Spoilers: So. What information is there on the Netherworld?

To me Netherworld is on another dimension, just like psychic plane, only you pass by it when you die and if you are a bad bad person there's a chance the shadows will take your soul away and remain there and suffer there, until someone summons your soul back only to harness it. It's an evil purgatory. I can imagine there is a never ending discomfort, you feel very negative and rebellious, so much negative energy! No wonder why everything there wants to get out of there and do chaos. After all it's my view of it...

They should do an incarnate zone there!

I would compare it to Tartarus, Sheol, the Mayan underworld, etc etc.

The way I pictured it, the Netherworld was a necessary subspace component to the normal world. Resonating at a different frequency it is an area of inverse potential from the normal fabric of the universe. When this dimensional frequency overlaps with the normal universe, they interact destructively with each other. This preforms work, most of which deals with corroding away material by altering the basic quantum state of the regular universe. This happens when the dimensions overlap, and not the objects in them, however, so a being from the netherworld can pass into the regular world without much of a problem.

Well. To derail my own thread.. But what Prometheus says about the well and dimensions and stuff.... Could that mean DJ Zero is a Well?

From my part of the country the Netherworld is a cheesy haunted house.

As for the Spiritual Plane, I mentally associated it with the DC Comics concept of the Phantom Zone.

I find it useful to treat the netherworld (and most metaverse elements) using the "Elephant and the Blind Men" metaphor.

These places are so vast and alien that our minds can't really register them. Much like the blind man encountering the elephant's trunk and thinking its a tree branch, we experience a small piece of a realm that literally defies human comprehension and we try to make sense of it, building up a mythos to support what we see. Other blind men encountering the elephant's tail, ear, or side come up with their own vastly different explanation. None (or very few) of us are capable of seeing the whole thing as it really exists. Trying leads to madness.

This has the advantage of leaving options wide open for the players. They can make what they want out of it without really conflicting with one another.




It could be fun to mix this with the idea that the collective subconscious actually "gives form to the formless." As more "blind men" come to believe in a certain mythos, the collective thoughts creates a "bubble of reality" in the netherworld that matches those beliefs. Charon the ferryman isn't just how we interpret traversing into the netherworld, like the previous example. Our collective belief in him has made Charon real.

Charon may or may not be aware of this. He may believe that he is exactly what the mythos says he is and the netherworld (to him)is the only netherworld... but maybe he's fully aware of the truth. What if he knew that his existence- his entire world's existence- was dependent on our beliefs. Would he try to shape that belief to gain influence in his world? What if he was aware of the other psyche-spawned netherworlds of other cultures? What if they were in competition for believers? What if that competition turned to war?

To expand a little on what I posted earlier, and give my own thoughts on the various realms:

The Netherworld is the realm of darkness and anti-life, the underworld; it is one of the realms of the dead. Its presence is inimical to life-as-we-know it - when it seeps or is pulled into this realm, or living questers venture there, it saps energy and vitality. A prepared traveler will take precautions against this.

My idea of the Spirit World is strongly formed by WW's Umbra, among other influences (from which they also drew). It's a metaphorical overlay for the "real" world, just on the other side of the mirror - and I mean literally metaphorical, if that makes any sense. Things there take their true form, in a spiritual and moral sense; a spandex-clad hero may appear as a shining knight, while evil and corrupt beings have that inner ugliness made manifest. It is possible, with the Sight and similar gifts, to see into this realm without actually entering it. The Spirit World is vast, possibly infinite; you can stay near the "shore", where it mostly reflects the material world, or venture out into the uncharted and alien frontiers, where things (and the beings encountered) get very strange.