The Rift

The Rift is not an elsewhere you visit so much as a pressure you live beneath. It sleeves Duskfall like a storm-wrought ocean—always there, always moving—and on certain nights you can feel it lean against the world until the glass hums. Sailors swear they hear it when the wind dies. Wardens count their heartbeats by it. Most folk pretend they cannot. This chapter opens that door on purpose.

Inside you’ll find what the Rift is and how it behaves when someone is foolish or brave enough to look back at it. Metaphysics of the Rift sketches the plane’s strange geography—a sphere around a sphere—where the Veilshore (the Verge), the Conflux Sea, and the Horizon Belt braid into one continuous, shifting medium. Magical Disruption explains how the Rift scrambles spellwork that tries to cross it, why planar travel detours through the Horizon, and which magics still behave as written. Breachpoints gives you the tools to run tears in the air as living hazards: what they look like, how they lash out, how many creatures can force through each round, and how to seal them a step at a time.

From there, the chapter turns to dangers that leak into ordinary lives. Rift Stones details the crystals that crust along thin places—how to recognize, harvest, weaponize, and (wisely) contain them. Rift Corruption sets the stakes for exposure, from early symptoms to the final, terrible transformation, while Shadow Plague narrows the lens to the contagion carried on breath and residue. Rift Madness offers roleplaying flaws for minds rubbed raw by impossible angles and patient procedures for finding your way back. Finally, Riftspawn reveals what waits at the end of corruption’s road: living bodies bent toward unmaking—pack hunters in the dark that think in the same shape and speak in a language that sounds like a knife being turned.

Use this material like Wardens do: with objectives, timeboxes, fallback points, and rope between you. The Rift rewards purpose and punishes pride. Not every question in these pages has a single true answer; many have several that are “right” for where you’re standing and when you’re standing there. Treat certainty as a tool, not a prize. When the veil thins, breathe once, check your lines, and step carefully.