The Otherside

The Otherside is the forefront of belief for the Human **Endless Spears**, a nomadic people focalized on tradition and the opportunities bestowed upon them by their ancestors.

*Reed accepted the vessel with both hands, taking care lest she spill any of its contents. The brew within was inky black and smelled of death, but she smiled as though greeting an old friend. To her, the smell had come to mean the end of waiting - and waiting was the part she hated most of any hunt. She cast one more look about the room, over the anxious faces of the other survivors and that of her mentor, who nodded with encouragement. With her words of crossing fixed in her mind she nodded back, closed her eyes, and drank.*

*As the concoction took hold her body dulled. Her senses dimmed. And then, as her waking self fell away, she felt her spirit come into its own. She kept her eyes closed all the while so the crossing would go swiftly, and also because she had heard that the things you could see in the transition were… unsettling. Reed had been studying her prey for weeks, and even in that first moment she could smell its the bog-sweet scent, rotten and familiar. Her body had been knelt when she drank, but on this side her spirit was already on its feet and at the ready. Her spear was also eager for the hunt, apparently, and she found it in her hands despite not haing drawn it.*

*Here on the Otherside she was back in Olsgrove - a town four years and six thousand miles in her waking past. Before her, the great heart-tree of the village was ablaze with dark flames, and within every ember she saw a baleful eye. She knew the tree to be a memory, something of her own mind conjured by the strange currents of the Otherside. The flames, though, were some other spirit's doing. Her prey. This she knew because she remembered well that Olsgrove hadn't burned... they had cut it down to make boats - to escape - and not everyone had.*

*She levelled her spear and spat a curse that had no waking syllables - a pure thing, of demand and binding. The flames began to keen and run like oil, collapsing down to the base of the tree. There in the roots they pooled and congealed into the shape of a woman. A woman twisted and decayed. She has forgotten the proper shape for kin, Reed thought, thought she smothered the pity before it could begin. The shade, for that is what it was, wailed out a sound not wholly unlike grief and began a jerking, ungainly charge towards Reed.*

*"I'm sorry we didn't save you then," She said, taking a slayer's stance "this time I will not fail."*

## **Introduction**

'The Otherside' is the name that the Endless Spears give to the realm of spirits and dreams. Though there are other cultures with traditions related to this place, the Endless Spears' culture and belief system is deeply tied to the Otherside and so this name has been widely adopted. To the Spears, the Otherside is not only a supernatural realm but an intrinsic part of their way of life, and is bound to rites such as their **Tacnu Zoku**, and funeral practices.

Teachings on the Otherside vary between peoples, and even within different Spear families, but it is commonly understood to be the intangible, ethereal reflection of the natural world. Mortals can use several methods to leave the 'Waking Weave', the normal realm that people live in day to day, and cast their spirits across the veil into the Otherside. The wisdom, utility, and dangers of such doing so are all hotly debated.

## **A Place Of Spirits**

The otherside is not a location in the traditional sense. Outside of extreme circumstances, such as the intervention of a powerful supernatural force, it is impossible to travel there fully. Instead, 'going otherside', as some call it, is a journey undertaken by the spirit alone. By various methods, a seeker of the Otherside departs the consciousness of their living body and leaves it in a state similar to deep sleep - and their spiritual form is then freed to traverse and interact with the Otherside. The nature of this spiritual form is of course contested between cultures, but for thousands of years the Spears have called this spiritual incarnation 'the otherself', and that has become the common name for such forms.

This 'otherself' is often of greatly different appearance to the waking self of the person it belongs to. It's common for otherselves to reflect deep truths or fundamental facets of the person they represent - examples observed have included an impulsive warrior appearing as a figure made of flame, or a steadfast farmer taking the form of a scarecrow.

But mortal travellers are not the only beings that traverse the Otherside. Some animals have a distinct presence and/or awareness of it, and there are beings whose entire existence takes place there. Shades, spirits, 'ghosts', and darker beings dwell in its vistas, and their nature is as obscured as their maddening, unreal forms. Some of these beings seem to be the spiritual remains of once-living things, sometimes called lost souls, but there are also many spirits who seem to have origins unrelated to our 'waking' world - true natives of the spirit realm.

## **An Unreal Reality**

The Otherside is seemingly unbound from many of the rules that govern the waking world. There, chunks of land might seem to hang impossibly in an endless, empty void. The sun and moon might share a sky, the seas might hang over the land, and beams of light might challenge you to an argument or an arm wrestle. It is dreamlike in its content, and for this reason the Endless Spears believe that dreams are primitive glimpses of the Otherside. Physical strength and prowess are not always easily translated across the veil, and oftentimes strength of will and spirit count for more than raw martial might.

The Otherside is not homogenous. A traveller can go 'Deeper', further from reality, and as they do so any comparisons to the waking world become less and less applicable. In the depths of the Otherside, truly leviathan spirits dwell, truly maddening knowledge can be glimpsed, and the chances of becoming forever lost increase exponentially.