Existing in a parallel space within the Shadowlands, there’s a monumental storm: the Tempest. Essentially the embodiment of passion, memory, and mortality, it whirls through the basement of our Earthly cosmos. This, I’m told, is Entropy itself – an eternal vortex that draws all things into itself eventually. The Tempest occasionally rips through to the Shadowlands, manifesting in lesser storms called Maelstroms that can transport a soul to another destination or – more likely – rip it to shreds.

As with the High and Middle Umbrae, the Tempest houses a multitude of Realms: Dark Kingdoms, hellholes, the dens of powerful entities, and the refuges of souls considered lucky by the standards of this region. According to death-mage lore, ghosts forge so-called Necropoli upon islands in the Tempest. Beyond these Dark Kingdoms – which are built, from what I’m told, out of crafted souls – there’s a titanic Labyrinth chewed out of the Maelstrom itself by monsters that might have once been human. At the center of that cyclopean maze, legends say, there’s a Void… THE Void, called by some folks the Great Unmaking. This gateway to Oblivion is the punch line to our cosmic joke. All that is, was, or ever aspired to be gets swept into the Void eventually and becomes nothingness once more.