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Description

Will be running a later part of the current Unmaïre 5e game in the in-setting analogue to the Baseline DnD Shadowfell, which I have decided to name the Unworld.

I decided to ditch much of the usual macabre posturing which the DnD Shadowfell often has, since the dark forests, armies of undead, mountains shaped like skulls, eternal moonless night, &c. are all 1: perfectly possible on the Material Plane, and 2: goofy and charmingly quaint rather than scary, so I went in a far more surrealistic direction off of Varo and Dali. My goal with the Unworld is to connect it not to death and undeath, so much as memory; the idea came from Hegel talking about subjectivity as a fundamentally negative process, as it dirempts from the "natural order" of the World, with individuality, critical thinking, &c. all being expressions of that same negativity. In the case of the Unworld, it's sort of the Plane of Negativity whereto all of those minds will go when they dirempt from the natural order of things.

The awarenesses are the mind's eyes of persons on the Material Plane, which go wherever their thoughts lead them. They often form long lines, called trains of thought, and are predated by concepts, tall beasts who seek to bring them into the castles on their backs for incredibly long periods of time. Attacking an awareness will cause it to dissipate and form someplace else, making the corresponding person on the Material Plane lose their focus or forget what they had meant to say. The memory beasts hold memories in the mirrors on their backs, and diminutive copies of them can be made by taking clippings of their claws and fashioning smaller mirrors out of them.

Most of the in-setting Shadar-kai (the usual inhabitants of the Shadowfell in baseline DnD) live as nomadic herders who tend to the memory beasts. Their few sedentary polities will use memories as currency, this having started with "memory taxes" imposed by the magistrates from the Meeting of All Things, with the memories generally being contained in coins minted from the toenail clippings of memory beasts. A memory contained in one is never lost, remaining as long as the smallest shard of its mirror, bones, or cartilage remains, but it can be very easily lost.

Description

Will be running a later part of the current Unmaïre 5e game in the in-setting analogue to the Baseline DnD Shadowfell, which I have decided to name the Unworld.

I decided to ditch much of the usual macabre posturing which the DnD Shadowfell often has, since the dark forests, armies of undead, mountains shaped like skulls, eternal moonless night, &c. are all 1: perfectly possible on the Material Plane, and 2: goofy and charmingly quaint rather than scary, so I went in a far more surrealistic direction off of Varo and Dali. My goal with the Unworld is to connect it not to death and undeath, so much as memory; the idea came from Hegel talking about subjectivity as a fundamentally negative process, as it dirempts from the "natural order" of the World, with individuality, critical thinking, &c. all being expressions of that same negativity. In the case of the Unworld, it's sort of the Plane of Negativity whereto all of those minds will go when they dirempt from the natural order of things.

The awarenesses are the mind's eyes of persons on the Material Plane, which go wherever their thoughts lead them. They often form long lines, called trains of thought, and are predated by concepts, tall beasts who seek to bring them into the castles on their backs for incredibly long periods of time. Attacking an awareness will cause it to dissipate and form someplace else, making the corresponding person on the Material Plane lose their focus or forget what they had meant to say. The memory beasts hold memories in the mirrors on their backs, and diminutive copies of them can be made by taking clippings of their claws and fashioning smaller mirrors out of them.

Most of the in-setting Shadar-kai (the usual inhabitants of the Shadowfell in baseline DnD) live as nomadic herders who tend to the memory beasts. Their few sedentary polities will use memories as currency, this having started with "memory taxes" imposed by the magistrates from the Meeting of All Things, with the memories generally being contained in coins minted from the toenail clippings of memory beasts. A memory contained in one is never lost, remaining as long as the smallest shard of its mirror, bones, or cartilage remains, but it can be very easily lost.