Welcome to The Actuality

Introduce the world to your players

Once you’ve re-acclimated to the Actuality, you’ll want to take certain steps.

1. Establish your home. (Almost) every vislae has a house, and being cut off from it for years is like having lost a limb you forgot you had. Sweep it out, chase off the spiders and the grigs, and make sure your books and other belongings are in order. Get to know the place again.

2. Make some friends. Some of these will be old friends you knew from before. Perhaps fellow members of your Order. Or simply your neighbors. Some might be people you met while in Shadow. Others will be new. The important thing is, the connections you have to others are going to serve as some of your more efficient tools for getting ahead in Satyrine. It’s very, very difficult to succeed entirely alone.

3. Rid yourself of “Shadow thinking.” Try to forget the things you think are important. Shadow has lied to you not just about who and where you were, but about how the very world works. Much of what you think you understand, from the laws of physics to the importance of automobiles and computers to the significance of dreams to an endless parade of other ideas and concepts, are all based on utter nonsense.

4. Similarly, alter your perspective on what “makes sense.” Often, things just don’t work like they do in Shadow, and vislae who have returned to Indigo just have to accept them and move on. Take, for example, the War. The victors of the conflict cast incredibly powerful spells to make the other side irrelevant. So no one really talks about them (occasionally referring to them as “the Enemy” and blaming them for any negative repercussions), nor do they discuss what the War was actually fought over. The magic involved makes this difficult to comprehend, and that might be the point. In the Actuality, roads sometimes spiral. Houses are sometimes more clever than their owners. A ghost of an unfinished book might contain the chapters that would complete it. Thoughts might think themselves.

5. Don’t utterly reject what happened to you in Shadow. Shadow is a lie, having muddled your senses and darkened your soul, but the experiences you had there still carry weight. Their significance lies not in the world without, but the one within. The experiences in your Shadow life are a part of you. They helped shape who you are. Recognize that you are not the person you were when you went into exile, and embrace it. It’s possible that what you learned in Shadow (not about the world, but about yourself ) will be invaluable.

6. Find something important to focus on. In Shadow, they say, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” In the Actuality, we know that devils have different tactics not so neatly summed up in a single statement, but the overall sentiment remains valid. You have great power and unique skills. Put them to use. Become a part of the real world again.