This is the first post in the Behind the Scenes series. Each one is a sneak peak behind the world building mechanics of SuD.
All posts marked (WB) refer to world building.
———
What is the Beyond?
The answers to this question are many, and like all answers to the most fundamental questions of existence they are all incomplete and therefore useless. Their only purpose serves to illustrate the thinking of those who give them and she very little light over the subject itself. I can only say that all the things that lie in the Shadows of Men and Things come from the Beyond.
The Beyond is a catchall term for the source of all supernatural things in our world. Depending on who you ask it can be an alternate reality, different dimension, a universe outside our own, Dreamland, Heaven, Hell, Hades,Valhalla, Sheol,etc. All those places that lie beyond our knowledge or understanding, and where supernatural things dwell. Spirits or Demons dwell in the Beyond and project themselves into our world (sometimes referred as the Mortal Realm). The stronger the being the more it can impose its will on our world and bend or break the rules, while weaker forms must conform to existing archetypes and labor under the limitations imposed by them.
From a world building point of view, a undefined space for the supernatural allows for all myths to be true thus giving me the ability to have different religious and philosophical traditions (both real and imagined) co-exist harmoniously. The key is keeping the different interpretations straight, accurate (up to a point, this is not a post-graduate theological/philosophy text). The conflicts arise not from the very nature of the supernatural, but of how different individuals, groups and cultures see it. Another thing to keep in mind is that regardless of their respective mythological sources, the rules under which these entities operate in the Mortal Realm must have some consistency, otherwise it reads off like a cheap excuse for not doing the work.
Well, that covers the concept of the Beyond.
Do you prefer a mix and match of things or do you try to focus on a specific mythos (original, derived or real world)?
——-
Sturm und Drang 