Welcome to Shadesmere

Through a Mirror Darkly

Suffer never the sun to rise or the light to burn. Here is realm where the trapped dead make merry with the living and magic is thick upon the air, cloying in the throat.

All light casts shadow. In the same way there exists the planes of Midgard (or the 'Bright Lands' to denizens of its dark sister) and Shadesmere. The two are as sides of a coin, though little is known about the how or why. Linked through magic that predates the youngest of the gods, many scholars speculate that one cannot survive without the other.

To the ancient world, Shadesmere was little more than a nightmarish rumor to quell unruly children. As terrifying as many of these tales were, they also spoke of unbridled magic left by the gods themselves, just waiting to be harnessed by an ambitious enough mage. This tempted many to rik life, limb, and resource to find it.

It was the great elven sorceress Satastra who finally rediscovered the plane, for she yearned for all secrets of the world. It is she who made the first witch-roads tethering the land, leading her court of exiled fey-magicians with her. Though she has long since abandoned mortal contact, her legacy prevails. The majority of settlements pay homage to her as a goddess, praying to her for luck and safety on the trecherous roads.

The Ebon Tides

It must never be forgotten that Shadesmere is a malovelent place that follows few natural laws. Great rivers of myrkur - the shadowstuff that suffuses the plane and draws so many to its shores for its promises of power - run like great lengths of black silk through the land, hungering for any creature who dares drink of it. Creatures old and strange stalk the uncharted corners, leftovers of the great gods who first shaped the waters.
In the mortal world we often think of the ground, the forests, and the mountains as permament, while shadow and light are transitory. This could not be further from the truth in Shadesmere. Shadows are eternal, while land and river shift and bend as they please. Entire forests walk and the mountains wander from time to time. Entire settlements have become lost if not thought of often enough, or not tethered correctly.
Many think of the plane as series of vast swathes of lands and islands adrift in an ocean of myrkur, often referred to as the Starless Sea. These islands are tethered by witch-roads and touchstones, by memory, and by the woods themselves. It happens slowly enough that few notice it before their eyes, but over days and weeks, when the tides shift, the land shoves rivers and even cities some distance from their usual and well-accustomed sites.
These ripples in the land itself are called the ebon tides, the stretches and compressions in reality that shadow folk know and plan for. Any survey map is useful for a season or sometimes for a lifetime—at least if that lifetime is not overlong. Hills can crumble quickly, exposed to eroding moonlight and washed out to sea. Harbors silt up, and forests quiver and rearrange themselves around riverbeds that dance slowly, ever so slowly, like liquid clocks shifting first one way and then another.
The bigger and more established a settlement is, the less likely it is to drift unreliably. Children of the first generations who settled Shadesmere generally have more ease finding their way, though the harshest of 'storm' seasons (terrible times when the tides shift and are unreliable even to the most studied of the plane - these occur every few years) confude even these natives.

Lights in the Dark

'There is no shadow without light' is a common prayer in Shadesmere.
It would be a disservice to Shadesmere to merely think of it as a distorted reflection or parasite of the Bright Lands. Just as wickedness exists in Midgard, there are bastions of light that prevail here too. Myriads of people call the plane their home - children of exiles, the lost, and the seeking. Enclaves of bearfolk druids fight back the encroaching dark, the Rangers of the Witch-Roads take the thankless duty of walking and forging new paths, Corremel the City of Lanterns never douses a single flame.

Ready to create your character?
Braving the Shadows: Adventurers in Shadesmere is your next stop!