World of Darkness: Setting

Much of the information he had really needed, it seemed to him now, had been in his mind all along, locked up behind a stout door. The door had a legend printed neatly on it - but not OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT or BOARD ROOM or even PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER. The legend printed on the door in Alan's mind had been THIS MAKES NO SENSE. All he'd needed to unlock it was the right key... Stephen King, Needful Things

The World of Darkness is a world much like our own...on the surface. The difference lies in the shadows, behind the scenes, where supernatural creatures lie in wait, pulling strings, or just waiting to prey on the foolish, ignorant masses. It's much like living in a Stephen King novel, where vampires prey on isolated towns, unhallowed magic reanimates the corpses buried in that old pet cemetery and some...Thing...lurks beneath the heart of the town. Ordinary humans might suspect, (and fear,) but few have the courage to face the madness. Those who do, become Hunters, fighting back the darkness. Geist, Werewolf, Changeling, Vampire, Mage, and Promethian all focus on the (un)lives of the supernatural creatures instead. Most supernatural societies have a code of secrecy, and interact primarily with others of their same kind. This means that, to play in one of the three currently running World of Darkness games, you will need a character of that type.

Note: New players do not have to memorize this all at once. While it's always nice to know,  Twilight  is most important to Werewolf and Geist,  Shadow to Werewolf,  Arcadia  and the  Hedge  to Changeling, and  Underworld  to Geist. If it seems like a lot of information to process, you can focus on those parts that are relevant to the character you are making first.

Valley of Shadows  - You won't see the name used often, but this is basically a fancy way of saying that the current Geist, Werewolf, and Changelinggames all take place in the World of Darkness version of State College and the surrounding areas, and are part of the shared continuity. That means it is sometimes possible for characters in the different games to interact, although this doesn't happen often.

Material World / Mundane World / World of the Living  - The ordinary world, where humans live, named from the perspective of other races. Player character supernatural creatures usually call this realm home, even if they can easily travel to others.

Twilight  - an ethereal, insubstantial, and invisible realm coexistent with the mundane, material realm - which is a fancy way of saying this is where theghosts are. With the right supernatural powers, it is possible to see and interact with creatures in Twilight, or even travel that state yourself. When spirits cross to the material world, they usually exist in Twilight as well.

Shadow  - What's this about spirits? In the World of Darkness, everything has a spirit. When you talk to your old rattletrap car to coax it to start, its spirit hears you, and may grant your request. Your computer really does have an impish side that likes crashing just before you save your term paper. Thunder has a voice, and a cunning fox can teach you to outwit your foes...for the right price. These spirits live in the Shadow, called the Hisil in their native tongue. (That native language is called First Tongue, and all werewolves can speak a bit of it, or learn to speak it more fluently.) Spirit-stuff is incorporeal when they visit the material world, but it is the natural state of everything in the Shadow, which means if you can cross to the Shadow, you can physically interact with everything there. Getting there is the hard part, but Werewolves can cross over at places of spiritual power called loci(singular locus). The Shadow mostly mirrors the material world, but there is a fourth dimension, where if you travel "deeper" into the Shadow, you journey into the spirit wilds, where the most ancient and powerful spirits lair.

Arcadia  - This is the home realm of the True Fae, (aka the Keepers, Gentry, or Others,) an utterly alien realm of magic, where everything, even the laws of physics, obeys the whims of the Fae. Different parts of Arcadia are very different, depending on the wishes of the Fae that rules there. You can find lightless caves home to man-eating monsters, grand castles of endless dungeons, marvelous halls of ice and woven light, floating cities of brass, enchanted forests, haunted mansions, sinister laboratories, or bloody arenas...all filled with glorious, terrible, marvelous, monstrous magic. Here Changelings spend their time as slaves of the Fae, where they are warped into something not quite human. It's this place they must somehow escape before they can try to find their way back to the mundane world.

Hedge  - Also called the Thorns. This is the border realm between Arcadia and the mundane world. It is mostly dense woody thorn trees or brambles, and an assortment of hostile wildlife. The paths are dangerous, but leaving them is even worse. With the right magic, known to Changelings and True Fae, you can open a gateway into the Hedge from any doorway in the mundane world, or into the mundane world from certain places in the Hedge. Some changelings carve out safe havens, called Hollows, where they can live in the Hedge and find refuge from humans. If you know what to look for, sometimes you can find magical items here. Creatures called hobgoblins are native to this realm, and usually cannot leave it. The geometry roughly parallels the mundane world: the Hedge ecosystem matches the local mundane world (some places are swamps, caves, etc). It is even possible to use the Hedge as a shortcut for travel in the mundane world, if you know the right paths. But there is a fourth dimension - it is all too easy to travel "deeper" into the Hedge, closer to Arcadia.

Underworld  - The realm of the dead. Ghosts with nothing left to anchor them to the world of the living go to the Great Below. There is no Twilight here - ghosts in the Underworld are physical, and can be interacted with normally. Sin-Eaters and their bound Geists can enter this realm through an Avernian Gate opened in a low place (graveyards or other places with deathly energy). Other creatures, including humans, sometimes uncover a way in - or stumble into one. A gate leads to the Upper Reaches, where the ghosts are comparatively young and human. The Underworld is contiguous with the world of the living in many places, but the geometry is too warped for it to be anything as sane as parallel. Travel deeper into the underworld (and yes, it usually is literally "deeper" here,) and you may cross a river into one of the Lower Mysteries. These are divided into Dead Dominions, each governed by its own set of Old Laws, which are enforced by ancient guardians called Kerberoi. The ghosts here are old, powerful, and crazy, and the deeper you go, the more rivers you cross and things become stranger. If there is a bottom to the underworld, a final Dominion, no one has ever found it and returned to share the tale.