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ateratmods) wrote2022-08-07 06:36 pm
Beyond Boundaries: The MirrorVerse
Reaching this place isn't as simple as stepping through the looking glass, should it reflect this strange reality rather than the rest of the room. You must come face to face with your Mirror Self and swap places with them. These Selves can be as like or different from your character as you like. The can be complete inverses of them in motivation and drive, or simply possessing a few altered personality traits, and you are welcome to play them in the main city while the character whose place they took wanders the MirrorVerse. Neither belong in the others' world, though, and thus after a week's time, they will return to where they belong whether they are near a mirror or not.
Unlike the world in which all new arrivals find themselves, which changes occasionally but whose additions stay solid once materialized, the MirrorVerse is a world heavily influenced by emotions, positive and negative. As such, while properties of this world may stay the same, maps are pointless as no two visits will illicit the same streets, same buildings, at least...for the most part. There are certain places, a run-down hotel near the city of the city that is roughly the same size as the city of Aterat minus things beyond its walls, stands ready to provide meager lodging and bland food that satiates a hunger at the very least even if its taste is never satisfying. All around, just beyond the walls, is a roiling mist, and the city beyond the mirror is always cloaked a heavy gloom.
The beings who wander native to this land never appear the same during any encounter, sometimes appearing familiar, like a species you may be familiar with in your own world, and other times appearing as strange, anthropomorphic animals of various species, insectile other times, amphibious, reptilian, even ichthyic. When approached, they will reciprocate whatever emotion is projected at them. If you approach in a friendly manner, they will be friendly in kind. Hostility will be met with the same, but there will always be a level of suspicion from them. You do not belong here.
The city, for it is a city, beyond the mirror is labyrinthine, and it's easy to become lost in its twisting corridors and thoroughfares. It's easy to be oppressed by the atmosphere, as the perpetual gloom of the place leaves the darkness pressing in at all times, even the lights of torches, flashlights, or the streetlamps lit at all times don't penetrate into the darkness near as far as they should, often leaving the upper floors of the looming buildings and ones own feet in twilit shadow. Overhead there always looms an eclipsed full moon.
There's a sense of instability about the place, and a feeling of oppressive closeness even if one stands alone in the middle of a street. Be wary of uncontrolled emotions, as there are beings in this place attracted to such things, spirits of anger, of despair, of joy, and of fear, and they will come to feed upon those emotions if they overflow. A hated enemy may appear before you, or a love lost, a love gained, your worst fear made manifest. This place has no matter of its own and it will take what it can from matter that arrives through the mirrors.
If one ventures near the walls of this shifting city, waves can be heard from all sides, as though the city itself sits adrift upon a vast ocean. If one scales the walls, they will find this assessment to be true. Stretching as far as the eyes can see in ever direction is a fast, black ocean, waves reaching as high as mountains at times, perpetually roiling. It may be a trick of wavering light cast by the eclipsed moon above, but if one peers out into the distance long enough, it's almost as though a vast undulating form can be seen, serpentine and unfathomably large, but then it is gone, making one wonder if it was seen at all.
As the MirrorVerse is a shifting realm influenced heavily by thought and emotion and not beholden to the laws of physics at all times, the MirrorVerse characters tend to develop areas around where they dwell that reflect what they would want in a living space. These are their 'demesnes', and where they call home. The characters can travel around the MirrorVerse as freely as their normal versions do the city of Aterat and its surroundings, and you're free to play them in this setting as much you'd like.
If a Mirror Version swaps places with a standard version, it can exist in the main city of Aterat for 1 week before everyone will return to where they belong. After which time, they will need to rest for 3 weeks before attempting a swap again.