Shadowfell
"The Shadowfell is a terrible place, just awful. Sucks the life and soul out of you, leaving you as a depressed husk of a person, and that's if you're lucky. Cannot recommend it. Shadar-Kai know how to party, though, so there's that."
~Seak Beardo Von Shmit, of Abide and Seak's Bizarre Bazaar
Geography
The Shadowfell is mostly a sucking morass or peat bog. Bits of architecture dot the landscape, all of it in ruins and almost all of it ancient. Every once in a while, where the Shadar-Kai have settled for long enough, more intact structures have been built and decorated with wild splashes of color-yellows, purples, blues and greens being their favorites.
The geography responds to the emotions of those living in them. The greater the doubt, self-loathing, or sorrow inside the traveler, the softer and stickier the muck beneath them is. A person who is fully confidant and light of heart can travel on it as if it is simply soft earth. This muck builds up into scattered hills, and bonelike protrusions can resemble naked, dead trees. The sun never rises in the Shadowfell, and a fog ranging from thin to completely blinding is always present.
Stinking ponds and sluggish, slime clotted rivers meander through the landscape. This water is brackish, undrinkable, and carries the terrible Dread Curse.
Fauna & Flora
All beings of the Shadowfell subsist on emotions and identity. The wretched souls of evil mortals that were sent to the Shadowfell by the Hamasana form the lowest rung on the food chain. Everything on the plane hunt them, even as swarms of them seek to bring down larger prey.
There is nothing on the plane that is recognizably a "plant." With no sunlight, nothing can grow but fungus. The white bonelike protrusions that make up the Shadowfell's dead, bare forest are actual large, fungal spires that feed on the fading emotions of Kobos and the Feywild. When a single prevailing emotion takes over a large group of people, it can become visible on these spires; in times of war they become covered in thorns and drip viscious red fluids, in times of plague the fear can manifest as black, pus filled buboes, after a large scale celebration such as the victorious end of a war or the birth of a prince, the corresponding spires will actually glow with a soft, green or orange light. The Wretched swarm these and suckle off of the experience like lamprey on a fat trout.
Natural Resources
A ritual exists to bottle the waters of the Shadowfell and preserve the Dread Curse within, making a potent ingestion poison. Such a thing is rare, however, as the ritual itself is perilous, costly, and unpleasant.
Spires can be cut down and consumed in order to experience hallucinations wherein the consumer experiences the emotions involved. This is especially popular among the Shadar-Kai, who have a variety of recipes for food made from different emotions as well as alcoholic beverages. While most of them never make it out of the Shadowfell, bottled happiness is quite popular with some segments of some populations, particularly those serfs and slaves still in bondage in Shelor.
Alternative Name(s)
Plane of Shadow, Realm of Darkness, The Dark, the Dreary, Siniam
Type
Dimensional plane
Included Locations
Related Ethnicities
Related Tradition (Primary)
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