Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (Official)

Started at Ambercon (US) in 2012 and run annually.

Player Characters

There are thirteen new Gossamer Lords (player characters)

1. Bridgette Ruggles: Maria del Oliviera, American, Las Vegas stage magician
2. David R McCreless: Elijah Crumb, American, NYU Prof of Literature
3. David A McCreless: Beckett Callavicci, Belgian, Cern, Theoretical Physicist
4. David Vandenabeele: Annalise Meyer, American, Battle Creek Michigan, Grad student
5. Liz Ray-Trumitch: Coralynn LeGarde, French, Nice, Sculptress
6. J.P. Brannan: Timothy Carlton, British, Birmingham, Genre author, conspiracy theorist
7. Joe Saul: Sir Richard Reynolds, British, Surrey. Author, explorer, television host.
8. Kris Kunkel: Alex Wynne, American, Penn State. College football player
9. Keith Cripe (2017-); Madeline Fwerda (originally): Ismail Haq, Chinese, Afghanistan. Man of Action.
10. Michael Kucharksi: Kevin Burkhart, American, Chicago, Architect
11. Tara Kunkel: Claire Robert, American, Pennsylvania. Waitress
12. Sol Foster: Xander Smolinksy, Michigan football player (Canadian)
13. Lisa: Valentina, a concert violinist

Primer We Received After Studying in Shatterlight during/after the 2013 Game Session

Historical Overview

Imagine your world, in all of its sprawling complexity and simplicity. Now know that it is but one of countless many, an infinitude of parallel-but-different existences, each real to those who dwell within it but made more substantial only by the intervention of true magical power. However, all of these many worlds are but veils of the faintest, most ethereal matter... as if made of gossamer. For this reason they are called the Gossamer worlds. Between them is only Shadow and emptiness... utter nonexistence.

True power is what makes the Gossamer real, and lends substance to that which is without. There are two great and ever-opposed forces in the universe: stasis and entropy. Know these powers by their true names: Eidolon and Umbra. The Eidolon is form, the ideal structure of the universe … a sublime organization of form. The Umbra is its opposite, a shifting, entropic disorganization which is pure chaos and ultimately… destruction. All of our world and all parts of the countless other worlds exist solely through their collision and their collusion.

Because of the sheer, unimaginable power of these forces and their intricate interplay, the Gossamer worlds are both similar and dissimilar, and echoes of them ripple from one to the next, twist and grow strange, or echo with familiarity. For this reason, Gossamer worlds may resemble their neighbors in all but the minutest details, or they may bear no similarity at all. Those folks with power may occasionally glimpse other Gossamer worlds. The veils between them may be weak, and those worlds that inhabit your myths, come from your legends, even your flights of fancy... those places may be Gossamer worlds glimpsed and visited countless times throughout history and in the time before history.

Now imagine an immeasurably long, unimaginably complex, forked and branching staircase, a span of steps and landings and halls, corridors and by-ways of near-infinite complexity. That is Escalara, the Grand Stair. All along it are Doors... Doors that open into the Gossamer worlds. The Grand Stair connects all of the Gossamer worlds through the Doors: some Gossamer worlds have many Doors opening into it, while some have few or but one... and some Gossamer worlds have no Doors and cannot as of yet be reached. Between the Gossamer worlds lies the Shadow, an unfathomable depth of void and emptiness... and the Shadow is active, claiming Gossamer worlds sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever. It is not known whether the Grand Stair was always there, unknown and waiting for the first beings able to pass through its Doors and walk upon it between worlds, or whether it was made within recorded time. Its mysteries are yet to be unlocked, but its use was readily apparent. The Doors of the Grand Stair opened occasionally, allowing random souls to wander its span... sometimes a simple step between one world and another, sometimes affording a fragment of a glimpse of the myriad of worlds it accesses. To those who could recognize what it represented, the Grand Stair represented the universe!

Before the Grand Stair made itself known, passage between the Gossamer worlds meant crossing the veil of Shadow, a rare and near-impossible feat, or an extraordinary freak occurrence. Now other worlds could be visited reliably, allowing privileged voyagers to amass secret knowledge about the hidden infrastructure of infinity.

The greatest of discoveries soon followed, outstripping even the notion of other worlds... these adepts became aware of the Eidolon and the Umbra, and earned the power to change reality itself by those dualistic, opposed principles. Quaint, barely-functional magical traditions were given newfound potency, and powers such as Invocation, Wrighting, Cantrips, and Sorcery were codified and improved. The dross of one Gossamer world could be priceless in another, and items and creatures with nothing remarkable about them revealed immense power in other worlds, artifacts to be sought, quested for, or wars waged to possess.

The most amazing benefit conferred by the Grand Stair was of a personal nature. Those who traveled its length were forever changed... they grew stronger, reflexes quickened, life-spans increased, and magic ability and force of will were magnified considerably. These gifts were sometimes passed along bloodlines, sometimes appearing anew with no prior heritage, but the constant was that it was the first walk upon the Grand Stair which activated this higher state of being. Those who could walk the Grand Stair appointed themselves the Wardens of the Grand Stair, and they used it to explore the countless other worlds it linked to, ruling as sovereigns of Gossamer and Shadow. It would have been easy for these lords and ladies (self-dubbed the Gossamer Lords) to become the masters of the multiverse, but they were opposed... by the Dwimmerlaik, terrible savants of the Shadow. They proved a scourge across the Grand Stair, and their civilization flourished as it spread, a race of psychically powerful, zealous invaders who would bring all the infinite worlds under one rule. They called themselves the Dwimmerlaik.

Ancient beyond days, the Dwimmerlaik trod the Grand Stair before, and for longer than, any other race known. If any came before them, those long-vanished species did not survive contact with the Dwimmerlaik, and only obscure traces remain of their existence. As conquerors, the Dwimmerlaik readily expunged the worlds they encountered of any semblance of prior rulers, scrubbing Gossamer worlds of any history they possessed before the coming of the Dwimmerlaik. The Dwimmerlaik installed themselves as monarchs, dictators, emperors, kings and queens... and they ruled world after world.

Eventually, though, the Dwimmerlaik overstepped their reach, and drew resistance able to meet them head-on. As the Dwimmerlaik spread across the Grand Stair, others were drawn together to counter the threat they possessed. These individuals ranged from philosopher-kings, sorcerers, philosophers, mystics, presidents, adepts, heroes, theocrats, and simple pilgrims. All realized the threat the Dwimmerlaik possessed, and were drawn to oppose it. Forging pacts across the veil of Shadow that separated them, these would-be-heroes, the Gossamer Lords, grew in number and strength, and taught one another secrets of magic and power, searching across the Grand Stair for a means of defeating the conquering race.

The Gossamer Lords battled the Dwimmerlaik in their own worlds and upon the Grand Stair, fighting alone and in concert. They brought the Umbra and the Eidolon to bear against them, as well as every other form of power they could muster. The damage was incalculable, with the Dwimmerlaik throwing hosts at this defiance. Armies like locusts, consuming entire nations, marched through the Grand Stair directed against those who opposed the Dwimmerlaik. Populations of whole worlds were drafted and pressed into service as foot-soldiers in this war, sent into battle to die for these otherworldly masters. Blades, guns, energy weapons, and sorcery were used... weapons wrought of iron and steel and glass and wood, crystal and fire, thought and stone... all were brought to bear and were bloodied. Gossamer worlds were stripped bare of their resources, poisoned, destroyed, evacuated and left empty and ruined. Blood stained the steps of the Grand Stair, and whole worlds were lost entirely, destroyed or cut off from the Grand Stair, their Doors broken and sealed. The carnage rippled throughout all reality, the sheer awful force of the conflict echoing across worlds, leaping the veil of Shadow, and manifesting in similar or altered form in all but the most distant or alien of the Gossamer worlds. However, no world suffered more than those directly involved in the battle, as no copy of the Dwimmerlaik could be so destructive.

The war raged for centuries, and the defenders fought against the oncoming wave of Dwimmerlaik until it seemed as if all hope was lost... and then the unimaginable happened. The Grand Stair itself seemed to intervene, cutting off entire expanses, erasing Doors, severing vast lengths of its span, and deactivating Doors that led to Dwimmerlaik-held worlds. The threat was over, and the Gossamer worlds involved in the war were able to recover.

More than a thousand years passed, and the Dwimmerlaik were forgotten by many. Worlds they had barely touched remembered them only as faint bogeymen or devils, strange and terrible creatures out of myth and nightmare. The Gossamer Lords who opposed them eventually returned to their former isolated ways, though still bound by the knowledge of what had been done to oppose the Dwimmerlaik, and what had almost been lost. Some among the Gossamer Lords used the peace to seize power for themselves, tentatively at first, then more brazenly once time passed, while others sought study, solitude, and solace.

No one knew the ultimate fate of the Dwimmerlaik. Had they been quarantined from the Gossamer worlds or erased from reality entirely? Were they still out there, biding their time, until they might return? Was such a return even possible? All of these questions were unanswered... until now. If the blood-writ message you saw on the Escalara is true, the Dwimmerlaik have returned.

Important Concepts

DOOR: Linked to normal doors, Doors (capital D) are entrances to and from the Grand Stair, allowing access to the infinite myriad of Gossamer worlds. Doors are used primarily by the Wardens of the Grand Stair, though the Grand Stair itself occasionally allows others to wander its corridors and steps. Doors can be created, destroyed, and manipulated by Wardens.

ESCALRA, THE [GRAND STAIR, THE]: An infinite network of hidden staircases and linked corridors, lined with magic Doors on either side, linking all of the Gossamer worlds. Wardens of the Grand Stairs are attuned to it and can activate or deactivate new Doors or manipulate existing ones.

GOSSAMER WORLDS: The infinite parallel universes accessed by the Grand Stair, brought into being through the interplay of the Eidolon and the Umbra. Every mythical place, fanciful otherworld, alternate history, every possible alternate universe is one of the Gossamer worlds. Your own world is one.

ICON: A magic device or symbol used for communication through and across the Gossamer worlds. Icons are created through the use of the Wrighting talent. Icons come in many forms: paintings, cards, electronic images, statues, stained-glass windows, figurines, etc. and are idiosyncratic to their creator.

SHADOW: The dark void between the Gossamer worlds, a murky, howling and infinite emptiness. Parts of the Grand Stair span areas of the Shadow, and if one tears the veil of a Gossamer world without linking it to another Gossamer world, they will see only shadow void between.

Magical Traditions and Powers

CANTRIPS: Minor, instantaneous spells used to achieve quick, direct, and simple effects.

EIDOLON: The primal symbol of order, the Eidolon is essentially the cosmic blueprint underlying all of matter and energy. It permeates all reality and all change in the universe is a result of interplay between the Eidolon and the Umbra, the symbol of entropy and change.

INVOCATION: A magic power concerned with the use of True Names, summoning and binding beings of power, or using their True Names to compel and manipulate them.

SORCERY: A magical power concerned with basic spellcasting, allowing sorcerers to create, store, and cast spells, as well as creating magic countermeasures. Sorcery also assumes knowledge of spellcasting traditions, providing lore and information about different types of spellcasting. Countless Gossamer worlds have their own magical traditions. These generally work in the world of origin and few other places. In ancient times, the Gossamer Lords codified a system of magic that functioned in most magical worlds and upon the Escalara itself.

UMBRA: The primal source of entropy in the universe. The Umbra represents the decay and eventual disorganization of all matter and energy into base, chaotic forms. It permeates all reality, and all change in the universe is a result of interplay between the Umbra and the Eidolon, the symbol of stability and order, which opposes it.

WRIGHTING: A minor magical power concerned with the creation of enchanted artifacts and creatures, and the magical communication means called Icons.

Places of Note

The Agora. Though the nature of the Escalara is that it practically defies permanent or long-term residences, nonetheless a market has formed, informally known as the Agora. It is located within a section of the Grand Stair where a series of parallel halls and high and wide sections allow for a sprawling "outdoor" style market. It is multi-leveled, with the Grand Stair folding back and over, with balconies overlooking sections of the Agora, and stretches of halls that intersect with wide foyers, vestibules, and wide landings allowing for structures to be erected. The marketplace consists of tents of all shape and size, lean-tos, blankets, stalls, stands, and even some smaller huts... all of which were brought in by the resourceful merchants and traders throughout the Gossamer worlds, who deal in all manner of goods and riches from the infinite worlds, or curiosities unique to a single place and time. The Gossamer Lords tolerate the place and maintain it as a neutral ground, and if the Escalara has any feelings on the Agora's existence, it remains as silent as ever. Here, it is said, "Anything can be found, and if it cannot, it is but a Door away."

The Labyrinth. The heart of the Escalara is the Labyrinth, a concatenation of landings, Doors, passages, stairs, and halls, unlike the rest of the Grand Stair. In the Labyrinth, Wardens and Masters of the Grand Star will gain a sense of "centeredness," realizing that they are in the nexus of the Grand Stair. Not all initiates of the Grand Stair know about the Labyrinth, or where it is, but to those who are familiar with it, the Labyrinth is the equivalent of holy ground, a neutral space claimed by none and respected by all. Bloodshed in the Labyrinth is to be avoided at all costs, and most travelers in the Grand Stair choose to avoid the Labyrinth whenever possible. There are sections of the Labyrinth that are known to only a few or perhaps only to those who made the Grand Stair itself, and over the centuries, more than a few Wardens and even Masters have simply vanished into its complex passages.

Shatterlight, Vala's Domain. Though she is not an appointed ruler, Vala is the acknowledged leader of the Gossamer Lords, and her Domain is considered open to all those who are able to traverse the Grand Stair. It is a rich and pleasant world, the name a witness to a peculiar atmospheric condition that sends prismatic lances of multi-hued sunlight across the land. It is a wealthy, prosperous world in a high medieval era, though with sky-sailing craft, evocative magic, and an egalitarian government overseen by Vala. She is the central figure of a rich mythology, and her castle at Shatterlight is atop a majestic mountain overlooking a sprawling, vibrant city. Many Doors open into Vala's grand hall, Doors guarded by generations of zealous warriors who would lay down their lives for her.