Shades¶
"Emotions give rise to sentient beings bound together with Psychic energy and combined thought and emotion." — the Cosmology Revision on the denizens of the Shadow Realm (S001)
Shades are the native sentients of the Shadow Realm, beings of emotion and psychic energy; lesser shades are beyond counting. The same plane is the prison of the Shadow Abominations, the Einar's failed creations, and the refuge of a few wizards who have merged themselves with it and taken the name of Shade.
Shades of the Shadow Realm¶
The Shadow Realm "governs shadow, memory and thought", and its deeper reaches are "filled with shifting images of places and events long forgotten or how things might become (the possibilities, memories and thoughts of others)". Its denizens are born of that stuff: "Emotions give rise to sentient beings bound together with Psychic energy and combined thought and emotion. Lesser Shades are extremely numerous." The astral powers make use of them; "Astral beings often empower local shades to protect these entrances to their demesne", the points where the Asomatus Lines of the Shadow Realm feed the Astral Shards. One theory of the origin of demons holds that they are "negative energy Shades", formed from the deficit the Einar left when they drew psychic energy out of the Shadow Realm; its supporting evidence is that "New Demons seem to arrive/spawn in the Shadow Realm" (S001).
Gap
No source describes a shade's appearance, how a greater shade differs from a lesser one, or whether shades leave their plane unbidden.
Shadow Abominations¶
"The shadow realm was the early discard pile for failed Einar creations. Many abominations and aberrations are imprisoned in its depths. Some have escaped and adapted to a sort of life in the Shadow Realm, some working towards ways to manifest themselves back on the material" (S001, S013).
Shades who were wizards¶
In the Sancturi campaign a Shade is also a man: "wizards that merged with the shadow realm". Such a Shade must rest in the Shadow Realm for at least six hours, is doubly vulnerable to radiant light and weak against fire, and in exchange can turn invisible, walk through the Shadow Realm, and take on a shadowform of darkness that turns aside blows (S174). A necromonger of Angorath travelled with "+3 Shade protectors" (S328).
Earlier accounts¶
The older Cosmology (S013) and the archive's Terrun Cosmology (S421) describe the Shadow Realm and its discarded abominations but name no shades; the sentient shades of emotion first appear in the 2026 revision (S001). The archive adds that "no magic (other than Astral) functions here due to the lack of connections with any energy plane" (S421), where the revision says only that magic does not function and that "strong minds can find it possible to alter or bring things into existence in the shadow realm" (S001).