Welcome to the Beyond

*You're leaving the walls? Don't you know what's out there!? There are....things in the dark. Things that were never meant to have the light shed on them! You're one of the mad ones, one a' them Awakened aren't you? - Anonymous*

## How did I get here!?

If your PC hasn't grown up in the Beyond, their sudden arrival in this world can be quite traumatic. Arrival does not happen in a dramatic fashion, no sudden storm depositing lost souls in shipwrecks, no wild tornadoes launching homes into the nearest town, no beams of light dropping fresh fools for the slaughter into the town square.

No, a person arrives here in the most unsettling manner possible. They wake up. One day, one seeming almost like any other, they start to get the feeling that something is wrong. Their neighbors don't look quite right, their home seems to have changed without them realizing. As they travel to find their typical haunts, they don't quite remember which turns to take or where their old landmarks are. Everything at once begins to turn and click in their heads, as the realization that they've been transported, body and soul, to someplace entirely alien to them slams into them like a brick wall.

The process of realization can be very traumatic, depending on the personality. It is no easy task to suddenly come to terms with your entire world being removed and replaced. Some people need days to recover once their mind begins to accept the awful realization, others might need only hours. Nobody knows how these strangers show up in their midst, and slowly the townsfolk have begun to get used to such oddities, even christening these new arrivals with an almost mocking moniker: "The Awakened."

## What do I do now?

Once an Awakened has suitably calmed down from their experience, many at least find their services in need. The people here are only too happy to give undesirable and dangerous tasks to those who are least comfortable with staying within the safety of an unfamiliar settlement's walls.

There are monsters lurking in the dark, twisted men and women who prey upon the weak and foolish who leave the relative safety of the settlement. Sometimes disaster strikes one of the valuable industries that barely manage to keep the City functioning and a hero is needed to resolve things. Other times the creatures that roam the outside world may make an attempt to find a weak point in the defenses of a settlement, trying to destroy any sign of civilization before it can become too advanced.

In any case, an adventurer will find themselves with plenty of offers of work. In lieu of direct offers, however, they can even set out to explore the world beyond the walls: a place that no commoner has ever tried to explore themselves.

Who knows what could be hidden out there? Vast wealth from long fallen civilizations? Forgotten technology or powerful magic items left by unknown heroes? Artifacts from the Gods themselves having been lost through time itself? It's up to the Awakened to find out, for there are many creatures that jealously guard such lost secrets.

## What's it going to be like?

This world is a grim one. The air itself seems to weigh upon your shoulders, fogging your mind and clouding your decisions. Whereas in another world you could have been a stalwart warrior, able to balk at the sight of a massacre, the atmosphere here forces your mind to directly confront the horrors you could have been trying to direct away from it.

Your very psyche and sanity will be tested. In the beginning, the mere sight of a corpse may be enough to break you down, just a bit. Eventually you will find older, and fouler things lurking where light has never dared to tread. You must prevail against such damaging sights and horrors, fighting back even as your own mind turns on you in desperation to forget what it has begun to learn.

The people of the Beyond call that the Malaise. The Malaise seems to permeate everything, eventually breaking even the most stalwart of mind's will to continue on. The residents of this world have typically given in to this foreboding sense of hopelessness, only doing the bare minimum to continue existing. Those who attempt to struggle past it will find their journey a difficult one, but not impossible. The wisest among those still left breathing have said it best when it comes to the Beyond.

*"Adversity and Existence are one in the same."*