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Travelling in for January's RPG Blog Carnival --
There's another place threading through (or maybe beneath, or maybe behind, or maybe all three, or) the myriad planes. All of them -- from the farmlands and battlefields of the mortal world to the deepest underrealm and the most rarified heavenly dome, from the howling Nightmare Reach to the End Of All Things, from infinite horizons to the smallest pocket dimension -- without exception.
Each and every one has at least one way to reach the Other Side.
The Other Side
How do you get there?
By accident, a lot of the time. Sometimes a connection is just made -- the right place, the right time, a wrong (or perfect) spark of magic), the just right wish to go.
Someone already on The Other Side might activate a window or a door to snatch-and-grab you (or someone else, or anything else); the gossip says you might find a spell for the trick scribbled on the walls, or under a fraying tarp, but of course that only helps when you're already there.
It's said that the patterns for ringwalking to the Other Side can be learned, but each and every world and section of world has its own pattern for connection.
Reflective surfaces -- water, mirrors, polished metal, shimmering mica and crystal and glass, sunlight on a pool of blood -- can do the trick, when the conditions are just right: a blue moon, an eclipse, the fall of a ruler, a small precious triumph, a shriek of utter despair, a small sacrifice off one's life, a perfectly whispered rhyme.
a terribly convenient place, a wild dead terrible place
So, is there anything there? Is anyone there?
Probably wasn't supposed to be, say the sages and the lost at the bottom of a bottle; but things have a way of not sticking to what they're supposed to be, and The Other Side is no exception.
Which is to say that there's a chance of stumbling across nearly anything and -one from across the worlds, simply by the nature of the place; but there's also some things that seem to almost be a given --
01. Slow-tongued ghouls pale with dust and whitewash, seeking bones and secrets
02. A spectral cat with silver eyes and a purring tongue and a knowing look
03. Eerie white-feathered flocks of fowl, silent and staring with blank white eyes
04. A knot of revolutionaries building a bolthole of sharpened spikes, eager for new recruits
05. Twining, moving rose-briars digging into the walls like veins
06. A hermit, dusty and ashen, who has been on The Other Side for a long, long time
07. A cheerful traveling peddler, unbowed by their heavy pack dangling with strange trinkets
08. Mirror jellies gliding over walls and floor and ceiling, mesmerizing
09. Shattered armour crumbling, a mad knight wails for redemption
10. Hundreds of fluttering butterflies, or gnawing ants, or gleaming beetles, or ivory bees
11. An animated shadow flits from place to place, murmuring
12. Another you; perhaps another you of the entire party ...
and, if you pick around through dust and debris and dead ends long enough, besides bits of gear, broken things and lost socks you might stumble across
01. Dozens of bladed weapons scattered across the floor and in the walls; dulled, scarred, half shatter when swung
02. A sprig of lavender that will not wilt
03. Bundles of broadsheets calling for a rebellion against the heavenly city
04. A heap of bleached bones topped by a skull with a burning carbuncle stone in its brow
05. Three-quarters of a cosmological map scrawled across a wall
06. A mound of perfect, palm-sized white scales
07. Patches of tiny blue-button mushrooms growing from a crumbling stump
08. A cache under a few prized-up floorboards: rations? potions? secret missives? jewel eggs?
09. Dozens of battered books stacked in precarious single towers, splashed with ink
10. A dead adventuring party, half petrified
11. A dying angel, half pearlized
12. The one thing that one of you had lost so long ago and thought would never find again
There's a lot out there in the worlds that would dearly love to claim The Other Side. That kind of reach behind all of existence; surely, surely that can be used, can't it?
All have failed, so far as anyone knows; after all, no one controls The Other Side
(that any know of)
and there has been no conquering force across the worlds, now has there.
Right?
There's another place threading through (or maybe beneath, or maybe behind, or maybe all three, or) the myriad planes. All of them -- from the farmlands and battlefields of the mortal world to the deepest underrealm and the most rarified heavenly dome, from the howling Nightmare Reach to the End Of All Things, from infinite horizons to the smallest pocket dimension -- without exception.
Each and every one has at least one way to reach the Other Side.
The Other Side
- Is a warren. A tangled twisty maze of passages, corridors, dead ends and intersections. And it doesn't come with a map.
- Is the white of dust and decay. Mostly old wood, but also peeling paper, crumbling stone, and powdery metal. Scrape away at the surface and find grey, maybe charcoal, but mostly more dust and ashes and the silver-white of age.
- Is scattered with Things: broken structures, abandoned materiel, scraps of strange cloth, bones and brass tacks, posters and broadsheets, barbed wire and barricades, boltholes and hideaways and --
- Is scattered with the ramshackle, crooked frames of windows and doors that can connect to This Side again. If you know what to do.
-
How do you get there?
By accident, a lot of the time. Sometimes a connection is just made -- the right place, the right time, a wrong (or perfect) spark of magic), the just right wish to go.
Someone already on The Other Side might activate a window or a door to snatch-and-grab you (or someone else, or anything else); the gossip says you might find a spell for the trick scribbled on the walls, or under a fraying tarp, but of course that only helps when you're already there.
It's said that the patterns for ringwalking to the Other Side can be learned, but each and every world and section of world has its own pattern for connection.
Reflective surfaces -- water, mirrors, polished metal, shimmering mica and crystal and glass, sunlight on a pool of blood -- can do the trick, when the conditions are just right: a blue moon, an eclipse, the fall of a ruler, a small precious triumph, a shriek of utter despair, a small sacrifice off one's life, a perfectly whispered rhyme.
a terribly convenient place, a wild dead terrible place
- If you can find the right way out, any connection from The Other Side to This Side can be made. The distance (physical or metaphysical) on This Side is irrelevant.
- No matter how much time spent on The Other Side, 1d6 days pass where you started from. Except for the 1-in-4 chance of it being 1d6x10 years.
- Unless you divvy yourself a way back that takes the passage of time into account properly. (yes, it can be done. or to the future! or the past! be careful -- or don't!)
- If you stay too long and get too comfortable, you just might start to get ragged and dusty and faded yourself, as The Other Side nibbles away at your You.
So, is there anything there? Is anyone there?
Probably wasn't supposed to be, say the sages and the lost at the bottom of a bottle; but things have a way of not sticking to what they're supposed to be, and The Other Side is no exception.
Which is to say that there's a chance of stumbling across nearly anything and -one from across the worlds, simply by the nature of the place; but there's also some things that seem to almost be a given --
01. Slow-tongued ghouls pale with dust and whitewash, seeking bones and secrets
02. A spectral cat with silver eyes and a purring tongue and a knowing look
03. Eerie white-feathered flocks of fowl, silent and staring with blank white eyes
04. A knot of revolutionaries building a bolthole of sharpened spikes, eager for new recruits
05. Twining, moving rose-briars digging into the walls like veins
06. A hermit, dusty and ashen, who has been on The Other Side for a long, long time
07. A cheerful traveling peddler, unbowed by their heavy pack dangling with strange trinkets
08. Mirror jellies gliding over walls and floor and ceiling, mesmerizing
09. Shattered armour crumbling, a mad knight wails for redemption
10. Hundreds of fluttering butterflies, or gnawing ants, or gleaming beetles, or ivory bees
11. An animated shadow flits from place to place, murmuring
12. Another you; perhaps another you of the entire party ...
and, if you pick around through dust and debris and dead ends long enough, besides bits of gear, broken things and lost socks you might stumble across
01. Dozens of bladed weapons scattered across the floor and in the walls; dulled, scarred, half shatter when swung
02. A sprig of lavender that will not wilt
03. Bundles of broadsheets calling for a rebellion against the heavenly city
04. A heap of bleached bones topped by a skull with a burning carbuncle stone in its brow
05. Three-quarters of a cosmological map scrawled across a wall
06. A mound of perfect, palm-sized white scales
07. Patches of tiny blue-button mushrooms growing from a crumbling stump
08. A cache under a few prized-up floorboards: rations? potions? secret missives? jewel eggs?
09. Dozens of battered books stacked in precarious single towers, splashed with ink
10. A dead adventuring party, half petrified
11. A dying angel, half pearlized
12. The one thing that one of you had lost so long ago and thought would never find again
There's a lot out there in the worlds that would dearly love to claim The Other Side. That kind of reach behind all of existence; surely, surely that can be used, can't it?
All have failed, so far as anyone knows; after all, no one controls The Other Side
(that any know of)
and there has been no conquering force across the worlds, now has there.
Right?
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A websearch for "RPG Blog Carnival" might serve some up, or I could go check in the server for other people's posts?
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https://ofdiceanddragons.com/rpg-blog-carnival/
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Also, updated the theme to my DW journal. Not that most folks here read directly on the person's journal, but rather on the 'friends page', but...