The Outside

## **What is the Outside?**

To call it a separate dimension would be somewhat inaccurate, even though it’s technically true in the sense that it’s another plane. The Outside is an interdimensional space that serves as a sort of cornerstone between all places and times across all of reality. It might be regarded as the source code of material existence. It’s not a particular place so much as it’s the barrier and the gateway between particular places, thus making it nowhere and everywhere at the same time. As such, it’s ‘outside’ of reality, it’s the gooey, sticky film that holds reality together.

While its origin is wholly unknown even to the most ancient beings and esoteric lore, it’s understood to be something of a proto-reality that’s innately connected to creation, and what happens in creation is mirrored in the Outside. Particularly significant events in the Outside can likewise be mirrored in some of the dimensions it connects to. This gives it something of a ramshackle, slapped-together appearance reminiscent of an unfinished project made out of the inert corpses of older projects. Some places in the Outside are a grotesque parody of what’s real.

While the Outside is clearly inspired by mirror realities like Stranger Things’ Upside-Down, much of the gloomy, overtly nightmarish hostility is absent, or at least hidden. The Outside is a place of saturated colors and lights from across the spectrum, and lots of it is made up of empty space that looks like some kind of multi-colored Star Trek nebula, filled with swirling auroras and distant, twinkling stars that don’t actually exist. Dotted throughout that technicolor dream are bits of floating ‘reality debris’ in the form of landmasses from the size of pebbles to planetoids.

The size of the Outside is infinite, and if it could be said to have a shape, it would be described as circular, because it’s entirely possible to move in a straight line and end up right back where you started. It would probably be more accurate to liken it to a mobius strip that constantly warps its own structure, ensuring that its physical space has little in the way of real continuity. Things will spring into being or wink out of existence seemingly at random, or wormholes to established realities will open up and spew out mirror images of places and events. Sometimes up is down and gravity is a punchline rather than a law. The Outside has a complicated relationship with time. Just as it has little in the way of physical continuity, it could be described as lacking temporal continuity as well. It intersects with all points in time, and as such it doesn’t really have a time of its own. Some events in the Outside occur in reverse, some in fast-forward, and some appear to be completely frozen in a moment. Linear beings within the Outside usually experience their own actions linearly, but that has more to do with the limitations of their perception than any imposition put upon the realm they act in.

Due to the Outside’s innate and necessary interconnectedness to our reality, just as our dimension can bleed into it, it can occasionally bleed back into our dimension. Usually this will go entirely unnoticed or will result in a phenomenon that can be easily dismissed, at least by those who did not experience it directly. This temporary bleed-through is called an ‘echo’, and is often the origin of things like UFO sightings, hauntings, and other supernatural events that defy reasonable explanation. These are all mostly-harmless after-images being projected from the Outside.

What’s less harmless is a ‘breach’, when a long-term or even permanent hole in reality allows the raw stuff of chaos and creation from the Outside to pour into a stable dimensional space. Reality is governed by structured principles in a system that appears entirely random at a micro level but distinctly well-ordered on a macro level, and the Outside has zero respect for these principles. The area around a breach will begin to break down to become more like the invading realm, characterized by the increasingly-severe loosening of the laws of physics, both material and temporal.

The transdimensional and transtemporal nature of the Outside means that not only is it possible to travel through space and time, it also means that both are actually quite easy to do entirely by accident. All in-universe methods for faster-than-light transit, time travel, teleportation, and other shenanigans that are in general disagreement with physics and the natural order are performed via the Outside and its properties. This includes supernatural phenomena, downloading one’s self into the internet, zombies, and teddy bears that can walk and talk.

Because the Outside touches all points in time simultaneously, it’s not impossible to encounter a temporal duplicate of one’s self from seconds or years before or after the point in time that one entered it. The potential also exists for duplicates from other realities with divergent timelines and histories, allowing for the possibility of encountering a radically different self. Naturally this is exactly where myths and legends about evil twins and doppelgangers originate from. They definitely exist, and they might even be enviously watching your life from across the dimensional pond.

It’s impossible to determine whether any of the various and multitudinous lifeforms found within the Outside are native, or if the notion of native life in this interdimensional space even has any meaning at all. After sufficient exposure to the region, anything living that manages to survive will adapt to its environment in ways both subtle and intensely disturbing, though it might be more accurate to say that such beings are adapted by their environment. Over a long enough timeframe within the Outside, the probability of compounding mutation approaches 1, despite how inappropriate the notion of a timeframe within the space might be.

While the Outside leaves its mark on all living things that reside within it and even on those that simply pass through it, there are certain entities capable of leaving their mark on it instead. Truly unfathomable beings great and small exist within its infinite depths, though as stated earlier, it’s impossible to determine whether they hail from the plane or have simply traveled to it in ages past. Whatever the case may be, such things don’t seem to be capable of leaving the Outside’s realm of influence anymore, if they were ever able to do so. Should the Outside ever ‘spill’ into another dimension, it’s possible that some of these beings, at least those less restricted, might be able to extend their reach into material reality.

One way that inhabitants leave their marks on the Outside is in the form of settlements. Many of the floating landmasses that idly drift through the aether contain portions of familiar cities from across space and time, from Ur to pre-war London to futuristic cities no one living has yet seen, and they’re often occupied and modified to suit their new landlords. Sometimes the debris of cast-off reality isn’t in such a ready-to-use state and needs to be slapped together into something more livable, leading to a number of expansive shanty-towns that defy conventional physics in various ways. From towns spread out across dozens of floating masses and connected with rope bridges to towers stacked upside-down and backwards, the Outside is host to all kinds of dwellings, both recognizable and terribly confusing.

## How can the Outside be used?

Due to the Outside’s unique relationship with all points in space and time, it can be used as a sort of vehicle for traveling faster than light or even through time. However, the Outside itself is permeated with a sort of ‘radiation’ that doesn’t always agree with visitors from realspace.

Extended exposure to it can have unpredictable results (watch the film Annihilation), which is why the overwhelming majority of those who utilize the Outside for their travel purposes tend to dip into it in a series of ‘jumps’ not unlike a flat rock skipping across a pond rather than diving directly into it.

This is reasonably safe for traveling faster than light in short bursts, but is typically insufficient for traveling through time.

Reality has rules, and the more closely tethered a person is to those rules, the more deeply into the Outside one must become immersed in order to achieve a state where that rule can be violated.

Since movement from place to place is limited only by speed and distance, traveling to a far away location is relatively simple.

People have a much stronger connection to their present place in linear time however, some might even call it fixed. Unbinding one’s self from this connection is a significantly more involved process, and this is one of the reasons why it’s rarely done, and even more rarely done without consequence.

Most people can be exposed to a little bit of ‘Outside stuff’ with no negative effects. Some people even live in permanent residence within the Outside without completely degenerating into grotesque abominations or going completely insane, but few of those who linger there will be able to do so without any kind of mutation or change. Some just become eccentric and weird.

Those rare few who are resistant or even impervious to the influence of Outside radiation are able to traverse the cosmos and all the corridors in between, so long as they have the means to harness it.

There’s a rumor that the technological capability to tap into the backdoor functionality of the Outside was developed by a hermit who had been dwelling there.

Below is a chart detailing the potential consequences of over-exposure to the Outside, and since the Outside is an innately chaotic place, the chart will use a last based on a d20 for now. Some areas in the Outside will only force a roll after an extended period if time, some will force a roll immediately. Time travel will always force a roll.

Special people are immune and don’t need to roll.