Places

As in the Astral Umbra, gargantuan mountains reach toward the sky. Unlike those superluminal Spires, though, these mountains must be scaled hand-and-foot unless you’ve got wings or some other means of flying. Beyond those peaks, there’s a vast open sky, marked by rainbows and the glittering stars. This is the realm of Thunderbird, the Aetherian Reaches that have been called “the face of the soul of forever.”

Through this boundless sky, cloud realms float and planets hover. It’s said that the Courts of the Sun and Moon can be reached by anyone with enough courage and insanity to try and

ascend to such heights. Such travelers must rely on their own power to fly, however. Technology cannot work in the Aetherian Reaches. Jetpacks, planes, even guns and synthetic fabrics, all either refuse to function or fall to pieces and disappear here.

High in the skies, whirling vortices often spin in and out of existence. These Anchorheads link the Aetherian Reaches to

the worlds beyond the Horizon – the Shade Realms, Shard Realms, and the Deep Umbra itself. A flying traveler could, if he timed his journey right, pass through an Anchorhead and ascend to these enigmatic Realms. As the saying goes, however, many try and few are chosen. What happens to the ones who mistime that trip is anyone’s guess…

And then, of course, there is death. We are all mortal. Magick gives us the means to stall death, even undo its effects for a short time. All things, however, die eventually: gods, vampires, even ideas. And the Low Umbra is where dead things go when they pass beyond the Earthly plane. As I’ve mentioned earlier, a living mage can enter the Shadowlands; magick gives us that much power, though at a fairly high cost. Beyond that entry, though, the Low Umbra remains mysterious, with many stories but very few conclusions other than the ultimate end of life itself.