Can I Play With Madness

    The further into the Wyld you go the more the land becomes a dreamstate. Tainted lands are the remnants of Wyld areas that have been shaped in such a way and then the Wyld has receded to leave the land unnaturally warped.
   The greater the power of the Wyld is the less Creation's laws apply and the more powerful the dreams that exit there. The Wyld is not a realm of meaningless, always changing chaos but rather a place where random notions come together to form dreams and stories and then dissolve back again. Rather than a place where fish fall from the sky like rain and then turn into trees a character could find themselves in an orchard where the fruit makes them hungrier and hungrier until they die of starvation. There is a structure to this fantasy but it works in direct contradiction to one of Creation's rules because that rule doesn't exist there. Just like dreamscapes and stories the energy of the Wyld also coalesces into consciousnesses. These are the raksha. In a way stories themselves but they can determine what happens in their story. They have the power to shape the dreamscape around them to form part of it. The further into the Wyld you go the further the stabilising sea bottom of Creation sinks beneath you and the deeper the seas of possibility are until there is no stability, there are no rules except what the crazed whims of the raksha decide to apply. Thus in a freehold you might sit down for refreshments in a palatial suite over literally half a cup of tea or fall into the intrigues of a set of man sized playing cards that have arms and legs and can talk.
   A waypoint isn't a physically measured area but rather a place where something happens. In pure chaos anything could happen. A freehold is an entire dimension in it's own right. A setting for a series of interlinked scenes. A waypoint could be as large as anything wants it to be within the notion of one tale. Although concepts such as distance, time and speed do exist in the Wyld it is not defined by them as Creation is but is defined by ideas. Such physical concepts exist within these ideas to give them meaning. From a storyteller's point of view a journey into the Wyld is literally a narrative and you could cast yourself as the freehold ruler who tells the story.
   Only in the true freeholds based on Unshaped raksha in the endless Wyld the Fair Folk have complete control over the freehold and may totally reshape a waypoint with impunity unless another Fair Folk tries to interfere. As they get closer to Creation shaping the Wyld gets more and more exerting until they finally leave it altogether where changing the land into a story is like trying to ascend an infinite cliff. It's a matter of speculation whether when Creation was first made the notion of impossibility being conceived brought about the existence of Oblivion which was only discovered when things realised they might not exist. In comparison with this uphill struggle shaping pure chaos is as easy and effortless as taking a gentle walk, something you can not only do but do with Style.
    In the Wyld there are not limits on what the raksha can or want to do. Those who become enamoured enough of Creation to dwell within it however often shape their stronghold and their minions in a way appropriate to their environment. These raksha aspire to elegantly encorporating the nearby element(s) nature into their forms. Most raksha who still live in the Wyld view this as treason becoming one with the elemental patterns of Creation instead of using their inconstrained fantasies.

   Stories exist as a series of cause and consequence of the Fair Folk's actions. Time only has meaning as the pace of the narrative and it does not flow at a constant rate or of it's own accord. In pure chaos physical concepts such as space and time are utterly at the whim or the Fair Folk. Things don't happen in the flow of time because time is a constant and always flows. Things happen because the Fair Folk say they happen. Distances exist because the Fair Folk say they do. If the Fair Folk decide for two things that were apart to become next to eachother or meld with eachother then unless they can interfere they do. Just as easily they can dissect things. Physical objects don't exist in the Wyld not because of a lack of possibility like Oblivion but because it consists only of possibilities, things which are not yet made. It is impossible for anything to exist in the Wyld save as an idea. The Wyld is better described not as a place (for such a thing denotes a concept of area) but as a mind- an inordinately vast mind. Place is a meaningless concept in such an environment. It is impossible to travel through they Wyld in the term people would understand it. Fair Folk do not exist in a place but as a chain of reasoning- reasoning to which no laws or limitations apply. Imagine living as a though within the brain of someone utterly mad with limitless intelligence. That is the existence of the Unshaped Fair Folk.

    Does soulsteel contain the screams of the Neverborn or something from Oblivion or the Labyrinth rather than using the Labyrinth ore to trap ghosts?

Realm of Death

    It's impossible to enter the Labyrinth without feeling the tide of hate that emanates from the tomb Neverborn. Whether any will lies behind that hate is a mystery to wise men but those listening to it are too strong in their convictions to listen to reason.
   Simply entering the Labyrinth itself would be a sanity threatening experience. Many ghosts who enter it have already been infected with it's madness. The Labyrinth is a soliloquy, the last act of creation of the Neverborn. The Labyrinth may even be the inside of the Primordials' minds when they died, a psychic dimension flooded with hate. Spectral cults who worship the Neverborn, which is hardly a surprise since they were greater than the gods, have complex and often conflicting beliefs on the nature of the Neverborn. It's uncertain if sentience still lives in their tombs or if their minds spilled out into the Labyrinth. If so the Labyrinth is actually the minds of the Neverborn, which would be no surprise to those who've seen it's twisted, warping depths. Others contend that the constant ringing of hate, a scream you can feel with your body that almost invariably induces an overwhelming desire to kill, is only the voice of the Neverborn and their minds are far worse.
   However twisted these Spectres and Nephwracks are, the shadow of Oblivion gnaws at their minds and fills their hearts with terror. Only the recent advent of the Abyssals have given Oblivion champions. They wield the power of the blackest evil. A mindless horror that threatens to consume everything. They scare even the most fanatical and violent Nephwracks with displays of Oblivion's power. Some are content to use their morbid powers and live their unlives as death knights. Others feel there is something more to their existence and search for a deeper meaning to their lives now that they have escaped death. These are the ones who travel to the Labyrinth on a vision seeking quest.
   All the Deathlords would learn Labyrinth Circle Necromancy that's a given. Abyssals don't know Void Circle yet but have the potential to do so and that scares the living Fuck out of the Deathlords. A Spectre might learn Shadowlands Circle Necromancy. As bearers of shattered reflections of souls of the Neverborn the Deathlords, who are ghosts, can learn Labyrinth Circle Necromancy as the Celestial Exalted who created Necromancy and developed it learned from the Neverborn. But only the Abyssals, whose power comes from Oblivion itself can learn Void Circle Necromancy if they seek for it and gain Whispers of Oblivion.
   There may still be remnants of First Age Solars who created the first Void Circle spells. The nature of Chiaroscuro Nos Veresus' mysterious companion points to such a possibility, that at least he may have tried to do so.
   Simply being an Abyssal gives them access to the power to learn Shadowlands Circle Necromancy. Labyrinth Circle Necromancy requires the hatred of Whispers of the Neverborn. Void Circle Necromancy requires Whispers of Oblivion.

      How Much Does Black Exaltation Change Them?
   It depends on how much they allow it to. Oblivion inspires but it does not create. Some feel drawn to seek out the source of the dark power within them.

   Necromancy- power over death

   Do the Deathlords have unique powers from possessing the spectral remnants of the souls of the Neverborn. What allowed them to encorporate their ghostly souls in the first place? Was it because of a psychic resonance that they hated Creation as much as the Neverborn?

   I think it's important to distinguish between the power of the Neverborn and the power of Oblivion. That fact that Abyssals' powers and those of others beings like the Deathlords seemed to come from both without much distinction was a weakness of the rulebook. I like the way the Oblivion is portrayed more as an entity than as a force, like Mr. Shadow in The Fifth Element. The get the feeling that there's a malevolent intelligence lurking in there rather than it just being a black hole. The outright presence of sentience in the Neverborn annoys me though. It should have been made much more unclear whether they are dead or alive. Call of Cthulhu was an obvious potential source of inspiration for the Neverborn and possibly the Yozis but it's one the writers seemed to ignore. They could have created a realm of great msytery which would have been excellent to explore through but instead they chose to spell things out. The Neverborn are obviously not truly dead and I think it would have been far more interesting for the game if no one knew really if there were dead or not. All they have to go by are the Whispers that emanate from their tombs and the apparent miracles they cause.