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setting:shadowlands_current_state

Welcome to Wraith Welcome to Stark

The cold winds of the land of the dead greeting you like an old friend. The muted colors all around become now visible as the black veins and particles in the air of tiny, almost none conscious particles filled the air here.

Moving through the graveyard, the head stones seemed to be barely visible, if not morphed here. The graveyard was a bit more lavish and filled with lots of interesting headstones that you know to be the reflected emotions and memories of those that had knew them in life. And they sure did have a life to them. All of them festive and pulsing with power. A graveyard, yes, had so much life to it in ways a mortal would never know because this is where the dead was honored and cherished. What was here were the memories of those that had passed on and were not trapped in this limbo.

You have begun to notice as you get closer to the light that has become known as the Beacon of Stark (A lore role will = Amenti, the Dark Kingdom of Sand has begun to spread across Stark. From the central cemetery outward driven by the anchor and the presence of the Kher Minu, and the rights performed on the cemetery itself.) There is a feeling expanding outwardly from the anchor a comfort and the weather changes (current Giza, Egypt temp and Humidity opposed to Starks). Occasionally small particles of sand and the sounds of distant rainforest creatures are carried on the winds. Light shins down on the anchor emanating outward in the same pattern as the weather. There is a strong feeling of peace in the beams of the light.


Why

As you may have noticed in reading Wraith 20 (which I hope if you are hear you have at least a little) Everything mentioned is up to the 5th Maelstrom. But wait in Shadows over the South (SOTS) we are post 6th I mean there are FALLEN!!!. You are correct and this has quite the issue in the Shadowlands as well as the merger of splats. So here I will try to give a brief history for overview purposes only just because it is here does not mean your character knows or is even aware of all of it.

According to general consensus of World of Darkness writing and speculation Stygia was essentially destroyed during the 6th Maelstrom in 1999.



Start of the Fall

In the time leading into the 6th There was a war between the Stygia and Enoch a vampiric city due to the Ferrymen, who were fulfilling an ancient debt to Anubis. To the Undying, Enoch was an obscenity, and its destruction was a major victory in the eternal struggle between Horus, Osiris, and Set. The Hierarchy besieged Enoch for several weeks until they finally it used a relic nuclear weapon to destroy the city.



Murphy's law

At the same time, in the Labyrinth, a Void Engineer, Xerxes Jones, prepared his greatest experiment: detonation of a second relic nuclear device in the mouth of Oblivion. The result was the most potent physical and spiritual destruction in the history of the Underworld. The carnage led the Labyrinth to vomit forth armies of Spectres under the control of the infamous Nephwrack, Coldheart. These armies in turn assaulted the Isle of Sorrows, Stygian outposts, soldiers of the Yellow Springs, anyone they could find. Stygian society buckled under the strain.



Always someone there to kick you when you fall

So who is the Yellow spring well good question since Stygia had been locked in a battle with Enoch and its troops were depleted or otherwise busy. The Asian underworld AKA the Yellow Springs with the treasonous aid of the Smiling Lord was able to assault Stygia leaving the Hierarchy barely holding on only due to the bravery of its defenders and the extremely shoddy equipment Yu Huang had manufactured in bulk for the assault (One thing about the shadowlands in general there are not great deposits of resources like in the Skinlands).



Cause and Effect

Charon Transcended almost immediately after beating back the spectral horde (no he has not transcended in out game but does not have his memory lost anymore). Stygia, both the city and the society, collapsed and the Yellow Springs retreated after taking damage far beyond their worst-case expectations. Complicating matters, the oldest and most powerful of the Risen, Persephone, attempted to flee into the Skinlands just as the storm hit; her escape attempt caused the Shroud to resonate, flinging thousands of spirits out of the Underworld and into the Skinlands. Some became Risen themselves, while others just wandered the Skinlands in spirit form. This accounts for large numbers of Risen and ghosts later encountered by the Imbued and the Orpheus Group.



an end or a new beginning

This violent event occurred in what was supposed to be the final book for the game Wraith: The Oblivion, and although it was deemed the “Final Maelstrom”, But since Onyx continued the timeline but did not address it in Wraith 20 it caused a gap.



So what now

With the fall of Stygia many Necropolis are cut off from the Dark Kingdoms, forced to either desperately try to reconnect with what remains of Stygia and the new power struggles there, or fending for themselves causing great conflicts and causing many Larger Nercopolis to question if they need their parent Dark Kingdoms anymore. with a few old hierarchy folks trying to hold the power it once had together and keep the Shadowlands intact.



Today

On 12-1-2020 the Ferrymen with the blessing and request of an old Wraith by the name Lugalbanda (Current Hierarchy Representative / prefect over Stark Shadowlands ) performed a ritual to pull the Spirit Storm that had protected Osira’s underworld to shroud the area around Stark sepperating it from the rest of the Shadowlands. (It can be navigated but no one as of yet besides the Ferryman and Lugalbanda know how (unless you can travel the Soulstorm).



what does this mean to you

What this does is makes Stake and a large portion of Florida a sort of badlands. Most Wraith will have the benefit of not knowing the full effect of the true destruction caused by the 6th maelstrom and reduce the role of the dictum mortem for Wraith that are in the area. Inside the storm area is Pensacola, FL; Columbus, GA; Charleston, SC; Bradenton, FL; Avon Park, FL; Palm Bay, FL – this should give you a circumference showing the outline of the Storm.



setting/shadowlands_current_state.txt · Last modified: 2020/Dec/01 09:00 by ha-mavet