The Actuality

Welcome to the Actuality.   What you thought of as the “real world”—a world of drudgery, fast food, paying taxes, and grey buildings under a grey sky—was, in fact, a lie. That world was in fact Shadow—a world of comforting lies and deception. The real world, known as the Actuality, is much more magical.   You are a vislae, a practitioner of magic (also known by names such as mage, sorcerer, adept, and more) who has broken out of Shadow and returned to the Actuality. Many years ago, a great War had come to the Actuality, and you fled to Shadow as a refugee to escape the horrors of the conflict. Now, upon your return, you are reacquainting yourself with the world you once knew and finding again your place in it. When you left, you had a home and a role in society, but memories are slow to return, and only in very broad strokes. The world was changed by the War, but you are on your way to reclaiming your lost life of magic and surreal wonder and reconciling it with your life from Shadow—a life where you were an accountant, clerk, programmer, or one of any other such mundane occupations where magic was just a word used by novelists, television producers, and con men.   An therein lies the main difference between Shadow and the Actuality: the Actuality has magic. In fact, all vislae use magic (though in very different ways). The Actuality is infused with it, and its residents use it in almost all aspects of their lives. The magic of the Actuality would seem to those from Shadow as something dreamlike or surreal—people with motes of light for a head, buildings built at unnatural and impossible angles, emotions taking physical form as ingredients for a magic potion. Part of adjusting to the Actuality is unlearning of what you used to think of as “normal.”   All of this magic is said to come from the Invisible Sun. The Invisible Sun is one of the suns on what is known as the Path of Suns. Each sun, in addition to being a literal sun shining over its realm, is also a separate plane of existence, and the Path of Suns represents a literal and metaphorical journey through not only the Actuality, but a mortal life. Each sun also has a Guardian that guards it gates, allowing or denying travelers to its realm. The Guardian of the Invisible Sun is Visla. In fact, this is where the word “vislae” comes from, as all vislae are “children of Visla” and members of the Invisible Church.   The Path begins with the Silver Sun (creation), and journeys through Green (life), Blue (the mind), Indigo (truth), Grey (lies), Pale (death), Red (destruction), and Gold (transformation). The Invisible Sun is not part of the Path--it is beyond it and all around it, separate yet all-present.   Some say there is a “darker” path, the Nightside Path, of walking the Suns in reverse, where each is reflected in a darker, maybe more sinister way.   You, however, begin in Indigo, in the city of Satyrine, having escaped Shadow (another term for the Grey Sun, whose lies are a "shadow" and distorted reflection of the real world). Satyrine is large but sparsely populated, with some streets quiet and empty while other bustle with life. Almost all are twisting, strange affairs—structures move, avenues repeat, places trail off into seeming nothingness, and much is in ruins due to the War. Here, you will begin to rebuild and build anew a life amongst the surreal and strange and magical in a city that is attempting to rebuild and renew itself.   Here, under the gaze of the Invisible Sun.