When people think about the Actuality, they often think of the realm of the Indigo Sun.

Indigo is not past, present, or future, but rather truth. The number of truth is 4, dichotomy both doubled and squared. This is the Real World. Capital R. Capital W. But the real world is one of thoughts and ideas. Truth is not a solid bit of rock—it is an immovable, unchangeable concept. (It is also relative, which gives Indigo its life and motion.)

Newcomers to Indigo from Shadow comment on the sharpness, brightness, and clarity of even the most mundane objects, sounds, and smells. There is no mistaking that you’ve entered a new—and far more substantial—realm altogether upon that first arrival. Beauty is more beautiful there. But ugliness is more hideous as well.

Although flat, the realm stretches out (perhaps) boundlessly with seas of cloudy musings and conceptual landmasses, many still as yet not fully explored. And at the center of it all, the Glistening City, the City of Notions, Satyrine.

The most significant thing to know about Satyrine is that it was reduced to ruin and rubble in the War. The inhabitants are restoring and rebuilding the city, but that is more difficult than it would seem because the weapons used in the War left behind extraordinarily dangerous hate-powered, cancerous objects called cysts. This has led to focusing on districts that were not utterly devastated and building out from each of these, like oases of safety and sanctuary in a desert of ruins.

Indigo’s warden is an ancient being known only as Quiss. If Quiss still exists, such is a mystery. Did genderfluid Quiss die in the War? Is Quiss in hiding? Many hope Quiss will return in full glory one day. Regardless of any physical existence, however, Quiss is still guardian of the Indigo gateway on the Path of Suns, and as such, vislae find a way to establish some form of communion when needed.

INHABITANTS OF INDIGO

Perhaps the most populated of realms, Indigo is home to hundreds of millions of people. Clans of elderbrin live in great numbers throughout the realm, and the highest population of lacuna live in Indigo as well. And of course, the half-worlds are home to a great many strange and wondrous peoples.

LOCATIONS ILLUMINATED BY AN INDIGO SUN

Rolling hills, small copses of trees, rows of hedges, and narrow brooks compose much of Indigo, at least in what most people accept to be the center of the realm, surrounding Satyrine. Beyond that, it gets wilder and the terrain becomes far more dramatic.

The Alone: Satyrine is a port city with two ports. One lies upon the vast and still sea known as the Alone, and the other on a void called the Abstraction. The Alone is almost always calm and is filled with islands inhabited by unique cultures and creatures.

The Abstraction: Matter breaks down in the Abstraction, but it does so slowly. In a borderland unlike anything in the Actuality, the Blue and Indigo influence each other. In the Abstraction, truth becomes thought and thoughts turn to truth.

Matter disintegrates, but over centuries. Which means that the very edge of the land (upon which Satyrine rests) slowly calves off island-like masses that float in the Abstraction. These islands eventually join the Unfathomable Archipelago. The discorporation of matter (which proves its false nature) and the preservation of truth—ideals, concepts, and so forth—figure prominently into the outlook of those who spend time in the Abstraction.

The Green holds nothing for dreams, so when a dream escapes from the Blue, it makes its way to Indigo instead. Leaked and errant dreams make up the clouds that stretch for miles in certain parts of the Abstraction. Ships can sail upon these dream clouds, but because the clouds are not flat like a typical ocean, only a careful and experienced sailor (or a potent magical craft) can navigate their peaks and valleys. The creatures that call the cloud seas home are dreams themselves, and often don’t look like anything you’d ever find in the water.

Even gravity has broken down in the Abstraction, so if you leap from the edge of the land into the void, you don’t fall, you drift. But slowly. And eventually you stop. Because momentum breaks down too. The only place this isn’t true is the place where the Abstraction and the Alone meet. Called Forever Falls, this is a waterfall that pours down into infinity.

The Unfathomable Archipelago: Located in the Abstraction, this archipelago of floating “islands” begins as a series of earthen masses covered in rocks, trees, and so on, but as one proceeds farther from the heart of Indigo and heads Blueward, the islands become entire worlds unto themselves, suspended in and surrounded by dream-filled clouds. These are the half-worlds, and from the outside, they look mostly like bubbles holding realms that are far larger on the inside, or lensed holes in the fabric of space that look in on completely different realms altogether.

Within the islands of the Archipelago, mystic mills use raw thoughts and feelings to create emotions and ideas that can be handled, bought, and sold. The vast majority are shipped to Satyrine in flying craft of all kinds for just such purposes.

Satyrine: Satyrine is the largest city in Indigo, founded many thousands of years ago as a trading hub for merchants selling thoughts, ideas, sensations, and feelings created in the Emotion Mills of the Unfathomable Archipelago. Eventually, some of those milling operations were brought to Satyrine itself. Before Satyrine was established, the site was home to another city, built by pre-human beings known as the arabast.

Tev Abbias: A city much smaller and newer than Satyrine, Tev Abbias nevertheless holds a place of importance in Indigo. This is where the migrating towers spend their winters, before fluttering off to their respective homes elsewhere in Indigo. In the winter, then, Tev Abbias grows to almost twice its size.

The towers that come here fly on giant wings no one knew they had until they unfurl them. Tall minarets, squat round towers, campaniles, clock towers—many varied types of flying buildings come to Tev Abbias in the winter. Sometimes, the towers bring their occupants with them, but other times they wait until they are empty before taking wing.

Mollune: A small city atop a hill surrounded by fertile fields of wheat and vegetables. Easily dismissed as a farm town, Mollune is built around a powerful magical site called the Cradle, sought for rituals and summonings by a variety of vislae. A council of elders attempts to regulate who can use the site and when, but sometimes unsanctioned rogues sneak in to perform rites under cover of night.

Indigo Rail: There is a train that runs throughout much of Indigo. It connects to the local train service in Satyrine, linking most of its districts. This is called, simply, the Indigo Rail, and its stops include Satyrine, Tev Abbias, Mollune, and more.

NIGHTSIDE OF THE INDIGO SUN

Nightside Indigo holds the number 14, placing it a level higher than 13, the number of mortality.

Since Indigo is truth, Nightside Indigo is the dark side of truth—the uncomfortable and disturbing parts of reality that we don’t want to admit are real. At least not in front of everyone. Thus, it is a realm of dark secrets. Appropriate for a place that looms beneath the city of Satyrine at the heart of Indigo.

THE HALF-WORLDS

Unlike the Leech Worlds clinging to the Nightside of Green, the half-worlds are small, individual worlds or dimensions that have existed for a very long time, like islands in the Abstraction. No one questions their right to exist. And no one has ever mapped or cataloged each one.

Yao Lan: A half-world where vislae focus their magic through a mixture of physical and magical martial applications which they call the sacred arts. The vislae in this half-world strive for advancement through greater understanding of these sacred arts through meditation and combat.