Shadow Path

A Shadow Path is a dimensional rift between the world of Sryth and the Neverness that manifests itself in the form of a swirling black or grey vortex.

During the Age of Araludon there existed many magical gateways between the world of Sryth and the shadowy nether-realm, the Neverness . These gateways came to be known as Shadow Paths, for they were portals to the darkest, most nightmarish regions of the Neverness.

The Shadow Paths were only small remnants of the much larger rifts between Sryth and the Neverness that existed during the Age of Storms .

During the Age of Araludon, the people and nations of Sryth waged a nearly endless battle against the evil creatures of shadow that used these portals as points of invasion from their dark Nevernal realms.

Quorid, a powerful Aldvari spellcaster was the first to discover a potent magic that could seal off these Nevernal gateways. As a member of the Grey Circle , he taught this powerful magic to many in the brotherhood of mages. Thus, through the efforts of the mages of the Grey Circle, nearly all of the Shadow Paths that plagued Sryth were sealed.

When a Shadow Path was sealed, in its wake the sealers left a sizeable slab of stone, known as a Shadow Gate. The Shadow Gates were covered with a cryptic code of runes. The code of runes was actually a powerful counterspell that, if deciphered correctly, could be invoked to destroy the Shadow Gate and reopen the Shadow Path. Quorid had created the complex coded counterspell in the event that his own magic ever should require undoing.

Realizing the danger posed by the counterspell, Quorid created only one copy of the cipher needed to decrypt his code. The cipher filled nearly three hundred pages, and when completed, Quorid gave the weighty tome to the head of his order, the Grey Mage , for safekeeping.

An unlocked Shadow Gate may once again be locked by a mage with a high enough level of mastery in the sphere of GATING. There are also magical items that have been imbued with the ability to relock Shadow Gates.

The only known way to unlock a locked Shadow Gate is through the use of Quorid's Cipher, which is by all accounts a protected artifact in the keeping of the Grey Mage.

A Shadow Path with no accompanying Shadow Gate (a dangerous thing indeed) can be closed by a mage with a very high level of mastery in the sphere of GATING. It is a dangerous proposition though, and failure of such an attempt can have disasterous results.

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