The Shadow is a mysterious mirror-realm that lies parallel to the material plane.
A Twisted Reflection
Places in the Shadow reflect places in the real world, but the correspondence is not exact. Places in the real world that are strongly associated with Shadow, or with events connected to Shadow, will persist as images in that realm long after the real world places have changed. Spaces in Shadow also do not connect linearly with their counterparts in the real world: a door that leads to a bathroom in the real world might instead lead to a completely different building in Shadow … or to a place that looks like nowhere on Earth.
Colors are washed out in the Shadow, muted to dull grays. Objects and spaces are mirror-reversed from their counterparts in normal space. Spaces that are well-lit in the real world look almost black in Shadow, while dark corners are a lighter shade of gray. The overall impression is much like a photographic negative of the real world.
Near and Deep Shadow
The Shadow can be divided roughly into two regions.
Near Shadow, sometimes called the Penumbra, is the portion of the plane that lies closest to the material world. It reflects real places that exist or have existed in the real world, with some distortions and gaps caused by the surreal nature of the plane.
Deep Shadow stretches far beyond the mortal world and twists and curves around it, connecting parts of it that are far apart in real space. Deep Shadow is an alien and irrational place, hostile to Earthly life and difficult and dangerous to navigate. There are narrow channels through it, called Ways, that provide (mostly) reliable transit from one place to another, but these paths crisscross with each other in countless places, and some paths that appear to be Ways are actually dangerous (and literal) dead ends.
Most wizards who are aware of Shadow at all know only about the existence of Near Shadow. Most of the Ways through Deep Shadow are only accessible to Ba'al and his servants — partly because the knowledge of them is well-guarded, and partly because Ba'al has put defenses in place along many of these routes.
Creatures of the Shadow (Shadowspawn)
The Shadow spawns a variety of creatures from its own chaotic substance, just as the Dreamlands spawn Fae creatures. These creatures do not "die" on their own, for they are not truly alive, but they can be destroyed (with varying degrees of difficulty).
Shadowspawn vary greatly in appearance and behavior, but they have certain traits in common:
- They all appear to be "missing" something. This could be one or more missing body parts, or a lack of logical body planning, or both. They have a half-finished, malformed sense to them.
- They all hunger for some aspect of mortal life, and try to obtain it by stealing it from mortals.
- They have a cold, ashen, withered, or lifeless appearance — something that associates them with death or decay.
Near Shadowspawn
Near Shadowspawn are created in the Near Shadow (Penumbra), and are formed because of tragic events happening to mortal creatures that are nearby in the material world. They generally have a more-or-less humanoid appearance.
Forlorn: These shadowspawn are created when a child suffers prolonged abuse and neglect. They resemble small children in tattered clothes, but their faces are unfinished, with little more than abstract suggestions of nose, lips, ears and cheeks. Their eyes are huge and glossy black, like a raven's, and they never blink. Forlorn are drawn to positive emotions, especially love and compassion. When they make physical contact with mortals, they drain the positive emotions out of them, along with a portion of the mortal's life force.
Faceless: These beings resemble tall, shockingly emaciated humans. They have no faces, but their heads include a wide, toothy mouth that resembles that of a deep-sea fish. They are formed when a mortal is abandoned and forgotten by everyone who knew them. They are drawn to mortal minds and attempt to consume their memories … and possibly eating their faces in the process.
Fetch: A fetch resembles a duplicate of a specific mortal being, but with ashen skin and dark, empty voids for eyes. It spawns when the mortal in question has been lingering in Shadow for a long time. A fetch will attempt to subdue its double and suck the life energy out of him. If it succeeds, it takes on the full appearance of its double, while the mortal victim falls into a coma and takes on the ashen, lifeless appearance of the fetch. The fetch will then attempt to take the place of its double and lure his or her companions into destruction.
A fetch who has stolen its double's life can perfectly mimic the double's appearance, and has access to all of the double's memories, but it has one great weakness: it cannot feel or understand mortal emotions. The only emotion it feels, if such can be called an emotion, is an overwhelming jealousy of its double's life. Fetches rarely succeed in fooling their victim's companions for long … but sometimes fooling them for a little while is all that is needed.
Other types of shadowspawn are possible, in addition to those described here.
Far Shadowspawn
Far Shadowspawn are created in the Deep Shadow, in regions that come nearer to the influence of the Underworld. They are spawned as a kind of immune system, to attack intruders who penetrate too deeply into Shadow. Ba'al suspects they also are sent out to deliberately attack and tear open weak places in the fabric of reality.
The Far Shadowspawn have no uniform shape; they are creatures of chaos and destruction. Think of the Shoggoths of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, amorphous beings constantly changing in appearance, and you won't be far off.
Travel to and within Shadows
It was Ba'al who first discovered this plane and taught mortals how to access it, traveling through it for rapid, stealthy transportation.
Ba'al continues to have access to the Shadow — in fact, all of the inner planes can still be accessed by the gods (when Merai broke the Axis, it disrupted the connection to the Outer Planes, but the Shadow is an Inner Plane). However, since Ba'al is the one who developed the magic to reach the Shadow, explored it over millennia, and developed the spells using magic from the Shadow realm, a significant portion of his essence is tied up into that plane.
Anyone who enters the Shadow will draw Ba'al's attention, and if anyone uses his spells without proper payment he can (and will) claim the user as payment.
In the distant past, there were assassin-mages who bargained with the Prince of Shadow and used Ba'al's dark gifts for personal gain. Then there were guilds of mortal assassins who learned on their own (avoiding the need to pay Ba'al, but still not able to escape his awareness) how to Shadow-hop, using the differing flow of time within Shadow to "teleport" between shadows on the material plane. These individuals use one shadow to enter the alternate plane, quickly traverse the distance to their destination shadow, and then emerge back into the material plane. The trip seems nearly instantaneous because of the faster flow of time within Shadow.
Entering The Shadow and using its different time flow means that Ba'al has a transportation option not really available to the other gods. The other gods know about the Shadow and how to travel through it, but they will avoid trespassing on a demesne that Ba'al considers his own, and with his connection to it Ba'al would have a substantial advantage in any fight within the Shadow. Other gods could access the Shadow and Shadow magic, but they would probably think of it only as a last resort, and even then would think about it two or three times before actually drawing on that resource.
Another type of Shadow-based transportation is Shadow Walking. Unlike most other Shadow-based forms of travel, this technique was developed independently of Ba'al and does not place the user under his influence. When a mage is walking through shadows in this manner, he can pass through objects with only a small amount of concentration. This does not make them immune to physical attacks in the outside world, though; each time he appears back in the material world, he is vulnerable, and in between he is vulnerable to the creatures native to Shadow (whatever those may be). A shadow-walking mage must pass through all of the earthly shadows between him and his destination; the spell was probably developed this way in order to minimize the mage's exposure to Shadow's effects. During the day the spell allows the mage to move very quickly, but at night he will be unable to travel faster than a normal man. A shadow-walker can, however, still pass through walls and other obstructions.
Shadow Magic
Ba'al discovered how to draw the essence of the Shadow into the material world to give weight and substance to magical illusions, making them quasi-real and more persistent. Much of this knowledge was suppressed by the Lightbringers and the Aedra for a large part of history, for prolonged exposure to Shadow-magic can corrupt the soul and turn a person toward evil.1
A few secretive orders of mortal spellcasters developed their own knowledge of Shadow-magic (and thereby avoided becoming indebted to Ba'al and being claimed by him as payment). Even some relatively pure-hearted illusionist guilds have kept secrets of shadow conjuration despite the Lothanasi and Aedra suppression of such knowledge. However, since much of the Shadow-magic that exists is tangled up with Ba'al's power, wizards have to be careful about using it and these techniques are only taught to highly dedicated and experienced students.
Currently, Shadow Magic isn't illegal in Metamor City, but its existence is a closely kept secret. Very few wizard guilds still hold any knowledge of Shadow magic and they guard the spells very, very carefully.
The Rasmussen School of Illusion is one of those few guilds.
Another rare type of Shadow magic that was known (at one point only one wizard in Metamor Keep's history had ever mastered it, so this use may not be known now except in ancient suppressed records), is Shadow Fire. By concentrating Shadow-stuff, the wizard was able to generate a dark fire that could be used to coat their body, or weapons, or anything else they wished. This magic seems to have been connected to the Underworld, and even Ba'al's servants have shunned it as a result.
Wizards Only may Apply
Only Wizard guilds (and Ba'al's servants) will have information on Shadow magic or Shadow travel. This type of magic is considered exceptionally dangerous for anyone but the best and most disciplined wizards, and even for them there is a high risk to add Shadow-stuff into magic. The mere concept of a sorcerer who has an affinity with to the Shadow plane is enough to give any of those disciplined mages nightmares and ulcers, and if they were to actually find a sorcerer like that these wizards would probably blast said sorcerer into a trillion pieces.
Author's Notes
The following information is not generally known to people within the world of Metamor City.
Buffer Zones
The Shadow and the Dreamlands are both buffer zones for reality.
The Material Plane, which contains the universe as we know it, can be thought of as sitting in between two unfathomably dangerous things: the Numen, the raw essence of creation (or possibly the Creator), and the Underworld, which is the ultimate manifestation of entropy and destruction.
Direct contact with either the Numen or the Underworld would be terribly destructive to the ordered complexity of the material universe; thus, there exists a buffer zone between the universe and each of these entities. Whether this was the will of the Creator or the result of a kind of cosmic evolution is impossible to say.
The Dreamlands are the buffer between the Numen and the material world. Because of their contact with the Numen, the Dreamlands spontaneously create: beings born from the imaginations of sleeping mortals come into existence here, given life by the raw god-stuff of the Numen. Creatures of the Dreamlands are overflowing with life: faeries, satyrs, centaurs, unicorns, all full of vital energy and dangerous wildness. The Dreamlands themselves are full of this same restless, wild life, exuberant and chaotic and feral and joyous.
The Shadow, in direct contrast, is the buffer between the material world and the Underworld. Its washed-out, bleak, and forlorn appearance reflects its proximity to the ultimate realm of death and decay. The creatures of Shadow exist in a state of un-life: they hunger for the light and warmth of living things, and are drawn to them, even as they hate them. These beings are warped and withered, vicious and hungry, and those that are not completely alien seem wretched and pitiful, horrific though they are. While the creatures of the Dreamlands are brighter, fiercer, more intense versions of their mortal counterparts, the creatures of Shadow are faded, decayed, withered, and cancerous.
The Dreamlands are fire; the Shadow is ice. Both can be deadly dangerous — but given the choice, the fire is more inviting.
The Warden of Shadow
Ba'al was the first to understand the nature of Shadow as a buffer against the Underworld. In time, as he explored this plane and traversed its Ways, he came to a horrifying realization: the Shadow was unstable. The Underworld was eating away at it, pushing into it, sending its own dark creations through it, endlessly chewing away at the edges of Reality. The Shadow, in turn, crept in on the material universe, creating weak spots in the fabric of space-time where dark things could seep in.
Ba'al became convinced that the Shadow must be fortified against the encroachment of the Underworld, or else all of Reality would eventually fall to destruction. Over countless centuries he wove his own Essence into Shadow, setting up alarms and traps and defenses that would help him to keep the Underworld and the mortal world safely separated. He recruited mortal wizards and his own half-divine children as agents to guard the Ways, and he exerted his will to bind and enslave the creatures of Shadow wherever he could. In the mortal world, he worked to make sure that any magic that drew on Shadow would pull power from those parts of the realm that he had already placed under his control; this would help to ensure that any humans who got access to Shadow would do so under Ba'al's guidance and leadership, lest they fall prey to the corrupting influence of the Underworld.
Even the other Immortals do not understand this mission that Ba'al has given himself; he would not trust them with the knowledge of it, and they likely would not believe it, even if he told them the truth. Indeed, if they did believe him, it might be even more dangerous; Ba'al suspects that the power and influence of the Underworld grows as more beings become aware of its nature. Ba'al's mortal and half-divine servants understand their purpose, at least in the broad strokes, but all of them owe their fealty to Ba'al and understand the importance of secrecy.
None of this means that Ba'al is good. He is a creature of Law and Evil, and his nature is to dominate and subjugate all lesser creatures beneath him. Nevertheless, Ba'al performs an important function for Reality as the Warden of Shadow, keeping the Underworld at bay so that the mortal world as we know it can continue to exist.
Shadow and the Undead
The section on shadowspawn reveals a number of similarities to vampires and other undead. This is not a coincidence. Early in the Daedra's time on Earth, Ba'al's control over Shadow was not firmly established, and Lilith conducted her own investigations of the realm. She created the first vampire using a core of dark energy drawn from Shadow, trapped within layers of her own spellweave. The chaotic hunger of the vampires, and their weakness to sunlight, come from their connection to Shadow; their obsessive needs for order, hierarchy and control come from the compulsions Lilith placed on them, to keep their Shadow-essence under control.
Ba'al was not amused by Lilith's interference in the realm he had discovered. Fearing that the Shadow's influence in the world would grow if Lilith and others continued to dabble, he forbade Lilith from conducting any further experiments, and leaked word of her creations to the Elders so that they would place a geas upon her to ensure her obedience. It is likely that word of the vampires' weaknesses reached the mortal world because of Ba'al's agents, as well.
None of the vampires now extant in the world of Metamor City have any idea about the connection between the Shadow and their own dark essence.
Source: Ba'al, email with Raven/Etherius August 2010, MK Wiki Entry- Shadow Magic
