Adventure Guide: Unwinding the World

  1. Adventure Guide
  2. Archetypes in Highland

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

What was the Cataclysm?

The fabric of reality is unraveling. At the edges of frayed reality, things get jumbled up. Out on the dangling threads are dead worlds, such as Dead Rome at the Crossroads. Slightly further in are decaying civilizations such as the world of Barcelas and Fading Highland.

As you move further in toward the center of reality, or the center of the Dreamlands, life becomes more and more vital.

If the unwinding of the world is an important feature of your games, it may be useful for the characters to meet someone old enough and knowledgeable enough to speak with them about the Cataclysm. I’ve used a Bean-Si at Brigit’s Springs to great effect, and the following quotes assume an ancient Elf of the old race.

Silence. Deep in the distance a faint song rises, unearthly and sad. It dies away so slowly you aren’t sure it’s gone now.

You hear the flutter of wings. A flock of sparrows rises around you and spirals into the sky. There is a tall and beautiful woman sitting on the stone; her face is veiled, but the moonlight that shines through the hole outlines a glimpse of gold at the edges of the veil.

She speaks in an ancient form of Elvish. If she chooses to speak with any who do not understand Elvish, she will gracefully scoop a handful of water from the waters of wisdom and offer it. Those who drink it will be able to understand her.

These are possible responses to some of the questions she’s likely to be asked.

“Welcome, children of men.”

“I have had many names, and I will not tell you my true name. In your tongue, you may call me Maria.”

“Can you not feel it in the seasons? Have you no tales of ancient times? The world is winding down.”

“The Elves? They do not visit as they did of old. They fear.”

“They begin to fear the seasons. The Elves, too, are winding down.”

“The eternal crossroads. Where, or whether, it stands today I know not. It may lie beneath the ocean, or hidden deep in the cavernous earth. Or it may lie across the world. You have seen echoes of it, I think. The eternal crossroads is the pivot of the world. Its echoes ripple through the roots of the world. Cartoril was the first and strongest echo. The Brilliarch’s Rainbow City was dimmer but an echo all the same. Tialnambe walked in its shadows; her husband knew the crossroads itself.”

“The great tree is the root of the world; the eternal crossroads its head. It is in the heart of all civilized races.”

“Cartoril, the silver city.” (Care tore eel)

If they ask about the Cataclysm, she can sing it for them. They will suffer the normal affects of a Bean-Si’s song, including gaining injury points.

A wave of orange, yellow, and brown rolls over you, like an autumn at the edge of a clearing. Then there is the silence as between thunder and lightning. The ground cracks open in a tumult of noise. You tumble into an endless abyss; below you a dull fire sucks in sound and feeling. Ancient gears of a giant mill turn slowly in the unearthly orange glow, grinding the world into dust.

A rust-red path leads out of the gears and into a coruscating mist. The mist rolls back as you fall and reveals a great city upon a green lily-covered plain. Two wide ochre roadways wind through the plain and intersect at the center of the city. Crystal spires rise from the city; they project all of the colors of the rainbow and then some onto the thin mist. Great silver towers, lined with green and gold, reflect the stars—unless the stars are a reflection of the great silver city.

As the world crumbles into the city, vines rise from the crossroads, twirl around the pieces of the world, and roll them together. A woody vine twines itself around you and lifts you from your descent. You are passed from vine to vine, root to root, branch to branch, soaring now high above a great green forest. Mighty roots thread across the two sides of the world, sealing them together like a jagged unmatched puzzle. Far in the crevasse of the world, insects of rust and worm climb from the burning gears, eating at the vines. One of the vines snaps. The world teeters, and the great forest bends around you at the horizon.

When they awake, they will hear the whistling of the wind, musical as pipes in the distance.

You may, of course, also wish to add other things to the dream that foreshadow future adventures or add mystery to old ones.

The Crossroads, the World Tree, and the Eternal City

Throughout all cultures you’ll find the symbol of the crossroads etched into our hearts: the Christian cross, the Celtic cross, the ankh, the sunwheel and the wheel of life and the swastika, are all echoes of the Eternal City at the crossroads.

The crossroads branch out into the Red Road. The Road travels through all the lesser worlds. Off the road, portals are required to cross from world to world. But when you walk the road, you see the true world, and you can more clearly see that the world is unwinding, raveling down. It is the loam of the world-tree.

The closer to the crossroads, stranger the true world. Very near the Eternal City and the creatures of the insect mesh terrorize local communities.

The start of the road is always marked by flower-bearing trees: apple trees in bloom, or cherry trees, or yellow trumpets. The road is a hard red clay, cracked at the edges, twining through the worlds from the crossroads and the Eternal City. Long ago carriages plied the Road but today it is covered with sand.

In Highland, the Red Road may be found amidst the pyramids of ruined Egypt in the Dark Forest. The path is marked by yellow trumpets, and leads into the southern mountains, but never reaches South Bend. The road is difficult to follow at first, but as they near the mountains becomes easier. When standing directly on the path between the trees, a pass is visible through the mountains. It exists only for those on the path.

There is a painting of the trumpets, pyramid, and road in the castle of the Stigmas di Cristo; the painting itself is magical and powerful.

Today the city is a city in slumber, its inhabitants bedded within their crystal mansions, their dreams leaking into the back alleys and side streets of the city itself.

  1. Adventure Guide
  2. Archetypes in Highland