Secrets of Irkalla

Secrets of Irkalla

   The information below is for the GM’s eyes only, and should not be revealed except under most unusual circumstances to players.

All creatures of Irkalla are foreigners

   Even humankind is saved from its own destruction by the spirit-entities they call gods, to preserve mankind from a terrible destruction wrought by the the presence known only as The Force, or the Other. At one point or another, every sentient (and most nonsentient) beings were brought here to be preserved, by the same mysterious gods, it would seem.

There is an ancient enemy that seeks to destroy all of creation

   The exact nature of this force is not known, but the dreams and visions of the faithful often provide visions of such a terrible force that all of the gods and spirits stand in awe and fear of it. The oldest texts from the most ancient of ruins speak of this force as an insidious Destroyer of Worlds, a being or beings so terrifying that they thrive on the spectral energy of spirits and souls, and can only release such energy through total destruction.

   Irkalla is a region of time and space from which few points intersect: those few cosmic travelers who come here assure those learned scholars who study celestial mechanics that Irkalla is very, very difficult to find or get to. They suggest that it is for this reason that so many beings and gods have come to this world, in the wake of the destruction caused by The Other. Indeed, some planar scholars from other realms have made it their lifelong obsession to determine what this malignant force is, which caused the native deities of Irkalla to seek such a remote refuge for they and their followers.

Mankind is ignorant of the cosmic war

   If there are ten million sentient beings who ponder the cosmos when they have time in the world, then there are maybe ten thousand of those beings who even begin to understand the basic physics and laws of the universe, and of those maybe a thousand who go on to try and divine the nature of magic, the spirits and the gods. And of those men, maybe one hundred have discovered that Irkalla is but one of countless universes, and of them, maybe ten have met other beings from these worlds, or even traveled to them. Fewer still have lived to tell the tale…

 The spirit world exists as a gestalt

   The Spirit World and all of its inhabitants are real….but exist as a part of the Weave of the Mind, a unique planar realm which is created by the conscious (and dreaming) state of all living beings. If all creatures died, the Weave of the Mind would die, and so then would the spirits and gods of Irkalla. As such, one could argue that all men can communicate with the gods at any time, are indeed a part of them, but in fact, the two worlds are very different, and can do little to directly influence one another. The distinction of the mortal and spiritual realm is one for the philosophers and theologians, however, for few now understand the true meaning of this concept of a world of the mind, and fewer still can even say what were to happen if a mortal being were to transcend in to the spirit realm.    

   The universe as most scholars understand it (the Planar Realms) consists of Five Tiers: The Underworld, the Mortal Realm, The Spirit World, The Dreamlands, and The Beyond; The Mortal Realm is believed to be infinite. Irkalla itself is such an enormous world that, though it is known to be curved by its own scholars, few think it has an end. Instead, the picture of Irkalla is like that of a sea of rolling hills, and the shallows are filled with water, the oceans, while the continents are like steeply curved hills jutting from the water.