Shadow Universe

"My home should remain sealed against your world, for even a moment's contact spreads the very cascade that led to complete elemental collapse. Something even I would never desire..."

- Erebus, on the Shadow Universe, The Journey Home!

The Shadow Universe is a universe contiguous to the Lorian sector in the multiverse. Once a universe where the use of hybrid elemental magics was advanced and excessively commonplace, a blurring between the boundaries of its elemental planes caused the collapse of its Planes of Darkness and Light in on each other, destroying the tangible universe (The Journey Home!).

Though efforts were made to stop the collapse—such as that of Dr. Celestus and Miss Lordover with their antiphoton bomb—, it could not be stopped as they were unaware of its cause. A scant few managed to flee the dying universe, crossing over into the main Lore. Finally, the universe's collapse destroyed everything (planets, stars, galaxies, even the gods), blendeding all of it together into a hybrid mix of Light and Darkness. With the original universe wiped out, it risked being pruned from reality entirely unless it could reform itself in some construct or form. So, this primordial shadow, a maelstrom of countless lives of mortals and gods blended together into a massless, shapeless 'thing' became a sentient entity, the "Mother". Its first creation was Erebus, for which he came to be known as the "Firstborn" (The Journey Home!).

However, the universe struggled to reproduce his model and, unable to perfect the formula, it abandonded that method of creation. Instead, it looked to fool reality, to mirror another universe and "copy" from it. It chose Lore, most likely due to the trail left behind those universe's "escapees", and so created a copycat universe. To prevent the entire universe from being a mere copycat and to maintain some semblance of control, though, the universe was divided into many layers. One such is the "puppet layer", the most simplistic and the one most people see, as the gates tap into it. It mirrors Lore, creating the shadow creatures as reflections of their Lorian counterparts. This layer of the universe distinctly lacks free will. It is known that the Mother dwells, dormant, in its deepest layer (The Journey Home!).

The Shadow Universe is infamous for its tendency to...