★★★
Shadowlands are places where the lands of the dead and the realms of the living are closer than they have any business being. The results of great battles, horrible plagues or terrible acts of depravity and murder, they are gateways between the two worlds, existing in both simultaneously.
Shadowlands are many of the features of the Underworld: The light of the sun shines less clearly in them, casting a pallor over everything even on those rare days when clouds don't blacken the sky. The air carries a noticeable chill, even at the height of summer. Little lives in most shadowlands; most animals will not willingly stay in a shadowland, and even battle-hardened and trained mounts will seek to escape them at their earliest opportunity. Most plants fare poorly in shadowlands. A few species of trees grow there - black ash, weeping willow, hemlock and yew among them. A smaller number of undergrowth plants - oleander, nightshade, arrowgrass, nettles, aconite and poinsettias, among others - seem to do well. Common knowledge holds that to eat any plant in a shadowland is to invite death, and this is not far from the truth. Few plants that will grow in a shadowland are healthy to eat, and many are extremely toxic.
Storms howl through shadowlands, gaining intensity from the proximity of the Underworld. There are no gentle rains in shadowlands, only great smashing storms that fill th esky with thunder and actinic lightning or dreary, seemingly never-ending rainstorms that turn even the hardest of sun-baked soils into hip-deep mud. Some of the storms that beset the shadowlands sweep out of the Underworld (especially at night), and these are horrid affairs, raining down blood, ashen water and its of bone or flesh on those unfortunate enough to be caught in them.
Most of the stones that can be easily mined from shadowlands are dark in colour; black sandstone, obsidian, basalt, dark marbles and black granite. Metals mined here are also dark in colour - even gold and silver take on a sullen, dark countenance when mined from shadowland deposits - only dark gemstones are mined from shadowlands: blood rubies, garnets, amethysts and black opals predominate. The riches of the shadowlands are said to carry with them the taint of death and avarice. Many who take gold of the shadowlands come to bad ends or become acquisitive beyond their means.
Um, also from Exalted. sweatdrop
★★★
