The History of ShadowLands

A History of the ShadowLands

This is a short story of how Shadowlands came to be and a bit of its history.

This place is another dimensional plain that’s at times connected to real time by random dimensional gates found all over the world. These “gates” can be of any size and shape, whether it be big enough to swallow huge ships or really small, enough space for say a small creature to crawl through. These portals are easy to see i.e. they are mushroom circles, stone circles, the Bermuda triangle, Leigh lines and bar-rows, all of which are mystical monuments of a magical time when gods truly walked amongst us. These gates are only ever open for minutes at a time and when they close they do so for centuries or for eternity. People have often stumbled upon these por-tals accidentally due to thick mists, which seem to accompany the opening of the portals. It would seem that the mists help to blend the dimensions, blurring the reality and making it easy to cross over.

As to the origins of The Shadowlands, there has only been speculation that it was perhaps once a part of our own world that was somehow removed by vast magical energies thousands of years ago and put into another dimension separate from our world but con-nected by the gates. It has been suggested that the gates may have (all those millennia’s ago) been used as one would use a bridge to cross from one side of a river to another, but as time has past the magical power that used to maintain these gates has weak-ened making them now a rare find. The other possi-bility is that it truly is another dimension that is pre-cariously linked to ours luring in unsuspected crea-tures, much like a spiders web would attract a fly. Whatever the case, it would seem that there is no way to get out or off of THIS dimension; people have tried without success, at times it has proven fatal.

Be warned that because of the magical nature of this land no mechanical device will work, which has pro-duced some fairly disastrous results. Years ago five large blue metal birds came through the mist but unfortunately they weren’t air born for much longer. After much spluttering they crashed into the sea just off the coast, six men were believed to have survived but no one knows what became of them since.

These facts have been compiled to the best of my extensive knowledge for you my lord and master, in the hope that these words penetrate the magical veil that surrounds this strange land.

Your faithful servant and sage.
ATHLEGARSTE
SAGE AND SCRIBE TO UTHER PEN-DRAGON