Much like the main in-game grid, the Umbra on TowersMUX makes heavy use of the concept of representational space. It’s not intended to be an exact replica of what the Umbra might look like in and around London; probably no two people would agree on that anyway. Instead, it’s meant primarily as a playable space where each individual “room” can serve as any of a number of different areas within the IC Umbra. Because the Umbra is generally accessible only to two of the three major groups of characters — Shifter and Mage, and only some of the latter — it’s substantially more abstracted than the main grid: there is a single Middle Umbra area for each London borough, or thirteen Umbral areas total as of this writing. There are also additional specific locations where appropriate, like the local Garou septs and some other areas of in-character significance.

As the main grid expands, the Umbra grid will expand along with it: when, say, the borough of Hammersmith & Fulham is built out, there will be a corresponding Middle Umbra area, and so on. 

Other Umbral Areas

We don’t expect, at this time, to add significant grid areas for the High or Low Umbra. There may eventually be a small number of specific locations that have associated areas in one or more of these worlds, but there will probably never be a one-room-per-borough High or Low Umbra in the same way there is for the Middle. For the most part, these other Umbras are specific to very small numbers of characters, and we feel that the effort required for a full grid would have more benefit for more players if spent elsewhere. It’s not impossible, but it is unlikely to be contemplated before completing all thirty-three London boroughs as well as some outlying areas like the Channel Coast, Brighton and the south coast, the Cotswolds, and so on.

The Digital Web is a similar story, but more so: it’s even more restricted in access, and is mostly of interest to Virtual Adepts, a few Glass Walkers and Ananasi, and Technocrats (the latter of which are not offered as PCs here). Furthermore, it of course bears little resemblance to the physical world in and around London. It’s likely that there will at some point be some implementation of the D-Web, but probably in a style similar to that suggested for the High and Low Umbra — a small number of specific locations rather than a full grid.

Traveling to and from the Umbra

The +umbra command is used to move characters from one world to another; see +help +umbra in-game for syntax and details. Notably, +umbra/travel does not always transport a character to the same place; with one Umbra grid area for the 8-14 grid areas in the physical world, we opted to have the command select one of the associated physical-world areas at random when traveling there from the Middle Umbra. This should not be interpreted as IC forcing separation of characters who travel through together; if you’re all in the Pimlico Umbra when you make the transfer, you’ll all end up in Pimlico, even though the code may send you elsewhere. While sometimes inconvenient, we felt this was a better solution than trying to select a single real-world point to send all Umbral travelers to; this may be revisited in the future if it proves too aggravating.