Duskscape

The Dreaming Mirror of Waking Materia, Surrounded by the Increasingly Alien Far Umbra

---

"These days, there are angry ghosts all around us - dead from wars, sickness, starvation - and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? So what? So's the whole damn world."

— Jigo, Princess Mononoke (1997)

---

A realm (or more accurately, collection of realms) that have been given many names over the millennia by Waking Materians: the Dream Time, Pathos, Nod, the Umbral Provinces, the Ambient, the Farfields, the Gloaming, Terra Incognita, Metaterminus and more. For many of the articles here connected, The Author will use the Middish Common name: The Duskscape.

Separated from Waking Materia by the Veil, the Duskscape is, to Waking peoples, a realm of shadows and monsters, dreams and death. While it is true that the dreaming and recently dead souls of Waking peoples travel there, the Duskscape far more than that. It is a world unto itself, with civilizations, ethnicities, flora & fauna more diverse even than its Waking counterpart. Intelligent Duskscape creatures are not even necessarily aware of Waking Materia, and those who are often dismiss it as a thin, backwater layer of reality above their deep and historically rich one, like a patch of moss atop an ancient boulder.

The Dream Time is ruled by a diverse and inscrutable pantheon of deities known as The Duskscape Regents, also called the Cenobites, Fomoraigh, Kagamikami and more.

Much scholarship on the Duskscape was destroyed by the Deluge, and the Veil was nearly impermeable during the Silence of the Second Age, rendering its "dark" magicks impossible and leaving almost no interaction between the two worlds. Now that the Silence has passed and the Veil is traversible again, Third Age Materia is reawakening to the many layers of reality that lie "beneath" it.

Metageography

See also: Imagery of the Duskscape (External)

---

The Duskscape is generally divided into two major parts: the Near Umbra and the Far Umbra. There is no strict, agreed-upon threshold between the two. The Umbral Encyclopediæ compiled by the Dragon Knights of Tallarax describe the difference as a matter of Logos and Pathos: Logos describes Materially "realistic" phenomena which follow expected paths of cause & effect, while Pathos describes indefinable or conceptual phenomena (though they are not any less real for being such). One begins at maximal Logos nearest to Waking Materia, generally regarded to be at or near the demonic city-state of Epitaph, but as one travels outward reality becomes increasingly beholden to Pathos, giving power to more esoteric forces.

The Near Umbra

The region that is "local" to Waking Materia in the sense that it seems to reflect the Material realm most closely (albeit often twisted). Spharai and Qlippoth interact directly with the dreams of Waking Materians, and these experiences inform the shapes they take. Demonic societies that reside here tend to have more relatable and less dangerous reactions to Waking visitors than in the Far Umbra (though the level of danger is still often high). This is especially true of the cosmopolitan umbral city of Epitaph. No known discipline or school of magic is able to traverse the Veil and land outside the Near Umbra.

The following is an incomplete list of Near Umbral cities, ordered by radial distance from "central" Epitaph:

• Epitaph
• Neith's-Head-Unto-Siv
• Sarkoldu'un-Imathratep
• The Vestige Materietúm
• Orms-by-Gorr
• Savvissivik
• Kloster Storkenfels
• Dis
• The Wilderness of Statues
• Húm Quoth

Due to weaknesses or absences in the Veil, some regions exist in both the Near Umbra and Waking Materia simultaneously, acting as "dimensional ports" in a sense. They include:

• Nibelheim, a primarily dwarven civilization below the Spine of Yorm: a volcanic seamount chain east of the Broken Empire
• The floodplains of Khayyam: underlying fully three quarters of the continent is a high water table of haunted brine fed from the Sunken Expanse, meaning even if there is a normal Veil strength at the surface, one may be standing only a few metres above the Near Umbra
• The inner depths of the titanic mountain Maraxas Mons, on a far Voideastern stretch of Khayyam
• The Yawning Spiral, located deep beneath the Maze of Oloraan, in the far eastern reaches of the Skylands
• Godskull, a mysterious geological(?) formation atop the eastern twin of Ket's two colossal plateaus; arguably the least dangerous of the Material-Umbral "crossroads" as the star-baked plateau is utterly inhospitable to most twilight monsters, save for roving, largely mindless assemblages of animate bones the Kettites call the d'rek
• Stargrave appears to be able to manifest in the Near Umbra even though the Veil seems to be of normal strength in the oceanic expanse where it's found on Waking Materia, suggesting some other method of crossing

The Far Umbra

Put simply, these are the umbral regions that are too alien to be considered the Near Umbra. In general, this means a sufficiently large radial distance from the "centre" of the Duskscape, Epitaph. Remaining First Age texts describing these realms never mention them having any end, in any direction.

The Far Umbra takes numerous forms, always uncanny, sometimes impossible to describe. The air itself sometimes takes on new properties without warning, becoming acidic or hallucinogenic, granting wisdom or eliminating the need for sleep. In some places chasms and valleys will widen so much that landmasses are no longer connected at all, becoming floating planetoids in the strangely-flowing Duskscape sky. Ups and downs begin to lose all meaning. Bright, oddly-coloured spheres can be seen floating far in the distance, which the locals call "moons". Sometimes the cloudlike æther coheres enough to create bridges between these solid points. The possibilities may well be limitless.

The Far Umbra is still populated by creatures recognizable as demons, fae, chimerae and the like, but in forms and societies that grow increasingly alien the farther one is from the Near Umbra. Waking travelers are not known to be welcomed in these places.

Significant Far Umbral settlements mentioned in Antediluvian texts include:

• SVKH ("Savokh")
• Boneflower
• The Lost Angles
• Liminos
• Nullzone
• Towersaglitter

Travel

Normally, Waking Materians visit the Duskscape as dreaming or deceased souls, released from their flesh-and-bone Material cages. However there are obscure, magical means of weakening the separation between dimensions, to the point where one may cross over physically and consciously. Fore more information, see the full article on The Veil.

Demonic Culture

For Near Umbral species, see the full article: Sapient Species of the Duskscape.

For Far Umbral (and extradimensional) species, see the full article: Extraplanar and Far-Umbral Sentient Species.

---

Outside Epitaph, Waking humanoids (that is, those that are neither dreaming nor dead, who have traveled here consciously and bodily) are not common and generally treated with suspicious curiosity if not outright hostility by the locals, like a wild animal who has wandered into a township. The most ubiquitous verbal demonic language calls Material visitors Tellurians, after the word telljúúr meaning clay walkers; demons find the limited, flesh-and-blood bodies of Material creatures bewildering, and interpret them as being made of the same clays as the Material fetches and talismans found in some demonic markets. In a sense, they view Material humanoids as walking, talking statues.

Demonic manner tends to be unhurried if not downright slow by Material standards as they are exceptionally long-lived. It is not as if they're in slow-motion (reaction and physical speeds are comparable to Material humanoids), their societies just tend to run at a more leisurely pace.

Cosmology

According to the Layer Theory of Dimensional Cosmology, the Duskscape is the Third or Spective Layer of the plane, also called The Wyrm. Usually the Spective Layer is co-located with the Mundane or Material Layer above, the Duskscape is separated from Waking Materia by a mysterious phenomenon (possibly unconsidered Layer?) known as the Veil, and instead the two layers behave like coterminous planes.

Banner art credit: Karl Sisson

Type

Dimensional plane