Paragons Design Journal #6

The Imageria

The Breakout revealed more than just people with paranormal powers to the world, it also opened up entire new worlds for them to explore, or an entire realm that contains many other worlds, depending on how you look at it. It is a place of imagination made manifest, a realm of thought, idea, myth, and potential, called the Imageria.

In essence, the Imageria is an immaterial alternate dimension that appears to encompass all of human thought, myth, and story. Literally every idea anyone has ever had can exist somewhere in its depths, and the more who have shared in a particular idea, the stronger its presence in the Imageria. The very strongest ideas form unique worlds and even beings capable of interaction with visitors. Some claim these places and powers are the gods of human belief, others consider them psychological archetypes or primal forces, appearing as gods in order to impress or simply so humans can comprehend them.

The Imageria may well be as infinite as the imagination itself, although it does have several distinct zones or layers to it, so far as anyone has been able to determine. What lies in the furthest reaches of the imaginal realm remains unknown, as no one can claim to have ventured there and returned, at least, no one sane or trustworthy.

Paths of the Unknown

It’s somewhat difficult to talk about the Imageria in terms of mundane geography: it is a realm beyond space and time as we know them, simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. It’s impossible to point to where it lies in three-dimensional space, or to talk about its regions as anything other then experiences, rather than places.

The most applicable model of the Imageria is one of layers. Think of the peaks of mountainous islands, thrusting up above a thick layer of clouds. Standing upon one of those peaks, you can see others thrusting up above the mists. The peaks are like individual people, the realm above the clouds like the real world in which we live. Unable to see any deeper, the individuals seem unconnected, the forces moving the mist appear somewhat random.

Walk down the slope and into the mist and you’re in the first layer of the Imageria, the Border, the part touching upon the physical world. You can still see the peaks above the clouds, but faintly, and less and less as you move further away. So it is in the misty borders of the Imageria, just beyond the physical into the realm of thought.

Down and down, the slope finally reaches the surface of an island, surrounded by an ocean. The island is the Reaches, the “near realms” of the Imageria, and it is even inhabited. It’s some distance from the high peaks of the real world, but what goes on there in the clouds still affects things here.

All the way downhill, you come to a beach and the ocean. Walk out into the ocean and the waters begin to close over you as you pass into the Depths, the deepest part of the Imageria it’s possible to easily reach. Just like water is thicker and heavier than air, the thoughts and forces are stronger and more viscous, life is more primal.

Down, down into the depths, where the light of the world cannot reach, lies the Abyss; darker and deeper than any ocean trench, where life is as alien and strange as you can imagine. It is the “smoker vents” of the deep mind, the lightless chasm of the soul.

If you could go all the way to the bottom, braving the darkness and whatever dwells there, you would eventually find the sea-bed, the Deep Beyond, and you would see how the island peaks all merge into one surface, one land, one world at this level, just as the Imageria and all reality merge into one, a singularity of experience and existence. Few ever reach this depth, and fewer still return from it.

Of course, the Imageria is not an ocean, or islands, or mist, and the real world isn’t made of mountaintops, but it’s as good an explanation as any for the experience of traveling into a place that is not a place at all but more a state of mind.

Is the Imageria “Real”?

There’s a great deal of speculation and debate as to whether or not the Imageria is a “real” place or layer of reality or simply some kind of sophisticated hallucination experienced by paranormals with the ability to access it. Thus far, there’s no conclusive evidence that gives credence to one explanation over another.

There is proof the Imageria can affect physical reality in various ways. Some paragons can summon or conjure things from its depths, things with physical substance and even permanence. Likewise, some paranormals are able to bodily enter the Imageria, disappearing from the physical world entirely and even taking passengers along with them! Others only enter the Imageria in a mental or spiritual state, leaving their physical body behind in a deep trance, but even then the physical form often shows signs of whatever the paranormal is experiencing in the other realm.

Experiences in the Imageria have affected paranormals’ powers, insights, and psyches. More importantly, there’s considerable evidence it’s possible to be injured or even die in the Imageria and, for most paragons, that’s more than enough evidence of its “reality” for them.