbol and so on. So long as it remains consistent, anything may happen. Be it fitting enough, thee could catch the sun in a net (no guarantees its the same sun outside the Land you do it in however). But the Sun might just have some words for you, and the consequences of your actions could be very long-lasting indeed.

Of course, there is a fundamental limitation of inertia. The Wildness of things, the directed Wish and other aspects, their Potency all resist alteration both blatant and subtle. Hence the requirements of physical metaphors for the alterations to occur. As said above, something must be fitting, and must make sense but not real physical sense, story-sense.

 

"The Blue Cat", Pamela Coleman Smith, 1907

Phenomena

But of course, the Other-Lands are not some passive recipient of action. It is a realm of many entities, all acting with and against each other...

• Wyrdstorms: Narrative storms, fuzzy causal clouds that churn the Other-Lands with their passing. These include such things as the Wild Hunt (Which scoops up "hunters" and sets them the "hunted", everyone else), The Bacchanal (Which simply gathers as much as it can into some wild revelry, fracturing into smaller parties to replicate itself) and more.
• Reigning-Folk: Those folk potent enough they could tell a stone to move and it would do so, even if the stone was not really a thinking or feeling thing. Reigning-Folk are Kings, Magicians, Demigods, Priests, Noble-Djinni, and so on. Beings for whom a "fitting action" to change somethings aspects are simply "demanding it" or "willing it". Incredibly Potent and vast.
• Fisher-Kings: Reigning-Folk that have woven themselves so utterly into the fabric of a location that they now are functionally one and the same. The Fisher-King becomes akin to Leviathan, a literal embodiment of their kingdom, their kingdom an extension of their will. In this way, their moods, will and so on can and do shape the very lands directly to a much greater extent. Arthur Pendragon is Camelot, and Camelot is He.
•  Twinselves: Beings who weave their aspects so closely together that they become one "person", with two bodies and minds, or individuals that construct new Personae and other aspects until they can craft an entirely new body.
• Faction-Folk: At the most extreme level, the passive loyalty of a faction, its own Personae, Wyrd, and other aspects, creates a self-sustaining system. These then act almost as abstract "people", without imposing on the individual too much generally, since with broadness such as this comes difficulty with managing it. In this sense, the faction one belongs to is almost its own emergent "person". These "people" may then eventually become very literally people, as they birth true bodies for themselves. The Order of One is the only example known to be solely (or almost solely) composed of this singular personhood. Most others are much fuzzier, much less egomaniacal characters. Yes even the Corporations (mostly).
• Genius Loci: Intelligent locations with legends of their own. Living and thinking landscapes. They may manifest bodies, acting as Fisher-Kings, or may remain locations, or may switch as the need arises. Some are kind, some are predatory but all have some core character or motivation defined by Personae and Wyrd.
• Figments: Wish-deprived beings, occupying an abstract existence even more imaginary than the Other-Lands themselves. Manifesting as figures that emerge within ones musings and daydreams, they seek to consume Wish in order to gain a measure of reality to them. Difficult to bind, as their sheer lack of reality means they exist in a state almost akin to a superposition, existing only in a vague cloud of influential non-interaction, but this strength is balanced by the weakness of being easily dispelled or ignored. Not necessarily hostile or parasitic, some are willing to lend aid in exchange for Wish.
• Nightmares: Beings born of the fears and anxieties of mortals (and of the Other-Folk themselves). The outflow of fear-flavored Shadow pools in hidden places, and generate the aspects necessary to birth these beings. Nightmares can be Other-Folk, or Beasts, or Monstrosities of other varieties. Even Abstracts.
• Primordial Beasts: In the old days there were no stories beyond the simple narratives of hunter and hunted, seeking a nesting place, the kind of biographical narratives of life itself. But there was fear. And from these eldest fears, the most grand and ancient Nightmares were born, the Primordial Beasts. These beasts have evolved with time, fallen to each other and had inheritors be born. The modern ones embody apocalyptic fears and the horrendous alienation of modern society.
• Magic: The qualities and aspects of the Other-Lands generate behaviors consistent with magic. The metaphysics of the Other-Lands are certainly "magical" by some metrics, but more importantly the symbolism of magic holds weight. Witches, Wizards, Sorcerers and Magicians of all stripes 
• Paradigm Shifts: Sometimes a dramatic change in culture in the Waking-World emanates into the Other-Lands. When this occurs, entire lands can be reshaped in a short time. Sometimes, a paradigm itself is its own independent thing in the Other-Lands, that suddenly surges up and changes the lands. These can be temporary or permanent, and can form strata of deep history, Chronicles difficult to read or understand due to their complexity and vast scope...
• Abstracts: Things of the deep. Beyond the spaces more proximal to the waking world, there lie whole ecosystems divorced from the radiance the mortal world provides. The things that dwell therein lack standard forms and natures, being abstract collections of ideas and symbols divorced from context. Built off primal bases, they manifest strangely and incomprehensibly to most mortals. Things of this variety embody simple ideas and themes.

John Bauer, 1911

 

Playing this game?

Id go with FKR or otherwise very mechanics-lite, using descriptive terms to establish how Potent a given aspect is, how that Potency is shared among sub-aspects and so on. Nothing super mathematical. This is a game I may actually outright reject the notion of using dice in cases of ambiguity, instead relying on the participants willingness to either back down or take on some harm to achieve something. Dying is temporary, or invites a transformation of game-play (one may choose to act as a ghost instead, for example, or as a memory that acts and behaves as itself).

Its almost definitionally more of a story game, grounded more in story logic than real logic, but still grounded. Just remember the causal requirements for affecting aspects, and get an impression of the underlying logic.

(All images from the Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.)