The Netherealm is indeed a mysterious place and only a few gifted unicorns and mages have the knowledge and power to transverse it physically, though most unicorns (and many humans) transverse it regularly via thought waves or astral projections.

Traditionally known as the home of the demons (which we shall discuss in depth in just a bit), the Netherealm is technically not an actual world, rather a plane of existence that lies between and amidst the fabric of the "real" world, extending across all of Rainbow's End, connecting, separating, and encompassing it. Existence in the Netherealm is one of pure thought and sensation, one without physical limitations, but also without physical manifestations of any kind. The landscape, sensed only with the "thoughtsense" that is inherent in all beings (best described as a sort of automatic intuition), is bland and without real color; it is sculpted only of pure energy, the different types of which differentiate the different "landforms", rather than the light frequencies which allow us to differentiate objects in the "real" world. Indeed, things that appear in the Netherealm do not always exist there - many are after images, imprints left by particularly powerful presences. Sometimes a particularly strong thought or emotion can be projected as a transphysical manifestation in the Netherealm, so travelers must always keep their thoughts and feelings in check, especially since thought/emotion projections are so easily detected by the demon inhabitants of the Netherealm.

Also inhabiting the Netherealm are "Ghosts", or those few souls who once freed from their natural bodies were somehow prevented from moving on, trapped either by will or by circumstance in the great void of the between. Though no one truly knows what happens to those souls that do move on, those trapped in the Netherealm retain most of the properties they possessed as a living being, at least emotionally and intellectually. Any magical talent they once had, however, no longer operates and they may not communicate with beings from the outside world unless contacted. Essentially, they are "trapped" in a sort of static, purely ethereal state and are doomed to wander the Netherealm forever unless freed by an outside force or unless destroyed by a demon.

Since the dawn of the Dark Time, the word "demon" has been equated with pure evil and no wonder! Demons themselves are merely cognizant manifestations of destructive magic which collected over time in some pocket of the Netherealm, only to escape the Realm through outside interference. While harmless to those in the "real" world as long as they remain confined within the Netherealm, demons are quick to pounce upon any sources of magical power in the physical world if freed, and are very, very dangerous. Fortunately, many are too stupid to pose *too* much of a threat, but if they are under the command of a powerful leader (such as the Demon King during the Dark Time), their powers can be virtually unstoppable.

Sometimes, a "hole" will manifest itself in the Netherealm, allowing the creatures within to travel to a random spot in the physical world, though they remain in ethereal form. These holes are a fairly new discovery, but scholars believe that if they can learn to control them, they may be an important way of transcontinental travel as they seem to transverse physical locations without regard to actual distances between points and with minimal temporal displacement.

The main use of the Netherealm, however, resides in the apparent role it plays in telepathic communication, most often employed by unicorns and Bonded humans. Just a few years after the Dark Time subsided, scholars discovered that the universal quality that allowed unicorns and humans to understand each other via telepathy was not due to a common language, rather to a sort of "synaptic codebreaker" in the unicorns' (and really all magical creatures') brains- a magic catalyst that worked by recognizing chemicals that represented certain images, emotions, and concepts, and then associated them in both human and animal brains, therefore acting like a creature's own personal translator - without either party having ever to form a single word in either mind or mouth. Telepathy, itself, however, was impossible without the existence of the Netherealm - the ether through which the transmission of such coded images and concepts could be sent. Though essential to the process of telepathy, unfortunately the Netherealm itself offers too much interference for a telepathic message to be coherently sent over a distance of over fifty or sixty miles, though particulary telepathically gifted beasts and mages have been recorded to have transmitted over 150 miles.

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Rainbow's End is the creation of Amber McNett
Page Designed and Maintained by player Rebecca Engelmann
[Text written by Amber]