The Veil

From Chapter 4 of Sindán ad Alta's The World Tree: Foundations of Reality and Belief

The Veil is poorly understood. Popular knowledge of the Veil amongst mages and scholars can be summarized by the following:

1: It is the razor-thin un-reality between the realms, the subtle barrier that divides the Middeia from the Sitha.

2: Disruption of the veil is dangerous, and certain magics seem to pull on and distort this membrane.

3: The veil manifests in the world as shadow-stuff, or it is "closer to the surface" in places of "obscured perception or understanding" (Eorm, "Commentaries Vol.14", 219-220)

Those who have touched the veil, however, know that all of this is only half-true; the veil is unknowable and undefinable, yes. The veil is thin and difficult to perceive. But it is a thing, a vast place without distance or boundary, found where our perception fails us.

In the obscuring fog, in the long shadows of moonlit night, in dreams, in the places we cannot see but must only believe, the Veil gently touches the world. Some very few people, either by birth or by some strange accident, can perceive these soft touches, and even learn to interact with them without the stuff of the veil slipping away. Still fewer can learn to step fully in to this strange liminal space, and it is from the writings of these gifted Veilwalkers that we begin to see what this realm truly might be.
Cultural Interpretations

The Veil is referred to as "the Hidden One" or "the Hidden Sister" by both the Tol'Atha and the Galdoi tribes to the north of Caladin , and is personified as Aethera in some Tol'Ani poetic texts. These personifications seem to stem from an ancient and reoccurring theme of "The Three Sisters", a common memetic construct in many cultures used to group natural and mystic phenomena. In this case, the Three Sisters would be the Middeia (the Physical Realm), the Sitha (the Spirit Realm, called Astera by the elves and the Fae by more rustic humans), and the Veil. Three co-terminus realms, with many intersecting points. A number of Veilwalkers have written, too, that the realm feels "alive" and oddly comforting, despite it's many dangers. The personification of the place seems as common as it might be in any terrestrial area of importance or power, though the Genius Loci of the Veil seems to be very rarely deified directly.

The Three Sisters myth has led many scholars to conclude that the Veil was formed at the same time as the Middeia and Sitha- that the Breaking of the World left Raen in three pieces, not two. It would be a neat, tidy theory, that would tie the ancient poetry of the elves right in line with the myths of the Northmen.

Unfortunately for tidy explanations, this doesn't seem to be the case.

The Veilwalker's Perspective

In the 5th century RN, the Shadarren Priestess Aethné of Caemwen wrote a sprawling series of dreamlike notes on the Veil. Many modern sages consider them to be ramblings, and even question her validity as a Veilwalker (It is worth noting that such scholars also often question the existence of Veilwalkers at all, a position that does not bear out under historical or even modern scrutiny). But sorting through her labyrinthine corpus of semi-poetic memoirs, where they survive, provides to us some unique and invaluable perspectives. Of particular interest to us, however, is the following passage, translated here from High Middle Galdic:

She(...) is the womb of worlds. She is the vast space within which the Great Tree grows. She touches all, from the high heavens to the realms deep within. She is older than stars. She is older than time. She is younger than every present moment. I have walked a step within her and seen the far reaches of Fae where its edges fray in to madness. I have floated softly in her depths, and I have, in an endless instant, gazed blind upon the Wheel of Worlds. I have wandered through the corridors of the Empty City at Sanctuary's heart and climbed the Boughs of Traedrassyl with a thought. She is grander than these fools could ever know. She is the nowhere between all things, the calm sea between the stars. She is all things, and nothing at all.

While Caemwen's treatises and musings may have been hyperbolic, her claims are supported by other Veilwalkers, past and present. We can therefore surmise from these experienced perspectives something rather startling: The Veil has appeared to arcanists and scholars as a "membrane" between the Middeia and Sitha entirely due to the sheer proximity of these sister realms, and our lack of understanding about the strange absence of relative space or distance within the Veil's dimensions, if it even has them. It has appeared to us as a "veil" only because it is squeezed so thin between us and our nearest cosmological neighbor. But the Veil may very well be the great interstitial space between all realms, the very same "Sea of Creation" proposed by the first-century scholar Seanach of Jiro. This means, alarmingly, that we have been approaching this "boundary" with a cavalier nievité for centuries... and history bears the bloody scars to prove it.

The Veil and Language

Caemwen's work has long been overlooked, due to what we might presume is a precedent of misogyny and cultural chauvinism within scholarly circles left over from the Second Belian Empire. It is a bias that, thankfully, is slowly dying out. And yet few scholars are willing to delve in to her writings even now, perhaps due to squeamishness in how frequently her exaltations of feminine cosmological forces turn swiftly to explicitly erotic allegory.

This author finds Caemwen's writings to be deeply valuable, not merely for her topical elucidations of the cosmos, but as artful and meaningful meditations on love, philosophy, and ontology. However, amongst the veritable treasure trove of Aethné of Caemwen's florid musings stands a remarkably sober passage, one that lends us a stunning insight in to the strange world of the secretive Shadarran cults that dot the known world. One that quite directly and acerbically answers a question so many arcanists and anthropologists have been pontificating upon for centuries: that of the origins of a strange language group referred to as the "Veil-Tongues".

...I have seen their writings, their "debates". Our language stems from an ancient and universal mother tongue, they say. Or it is a sinister constructed syllabary used by our covens to communicate secrets across the world, or even that it is a reconstruction of the First Speech, and that we may walk with the Hidden One by harnessing echoes of the power of Creation. They are such fools it beggars belief.
We speak as we do because we must. We keep it secret because we must.
The many modern tongues of are meant to hold, to contain, to encapsulate with fragile certainty a kenning that anchors what is real, ties it down, shackles it with heavy iron to a basal and dead continuity. The Hidden One is wise, and she hides from such brutality of thought. If we are to entreat her, we cannot claim to know her. We cannot claim to know anything, nor to be ignorant of anything. We must rid our thoughts of the violation of definition. We must surrender distinction. We must humble ourselves. We must be still.
Our tongues form the shape of our thoughts; our thoughts shape what we perceive, what we perceive becomes our world. We learn to speak as we do because the Hidden One is formless, and so our thoughts must not attempt to shape her or she recedes in to un-being. There is no grand order to the Shaddaren, no great global conspiracy or culture of (veilwalkers). The tongues sprouted whole within the many sisterhoods. They are learned by listening to the Empty Song, and they are similar and cognate not out of shared lineage but out of utilitarian necessity. There are (veilwalker) "covens" in all the many nations and continents, even a thousand marches away, that have never had communication with our traditions here in Caladin. We are all alien in culture and decorum and manner and ritual, and yet--in our "structure" of speech and thought, in our purpose--we are aligned. For there is no other way to walk within Her embrace.
The fools. They merely had to ask.

This passage is fascinating, and quite unlike most of her writings (save her understandable disdain for the scholarship of her age). The Veil-Tongues are largely grouped in to the "Primatist" school of thought in regards to the origins of Magic: that all magical intoning is an emulation of the First Speech of Creation ("To Sing the World"-Périgord, 19-41). But we see here that this linguistic "group" is emphatically antithetical to the act of creation, or even in exerting sapient will upon the cosmos in any fashion. Indeed, what little we know of these secretive languages bears this out: no infinitive forms, no way to establish ownership, no verb tense, seemingly no way to speak of anything directly, even the self. It seems that, as Caemwen implies, these languages are tools to train the mind to "accept" the tenuous un-reality of the Veil, not a method to control it.

There are two peculiarities of note in this passage, however. The first is the offhand mention that the veil-tongues are somehow transmitted to the Veilwalkers through the "Empty Song", a name she makes mention of many times in her writings.

The Dangers of the Veil

It has long been observed that certain arcane magics, usually powerful conjurations and certain illusions, cause "ripples" in the veil, detectable distortions in the fabric of liminal space. If violent or prolonged enough, these distortions can even cause "tears", areas where two realms begin to bleed in to one another with catastrophic results.

But there is another danger to theses ripples; it seems there may be creatures that dwell in the veil, and they are drawn to such disturbances of their native realm.

The mage Eod-Malim et Evat Atinarji is widely credited with the rediscovery of the arcane school of Conjuration some fifteen-hundred years ago. According to his own writings, he found the basic formulas for such spellcraft in one of the Horen Codices that he spent his life deciphering. The vast majority of the spells and rituals used by the discipline today are a direct product of his research. He is believed to have gone quite mad a short while before his final disappearance sometime in the tenth century B.R.N.. One of the few remaining fragments of his writing from this time reads as follows (translated from Ancient Goethnanil by the monk Eorm of Kitha in 214 R.N. Some fragments were missing or unclear):

Eyah, but I am hunted still! The Daemons that I have long seen, that stalk me both in waking and in dream, that flit and writhe in the dark (...) Cannot escape them. I fear even mine own shadow, for in quiet moments it is like to grow fangs. Fool, Fool I am! I have meddled in the (...) of the Gods! What fool hubris hath doomed me? Mine own, and none other. And now I am marked. They have my scent, like hounds on the fox-hunt, and I feel (...) gnawing dark. What spirits without have I angered? What sin within (do) they seek to punish?

The "Daemons", Atinarji writes of are surely what the Shadarren covens refer to as the "Remnants", the semi-alive shadow entities that dwell within the Veil. There are many cautionary tales of careless conjurers being torn apart by vengeful spirits.

Geography

The Veil is typically described as a endless dark plain, sometimes as a solid and still black sea under starless skies. In only singular writings, it is observed as a forest, or a mountain range with peaks that shift and flow like waves. Where it is close to a realm that has form, it will often contain "imprints" of the topography or landmarks of the area it touches. Such features are occasionally twisted in to endless and repeating fractals of their own form. The veil also seems to be affected by the minds and emotions of those touching it, though the extent of it's mutability is unknown.

Fauna & Flora

There are a handful of extant writings that attest to strange plant life growing in parts of the Veil- black fields of translucent flowers lit as though by moonlight, cathedral-like forests of infinitely tall shadow-trees, and odd vines that hang from nowhere over a mirror-like ocean and disappear like smoke when touched. It is unclear, however, whether or not these vistas are natural features of the realm, or manifestations of the psyche of the traveler experiencing them. There may be no way to ascertain the truth.
The creatures that dwell within the Veil, though, are certainly and terribly real.

Alternative Name(s)

The Hidden One, The Hidden Sister, Aethera, the Shadow Realm, the Quiet Dark

Type

Dimensional plane