Shadowfell & Feywild

[Ashrem Bayle]

The DMG uses world like "reflection" and "mirror" to describe the Shadowfell and Feywild.

So it sound to me like the Shadowfell and feywild would have the same basic geography as the "standard planet", but the Shadowfell would be a "darker" version, and the Feywild would be a "wilder" version.

So when a Eladrin uses Fey Step, he fades into the Feywild, moves to the coresponding location he wants to appear at in the "real world", and fades back in? Maybe?

So a forest in the "normal world" would be a forest. Hope into the Shadowfell, and it's the same forest, but darker and more sinister. Hop into the Feywild, and it is a vibrant forest with faerie glades and such.

Have I got my head wrapped around this correctly?

 

[snarfoogle]

I haven't read 4e yet but from your description it sounds like the Magic: The Gathering worlds of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. Seriously, Wizards?

 

[Morrus]

I haven't read 4e yet but from your description it sounds like the Magic: The Gathering worlds of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. Seriously, Wizards?

I think the basic idea is a little older than MtG.

 

[wayne62682]

That's what it sounds like - it reminds me of shifting into the Pneumbra (sp?) in Werewolf or shifting in the videogame Soul Reaver, where things are a little different but it's roughly the same area.

 

[Nifft]

That's what it sounds like - it reminds me of shifting into the Pneumbra (sp?) in Werewolf

"Penumbra". And the Shadowfell is the "lower umbra" nearer to sinister and nasty places. White Wolf used that cosmology in all their games, I think -- Werewolf and Mage at the very least.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

So a forest in the "normal world" would be a forest. Hope into the Shadowfell, and it's the same forest, but darker and more sinister. Hop into the Feywild, and it is a vibrant forest with faerie glades and such.

Have I got my head wrapped around this correctly?

Pretty much.

The Feywild is the world crisper and sharper. The waters are not just blue, but crystal blue, almost painful to look at. The wind is bracing, the sharpness of its breath in your nose and lungs almost like that of a knife.

Mountains appear higher, the peaks rockier, more jagged. A patch of green grass is like an emerald ocean. A field of flowers so colourful it brings tears to the eye.

There is a wildness to the Feywild that kind of awes you... even as the horrors there chill your very soul. It is the world as the world could be: a place of beauty so striking that it hurts... and a place of terrors that leaves you quivering. It is the land of dreams and of nightmares both.


The Shadowfell is the world seen on a dark, cloudly, miserable day. It is gloomy, macabre, deadening. Things are muted, emotions repressed, and dreams appear worthless. Things around you are old, decrepit, and falling victim to death.

It is a land where all the great things have already happened, and there is nothing to the future but decay and death. It is a land not of hope, but of despair. The dead linger here, bemoaning their lives lost before they fade from knowledge.

Those who travel in the Shadowfell feel the ever-present shadow of Death upon them. It may not strike now, but it is there, it is present, and it will --one day-- come to collect.


So the two are mirrors to the 'real world' of the material plane. When in the Feywild, one should feel Alive! When visiting the Shadowfell, one should feel like they are awaiting Death's inevitable embrace.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I have extended this even farther in my campaign, in a couple ways. There are points where the barrier between the Feywild/Shadowfell and the World are weaker. As such elements of both begin to edge into this world, so for example:

A alleyway is covered in decaying vines, and autumn leaves seem to endlessly turn in small bursts of wind in this alleyway. In the Feywild, the area is littered with trash, a lamppost covered in growth tries vainly to cast out is light.

Another way the World enters the others, is when objects or structures are left in a area for a extremely long period, they tend to bleed into the Feywild. So a ancient city may have elements of it reside within both the Feywild and Shadowfell (with the appropriate environmental side-effects).

Structures that may not even exist anymore may still reside within the Feywild or Shadowfell because of not being fully brought down in that world. This is especially true in the Shadowfell, since spirits and energy that once resided within these structures and objects when their destroyed can cast a permanent shadow form on the Shadowfell. For example:

If in a world, a city was wiped out in one massive magical-explosion (ie; a nuke), then this city would still reside within the Shadowfell permanently, with all manner of spirits living within it, that once lived in and around the cities structures.

 

[hong]

I feel... VIGOROUSLY alive!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Man, WotC is TOTALLY ripping off folklore and mythology.

Folklore and mythology should TOTALLY SUE.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

"Penumbra". And the Shadowfell is the "lower umbra" nearer to sinister and nasty places. White Wolf used that cosmology in all their games, I think -- Werewolf and Mage at the very least.

Cheers, -- N

Exactly. That's what I was thinking.

In the new World of Darkness, both the Feywild and the Shadowfell are similar to the Shadow Realm (Spirit World), with high concentrations of "death" and "wild" resonating essence.

And that's a GOOD thing. I may be able to port over some ideas from the nWoD Spirits book, which is very good.