TEXT: Lords of Gossamer & Shadow 
   
    
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   by Rob Donoghue 
  
   
   
   
  Rite Publishing Presents: 
   
  Lucien’s Guide: Legends & Lies 
   
  Explorer (Author): Rob Donoghue 
  Seeker (Editor): Steven D. Russell 
  Searcher (Cover Artist): Michael Richards 
  Trailblazers (Interior Artists): Matt Morrow,  
  Michael Richards, Brenda Clark, Mursku Xenos,  
  Jason Rainville, Adrian Mark Gillespie,  
  Luiz Eduardo Borges 
  Pioneer (Trade Dress): James “Devin Knight” Hazelett  
  Lost Boy (Layout and Publisher): Steven D. Russell 
   
   
   
   
   
  Based on Lords of Gossamer & Shadow by Jason Durall 
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Lucien’s Guide: Legends & Lies Copyright © 2015 Steven D. Russell All rights reserved. Lords of Gossamer and Shadow Copyright © 2012-2013 Steven D. Russell All rights 
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  I sit down to compose this largely because 
  I am sick and tired of answering the same 
  questions over and over again.  Apparently 
  being borderline transcendent beings 
  capable of striding across the cosmos does 
  not make us immune to the lure of folklore. 
  I have no idea what makes these particular 
  stories so resilient - some of them are 
  based on events which are so far outside of 
  living memory that I can’t even imagine 
  who perpetuates them. 
   
  But for all that, I cannot pretend that they 
  have no value.  Some of these stories are 
  merely twisting of real or important things.  
  The memory of Gilead, for example, will 
  likely be with us for a long time, and it 
  behooves us to see that it mutates as little 
  as possible. Other tales are the sharp point 
  of larger stories, thing which might 
  reasonably be called the Warden’s domain. 
   
  And so I present you a collection of some of 
  the 
  more 
  pernicious 
  tales 
  I 
  have 
  encountered in my travels up and down the 
  Stair.  They may offer you some useful 
  insights, but at the very least they may 
  spare you from looking like an untutored 
  novice when someone speaks of the 
  Paladin of Gilead, or tells a war story about 
  dealing with The Incursion. 
   
   
  Doorghuls 
   
  The Legend: There are shapeshifting 
  creatures - Januavores, or “Doorghuls” - 
  who inhabit the Stair who can take the 
  form of doors. Indistinguishable under 
  normal inspection.  Should you step 
  through one, you are taking one way trip 
  into its belly, never to be seen again. 
   
  The Truth: I start with this one because 
  while it’s mostly nonsense, it’s incredibly 
  persistent. 
   
   
   
  So, first and foremost, there are no such 
  creatures.  They would either need to 
  contain otherworldly space within them 
  (which I’m confident is not possible within 
  the Stair) or have very thin stomachs 
  indeed.  Doors turning into fangy maws 
  and drawing in prey with giant tongues 
  makes for fanciful tales, but has no real 
  substance behind it. 
   
  Which is not to say that there are no 
  predators which take advantage of the 
  nature of the stair.  Even if you set aside 
  Zane’s crazy ass theory about predator 
  worlds, there are more mundane dangers 
  which may inspire this. 
   
  Setting aside the simple mundane threat of 
  dangerous creatures living on the other 
  side of a door, some worlds have 
  documented predators which are very but 
  capable of wrapping themselves around 
  their prey like a blanket. These creatures 
  are usually capable of blending into their 
  environs, taking the form of a floor or 
  1 
   
  
   
  ceiling, and it’s entirely possible one could 
  take the form of a Door. 
   
  This is not to say that it’s time to start 
  stabbing every door you see, just in case. 
  Setting aside that a warden should be able 
  to trivially penetrate this deception, the 
  simple reality is that the stair is not 
  friendly to long term habituation, even by 
  strange shape-shifting door creatures. And 
  more, such creatures would have no way to 
  get to the stair on their own, so it’s possible 
  that a Warden with a strange sense of 
  humor might seed a stretch of the Stair 
  with this sort of creature, it would require 
  fairly regular maintenance for them to be 
  any kind of persistent threat. 
   
   
  The Fall of Gilead 
   
  The Legend: Gilead was the last shining 
  beacon of hope in the universe, but it was 
  betrayed and fell to the Dwimmerlaik. A 
  handful of Paladins still wander the Stair, 
  righting wrongs, and they are all that is left 
  of the great silver empire.  But some say 
  Gilead is not fallen, merely lost, and the 
  Paladin’s seek it to this day.  Further, it is 
  said, in our darkest hour, Gilead will 
  return, 
   
  The Truth:  The Protectorate of Gilead 
  was ancient and well into decline when the 
  Dwimmerlaik struck.  It did not survive the 
  conflict. The eldest Lords can still tell you 
  what it was like to walk Gilead’s silver halls 
  in its days of glory, and their stories are 
  always bittersweet, for its loss is something 
  they still feel.  To some of them, we Lords 
  today are the heirs of Gilead, and how we 
  have lived up to that mantle is a subject of 
  some debate. Of course, to others, Gilead is 
  just one more dead world.  I express no 
  opinion on the subject, but I do caution 
  that it is a topic to broach with care. 
   
  Gilead proper was a world with thousands 
  of Doors upon it, and they had extended 
  true rulership into a handful of other 
  worlds, beyond their borders.  More often, 
  however, their presence on other worlds 
  was invited as these worlds came under 
  Gilead’s protection, offering a small 
  amount of tribute in return for protected 
  trade between worlds and protection from 
  the Paladins of Gilead against any external 
  threat.  As Gilead controlled the bulk of 
  travel, it was rare and difficult for worlds to 
  come into conflict, and conflicts within a 
  given world were largely treated as internal 
  affairs. 
   
  Of course, that works better on paper than 
  in practice.  One simply cannot maintain a 
  structure that complicated without edge 
  cases and exceptions, and over time the 
  Protectorate had to commit more and 
  more resources to maintaining stability. 
  That curtailed growth and, paired with the 
  difficulty in the training of Paladins, 
  eventually lead to a decline, as worlds left 
  the Protectorate.  It was a slow process, 
  taking place over generations, and by the 
  time the Dwimmerlaik threat arose, all the 
  Protectorate encompassed was a few 
  hundred worlds. 
   
  Which is not to say they did not put up a 
  hell of a fight.  Records are a mess, but 
  there’s a good chance that Gilead was 
  fighting the Dwimmerlaik before others 
  ever recognized the threat.  As battles 
  spread, there were many worlds that were 
  saved by the timely arrival of a dropship of 
  Paladins, and their fights still echo in 
  legends.  Had Gilead stood, it is possible 
  that the Dwimmerlaik would have been 
  stopped cold, which is why its fall was such 
  a blow. 
   
  And, frustratingly, we still don’t entirely 
  understand how it happened. What we 
  know is this - The Dwimmerlaik attacked  
  2 
   
  
   
   
   
   
  Gilead directly and Gilead’s forces were 
  withdrawn from other fronts to face this 
  threat.  It looked like a desperate gambit on 
  the Dwimmerlaik’s part, for the cost of 
  taking Gilead would be immense, but it 
  was a feint. 
   
  At the time, it was known that the 
  Dwimmerlaik had the power to break 
  doors and sever worlds, and they had used 
  this to good effect in certain key battles. 
  However, our expectation had been that it 
  would be impossible to sever at world like 
  Gilead.  With its thousands of doors, no 
  amount of effort would make it a practical 
  undertaking. Yet somehow they managed 
  it.  Over the course of an afternoon, 
  perhaps even a single moment, every door 
  to Gilead went dead. 
   
  A handful of travelers escaped Gilead that 
  afternoon, and their stories are interesting 
  but hard to distinguish from the thousands 
  of frauds and shysters selling tales of the 
  last days of Gilead or promising maps to 
  fantastic treasures smuggled out before the 
  fall.  By reports, there was some amount of 
  atmospheric 
  disturbance 
  (red 
  skies, 
  thunderstorms) but more troubling are 
  recurring stories of a traitor and defenses 
  that did not do their job.  The implications 
  of that last are a little off-putting, because 
  if it’s true, then that traitor could still well 
  be among us. 
   
  There are a lot of theories about what 
  happened. One possibility is that the world 
  was simply destroyed. That is certainly 
  conceivable - there are weapons and beings 
  that are capable of this, but such things are 
  rarely deployed without significant effort 
  and even more significant secondary 
  effects.  I cannot imagine it happening so 
  cleanly, even if Gilead’s defenses were truly 
  down. 
   
  A second possibility is that we have greatly 
  underestimated the Dwimmerlaik’s power, 
  and that this is simply something they can 
  do. That is a terrifying thought, and I need 
  to be careful that I don’t dismiss this option 
  because I don’t want it to be true. 
  Upon consideration, I would say it is not 
  impossible, but there are substantial 
  qualifiers to consider. Cutting off all of a 
  world’s doors simultaneously could not be 
  done from the stair.  It would need to be 
  performed from the world being cut off, 
  3 
   
  
   
  which means that if this happened, then 
  the means may have been lost along with 
  Gilead.  If it was something unique - an 
  artifact or the like - then this was truly a 
  one shot threat.  If it was something more 
  than the price must have been substantial, 
  for the Enemy have not used anything on 
  that scale since. 
   
  A third possibility is that it was not the 
  Dwimmerlaik at all, but rather Gilead’s 
  doing. It may sound mad on the surface of 
  things, 
  it 
  is 
  not 
  an 
  unreasonable 
  contingency plan - if an external threat 
  becomes to dangerous, put a killswitch on 
  the doors of your world. Perhaps the 
  Dwimmerlaik got too close, and Gilead’s 
  king decided that this was the only way to 
  preserve his world. 
   
  Certainly, Gilead could have done this. To 
  this day, many of their marvels have not 
  been replicated, and at the very center of 
  their power, with any amount of time to 
  prepare? I have no trouble envisioning it. 
   
  Still, for all its tragedy, the fall of Gilead 
  may have been for the best.  Even in 
  decline, their power was immense, and I 
  have little faith that their decline would 
  have continued peacefully. These things 
  tend to end in explosions of violence and 
  invasion, and I doubt Gilead would have 
  been 
  any 
  different. 
  Without 
  the 
  Dwimmerlaik, perhaps we’d be fighting a 
  very different war today. 
   
  Grim thoughts, but they lead to one that 
  may be grimmer. Assuming Gilead was not 
  destroyed, then it is still out there 
  somewhere, in the vastness of the cosmos.  
  It is still a seat of immense power, and 
  there were still substantial Dwimmerlaik 
  forces on the world when it fell.  What 
  shape is that world in now? Whoever holds 
  the world has had time to gather power, 
  knowing that there are other worlds out 
  there, but not knowing what has transpired 
  there.  Imagine all that could happen in 
  such a place. And then imagine what would 
  happen should a door ever open again - 
  perhaps it would be a return of long lost 
  allies, but perhaps it would be an entirely 
  new threat. 
   
  As to the Paladins - Gilead’s power might 
  loosely be described as a union of 
  technology and sorcery, but with such 
  sophistication that the very comparison is 
  crude, like describing a violin a union of 
  dead trees and dead cats.  It most often 
  took the form of metals which changed 
  forms freely in accordance to the needs of 
  the user.  The quality of their work is such 
  that Gilead blades - which can take the 
  form of numerous weapons - are still 
  functioning and highly prized throughout 
  the stair. 
   
  This flexibility was part of how they could 
  project their power into other worlds. A 
  lone traveller with a single metal “Seed” 
  could plant it on another world and grow a 
  great silver mosque overnight.  These 
  mosques were centers of immense power, 
  which in turn could be tapped by the 
  Paladins. 
   
  Which leads to the Paladin.  Figures out of 
  legend, clad in armor of Gilead silver, a 
  single Paladin was like a walking engine of 
  destruction, wielding arcane fires, less 
  arcane projectiles and molecular-edged 
  blades as the circumstances called for it.  
  Adherents to a strict code, the Paladins 
  were almost custom made to be larger than 
  life. 
   
  And to answer your question, yes, a few 
  still remain.  A few hundred were not 
  present on Gilead when it fell for one 
  reason or another, and a few score survived 
  the subsequent conflict. Those who remain 
  today are relics. Age will not claim them  
  4 
   
  
   
   
   
   
  while they are bound to their armor, but it 
  is said that madness has taken more than a 
  few.  Some try to find purpose in upholding 
  the code, others quest for a way back to 
  Gilead - a secret door, a lost relic, a dark 
  tower. Some guard the handful of 
  remaining silver mosques. 
   
  Those in the know show them hospitality 
  when they pass, out of memory of what has 
  been lost.  Those who get in their way tend 
  to see a bad outcome. 
   
  Rules 
  Artifacts of Gilead provide an excellent 
  backstory for any item with a shapeshifting 
  property, as well as a distinctive physical 
  appearance.  A character in possession of 
  such an artifact may have a tie to Gilead, or 
  may simply have acquired it through other 
  means. Any artificer who has been around 
  the stairs long enough will be familiar with 
  Gilead artifacts, and probably have seen a 
  few lesser ones. 
   
  Of course, a weapon that can change shape 
  is no great thing when compared to the 
  armor of a Paladin. Now, each Paladin’s 
  armor is unique in ways that are apparent 
  to them, but they share numerous similar 
  qualities - it takes a humanoid shape of a 
  uniform color (silver I most common, but 
  some have distinctive hues) with smooth, 
  liquid lines. The armor shifts to produce 
  appropriate armament, and also provides 
  incredible protection and mobility.  It also 
  keeps its owner alive, however much they 
  may come to wish otherwise. 
   
  5 
   
  
   
   
  Paladin Armor (57 Points) 
  • Pass Through Door (1 Point*) 
  • Immense Vitality (4 Points) 
  • Deadly Damage (4 Points) 
  • Engine Speed (4 Points) 
  • Combat Mastery (4 Points) 
  • Tireless Stamina (4 Points) 
  • Immense Vitality (4 Points) 
  • Psychic Neutral (2 Points) 
  • Invulnerable to Conventional 
  Weapons (4 Points) 
  • Danger Sensitivity (2 points) 
  • Regeneration (4 Points) 
  • Limited Shapeshift (4 Points) 
  • Convey Regeneration (10 Points) 
  • Convey Psychic Neutral (5 Points) 
   
  * - Before Gilead Fell, Paladin’s could 
  Search Through Worlds, always able to 
  return home, but that is no longer the case. 
   
  Traditionally, a Paladin and her armor are 
  bound for life, but that does not mean that 
  there are no exceptions.  It is not 
  inconceivable that a Paladin may find a 
  squire and find some way to pass on her 
  armor. It is even possible that some seeds 
  for Paladin armor are still in existence, 
  though what one would have to do to get 
  such a thing is an open question. 
   
  Should a character follow this path, it is 
  entirely possible that their armor will not 
  be a full Paladin levels when they start out 
  (which is to say, it may be made with rather 
  fewer points). In that case, the stats above 
  reflect the items potential, whether or not 
  the character ever achieves it. 
   
   
  The Darkened Doors 
   
  The Legend: There are doors (sometimes 
  7, sometime times 17, the stories change)  
   
   
  that can be found along the stair that no 
  force will open. Each is distinct, but they 
  are recognizably similar, and the greatest 
  mystery of the universe lies behind them, if 
  only the key can be found. 
   
  The Truth: This one is fairly easy to 
  punch a hole in when you start asking for 
  specifics.  Almost everyone traveling the 
  stairs has heard of the darkened doors, but 
  the number who can say they’ve seen one 
  is vanishingly small. 
   
  Which is just as well, because they’re real, 
  and they scare the crap out of me. 
   
  I don’t pretend to know how many of these 
  there are, but there really are doors which 
  cannot be opened, at least not without 
  efforts that I would deem unwise.  For any 
  warden, even a highly skilled one, this is 
  daunting. We are used to being masters of 
  the Doors, and while we may be used to the 
  idea that another Warden may attempt to 
  bar our way, the idea that a door will 
  simply not bend to our will is a trifle 
  humbling. 
   
  When I was younger, I spent a lot of time 
  and energy worrying about these, and I had 
  6 
   
  
   
  a lot of theories about them, but over time 
  I boiled them down to two possibilities.  
  The first was that they had been sealed by 
  some manner of Ur-Warden, and the 
  inability to open them was a function of a 
  difference in power.  The second was that 
  they had been sealed - somehow - from the 
  other side. 
   
  If they seal off something dangerous, then 
  whoever did it knew enough about the 
  doors to make me look like a child by 
  comparison.  So, obviously, that’s unlikely.  
  But if so, then what in the world would 
  such a being need to seal?  Either 
  something private, or something really, 
  really, really bad. 
   
  If they’ve been sealed from the inside, 
  that’s even stranger, especially if they all go 
  to the same world. Who lives on such a 
  world that would do such a thing? 
   
  Many questions, and I like none of the 
  possible answers. And these days, while it 
  might be possible that I could force one of 
  these doors open, it is more and more clear 
  what a terrible idea that is. 
   
  Which is not enough to keep someone else 
  from trying, so for this one, take my advice 
  - if you encounter a giant, ominous door 
  that you can’t open, just let it be. You have 
  the rest of the universe waiting for you. All 
  it asks is a little restraint. 
   
  And if you can’t show that restraint, then 
  consider that it’s entirely possible that I’ve 
  been randomly locking doors that go to 
  horrible hellscapes solely to reduce the 
  lifespan of wardens lacking in that 
  restraint.  Not to say I’ve done any such 
  thing of course.  Merely that it’s possible. 
   
   
   
  The Drowned Expanse 
   
  Legend: If you delve the stairs far enough, 
  then you will find places where it is friendly 
  to other life and architecture.  Great 
  expanses of stair are submerged in water, 
  lined with crystal and coral, with doors that 
  open beneath the oceans of a thousand 
  worlds. 
   
  The Truth: I actually rather wish this one 
  were true.  And like anything that posits 
  “far enough”, I cannot rule it out 
  completely. The Stairs are infinite and no 
  one has seen everything.  But this is 
  sufficiently at odds with everything we’ve 
  seen that I consider it highly unlikely. 
   
  The closest I’ve ever seen is an expanse set 
  up like a canal where locks lead to boat 
  docks where one finds doors, and another 
  expanse submerged in two or three feet of 
  brackish black water. I will not tell you 
  where these are, for reasons which will 
  become apparent, the first because I made 
  a promise, the second because it’s a terrible 
  place. The whole of the second area is misty 
  and 
  unpleasant 
  smelling, 
  footing 
  is 
  treacherous, by and large it’s not a place 
  you want to spend much time.  But both 
  have one other important quality: They are 
  impossible. 
   
  Whatever mechanism keeps the stair 
  reasonably free of detritus should, by all 
  rights, have dried these areas right up by 
  now. And even if it didn’t, the water should 
  largely have just flowed away by now.  
  Neither of these things has happened. 
   
  The first time I encountered this, it 
  offended me so much that I found a fairly 
  flat stretch of the stair and tried to flood it, 
  even a little. I got it wet, certainly, but that 
  was the extent of it. Maddening. So I went 
  through every door in the damnable 
  sunken expanse looking for some manner 
  7 
   
  
   
  of explanation of what in the hells was 
  afoot.  I found suggestions, but no answers.  
  But I also found something else entirely. 
   
  There were approximately forty doors in 
  both areas, and at first, I thought they all 
  lead to the same world, as the destinations 
  were all similar (rocky, coastal regions), 
  but that was not the case. Rather, they were 
  all worlds that had at one time or another 
  shared a common culture.  There were 
  ruins and artifacts suggesting this, yes, but 
  also there were the Notar - lizard-like 
  hunters who seemed equally comfortable 
  underwater and in the air. 
   
  I passed some time with them, listen to 
  some of their myths and legend but gave it 
  no great thought until the migration 
  season came and they simply walked 
  through the door, across the stair and into 
  another world, as if it were no strange 
  thing. 
   
  Let me be clear - there was no leader or 
  shaman opening the door or showing the 
  way. No ritual or artifact giving guidance. 
  They just walked. 
   
  Consider the implications of this - they are 
  an entire people capable of navigating the 
  Stair naturally.  I spent more time among 
  them, met other tribes and nations, and 
  they tolerated my strange inquiries. The 
  more I studied, the more the results were 
  consistent - so far as I can tell, the Notar 
  are born with the ability to navigate the 
  stair. 
   
  From what I can piece together, they were 
  bred by an ancient race - the Stavitel - for 
  exactly this purpose.  Judging by Notar 
  legends, they were masters of life.  Rather 
  than build tools or cast spells, they bred 
  creatures to serve their needs.   They bred 
  giant leviathans to fight, cunning  
   
   
   
  crustaceans to build their cities, and the 
  Notar to go places they could not. 
   
  I’ve not had the time or resources to look 
  into 
  this 
  much 
  further, 
  but 
  the 
  implications are fascinating, and the 
  question of the fate of the Stavitel is one 
  that occasionally bothers me.  But I am no 
  deep sea explorer, and I am likely not the 
  man to solve this mystery. 
   
   
  The Old Ones 
   
  The Legend: Out there, in the space 
  beyond darkness, beyond the Umbra and 
  Eidolon, lie the Old Ones, unknown and 
  unknowable, tentacled horrors for whom 
  our existence is merely a fever dream and 
  who will inevitable consume us all. 
   
  The Truth: Utter bullshit. 
   
  Look, there are terrible things out there. 
  Things 
  we 
  don’t 
  understand. 
  Even 
  8 
   
  
   
  tentacled eldritch horrors. No question at 
  all. 
   
  But the idea that these things are somehow 
  foundational to our universe, or exist 
  beyond it, is the construct of a weak, alien-
  fearing mind.  It is the view of one who 
  cannot make peace with what they cannot 
  understand, and responds with fear. It is 
  petty and small, and we are better than 
  that. 
   
  This is not to say you can just pretend 
  awful things don’t exit. They do. But don’t 
  give them any more weight than they 
  deserve. 
   
   
  The Incursion 
   
  Legend: Beware the Incursion. They will 
  come to your world as traders and scholars, 
  but in time they will reveal themselves as 
  metal-masked conquerors. They have no 
  need for magic, as their science can carve 
  through the walls of worlds and their 
  weapons are undeterred by the rules of 
  reality. 
   
  The Truth: Speaking as a sorcerer, we 
  have our heads pretty far up our asses 
  about technology.  The reasons for this are 
  pretty self-evident once you think about it 
  - beyond a certain threshold, almost any 
  individual problem is more easily solved 
  with magic than science. And since any 
  sorcerer with an inkling of the Stair 
  probably is past a certain threshold, it’s 
  only natural to go with the tool that’s going 
  to work with the least effort. 
   
  That leads to a blind spot.  As much as 
  magic is the tool of the moment, 
  technology is the tool of the long game. It 
  is built on distribution and re-use.  Magical 
  solutions tend to be one offs, while 
  technical ones tend to be iterative.  What 
  does that mean? Consider - if I want to 
  drop a rock in a certain time and place, 
  then I could craft a spell to do that with 
  maybe a few hours of effort. If I want to do 
  it with science then I need to do a lot of 
  measuring, maybe invent the computer to 
  do the math, and eventually drop the rock. 
  It 
  could 
  take 
  years, 
  maybe 
  even 
  generations, depending on my starting 
  point. 
   
  But the trick reveals itself in the second 
  rock.  I can make another spell, another 
  few hours, no big deal.  But the science 
  guy? He can retune his system, build on the 
  work he’s already done, and maybe drop 
  the new rock in much less time.  And the 
  next one will be faster. And the next one 
  faster still. Eventually, they build a tool to 
  automate rock dropping, and give it 
  controls that any goon can use, and now 
  they’ve got a thousand guys dropping rocks 
  every 30 seconds, all aside from the other 
  secondary benefits they’ve reaped from 
  building this thing. 
   
  This is not to say one or the other is better 
  in some way. We all have our biases.  But 
  we’re all very familiar with the new 
  traveller on the stairs who gets eaten by 
  something unpleasant because his blast-o-
  tron 9000 doesn’t work. So much so that 
  we tend to dismiss him and his ilk, 
  considering the Stair and its worlds to be 
  far more a function of magic than science.  
  And perhaps that tends toward true, but it 
  is not the whole truth. 
   
  First, the universe is not much friendlier to 
  magic than it is to technology.  Consider 
  the necessity of lynchpins to the workings 
  of sorcery.  The mightiest of archmages is 
  going to be as helpless as our blast-o-tron 
  wielder if they think their magics will 
  protect them on another world without 
  adaptation. 
   
  9 
   
  
   
  Second, there is a very important gap 
  between difficult and impossible.  And into 
  that gap steps the Incursion. 
   
  The Incursion’s home world was actually a 
  collection of worlds, similar in scope to The 
  Black, but rather less diverse (possibly by 
  chance, but more likely by virtue of brutal 
  history). The primary leadership was a 
  highly militaristic interstellar empire. 
  Importantly, while they were techno-
  logically sophisticated, they were hardly 
  transcendently so. We’ve seen records and 
  evidence of worlds where technology 
  advanced to the point of indistinguish-
  ability from magic with their weaponized 
  black holes, sphere worlds, lenses and 
  bizarre math, but the Incursion were none 
  of these. They had understandable science 
  - space ships, robots, energy weapons and 
  so on. 
   
  And when they discovered The Stair, the 
  results were predictable - squadrons or 
  armored space marines were torn to pieces 
  when they engaged “primitive” forces 
  armed with weapons that actually worked. 
  For most would be conquerors, that would 
  be the beginning and the end of things, but 
  for the Incursion, this was exactly the 
  challenge they needed. They were warriors, 
  certainly, but they were not warriors who 
  prized strength, they prized logistics, and 
  the stair was just one more such problem. 
   
  What followed was an utterly methodical 
  expansion. They explored aggressively, 
  mapping the Stair extensively.  Where they 
  encountered resistance or challenges, they 
  withdrew, made a note and moved on.  
  When they found opportunity, they took it, 
  establishing settlements on other worlds 
  which were well-supported and dedicated 
  to research. 
   
  As a scholar, I admit some envy at the 
  extent of this effort.  To my knowledge,  
   
   
  there has never been a comparable effort at 
  cataloging 
  the 
  scientific 
  vagaries 
  of 
  individual worlds, and any remnants of 
  their research would be incredibly valuable 
  (to me at the very least). It is said that they 
  even inferred the existence of the Umbra 
  and Eidolon from their studies, but took 
  little note in them as tangential to their 
  practical interests. 
   
  Over time, this research was collated, 
  studied and - most critically - applied, 
  specifically 
  to 
  the 
  development 
  of 
  technology.  Weapons and armor, yes, but 
  also utilities like communication and 
  transportation. In worlds that supported it, 
  they took to space, building new empires 
  10 
   
  
   
  from their point of incursion. In worlds 
  they valued, they deployed troops, and this 
  time, their weapons and armor worked just 
  fine.  They were careful not to pick fights 
  they could lose (which included steering 
  clear of any Lords they encountered), but 
  when drawn into conflict with such beings, 
  they responded with overwhelming force. 
  They did not overreach, maintained their 
  holdings well, and showed no sign of 
  faltering. 
   
  Yet falter they did. Slowly at first, then all 
  at once, like falling dominoes.  Their 
  communication network between worlds 
  (always tenuous, for the necessity of 
  passing through The Stair) was the first to 
  fall, and in its absence, things quickly 
  splintered. They did not vanish, but in the 
  absence of a unifying drive, each world was 
  forced to establish its own fate.  Some 
  could not survive without Incursion 
  support.  Others survive to this day, in one 
  form or another, often recognizable by 
  some remnant of Incursion design or 
  iconography.  It is even possible that some 
  are fully intact - those that took to the stars 
  after passing through the Doors are hard to 
  speak of with any authority. 
   
  So 
  what 
  happened? 
  Apparently 
  the 
  universe has a sense of humor, because the 
  answer is “magic”, but not in the usual 
  sense.  As it turned out, the Incursion’s 
  research had also given them all the 
  information they needed to get a pretty 
  solid grasp on the workings of magic too.  
  Initially, it was not pursued as it offered 
  little advantage to the Incursion as a whole, 
  but 
  eventually, 
  someone 
  wanted 
  a 
  shortcut. Someone important in the 
  Incursion turned to magic to promote his 
  personal agenda, which forced others to do 
  the same. What followed was something of 
  an arms race that culminated in a brutal 
  civil war. 
   
  I’m not sure what of the original Incursion 
  still remains.  It’s possible that they 
  destroyed themselves.  It’s also possible 
  that a handful of magic wielding god kings 
  command armies prepared for transworld 
  combat and will be returning their 
  attention to the stair once local matters are 
  sorted out.   There are other possibilities 
  too, but that last one is what comes to mind 
  when I’m trying to sleep at night. 
   
   
  The Infinite Door 
   
  The Legend: The ancient and powerful 
  archwarden Zandalee built a door which 
  could be tuned to connect to any door on 
  the Stair, allowing her to reach any world  
  She is gone, but if you can find the door and 
  decipher its many dials and settings, then 
  you too can get anywhere. 
   
  The Truth: So, let me just say I really like 
  the totally-made-up-term “archwarden”, 
  and I may have to start putting that on my 
  calling cards.  Beyond that, this is pretty 
  much poppycock, and it’s interesting 
  mostly because it has shown up in a huge 
  number of forms and variations. The name 
  of the creator changes, the description and 
  details change, but the story keeps popping 
  up in one for or another. 
   
  Some might take that as a sign that there’s 
  some hint of truth behind it, but I think it’s 
  more likely that it’s a sort of self-
  perpetuating stupidity.  I suspect every 
  artificer worth his salt has tried to make 
  something like this. The universal door is 
  to Wardens roughly what the philosopher’s 
  stone is to alchemists - an ideal rather than 
  something to be taken literally.  But there 
  will always be fools with to much time and 
  not enough understanding of metaphor, so 
  I don’t expect these stories to go away any 
  time soon. 
   
  11 
   
  
   
  Lost Eggs 
   
  The Legend: Dragons are ancient and 
  powerful beings who have navigated the 
  stair longer than any race, and perhaps are 
  the original creators.  When the time 
  comes for them to reproduce, they will 
  secret an egg in some faraway world. What 
  hatches from the egg will resemble the 
  natives of the world and have no inkling of 
  its true nature. But it will also be possessed 
  of great natural power, and in time will be 
  sure to find its way to the Stair, where they 
  will continue grow in power before 
  someday discovering their true power. 
   
  The Truth: Ok, here’s the first truth – 
  anything that anyone tells you about 
  dragons needs to be viewed with extreme 
  skepticism, and that includes this.  There 
  are Wardens who have dedicated their not-
  inconsiderable lives to the study, catalog-
  ing and occasional combat with dragons.  
  Even the respectable scholars among their 
  number could come to no consensus on the 
  true nature of dragons – the creatures 
  simply take too many forms across the 
  many worlds. 
   
  Yes, obviously, there is something to be 
  found out about dragons.  Probably many 
  somethings.  There definitely have been 
  dragons 
  who 
  could 
  do 
  things 
  like 
  shapeshift and travel the stair, and if you 
  ask them, they will no doubt tell you stories 
  that frame themselves as masters of the 
  stair.  And of course, you can absolutely 
  trust their version of things. 
   
  So, given all this, I suppose this story is no 
  more 
  preposterous 
  than 
  any 
  other. 
  Certainly there are beings born on out of 
  the way worlds who discover unexpected 
  or inexplicable powers and in turn find 
  their way to the stair.  Hell, you probably 
  know a few.  But there is nothing that  
   
   
   
  demands that this have a particularly 
  draconic explanation. 
   
  Short form – once you start talking about 
  dragons, stick to what you’ve seen with 
  your own eyes.  Nothing is less reliable 
  than a secondhand dragon. 
   
   
  The God’s Passage 
   
  The Legend: Far along the stair you will 
  come to a place where the hall grows wider 
  and taller, until you can no longer see one 
  side from the other, and the ceiling is so far 
  up that it looks like the sky.  The way is a 
  vast dusty plane, and the doors to each side 
  tower out of sight, sized for gods and titans, 
  no mere men.  They do not budge, even for 
  Wardens, for beyond them lie the realms of 
  the divine. 
   
  The Truth: Setting aside the poetic 
  license, there is actually some truth to this 
  one.  The stair is not miles wide, as this 
  description might suggest, but is several 
  hundred feet across and high, and each 
  “step” is easily three hundred feet long, and 
  thirty feet up from the previous one.  There  
   
  12 
   
  
   
   
   
  are handholds, so it’s navigable with effort, 
  but not the sort of thing to do casually. 
   
  Interestingly, the story is also right about 
  the dust.  There’s a red tinge to the light, 
  and the dust is ever-present here, getting 
  into everything and carrying a faintly rusty 
  odor.  There’s no breeze to move it, but it 
  seems to shift when you’re not looking. The 
  effect is off-putting, and it’s made worse by 
  the doors. 
   
  Most of the doors along this length are 
  large, but not unreasonably so.  But there 
  are a half dozen exceptions, portals 
  ranging from 60 to more than 200 feet 
  high. Each is ornate, and many of them are 
  flanked with guardian statues or similar 
  decorations. But despite the rumor, there 
  is nothing out of the ordinary about the 
  doors themselves, and they will open to a 
  Warden as easily as anything else, though 
  there’s a certain dramatic slowness to it. 
   
  Obviously, this makes me a bit nervous. 
  I’ve remarked in the past that the small 
  scale of the doors protects us from a certain 
  category of menace, and the kinds of things 
  that could come through doors of this size 
  could be quite dangerous indeed. So with 
  that in mind, I’ve investigated each of these 
  doors and found they share a curious 
  commonality - each goes to a dead world 
  under a great red sun. Perhaps they are the 
  same world, perhaps not - I’m not entirely 
  sure.  I wonder if, perhaps, these are tombs 
  of a sort. They certainly feel like it. But of 
  what, I can hardly say. 
  13 
   
  
   
  The Forest of Doors 
   
  The Legend: There are places where the 
  walls fall away and the doors stand on their 
  own. Sometime these are narrow zigzags of 
  stairs over the abyss with a single door at 
  each landing.  Others are vast misty 
  expanses where dozens or hundreds of 
  doors stand, waiting.  No one knows where 
  these landings come from, but it is said 
  that they were constructed - built out by an 
  ancient race of travelers as their own 
  personal nexus of transit, adding new 
  doors to the forest rather than traveling the 
  stair. 
   
  The Truth: Pretty much nonsense. The 
  image of a door standing on its own is a 
  powerful one, and it shows up frequently in 
  imagery and iconography associated with 
  the Stair, and it’s especially common for 
  those going into a fugue to stop noticing 
  the stairs and only notice the doors, but 
  that is more of a reflection their state of 
  mind than any kind of reality. 
   
  That said, there are places where the walls 
  are not necessarily *visible*, or where their 
  visual characteristics are a bit peculiar. In 
  those places, it may appear that there’s 
  nothing but free standing doors, but it’s 
  simply an illusion. 
   
  As to the forest of doors, that one’s 
  particularly pernicious. I attribute it to 
  wishful thinking. We have all toyed with 
  the idea of building some manner of 
  personal nexus at one point or another, 
  just doors, unbeholden to the drudgery of 
  marching up and down the stairs and 
  spared 
  the 
  inconvenience 
  of 
  other 
  passersby. But to my knowledge, it remains 
  a pipe dream. 
   
   
   
   
  Old Man Cavendish 
   
  Legend: There is a man as old as the stair 
  itself. He calls himself Cavendish, and 
  wherever he may be found, his garb is that 
  of a traveller, and a drink is not far from his 
  hand. He has survived every great tragedy 
  the Stair has seen, and death comes in his 
  wake. Should you ever find his cup empty, 
  offer to fill it, and he may share with you a 
  secret. But be wary, for it may not be a 
  secret you want to hear. 
   
  The Truth: He’s real, and leave him the 
  hell alone.  He has suffered enough. 
   
   
  The Cupboards 
   
  The Legend: At certain spots along the 
  stair, you will find cupboard doors in the 
  wall.  Should you open them, they will open 
  up into a dollhouse-like set of shelves, 
  connected by stairs, and lined with doors.  
  The doors may be opened, but reveal only 
  wall behind them, and there is rarely ever 
  anything to be found in these cupboards, 
  save the odd knickknack - a bent nail, a bit 
  of string, a dirty coin.  There seems to be 
  nothing more to them, but those who open 
  these cupboards all report the sense that 
  there was activity happening until the 
  moment they opened the door to look.  But, 
  of course, that’s just their mind playing 
  tricks on them, isn’t it. 
  14 
   
  
   
   
  The Truth: Oh, yeah, I’ve seen those. 
  They freak me out a little.  It’s like there’s a 
  whole parallel Grand Stair for mice we 
  never see, or faeries or something. I have 
  no clue what’s going on there. 
   
   
  Broken Stairways 
   
  Legend: In times of great disruption, the 
  stair itself shifts, sometimes ejecting entire 
  lengths from its length.  These broken 
  stairways are not destroyed, but instead 
  spin off through the cosmos, operating in a 
  manner similar to the Stair, simply on a 
  smaller scale.  Sometimes an explorer 
  manages to find one of these on the far side 
  of a strange door, and such a discovery is 
  incredibly valuable. A warden might carve 
  out a private domain in one of these, or 
  discover powers so potent that the Stair 
  itself could not bear them. 
   
  The Truth: This one’s tricky.  I have no 
  evidence to support the existence of broken 
  stairways, but it is not an unreasonable 
  hypothesis.  With some qualifiers. 
   
  First, every documented case of a broken 
  stairway I have had the opportunity to 
  investigate has merely been a case of a door 
  that 
  opened 
  into 
  a 
  particularly 
  inhospitable or confusing expanse of the 
  Stair - the way up and down were not 
  obvious, but they could be found by a 
  properly trained eye. Tellingly, those who 
  are inclined to find a “broken stair” are 
  equally disinclined to look too hard for 
  evidence to the contrary. 
   
  Second, if we accept the position that the 
  Stair is ejecting these expanses, it seems 
  vanishingly unlikely it would do so 
  halfway. The idea that a world might be 
  connected to the Stair and to a broken stair 
  seems highly unlikely. Of course, as I 
  frequently note, unlikely is not the same as 
  impossible, so I cannot completely rule it 
  out.  But I’m not holding my breath on this 
  one. 
   
  Third, it is entirely reasonable to suggest 
  that when the Stair appears to eject these 
  stretches that it merely shuffled around the 
  Stair.  Disruption events are incredibly rare 
  (at least within our experience) and poorly 
  understood. It is equally reasonable to 
  suggest that anything ejected from the 
  Stair will not have the integrity to survive 
  in whatever space exists between Worlds. 
  It is possible that this is how anomalous-
  seeming areas like the Labyrinth come into 
  being, though that seems like a very 
  incomplete explanation of a very comp-
  licated phenomena. 
   
  Last, also bear in mind that this sort of 
  disruption has virtually no impact on the 
  worlds affected. They continue orbiting 
  their sun or watching their flaming chariot 
  or whatever they do, or at least we presume 
  so. 
   
  But with all those qualifiers in place…it’s 
  possible.  And I admit, the prospect is 
  intriguing, because if it were to happen, 
  there is no predicting the form it would 
  take.  Certainly the broken stairway might 
  resemble the Stair as we know it, but it 
  could take an entirely different form. A 
  world tree. A great river. An infinite misty 
  expanse filled with mirrors.  The rules of 
  the stairs as we know them may be entirely 
  thrown out the window.  Obviously, that 
  would be incredibly interesting to study - 
  the prospect of an equivalent of the stair 
  operating according to different rules 
  would be a fantastic opportunity to 
  understand what makes the Stair work. 
   
  And, notably, none of this accounts for the 
  reason that the section of Stair was ejected. 
  Accepting that we probably can’t fully 
  15 
   
  
   
  understand what triggers this kind of 
  event, consider the implications of what 
  sort of thing would get ejected. Things that 
  threaten the stair itself perhaps?  That’s a 
  daunting prospect. 
   
  I admit, it is difficult for me not to think of 
  it in biological terms, with the stair as a 
  living entity ejecting “unhealthy” tissue. 
  But that, of course, suggests another image 
  - reproduction.  Perhaps these broken 
  stairways have the potential to grow into 
  Stair-analogs of their own. 
   
  It seems like a flight of fancy if you think 
  about it too much - what is food in this 
  analogy? 
  What 
  else 
  exists 
  in 
  this 
  ecosystem?  And yet…there certainly is 
  something to the idea of the Stair operating 
  in an organic fashion.  Not to say it’s a 
  living thing in any sense, but rather that it 
  has those characteristics of responsiveness 
  and adaptability which are very life-like. 
  Certainly, it is easier for me to conceive 
  that the stair was “grown” rather than 
  built, but perhaps that is my failing. 
  In any case, this is largely an exercise in the 
  hypothetical. Even if broken staircases 
  exist, it is unlikely that we will ever 
  intersect with them in any meaningful way. 
  Even the powers we are familiar with 
  would likely fail to cross the threshold to 
  “our” Stair in any meaningful way - the 
  Stair has such a gravity (for lack of a better 
  word) that even universal forces like the 
  Umbra or Eidolon might be expressed 
  relative there specific stairway. 
   
  But it is certainly fascinating to think upon. 
   
   
  16 
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Amber/Lords Of Gossamer And Shadow/Lucien's Guides/Legends and Lies.pdf