Unreality

"This is a place where things which cease to exist end up, a land of lost things. Nothing can find its way here intentionally because it's not a real place to find."Reality is the sum of all things which normally exist; the real, tangible and physical. Unreality is everything else.

Unreality isn't another dimension or world, instead it's is the space in-between alternate dimensions, the darkness between realms, and the nothing between existences. Similar to how a player in a video game may be able to no-clip outside of the boundaries of a level, Unreality is usually accessed without intention and once something enters it, it is nearly impossible to leave. Even if something finds its way out of Unreality, it will likely leave very different.

Unreality doesn't exist, and because it doesn't exist everything within it doesn't either. The only things able to populate Unreality are objects, people, ideas and memories which have been forgotten or lost in some way. (If something is erased from existence completely, it may find itself here). Within Unreality, these lost and forgotten things (often half-formed or incomplete) are able to attempt to maintain shape. Without conscious effort tethering to this place, everything begins to Fade Away eventually. The natural order of Unreality is nothingness.

Oddments
Oddments are altered objects which have remained within Unreality long enough to warp and change, gaining strength through these alterations. Many Oddments are dangerous -- others twist into something which may be extremely beneficial to a person. Characters are able to find and utilize certain Oddments. Oddments can be physical, intangible or even sentient.

Main article: Oddments

A full list of Oddments Players have access to can be found here.

Constructions
Nothing is native to Unreality; structures, buildings, pockets of created spaces, and even the Fauna are not from here. Anything found across the landscape either dropped in from another place or, in rare cases, was crafted intentionally using the components of lost things.

Fully constructed things are exceedingly rare, and always have a cost. This is usually seen when only a fraction of whatever base material is being worked with actually making it into the final (product); the rest simply vanishes. More elaborate constructions are only possible by those who have been trapped in Unreality a very long time; the most prominent of which are the constituted Places crafted by the Archaeons.

Fabrication
Fabrication is the ability to extract or create Oddments from materials found in Unreality. These pieces aren't combined through traditional means, but are instead stitched together through an act of intention and will. Player Characters are able to engage in Fabrication only with aid of a (Golem). Fabrication is unavailable to Players during Play Testing

Main article: Fabrication Anything lost or forgotten may have the misfortune of slipping slip into Unreality. Things of sentience: animals, plants, people, constructs, or anything between, can fall through just as easily as an object or a thought. In this convergence between realities, any number of lost people from all across imagined times, worlds, or existence have the same chance of finding their way here.

Character Rules & Guidelines.

Character Sagas
Saga tells the tale of how a person found their way into Unreality. Saga is chosen when Creating a Character; this effects a characters base Aspect Bonuses, which help determine difficulty when attempting almost any roll. Once chosen, base score for Aspects cannot be changed (though it can be modified with certain Quirks).

Main article: Sagas

Fading
The nature of Unreality is absolute nothingness; Everything and person stuck within it, begins moving towards this nothing. The longer a being of reality spends outside of it, the more their body, memories, and the very essence that makes them up begins to Fade Away.

Main article: Fading

Belief & Survival
The only reason anything is able to exist outside of existence, is only through the Belief that it can. Belief is a potent force which has the ability to alter very nature of what something is.

If upon entering Unreality, someone believes they need to eat food to survive because they have always needed food, then it will be true; Hunger will gnaw at their gut, they will gain or lose weight, and if they do not sustain on food, they will starve and die.

For the most part, a person affects only themselves through Belief. Those of exceptional strength (notably those of Ebon Tier) may find they can cause and create external effects through their Belief. Even then, it is hard to control with absolute certainty what anyone deep down believes to be truth.

Language
There is the common expectation that noises created in an attempt to communicate mean something beyond the simple sound uttered. The belief that words or sound should be understood, results in people speaking in drastically different tongues, but able to understand each other. An expectation that what is said has meaning and should be understood, makes this truth.

In a similar way, when anyone uses Everybooks, drastically different writing, markings or scribbles put to paper is able to be understood.

Unreality is vast, a seemingly endless landscape of emptiness sandwiched between existences. The Space Between is a location within Unreality, a place built up over eons by those trapped.

Nestled against an empty sea of oily saltwater and jutting, broken peaks which often break apart and float into a sky of nonsensical constellations, things collect here as though dragged by a current. There may be countless other convergences like this where piled leavings of other realities accumulate, or The Space Between might be unique. It's impossible to tell when it's impossible to escape.

Related Article: Locations in The Space Between

Travel
Exactly what is beyond the bounds of known space impossible to say, and uncertainty threatens absolute nothingness. Past a sea of faintly luminescent water or craggy rocks protruding against a horizon of stars, it's unclear if anything exists at all.

Unseen currents drag lost things (and often people) ashore. Those washed ashore only ever come from real places, and travelers from elsewhere, if they exist, are not seen.

Many have tried to venture outward with promises of return; few make it more than a short distance, and many more vanish forever. It's largely assumed travelling too far means slipping away into nothingness. A person may be able to travel a short while out, to fish for things adrift or make a futile attempt at surveying, but it's not advised. Even a short trek may end in disappearance.

Time
Time doesn't exist normally outside the bounds of reality. Days don't appear to change, and while a person might attempt to keep track of time, this comes with a great deal of confusion. Small or mundane irregularities are common, especially concerning non-sentient objects:


 * Food long past the point of foul slowly grows fresh — loosing all traces of rot.
 * A newly sprouted seed grows to towering height in what appears to be seconds.

More intense abnormalities in time are not unheard of, but unlikely to happen ta single, or small collection, of individuals. Time itself may slip away suddenly, or twist to trickle back upstream, but considerable changes to time are understood to effect all people trapped within The Space Between in a similar way. Age for an individual is built upon their Belief in how quickly they will grow older, not any real passage of time.

Time & Travel
The further a person journeys outward (whether into the towering expanse of craggy stone or through the infinite ocean), the stranger time churns, and the more likely it will not work correctly.


 * Two travelers sail out to sea so far they can’t see the shore anymore — one demands they return, insistent that they have been on the water for months — the other protests, as a day at most has passed. Both are right.
 * A scavenger spends a few hours up in the mountains, searching for food — by the time he returns, it’s a week earlier and food they've already eaten fills their shelves again.

Game Mechanics
There are no consistent seasons in The Space Between. While players may choose to treat Time however best suits their characters, it is generally considered that Player Characters are experiencing time at the same speed. It would be seen as exceedingly unlikely for abnormalities with time to occur for only one, or a small group, of individuals.

Plot lines concerning problems with time can occur, but these should be limited and considered extremely uncommon, confusing and potentially dangerous to any Player Characters involved. Anything related to time which may effect more than just your character should be limited to Storyweaver creation or approval.

OOC events to fit alongside real world holidays exist, but in the space itself there is no change in day, month or year and very little to mark exactly how long has passed by.

Weather
Salt may flutters downward like snow, glittering rain trembles from the surface of the ocean up into the sky, an eerie song dances across the wind; there are changes to the weather...but they often make little sense. More often than not, the air is a pleasant, whatever that might mean to a person, neither warm or cold, almost as if temperature doesn't exist at all. Changes in the weather happen, but are often strange, sudden, and inconsistent.

Game Mechanics
The state of the world and weather as it has changed can be found in the HUD under World Events.

Astronomy
This land is cast in endless twilight, with only the dim light of hazy nighttime. Within the sky, strange things appear; twin planets dance through the sky before disappearing over the horizon forever, the shadow of jet plane soars soundlessly onward, a grim reflection of upside-down city hangs blurred and distorted. These things appear and vanish, sudden and with no pattern.

Stars
Lights stray across the sky, overlapping and covering the whole of the heavens. These points move, flowing as though through water, gleaming bright, and streaking past the horizon. These lights are impossible in the way they crawl over the sky.

While at first these little points of light appear to be stars, the more a person watches, the clearer it is these are something different.

There is no easy way out of Unreality, and once here, most everything is trapped. Only individuals of exceptional strength (and only those of the highest Tiers) could even make an attempt to break back into a reality; even then, where or when they may end up is never certain, and the chance of miscalculation and being lost among endless nothing is very likely.

Game Mechanics
While travel in and out of this pocketed Unreality isn't completely impossible, for Roleplay purposes only those of Crimson Tier or higher could even attempt an action like this. Even then, it is always very chancy and uncertain -- with the potentiality of slipping away to nothing. Those who manage to leave The Space Between aren't likely to find their way back. Because of this, anything related to either existing Unreality or attempting to draw people or items intentionally into it should be limited to Storyweaver creation or approval.