Getting back after a hiatus

[Herbert_West]

Hey there

Finally I might have the time to ST Wraith again.

A couple of questions:
1, Does WR20 have a ready-made adventure, either as an official release or as a storytellers vault thing? As far as I can tell, the ST Vault for Wraith in general is empty, the only titles I saw were official WW/OPP products. I know of the various other ones (Little Five Corners or something and the Midnight Epxress/Atlanta ones), but they dont fit my plans so far.
2, There used to be some great, potentially grey-to-black in legality sites that had a ton of info on them (Arcanoi, character creation, etc). I can't for the life of my remember what they were, and google comes up empty. I do have the sourcebooks (I have a nice, think, printed WR20 right next to me), but they can be cumbersome for me, let alone newbies. Those sites helped me out. Did they get nuked?
3, I am still a bit confused about how the Skinlands and the Shadowlands overlap canonically. Lets say there is a building in the Skinlands. Is there one in the Shadowlands then? Is it the same? Is it some earlier, emotionally more charged version? What happens when a Wraith has to go through a door in the Skinlands that is not in the Shadowlands, and vice versa?*

* I think I used to have a definitive opinion on this, but alas my knowledge has been eaten by Oblivion.

Thanks!

[Callishka]

I'm not aware of a ready-made Wr20 adventure, but I could have missed one. I recommend doing a session zero that encourages a shared foundation for all PCs (shared fetter, passion, cause of death, reaper, etc). Then, study what your players have come up with, and/or ask probing questions to figure out what they'd like to do, and build the first couple story sessions based on that!

I mean, there's this? But it's not Wr20: http://wraithlarp.net/creation.html

As for Skinlands/Shadowlands, people disagree about this, but I think the books are pretty consistent and relatively clear: A building (or other object) only appears in the Shadlowands once it has been destroyed, buried, totally abandoned or decayed (IE, to the point of being lost to the living), or otherwise lost to time. If it has not been thus destroyed or lost, and if it was not invested with some strong emotion, (and most buildings have emotions associated with them), it is not in the Shadowlands.

So if building exists in the Skinlands, that same building cannot also be in the Shadlowands, unless it was demolished and rebuilt in the same spot. In that case, you would have two buildings in the same spot, one on each side of the Shroud. Technically, they are two buildings, but the living only notice the new one. Ghosts could pass through the walls/surfaces of the new building with some effort, but they could not ever pass through the walls of the relic (destroyed) building. Buildings renovated after being partially destroyed become strange funhouses of intersecting walls and false floors for ghosts to navigate. This is mentioned in the 2E book when it discusses the renovated White House.

Don't forget that relic-matter is extremely valuable, so the Necropli and Stygia (not to mention people like Renegades and relic hunters, known as magpies) scavenge some relic buildings for other construction. This means that relic buildings don't have to remain in place forever. In addition, any relic that does not receive some emotional investment from ghostly users eventually fades away, if it isn't somehow reinforced by a craft to make it a nearly permanent artifact.

Note that in India's Shadowlands, relic buildings and other pieces of infrastructure and architecture DO NOT fade away, so that environment is much more jumbled and chaotic.

"The bulk of the raw materials are memories,
relics of destroyed items from the Skinlands
that made their way across the Shroud and were
scavenged to feed Stygia’s insatiable appetite.
Chunks of buildings, cars (wrecked and usable),
torn-up rail lines, and the asphalt from abandoned highways, all of
these find their way to the Underworld and, in capable hands, are
put to use. There’s a reason wraithly architecture looks like it’s made
from bits and bobs haphazardly welded together; that’s because it
is. Look at the walls of a Citadel and you might see brick from a
beloved schoolhouse cheek-by-jowl with concrete buttresses from an
imploded stadium and steel girders from an old shipyard left to rust.
But while they may be common materials, they’re not necessarily the strongest, which is why the economy of Stygia really runs on something else: souls. (Wr20 42)"

"Relics come from the Skinlands. They’re
the ghosts of things that have been destroyed or have been
abandoned or rotted away, and they materialize throughout
the Shadowlands at the moment of their final destruction in
the lands of the living. But mere destruction isn’t enough; they
also need to have been invested with emotional significance —
positive or negative — by someone. It’s that emotional fuel that
provides the kick that turns a broken toy into an intact relic.
This produces some odd disparities in the Underworld — there
may be a billion broken cheap ballpoint pens in the world, but
it’s the fancy models that were given as birthday presents and
anniversary gifts that tend to pop up as relics (Wr20 44)"

"Unless reinvested with emotional energy, relics eventually
crumble and fade. Sometimes it’s a question of years, sometimes of centuries, but they’re simply not made to last in the Underworld. Artifacts, on the other hand, tend to endure the
ages exceptionally well, and thus are generally more desirable (Wr 20 44)"

"The Underworld of Swar is a grand panoply of historic
buildings, sculptures, and natural spaces, each of which are
reflected and distorted versions of their Bhur versions. In Swar,
shadow versions of structures do not erode after their Bhur
version’s decay, which results in a bizarre assembly of old and
new stacked on top of and inside each other. To observe Swar
from a distance is to look at a maze the likes of which M.C.
Escher would be proud (Book of Oblivion 106)"