3catcircus said:
I mean, they are going out of their way with the "points of light" to make you and your neighbors 10 miles away more isolated, yet they are making other planes of existence more accessible?
The article says that only the Mightiest of heroes can get to the Astral dominions. I don't expect there to be a door to the Elemental Tempest in the alleyway over there.
But there is mythological precedence for the proximity of the Fey and Shadow realms.
Fey were believed to live in every nook and cranny, that they ruled the woods out behind your house. I watched a documentary where several old folks in an Ireland village tried to prevent a highway from being built because a tree in the path was believed as a home of faerie, and if they cut the tree down, a lot of people would have crashes on that highway.
As for the Shadowfell, Samhein is a great example - the Celts believed that on Samhein, the realm between the Living and the Dead was at its closest, and spirits of those who died that year could "cross over". That's part of why they dressed in costumes; to confuse the spirits, make them think that those in costumes were also spirits. "Treats" were often left to appease the spirits, etc. I imagine sites closely tied to death (graveyards, battlefields, sacrificial chambers, dungeons of torture) are sites tied to the Shadowfell - they might be unhallowed, where death magic is stronger, or where it might be easier to cross over with the right magic.
I think that part of the Points of Light is that some of the darkness is caused by the proximity of the Material's shadows. Those woods aren't dangerous, not only because there are monsters out there, but because there is a ring of stones that at High Noon or High Moon, one could accidentally walk into the realm of Fae or that the Fae could cross over, hunting for human children to swap with their own.
Something like Labyrinth, Labyrinth or Pan's Labyrinth would be easily accommodated by the Faewild.
