-- ReginaldGusto - 08 Nov 2015

“Kaiju and Celestials were not the only things to change when Balder erupted. All that energy, sufficient to overwrite the known laws of Physics, able to turn a 160 pound teenager into a hundred-ton monster in a few seconds, It has to come from somewhere, and it has to go somewhere when it’s released.
Do you remember Shirley McLaine? I was a child of the 80’s. She was an actress who turned New Age guru. She used to talk about Astral Projection: the ability to travel outside your own body as a spirit. Back then, she was ridiculed. They called it junk science at best and insanity at worst. She’s been vindicated. I myself? I was raised by parents who believed there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in our philosophy. My mother, my aunts and uncles, they delved into the New Age in their own way. I always believed in the Creative Stream, a Jungian Collective Unconscious where memetic ideas were shared among the sensitive. I was also Christian, raised in the southern protestant tradition of the Church of Christ, an independent sect born of the Restoration leaders Thomas and Alexander Campbell. Spiritualism, a certain amount of mysticism and belief in souls and the supernatural were no strangers to me.
And dreams? I remember when I was a small child, I put a lot of effort into not dreaming. After a while, I began to dream things that were on the Creative Stream. Creative energy always caused ripples in the Stream, even before Balder. The Aboriginals and other tribes put a lot of stock in the magic of dreams. Joseph Campbell—the other Campbell whose teachings were influential on me—always spoke of the power of myth and metaphor. It’s only superstition and magic until you know how it works.
Do I know how it works? Not even a little. But I do know this: You don’t get the magic of myth and metaphor unless you use the right words. Imagine the difference between the statement ‘A collective reorganizing of our thought processes is taking place, wherein we now consider the possibility that certain speech patterns affect how we think. The act of calling on a divine being accesses parts of our minds we never could consciously,’ and the statement ‘Tiamat is awake, and She is coming.’
They both say the words, but only one sings the song.”

—Nibiru Yog-Sothoth

The Aether

The Aether is a spiritual world, superimposed onto our own real world. It is composed entirely of energy. Time and Space are mutable there. Astral Projection is one term for how you travel in the Aether. Spirit-walking, religious trances, anything that takes your soul out of your body and allows it to roam free is the Aether.
It should be noted that “in the Aether” and “Aetherial” are two different things. An Aetherial creature is actually in our world, they’re just here in Aetherial form. They can enter and exit the Aether at will. If a corporeal creature enters the Aether and then exits at another place, he or she does so in an Aetherial form, and must travel back through the aether to rejoin his or her body.
Ygdrasil, the World Tree, is in the Aether. If you travel far enough down the roots or up the branches, you come to the Deep Water or the Celestial City. The Aether is alive with traffic. You’ll find cities, fortresses, way-stations, meet people of all kinds. The landscape of the Aether is fantastic and ever-changing. You might also see the faint outlines of the real world as you go: buildings that have stored a lot of energy, power lines, places of intense activity, seats of power.
The corpse of Balder stands as full and real in the Aether as it does in Washington, DC, and many memorials are left there in both worlds.
To enter the aether, You must meditate alone in a quiet, safe place. It has to be safe because you will be leaving your body behind. Roll WIL vs. A Difficulty of 22. Each person meditating with you to enter with you reduces the difficulty by 1. Every hour meditated reduces the difficulty by 2. To exit, simply return to your body, or roll WIL vs. Difficulty 16 to exit somewhere else, but if you do, be careful—you have to get back in to get to your body, and the difficulty to do that is whatever it was when you got in initially.
In the Aether, you have no physical stats (PRO, STR, ATH). For the purposes of activities that would use those stats, your AWA is your PRO, your WIL is your STR, and your ROG is your ATH. Also note that the flow of energy through the Aether is different enough that you do not spend Primal Energy to maintain your eruption. You do still have to spend it for other effects, and if you reach zero Primal Energy, nothing happens except you can’t use those abilities any more. If you return to your body with zero Primal energy, it is the same as if you ran out while erupting in the real world.
Your body will continue basic functions on its own without you: breathing, heartbeat, digestion, etc. Eventually, it will start to experience needs, and may suffer damage because of them if you take too long. Your body can survive without you for a time, but anyone finding it will think you’re asleep or in a coma. Make sure you leave it where it will not be disturbed—especially by someone who may harm your body while it is defenseless. If your body is attacked while you are in the Aether, they can murder you easily, or worse.
If your body dies while you are in the Aether, you become an Aetherial Kaiju. If your body is moved (say, taken to the hospital), you’ll have to find it. Also be aware that a body you left behind could be possessed. They won’t even have to roll for it. You can take the body back with a contest of wills.
Psychic wounds suffered in the Aether have to be healed, just like physical damage does. Mental Health is woefully behind the curve for this task, so you will have to see a healer, or let it heal over time.
Or, you could consult a Dreamwalker…

The Dreamscape

Dreams are how our mind processes information by metaphor, organizing stray data into usable narrative strands for ease of storage. Before the eruption of Balder, this process was a purely personal affair, though some isolated individuals and cults might have managed something collective. After Balder, though, Dreams became something less esoteric. Now, all dreams are gateways and chambers of the Dreamscape, connected by the Creative Stream, one facet of the Collective Unconscious. The Stream itself is like a great flowing river, sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent, depending on the energy of the people of the world. In it, the most powerful ideas and concepts drift between people, latching on to the sensitive and inspiring them. There is no removing data from the Stream. Information you take is copied, not cut.
Anyone may unconsciously access the Stream, but only a Dreamwalker may enter the Dreamscape, or take others in with him. The Dreamwalker must enter through either his own dreams, or the dreams of others. If his own, he simply performs a ritual before bed and spends a Primal energy (in his Human form or permanent form, of course). He cannot take others with him this way, but he can walk about freely through the dreams of others, or even further.
Entering the dreams of an informed, willing participant requires no roll, only the spending of the Primal Energy. If the person is uninformed but not necessarily unwilling (for example, unconscious before the need arose), you will encounter a Threshold Guardian, a part of his mind that will allow you to parley for entry. If the party is unwilling or pre-disposed to be unwilling (for example, a prisoner you’re attempting to interrogate), the Threshold Guardian will fight you, and may call in help. Defeating him will cause psychic damage to the host, and in the process, you or others may be injured as well. It should go without saying that doing this to someone is looked upon somewhere between rape and torture.
In the Dreamscape, just like in the Aether, you have no physical stats. Your AWA becomes your PRO, your WIL becomes your STR, and your ROG becomes your ATH. Travel is from dream to dream, through the network of people connect to each other. For example, if you enter through the mind of a child, you can then go to the dreams of his dad, and then his dad’s boss, and then the boss’s wife, and then the wife’s doctor, and so on. In between the dreams, you encounter the Stream. Traveling through the dreams of others after entering the Dreamscape usually follows the model of the uninformed and neutrally willing, but some can be hostile from the beginning, for any number of reasons. Every time you attempt to pass into another person’s dream, you will have to deal with the Guardian of that person’s threshold.
Beware the dreams of a Celestial. His Threshold Guardian will not easily yield to parley, and he will certainly at least injure you in the fight.
In a person’s Dreamscape, everything and everyone you interact with is that person. Unlike with the Aether, the population of each dream is exactly 1 (unless of course others are Dreamwalking here at the same time). You can communicate with that person by interacting with their dream. If they are lucid dreaming, they may be able to walk with you and your cohorts as if they entered with you. You can only find the exits onto the Stream with the help of the host. You have to negotiate with them to move on to someone else’s dream. Also, only those powers of yours which your host allows to operate will operate in the Dreamscape. If you are passing through the mind of a Human who does not have much contact with Kaiju, his base assumption may be that you are Human, and if so, none of your powers will work, or only those that fit the milieu of the dream.
Fighting others in the Dream of another person may cause collateral damage. Be careful what you do. By contrast, fighting others in the Stream will not damage anyone or anything but those involved in the fight.
If you offend a host while in their dreams but after their Threshold Guardian has granted you entrance, their entire dreamscape can turn against you. You then have the option of waking up immediately. You, everyone you brought with you, and the host will all wake up as if from a horrible nightmare, but no (more) psychic damage will be done, and some or all of the trust may be salvaged between you and the host. Or, you can fight to maintain the dream, WIL vs. WIL, with the host having a +6 bonus. This fight will certainly do damage to at least one of you, probably both, and will make you a villain in every way that matters.
There is one way, however, that fighting your Host is considered a good thing, and that is if they are having a nightmare and you are defending the subject character in the dream from the fearful event. For example, Little Joey has nightmares about a monster chasing him. You enter this dream from someone else’s, and the Threshold Guardian urgently waved you in, saying he needed your help. You enter the dream, and are able to fairly easily determine that this nightmare is not a Bogeyman attacking Joey, just his own fears manifesting in dreams. You move in and fight off the monster, even killing it in that dream, and Joey’s dream form gives you a big hug and shows you the way out.
You may also exit the Dreamscape by choosing to wake up. Doing so removes you and your cohorts from the Dreamscape and wakes you all up without disturbing the Host. He or she may continue to sleep restfully and dream as normal.
Dying in the Dreamscape destroys your mind and turns your body into a brain-dead vegetable. If you are about to suffer a fatal blow in the Dreamscape, dodge by choosing to exit. Anyone you brought with you may choose to exit independently of you, but none can remain behind if you exit. They exit with you. Even a person’s nightmare can kill you this way. Remember that in someone’s nightmare, even though the dream is horribly unpleasant for them, their mind still created and made it possible. There is a reason. You should not lightly interfere even with nightmares, because you don’t know what effect it will have on the person. Furthermore, since it is a creation of their mind, you might not only be fighting the nightmare itself, which means you could damage their mind.
Time passes normally in the Dreamscape. You only have as long as the sleep cycle of the person whose dream you are in. You can try to wait it out in the Stream, between dreams, but if everyone in the cluster around you wakes up, you may be waiting a very long time. After a certain point, you will wake up naturally as well. Anyone on the outside may wake you up as they might wake up any other sleeping person. If so, you exit the Dreamscape. If you were brought in, you wake up and exit alone. If you are the Dreamwalker, everyone you brought with you wakes up with you.

Deep Space

“Never been there. No idea. I hear it’s quiet, though.”

—Nibiru Yog Sothoth

There are components of this setting that allow for action in space, indicating that it is possible to visit. I do not recommend allowing aliens into the game, but hey, you’re the GM. Having said that, though, keep in mind that all of HP Lovecraft’s monsters either came from outer space, or another dimension. The implication is that Cthulhu, for example, erupted somewhere else—somewhere very else—and then traveled to Earth through the cosmos. Similarly, Gamera was explicitly from space. It’s not unheard of at all for Kaiju to interact with Space, which is why I built the option in.
Remember that Space is a very hostile territory for biological organic life. You the GM will have to handle the terrain carefully to avoid an anticlimactic “total party wipe,” or complete death of all characters in the party, by a method that makes the game less enjoyable. However, if your Player-Characters are equipped, let ‘er rip.
Options for a deep-space arc are numerous. Besides the idea of Elder Gods falling to Earth, what if there’s a particularly nasty one encased in the Moon? Or on Mars? What if the Celestial Court is secretly developing space travel for some reason? What if someone tried to get rid of a troublesome Kaiju by launching him into space? Or if the governments of the world are secretly working on making Mars a prison gulag for Kaiju?