Dwimmer
Magical Auras
Academic description rarely does the dwimmer phenomena justice. The doddering mage Synthaktamos Surretes lectures that “Drintera is best conceived of as a patchwork of intersecting magical auras that govern natural and supernatural phenomena, divided at the seams by permeable veils,” but this description often leads the untraveled layman astray. Many a first-year collegiate has conceived of the veils between auras—between dwimmer—as curtains of mist or as stark borders where night and day shine differentially in the sky. What a fallacy.
When a wizard and a warrior pass through the veil into a dwimmer of gloaming undeath, they don’t force their way through a mystical membrane. Trees are not suddenly devoid of leaves, nor do rattling bones echo on the wind. Such tokens of evil may eventually appear but not until they approach the heart of the enchantment. No; the first thing this intrepid pair are met with is a sour change in mood. As the dwimmer takes hold of their souls, grief for death past or hopelessness in the face of death future mixes with an instinctual disgust for the odious anti-life of the new realm. The result is generalized, sourceless repugnance. Our heroes conceptualize their feelings differently. The wizard may reflect on the interdependence of all beings with the ambient magic of their surroundings—as all creatures are one with the food they eat and the minuscule workings of their viscera, so is every soul one with the esoteric influences of their present dwimmer. The warrior, meanwhile, astutely states, “This is a bad place.”
In layman's terms, a dwimmer is a regionalized magical effect that manifests as an invisible aura. It is the result of resonant vibration between occult forces in the world brought about by astrological movement, shifts in ley lines, and the like. A dwimmer influences the creatures, plants, spirits, and weather of its region, even affecting the human mind. Dwimmer, in short, are places where the disposition of the world changes.
A Dwimmer’s Temper
A dwimmer is a moody thing. Each dwimmer possesses a temper which influences everything within its land. The temper characterizes the dwimmer's emotional and poetic quality. One dwimmer may be “whimsical,” another “decayed,” and a third “a dark and stormy night.” There is no end to the variety of tempers, much to the chagrin of my colleagues in arcane semiotics, who, given the opportunity, would provide classification schemes for their marriages. Instead, a cataloguer must simply describe how a dwimmer makes them feel.
In the old days, scholars presumed the ambient magic aura surrounding a haunted house was of a different nature than that found amid fields of flowers and faeries. Now, we know them to be the same phenomenon: magic with a tone.
Dwimmer have an emotional character, yet they do not “feel”—at least, not in the human sense of the verb which implies that the feeling is temporary. A dwimmer’s temper, though as affecting as mortal love, is a fundamental and natural force of its own miniature universe. Oftentimes, a dwimmer’s temper is determined by an event. On the eve of a beloved king’s death, a dwimmer of gloom falls over his nation. The eruption of a raging volcano creates a dwimmer of equivalent warlike fury. A sage realizes the truth of the universe and a dwimmer appears that can foster her enlightenment.
Transient vs. Stable Dwimmer
As we have noted, dwimmer originate from relatively common phenomena, such as the movement of the stars, geological shifts, and tremors in the spiritual realm. Why, then, my students ask, are dwimmer not exceedingly common given the constant motion of such things? The simple answer is that dwimmer are quite common—or, I should say, transient dwimmer are quite common. You are not unlikely to experience one on a given full moon. Transient dwimmer are the temporary fields that manifest solely from the occult and natural energies we have discussed. With no intervening factors, transient dwimmer naturally deteriorate in the subsequent hours, weeks, or months as the energies that conjured them change.
When we speak of dwimmer, however, we most often speak of stable dwimmer. It is stable dwimmer that have drowned the land of tears in rain, plunged Torden Rock into endless violence, and trapped countless adventurers in the great fields of Elysian poppy. These dramatic dwimmer resonate with an “axiomatic root”—a person, a place, an object, an event, or even the emotional waves of a people undergoing change. The vibrations of the spiritual, the natural, and the indefinably dramatic perfectly align, and the environment becomes rooted in a stable dwimmer.
Effects of Dwimmer
“A dwimmer might affect me as frequently as the full moon? Must I be worried?” Firstly, yes—this is a dangerous world, and one must always be worried. Secondly, no. A weak dwimmer is likely only to affect your mood and the way that shadows fall. Beware that which is already unstable in a weak dwimmer, but do not think of the effect as more than a magnetism pulling the world toward the dwimmer’s temper. The first things a dwimmer affects are mood, weather, light, and temperature. These changes are not extreme—one might even consider them aesthetic.
A strong, stable dwimmer, however, is another story. In these, the pull toward the temper is strong enough that magical forces coalesce and create effects akin to spells. In a stable dwimmer, the dead are known to rise, the memory of the outside world fades, flames spring twice as high and speak in shrieking tongues, knights are sealed in armor forevermore, and people transform into senseless beasts.
As a general rule, a dwimmer creates effects that are aligned with its temper. A dwimmer of tragedy drags its inhabitants toward the sad, so it shreds the trees of leaves, adds a cool bite to the air, and calls constant rain from the sky. This effect then cascades to the creatures of a dwimmer. In a dwimmer influenced by war, a tiger might grow to legendary proportions and engage in unnaturally aggressive behavior, perpetuating the dwimmer’s cycle of violence and glory. By contrast, a dwimmer of serenity might feature a tiger that lives in perfect harmony with the monks and deer of its temple home.
Dwimmer have earned their reputation for creating monsters. Take our tiger—a naturally occurring animal in whom the dwimmer enhances the most intense characteristics until it becomes a deadly caricature. More powerful dwimmer, though, might spawn abominations from the very earth, manifestations of the dwimmer's essence. Dragons explode from mountains. Portraits watch you, waiting for you to turn before they crawl from their frames. In the spilled blood of a god, a demon writhes to life. Do not forget: dwimmer are natural things, and they possess all the cruelty of nature.
Changing or Ending a Dwimmer
Even a pleasurable dwimmer is existentially frightening. Therefore, much of the research regarding dwimmer, especially stable dwimmer, focuses on how to end them. You cannot always end a dwimmer, but it is always possible, with great difficulty, to change one. The secret to affecting a stable dwimmer lies in its nature: discover and target the axiomatic root. In so doing, you will disrupt the resonance that keeps the dwimmer stable, forcing the spiritual energies to flex, reattach to a new root, or dissipate entirely.
The ideal axiomatic root would be an evil wizard or powerful artifact; adventurers have their own effective way of dealing with such things. It can get a far sight more complicated if the root is in an event, because the event has passed and cannot come again; therefore, its echoes must be disrupted by a new event that exerts equal power over the place and its people, causing the magical ley lines to align with the new root. Likewise, a root that is a place must be cleansed of temper, a worthy person must be given an end that is not death, and an emotional experience must be resolved.
In sum, make new memories in an old place.
Size
A dwimmer might be any size and any shape. Some are as small as the aforementioned haunted house, but a few pervade entire kingdoms. Left to themselves, dwimmer appear to expand naturally to fill an appropriate shape. At the margins where things end—national boundaries, tree lines, private gates, etc.—so, too, does the dwimmer.
There appears to be an inverse correlation between a dwimmer’s size and its influence. The larger a dwimmer, the greater diversity of emotional expression within it. In the kingdom of forever sun where the king grants every wish, there is a skulker disappointed that their fortunate lot is merely equal to that of other citizens. In the land of endless grief, there is a parish who preaches hope. Such dissonance doesn’t occur as frequently in smaller dwimmer. A cave of torture is unlikely to hold much but pain for its entrants.
Dwimmer are Nondivine and Intraplanar
Misconceptions abound with such esoteric topics as dwimmer, so it is worthwhile to address two. Firstly, dwimmer have nothing to do with the gods. The gods may claim the night sky and deep rock, but much as the artist cannot control the passion their piece provokes, the gods do not govern or create the dwimmer that spring from great forces, seen and unseen. Secondly, dwimmer are not other planes. This is a fiction that has popped up in the last few centuries. The faeries exist in the dwimmer under the dale, not in another world beyond ours.
Example Dwimmers
- Torden Rock
- The The Wizard's Nest of the Viridian Coats
- The Vaults of Golden Splendor
This article originally appeared in Issue #5 of Drintera Magazine. It's also included in the Volume 1 bundle.
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