The greater London area encompasses some of the most developed and urbanized areas in the world, but also some areas of preserved wilderness, and its Umbral landscape is almost as varied. There’s a great deal of room to tell stories in, and about, the Umbra, and we don’t want to keep you from telling them — but we do want to establish some basics in order to help the stories we all tell be relatively consistent, and keep everyone be more or less on the same page, narratively speaking. (For information on our view of the structure of the Umbra, please see Umbral Cosmology; this page assumes some knowledge of what the spirit world is like and what the different terms for various parts of it mean.)

TowersMUX views the London Umbra, except where otherwise noted, as a dangerous — but not instantly or invariably fatal — place. Going into the Umbra is not like walking down the street to go to the shops — every time you cross the Gauntlet, you’re taking a risk, and while nine times out of ten you may not be forced to deal with anything particularly dangerous, there is no such thing as a “routine” Umbral journey. Character should treat traveling to, and within, the Umbra with appropriate seriousness, and staff will take that into account when considering XP spends related to the spirit world.

The Spirit Wilds and the Middle Umbra

Because of its extensive history of urbanization and industrialization, as well as its status as the world headquarters of Pentex, the Spirit Wilds of London are — by and large — a particularly depressing place. In the most urbanized parts of the city, they’re a nightmare of either the Weaver or the Wyrm (if not both) run completely amok. In spaces dominated by the Weaver, her webs are everywhere, turning even a simple walk of a block or two into a struggle through a bewildering labyrinth infested with Pattern Spiders who regard any intruders as rogue elements to be either forced into compliance, ejected, or eliminated.

Where the Wyrm holds sway, the blight is as bad as it ever was during the days of smokestacks belching coal fumes into the sky, with Banes that range from the tiny to the monstrous constantly pushing things deeper and deeper into decay. Often, the only thing that saves travelers from being assaulted is that Weaver and Wyrm are too preoccupied in struggling with one another to waste any time on anything not of either. Even the Fenestre Holdings building and the Sept headquartered there is at best a fortress under siege, with the idea of gaining ground being all but impossible and even holding on to their current territory being a constant struggle.

The parks, gardens, and green spaces are only a little better — few of them have much in the way of the Wyld about them, and only constant vigilance on the part of their caretakers (whether Garou, Fera, mage, or Changeling) keeps them from being broken down and corrupted by the world around them. The hearts of such areas are still something of a refuge, but the outskirts are constantly being probed and invaded by spirits of either Weaver or Wyrm, sometimes obvious, sometimes the furthest thing from it.

In more suburban areas, things are not quite so bad — the ossification and corruption of the city center are still present, but significantly less overwhelming, and places like Hampstead Heath and Richmond Park have achieved an uneasy kind of security, with the intrusions (though still occurring regularly) being more likely to be slow and stealthy than overt and violent. Still, the only sizeable area that could truly be considered “safe” — for Garou, at least, if not at all for any non-Garou intruders — is Ruislip Woods in Hillingdon, the site of the Sept of the Spiked Pavise.

The Shadowlands and the Lower Umbra

For the living, the Shadowlands is rarely a pleasant place under any circumstances; the number of people who can feel at all comfortable when surrounded by so much entropic energy is very small indeed. Even most of those among the undead who are capable of interacting with the Lower Umbra find it discomfiting, and those who don’t are often shunned by their own kind as unhealthily close to madness, if not already over that line.

London is no exception. The Shadowlands and the London Necropolis are crowded with ghosts, some of which even date back to the plague years, to the Great Fire, or to the Blitz. The majority of them just want to go about their afterlives in peace, but in a population as large as this, “majority” is not a comforting phrase. The chances of encountering an angry, frustrated, or mad wraith during the course of one’s travels are dismayingly high, and, if one manages to avoid them, there is also the possibility that the ghostly Hierarchy may take offense at the presence of the living (or, in the cast of vampires, the not-yet-dead).

In short, while the Shadowlands are less of an overt battleground than the Spirit Wilds, they are by no means safe, and when something hostile is encountered, the chance of a more organized and less haphazard response than either the Wyrm or the Weaver are capable of is alarmingly high.

The Astral Plane and the High Umbra

By comparison to the Middle and Lower Umbras, the High Umbra might seem refreshingly safe. As far as external threats go, this is true: although there are significant environmental hazards, outright attack by astral denizens is much less likely. What is much more dangerous, however, are the psychological hazards; of being trapped in a maze of incomprehensible ideas and unable to find a way out, or of being so mesmerized by a fascinating idea or concept that one loses one’s self entirely and never returns to the mortal world, eventually becoming a spirit being oneself.

The two most dangerous things in the High Umbra are thinking too much and not thinking enough. Either can be equally deadly, and those who opt to explore this part of the spirit world must guard carefully against both.

The Near Umbra

Our expectation is that most play in the Umbra will take place before the Near Horizon; venturing past it, and out into the Near Umbra, should be an experience that’s rare and worth talking about, even for character types for whom venturing into the Umbra is a regular part of their lives. Even getting to the Near Umbra is hard. Finding your way to a destination, succeeding in your quest, and getting home safely is even harder. Someone who’s done this at all is worthy of respect when it comes to their knowledge of the spirit world, all the more so if they do it more than once.

Travel to the Near Umbra will involve an escalated level of danger, both in terms of the trip there and back, and in terms of the challenges you can expect to encounter when there. Going past Horizon is an announcement to staff that you don’t feel like you need training wheels any more, and while that’s great, and something we encourage people to try when they feel they’re ready, you should also be aware that it will carry with it a greater risk of failure, and a higher chance of negative consequences whether you succeed or not.

The Deep Umbra

The Deep Umbra is the furthest frontier of the game, and one that we expect that very few characters will ever journey to. A successful quest into the Deep might well be the high point of a character’s career, and is something that should be worthy of being talked about for weeks, if not months. It’s a really big deal, and it demonstrates a level of knowledge and ability that places people who accomplish it in the upper echelons of any of London’s spheres.

Accordingly, the Deep Umbra is also a place that represents a high risk of failure and of negative consequences — among the highest you can find on TowersMUX. If you opt to make the journey, you should do so with the awareness that staff expect more such attempts to fail than to succeed, and antagonists will be designed accordingly. “Negative consequences” doesn’t necessarily mean character death — there are a lot of other ways things can go wrong in the Deep Umbra — but it is one possibility, and staff will feel less inclined to pull their punches when it comes to combat past the Membrane.