I addressed a little bit about the cities in the Shadow, henceforth to be called the 'shadow city of...', but wanted to devote an entire post to them because they are almost like a totally different beast than the Shadow and spirit world as a whole.
Each major settlement, towns included, have a twin in the Shadow. Some smaller hamlets or individual farmhouses that are old enough may be represented in the Shadow also, though these are often derelict and uninhabited. They do follow the overall rule of what's in the shadow, though, which is to say that all buildings and settlements in the Shadow seem frozen in the state they were in during the late Industrial period, which was roughly the early part of the twentieth century. If I were to set a date, I would say either Edwardian period, just before World War I in Europe, and just a little later, the year 1923 sticks out in my head, for the States, the Americas and the rest of the world.
Basically, they are stuck at the point where a few people had telephones but before anyone really had radios, and before buildings began to climb above a dozen stories high. Now, in New York there are a few tall buildings, as well as in a few other places, but by and large just picture the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Buildings in the Shadow can and do change, though, along with their owner's/occupier's whim. While the cities overall reflect their mortal world counterparts, some have been knocked down and replaced with similarly dated style buildings by owners. The datedness of new construction is mostly due to the building machinery being limited to those of that same time period and because of inability for electricity to function in almost all of the Shadow.
Technology is consistently somewhat prehistoric compared to that in mortal reality. In some places, locations particularly close to the mortal world, telephones actual work, and what's more they even connect to those in the mortal world. This is a rare quirk and sometimes makes those locations valuable property. The same things that make that location able to have a working phone, however, also makes it hard for spiritual entities to subsist there. In general that area isn't as dark, sometimes even seems to have more sunlight, and has a lot more of the properties of the mortal world than the areas around it. These patches can be as small as a corner in an alley or as large as a small neighborhood, but they never take up a large chunk of a city, and the larger of such an area a city has the fewer of those areas it has overall. Few cities have more than five or six even when the areas are all small.
Just as technology is a problem, so then are cars a problem. There are cars in the shadow cities, but they are infrequent. Mostly they are owned by people wealthy or powerful enough to be able to afford the fuel usable throughout the city, since gasoline is an almost completely worthless source of fuel. Almost all cars in the Shadow are pre-1960 models. A few models from the 60's and even the 70's are on the streets, but for a lot of reasons people prefer the more solidly build and heavier older car models.
Money in the shadow cities is very important. Wealth is power just like it is in the mortal world, only in the Shadow there are a lot fewer laws and a lot less enforcement of them. Because resources are scarce, though, a lot of stuff is imported, such as food, so crime is high and for most people money is tight. Those supernaturally powerful enough can make a fortune for themselves, but doing so eventually runs afoul of one of the big powers in the area, and doing that without the power to win means they will end up dead.
Friday, April 29, 2011
My World: The Shadow
I want to make a few remarks about the Shadow, in case any of my fellow reviewers on the workshop sites I belong to read this, and so it's down somewhere.
The Shadow is part of the Otherworld or spirit world. It isn't the whole spirit world, just a region of it, and to borrow some terminology from Dungeons and Dragons, it is a coexistent plane, that is it overlaps our reality. One of the unique properties of it, however, is that it functionally has a coterminous relationship to its connections to the mortal world, so there are specific places that are geographically stable, whereas most of the rest of the spirit world and the Shadow is relatively nebulous when it comes to its geographic layout in comparison to mortal reality.
To explain further, the overall coexistent nature of the spirit world is pretty easy to understand, it exists all around us, everywhere, at all times. Its secondary nature of being coterminous within that coexistent nature means that there are specific places that are like anchors. These places are either locations with significant amounts of natural energy, such as large waterfalls or particularly biologically diverse and active areas of forests, or cities. The degree of permanence is tied to the amount of spiritual energy, which is generated by living creatures and the natural environment, or by significant events such as major battles. These places are always connected to a version of them in the spirit world, and in particular in the Shadow. The landscape and geography within these locations is also stable and does not change significantly, so they are easily the most inhabitable. Outside of these areas things grow much more unstable, and one can enter the Shadow from two spots only a dozen feet from each other and end up miles apart in the Shadow, with no real discernible or calculable method for distance or direction.
This also holds true with respect to the overall geography of the Shadow, especially in relation to the cities. The layout of the Shadow as a whole does not correspond to that of the mortal world. That is to say that it is not like there is an exact map of the mortal world in the Shadow. Distance and location of individual cities largely seems random. The distance between Omaha and Paris may only be a hundred miles in the Shadow, whereas it is thousands in the mortal world and in the opposite direction. Some areas of stable geography do exist, especially where large settlements are connected by an overall metropolitan area. London, for example, is largely stable until one really gets to the country. Then distances start to get distorted.
When one does step into the Shadow, you do arrive in a shadowy double of where you'd been, the same terrain and environment specifics. However, the spirit world is far more vast than the mortal world and so the distances between two relatively close sites in the more chaotic locationality of rural areas just incorporates greater amounts of space and a seemingly random geographic layout.
The weather of the spirit world ranges from cold, damp and wet, such as a cold day in early spring, to cool, damp and somewhat dry, such as nighttime a little later in the spring. It never gets truly warm, though temperatures can rise to highs in the low 60's Fahrenheit, but usually hovers between the mid-40's and low-50's. It is also almost never dry. No matter the geography or environment of the corresponding mortal world location, it is always cool and damp. This is in part because there is no real sunlight. the little light one does get is like sunset once the sun has already gone below the horizon and there is only a haze of purples and dark reds on the distant clouds. There is also only a shadowy specter of the moon in the sky, so even on the rare nights when the sky is a little bit clear, there is little to no light, and only a few dim points for stars.
Because of the lack of sunlight there is little thriving vegetation, though somehow plants seem to cling to life, despite mold, spores and leaves beginning to rot. There are some species of plants that are native variations of mortal world plants, which somehow evolved to survive, or maybe always existed in the Shadow and able to live there.
The Shadow is part of the Otherworld or spirit world. It isn't the whole spirit world, just a region of it, and to borrow some terminology from Dungeons and Dragons, it is a coexistent plane, that is it overlaps our reality. One of the unique properties of it, however, is that it functionally has a coterminous relationship to its connections to the mortal world, so there are specific places that are geographically stable, whereas most of the rest of the spirit world and the Shadow is relatively nebulous when it comes to its geographic layout in comparison to mortal reality.
To explain further, the overall coexistent nature of the spirit world is pretty easy to understand, it exists all around us, everywhere, at all times. Its secondary nature of being coterminous within that coexistent nature means that there are specific places that are like anchors. These places are either locations with significant amounts of natural energy, such as large waterfalls or particularly biologically diverse and active areas of forests, or cities. The degree of permanence is tied to the amount of spiritual energy, which is generated by living creatures and the natural environment, or by significant events such as major battles. These places are always connected to a version of them in the spirit world, and in particular in the Shadow. The landscape and geography within these locations is also stable and does not change significantly, so they are easily the most inhabitable. Outside of these areas things grow much more unstable, and one can enter the Shadow from two spots only a dozen feet from each other and end up miles apart in the Shadow, with no real discernible or calculable method for distance or direction.
This also holds true with respect to the overall geography of the Shadow, especially in relation to the cities. The layout of the Shadow as a whole does not correspond to that of the mortal world. That is to say that it is not like there is an exact map of the mortal world in the Shadow. Distance and location of individual cities largely seems random. The distance between Omaha and Paris may only be a hundred miles in the Shadow, whereas it is thousands in the mortal world and in the opposite direction. Some areas of stable geography do exist, especially where large settlements are connected by an overall metropolitan area. London, for example, is largely stable until one really gets to the country. Then distances start to get distorted.
When one does step into the Shadow, you do arrive in a shadowy double of where you'd been, the same terrain and environment specifics. However, the spirit world is far more vast than the mortal world and so the distances between two relatively close sites in the more chaotic locationality of rural areas just incorporates greater amounts of space and a seemingly random geographic layout.
The weather of the spirit world ranges from cold, damp and wet, such as a cold day in early spring, to cool, damp and somewhat dry, such as nighttime a little later in the spring. It never gets truly warm, though temperatures can rise to highs in the low 60's Fahrenheit, but usually hovers between the mid-40's and low-50's. It is also almost never dry. No matter the geography or environment of the corresponding mortal world location, it is always cool and damp. This is in part because there is no real sunlight. the little light one does get is like sunset once the sun has already gone below the horizon and there is only a haze of purples and dark reds on the distant clouds. There is also only a shadowy specter of the moon in the sky, so even on the rare nights when the sky is a little bit clear, there is little to no light, and only a few dim points for stars.
Because of the lack of sunlight there is little thriving vegetation, though somehow plants seem to cling to life, despite mold, spores and leaves beginning to rot. There are some species of plants that are native variations of mortal world plants, which somehow evolved to survive, or maybe always existed in the Shadow and able to live there.
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