Ethereal realm

## Yetzirah

Located "above" or "inside" the Material Realm is its closest shadow, Yetzirah, the Astral Realm. In appearance, the "outer" reaches of Yetzirah closely echo the "neighboring" sections of Assiah ~ the astral counterpart of a sunny mountain lake in the Material might glow in a Technicolor overlay, or a haunted house in Assiah could extend into Yetzirah, warping into Expressionist geometries full of shadow and menace. Many astral projectors, ghosts, and magi never move beyond this "ghost zone" into the deeper Astral.

Sufficiently "astrally charged" locations, items, or artifacts actually have a kind of astral shadow. This is how magi carry their wands or robes into the astral while projecting, for example. Forcibly removing something's astral shadow is difficult, requiring an expenditure of Fatigue equal to the energy spent to create it ~ and three times that amount if its creator is present either materially or astrally. (At the GM's option, psionic Mindsword strikes or magical Breaking spells may significantly reduce this cost.) Something without its astral shadow is only half as effective in the Material Realm as it was previously. Magical wards, pentagrams, etc. can block an astral shadow, as can anything that blocks Astral Projection; many magi keep their most powerful artifacts in such warded sanctums.

In deeper zones, Yetzirah usually appears misty and indistinct to mortal eyes, although clearer paths and regions appear throughout the Astral Realm, usually associated with its denizens or with the magical sub−creations of sorcerers or supernatural entities. Yetzirah holds towering cities, remote prisons, vast continents, and unending expanses of luminous whiteness. Yetzirah, even more than the other Realms, is indefinable by conventional, material dimensionality. In some areas, Yetzirah may simply take on a gray formlessness, darken to impenetrability, or become a hallucinatory kaleidoscope without warning. Many Cabalists chart the eddies and shoals of the Astral Realm; rather fewer of them share their knowledge freely.

The Astral Realm seems to function as an "interface" between the more starkly defined worlds within Briah, the Iconic Realm, and the perceptible world of Assiah. As an interface, or gateway, it is especially interpermeable from the Material Realm. Particularly energetic or powerful accumulations of spiritual energy (such as ghosts or other astral entities) can cross over into the perceptual world of Assiah. Similarly, "places of power" or "weak points in the fabric of reality" (depending on one's perspective) exist where the veil between the Realms can be more easily breached. In addition to ley intersections and spaces particularly resonant with the decan Iudal, powerfully or anciently haunted houses, mass graves and battlefields, or similar places where enormous magical stresses have occurred can make "crossing over" easier. Many ghostly or spectral members of the Cabal make their home at just such locations, to enable them to easily influence events in both the Astral and Material Realms. Even some material nonhumans prefer such places; the inherent magic that pools under bridges keeps trolls alive even beneath iron railway bridges.

### Entering the Inner Realms

Even in places where the Astral does not directly impinge on the Material Realm, sorcerers and psis can cross into Yetzirah (and eventually the higher Realms) using the Planar Visit spell or the Astral Projection psionic skill. These (and similar "out−of−body travel") techniques create an astral form or "shadow body" of the sender, known to Cabalists as the ka. A mage's or psi's ka is immune to physical attacks or dangers, since those attacks and the ka don't even exist in the same realm. The ka of a traveling mage or psi, of course, is vulnerable to any of the astral or magical dangers of the Realms, such as magical or psionic attacks by rival mages, bands of roving egregores or yithoghu, and astral storms or riptides. The Astral Realm is normal mana.

Note that neither the Ethereal Body spell nor the Insubstantiality ability translates the subject to Yetzirah, but simply transform the physical body from flesh to aether. The caster remains in Assiah, simply "rotated" out of phase with the immediately physical universe. By contrast, the Plane Shift spell actually sends the caster physically into the targeted realm, which can prove rapidly fatal in areas such as the Elemental Plane of Fire. Even in the "normal" areas of Yetzirah, some sort of magical armor or protection may turn out to be necessary, given the changeable nature and frequent dangers of that Realm.

### Traveling in the Inner Realms

In Yetzirah, conventional dimensionality simply does not apply outside the Astral Realm's tangent connections with Assiah, in the "ghost zone," and with Briah, at the Pearl−Bright Ocean. In Briah, although the geometry is plainer (there is, for example, an "up" and a "down"), it remains unearthly; for example, distances vary with the traveler, not with the geography. The actual mapping of these realms, and navigation within them, can be complex. Rather than conventional geography, common associations (between a stone ring in Ireland and its other side in Faërie), frequent interaction (between a morbid writer's dreamworld and the astral reflection of a haunted house he often visited), or common elements (between any two bright scarlet−colored regions) create "adjacency." Occasionally, a powerful entity (or one that strongly dominates a given area of the Realm) can enforce location, at least relative to something else. For example, a magically−aware dreamer can place an astral thorn−barrier around his dreamworld to slow intruders, a Master can force anyone traveling to or from a pocket−dimensional prison to pass a guardian spirit, a god can build a terrace of realities and initiatory encounters on the path to his court. As a rule of thumb, this requires a successful Will roll at −15; to violate such geography, the traveler must win a Quick Contest of Wills at −10. Various spells, maps, and artifacts can make either process simpler, reinforce it, or work around it entirely.

### Manipulating the Inner Realms

Sufficiently powerful entities can manipulate the ectoplasmic fabric of the Astral Realm, building anything from a small penknife to an astral airship to the Polished Citadel of the yithoghu.

There are any number of ways to create something from ectoplasm: psionic Telekinesis (usually combined with the suitable Craft or Armoury skill), Lucid Dreaming, various magical spells such as Create Object, and so forth. Spirits can use the Poltergeist Effect or Probability Manipulation to do so, albeit slowly. Contests between two ectoplasmic creations should default to contests between their creators, either a straight battle of Will vs. Will or a contest of skills (magical, psionic, or both). A weak magus can create a mighty castle ~ but a powerful eikone would be able to cut his way through its "stone" walls with an ectoplasmic butter knife. That said, GMs are free to grant modifiers for "correct" attacks ~ the Astral Realm rewards symbolism. The same eikone might find his ectoplasmic battering ram even more effective at knocking down an astral castle wall, even with less energy invested in its creation.

### Dreamworlds

As far as the Cabal can determine, all sentient, material creatures dream. (Cabalistic rumor hints that some very powerful entities within Briah also dream. Entering the dreamworld of a god might grant power or insight worth the tremendous danger inherent in such an attempt.) Their dreamworlds act as a kind of personalized astral dimension, built using highly individual imagery or concepts drawn from the dreamer's life experience, memories, and beliefs. Individual dreamworlds exist in bubbles within Yetzirah, linked to Assiah by the physical body of the dreamer. Entering an individual dreamworld usually requires the Dream Projection spell, a spirit, or psionic Dream Travel, or some other magical or psychotronic mechanism. Entering an individual dreamworld from the Material Realm, like entering any other area of Yetzirah, creates a ka. However, a ka is vulnerable to lucid dreaming by the dreamworld's dreamer; the dreamer's lucid persona can attack the ka just as any astral entity does. A lucid dreamer who is also a mage or psi can add half his skill in Lucid Dreaming to his skill at magic or psionic techniques within his own dreamworld only.

All individual dreamworlds connect to each other in Nod, the land of dreams within Briah, the Iconic Realm. A lucid dreamer, even one who is not technically a mage, can potentially travel between his own dreamworld and Nod. Similarly, a ka can theoretically "backtrack" from Nod to an individual dreamworld, although finding one individual dream track among billions takes either magical divination or inside information from one of the more powerful (or knowledgeable) inhabitants of Nod. The true nature and function of Nod remain unclear; some Cabalists believe that Nod is simply the reflection of all Briah as it exists on the edge of individual dreamworlds, while others (especially the oneirically−obsessed Corvae Hermanubis Lodge) believe that it has a separate archetypical existence. Nod sits on an island, in an estuary of the Pearl−Bright Ocean at the mouth of two rivers, behind a high brick wall with two gates. The Gate of Horn, which traditionally emits true dreams, bestrides a major tributary flow of the decan Ruax, and the Gate of Ivory (the traditional source of false dreams) likewise focuses a powerful manifestation of the decan Methiax. Within the wall roils a surrealistic panoply of dream imagery from Jungian archetypal figures to masturbatory fantasies to fanged beasts of nightmare. Nod is ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Chabuiyah, Lady of Love (the Aethyr of Methiax), Deneyal, Lady of Dominion (the Aethyr of Ruax), and Hypnos, the god of sleep. Since the Aethyrs usually have more pressing business elsewhere, Hypnos and his servitors have the most immediate influence and power within Nod.

### Faërie

The land of Faërie is the domain of a specific race of ultraterrestrials, the fey, who interacted with Assiah repeatedly and openly for about three millennia, primarily in various parts of the European continent. As a response to Garravin's strike for domination of the Cabal, King Oberon and Queen Titania decided to remove their domain from close association with Assiah, completely isolating it on the outskirts of Yetzirah in the year 1212. Individual fey (in troops or singly) have wandered the trods between Faërie and rural Europe since then, and individual humans (most notably John Dee and William Butler Yeats) have attempted to reopen full traffic between Faërie and Europe in the last millennium, but with dubious and debatable results.

Faërie, although mutable by sufficiently powerful fey, usually resembles a rural area of northwestern Europe on a perfect spring afternoon. The palace of Oberon and Titania rises in the center of the domain, with a "goblin marketplace" on the border. Many trods, or pathways, run from Faërie to Assiah, still laid down in the ancient pathways, especially at loops or nodes of the ley network. Other trods link Faërie to the Forest of Arden, deep within Briah. From Earth, even non−mages can (at the proper time of year, or with the right blood) find themselves stumbling into Faërie, into the Astral Realm from an Irish hilltop or a Tuscan grove. The relative solidity of Faërie makes it a common destination for material travelers elsewhere in the Realms, as well.

### The Pearl−Bright Ocean

At the deepest, inmost edge of Yetzirah swirls an ocean mighty enough to contain worlds. In fact, it does; this is the Archetypal Ocean of the Unconscious, the "face of the Deep," connected to all oceans and to the Elemental Plane of Water. Its tides and currents, eddying around the Isle of Glass and other legendary landmarks, slowly trace out a mappamond, mirroring the flows of magic throughout the worlds. Somewhere on these currents floats the True Sargasso, where shipwrecks from all across the Realms float, mired together within a vast expanse of seaweed. In the deepest trenches swims Leviathan, the great sea monster the size of a continent. Her hatchlings sometimes escape down the murky crevasses to surface in isolated lochs or "weak spots" in reality such as the Bermuda Triangle. Similarly, the Flying Dutchman and its kindred ghost ships cross from the Pearl−Bright Ocean to the night seas of Assiah, making port in plague−stricken coastal towns, or in the phantom city occasionally visible in the Straits of Messina.

Such mirages may be reflections of (or imperfectly closed gateways to) Tritonis, the City Under The Sea, which marks the sea−bottom boundary between Yetzirah and Briah. Merfolk, tritons, nereids, and other oceanic beings both spiritual and material dwell here. Many other underwater ruins and conurbations appear beneath the waves of the Pearl−Bright Ocean, but unlike Tritonis their locations shift and ebb with the currents of memory and magic. Other significant underwater locations include Davy Jones' Locker (a realm of the pirate dead and coral−covered treasure galleons), the voudun Rada spirit realm Guinée, the desolate Lemurian metropolis, and the mirror−moon captured beneath the Lake of Nemi in Italy. Those who know the way can walk from the silvery beaches below that reflection to the maria on the surface of the Moon.