Like
Hades , the
Nightlands are a planet much like Earth, but much much older than both. It is so old there are few beings in the cosmos to remember what it may once have been named. The Nightlands were once a world teeming with life and light. And like Earth and Hades, a great cataclysm occurred and it fell to supernatural invaders. In its case, they were dark creatures we know as the
The Lords of Night. The Nightlords thrive on fear, making fears manifest in reality itself. No race, intelligent or not, could stand before an assault powered by their own fear.
Long after the Nightlands planet went through its great cataclysm, time of rifts, and eventual loss of magic; Hades did the same. Now it is Earth's turn. The dimensional nature of Hades is such that humans have known of it and the demons who call it home for all our history and before, Demons and Hades have entered our mythology and collective cosmology. The Nightlands is no different. The time of peak rift activity in the Nightlands created outgoing rifts to worlds accross galaxies, including Earth. These connections arrived at points throughout Earth's past, present and future, and so Earthlings have been acquainted with its influence throughout our history.
Like the Spirit World, which is created by the raw belief of humans and which takes the shape and form and existence of those beliefs, the Nightlands takes the shape and form of the fears that it touches. Now that the time of rifts is at hand for Earth, our rifts are now reaching back to the Nightlands. The innumerable and near-constant connections between our two worlds have caused the Nightlands to become an up-to-date yet distorted rendition of Earth. It is a nightmare planet reflecting Earth as it is seen in the nightmares of all its denizens.
The Lands of Night is a nearly identical, yet nightmarishly corrupted reproduction of Earth. This has caused scholars (what scholars there are) to speculate that the Lands of Night are just another dimension of Earth. This belief is reinfoced by the presence of the Nightlands behind seemingly every mirror. "How could this be?" they ask, "unless it was a parallel dimension of some sorts."
But the Nightlands are not a parallel dimension of Earth.
The Nightlands are inundated with the fears of earthlings, and through the power of the Nightlords the planet is altered to reflect the world of the earthlings. The world has been molded and remolded by the seeping nightmares of Earthlings. It is a near real-time reproduction of Earth, as seen through the nightmare perceptions of its denizens.
Whether it is by the power of the Nightlords, their ability to warp reality to reflect fears, or the collective fears of Earthlings themselves, Connections between the Nightlands and Rifts Earth are weakest at mirrors and other highly reflective surfaces. Anyone touched by the reality altering power of the Nightlords (
Nightspawn) and others who are gifted with an arcane understanding of dimensional travel (such as
Shifters) are able to cross from Earth to the Nightlands and back through these surfaces without much effort. Not every mirror can be used thus, but any reflective surface that has appeared in a nightmare can.
Of course, this means that the nightmare creatures of the Nightlands can come across to earth as well. And while most of the creatures of the night are not capable of doing this by their own power, there are enough masters of dimensional travel among them to open paths for them or lead them through.
Nightspawn became what they are through the influence of the Lands of Night, or the Nightlands.
Alternative Name(s)
The Lands of Night
The
The Nightlords, dark conquerers of the Nightlands, are cruel and heartless beings that thrive on fear. They use fear to power themselves and can manifest it into reality as far as they can reach. So the Nightlands is constantly being molded and remolded into the shape and form of the fears the Nightlords feed upon. When this land corrupted by the Night Lords connects to Earth, their fear-inducing corruption seeps in with it. This influence, this subconscious fear, is so common in our human existence that we have given it a name: Nightmare. Nearly every human being in the history of the planet has had a nightmare, this is how often the Nightlords have been able to reach across to our dimension. When we have a nightmare, what we are experiencing is the influence of the Nightlords across time and space through some dimensional gateway to our here and now. The imaginings of our nightmares have, in turn, seeped into the Nightlands, molding them with the power of the Nightlords into the stuff of our nightmares. And the Nightlords are awash in the power.
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