Category:Fracture: Difference between revisions

The Shadow Rift is an imperfection in the planar fabric of the Demiplane of Dread, caused by Gwydion’s attempt to escape the Obsidian Gate during the Grand Conjunction. In trying to pull himself free, the sorcerer-fiend uprooted the entire domain and dragged it with him, shattering the Dark Power’s carefully organized handiwork. Like a piece of glass smashed with a hammer, the Rift is a gaping hole in the Core, and Fractures radiate like cracks into the more complete domains around it. All these pathways exist outside, or perhaps between, time and space and allow the fey to enter other domains. Most lead to the Rift’s neighbors, but they can potentially open into any domain. Traversing any of the Fractures is a disturbing experience of bizarre, half-remembered impossibilities. The Fracture leading from Mordent to the Darkenheights, for example, is lined with invisible people who demand passers by surrender their equipment, their clothes and finally their bodies before they can ‘go down’. Those who do emerge as incorporeal spirits; those who don’t never emerge.

Permanent Fractures

The safest and most used fracture is the Fracture in southwestern Tepest. It has the appearance of a cave.

Transient Fractures

Several Fractures only intersect the material world on particular occasions, such as a solstice or equinox. Because of the temporal fugue, these Fractures only open once every 26 years for those inside the Shadow Rift. Others vary in their destination depending on arcane but clearly defined conditions. The Fracture at the bottom of Loch Lenore, for example, opens into Saragoss when the Seelie Court is in power but into Lake Amenta in Nidala when the Unseelie Court is. Another only opens when its opening on the surface is in shadow.

Keyed Fractures

Keyed Fractures only open if a particular action is performed or condition fulfilled by the person trying to pass through. Examples include walking 13 times anticlockwise around a particular barrow mound, or a Fracture that only opens if an Innocent touches the inside of a cleft tree.

Guarded Fractures

Many are protected by strange and fearsome guardians. This can be a good excuse to use creatures that may not otherwise fit into a Ravenloft campaign. As a rule, they should have a CR of at least 12. For example, one Fracture is watched by the Hound, an immensely strong half-dog, half-giant, who must be fought for the journey to be completed. Another leads from a goblin lair in the Mountains of Misery and is guarded by a balor (with no reality wrinkle).

References

[Notes supplied by the chapter's author Ryan Naylor]