Mythos

This sections contains information about the general mythos of the Altered Realms. Including, how the "Codex" was acquired, and how the information about the altered realms made its way to earth.

The Altered Realms

The story that follows, recants the origin of the Altered Realms inception. None of what follows can be confirmed and should not be believed by any reasonable person.

I became aware of the Altered Realms in 2018 via what I thought, at first, to be a glitched or virus filled spam email. The subject line of the email was a series of those rectangles you see when you don’t have the right update for that symbol or font, followed by the words “Can you read this?”. Foolishly clicking on the email immediately sent my PC in a chugging fit as dozens of error messages briefly piled up on top of each other. Then the screen locked up and I was forced to shut it down. When I attempted to restart the PC it started making strange noises and a distorted update message stated that it was installing new data. I panicked and shut it off again. Life caught up with me and I left it that way for a couple of weeks. I could swear every now and then when I’d walk in, I heard it making those odd noises again.
I don’t remember why I turned it back on, probably absent mindedly, forgetting in the moment why I hadn’t been using my PC. When the boot completed I was greeted by an unfamiliar sight. My entire operating system had been removed and replaced by something else. It looked like something straight out of the 90’s and there were a lot of strange terms and interfaces. At first I was devastated by the loss of all of my data, sure that I had been pranked by some hacker. Eventually, I couldn’t help myself and started poking and prodding at this foreign software in my computer until I started to figure out how it worked. Once I did I thought for sure it was an extremely elaborate hoax. There was tons of data in an almost encyclopedic organization about not just another world but worlds. There were details, images and diagrams about local species, climate conditions and even fundamental laws of reality in those places.
After a while it became clear that there was simply too much here for it all to have been made up. On top of that the operating system didn’t seem to be compatible with anything else digital in our world. Any device I connect to the ports is not recognized by the system and connected devices don’t recognize my PC. Stranger still, the pictures I try to take of the screen all appear to be a very distorted screen with no recognizable data or imagery.

The risk of moving the unit to prove its existence seems too great. So, after a year or so of pouring over the data I decided to start working on the Altered Realms System. I can’t Copy and Paste or anything like that due to these anomalous constraints and systemizing these Realms has proved challenging but I’m confident I was sent that email for a reason; I think they want people from other realities to imagine their Realms, or at least become comfortable with idea of their existence, and there’s simply too much here not to do something with it. I’ve dubbed this trove of interdimensional information, the Codex, and even now I am working diligently to extract as much information as I can and present it in the format I feel was implied by its creators.

The Altered Realms Philosophy

The Altered Realms System encourages creativity and self-starting, but by no means discourages the use of pre-made materials to collaboratively tell stories between yourself and your friends and family. All the tools for various styles of play are available on this website, there is no one right way to play Altered Realms. Whatever fits for you and yours is how you should play. Feel free to imagine any of your worlds you create as one of the many Altered Realms, their variants or as your own dimension separated entirely.

The Nature of the Altered Realms

The Codex States that; “The Altered Realms are a diverse collection of adjacent Dimensions or “Realms” that can, and do, regularly interact throughout their history. Travel is possible between these realms because the “Membrane” of Realms can be distorted and stretched via magical or technological means, encompassing travelers as they make their way through dimensions. As the membrane is thinned from this stretching effect the two realms begin to be able to interact and become visible to each other. Even though the Realm within which the traveling creature is interacting may be operating on fundamentally different laws of reality, they are protected from any Dimensional Backlash due to their reality stretching to encompass them. Meaning; even though a traveler can interact with matter from that realm they do not fall apart, have No anti-matter-like reactions or cease to exist, while technically within a realm their body should not be able to exist within, being made of particles from an entirely different dimension. Due to this anomaly, it is possible for Realms to merge over millennia and even out between the laws of reality present in each, as long as enough realm travel or cross dimensional procreation takes place between the two."

The Altered Realms Overview

Each of the Realms is fairly unique and diverse in its own way, but many share close similarities. For example; there seem to be many Realms where Great Apes became the dominant species and developed into species not dissimilar to the homosapien of earth. All the realms connect and interact with each other in some way, at some point in their histories. In the second half of the Altered Realms Historical Timeline there is an increase in interdimensional travel, and as realities are starting to merge, their membranes are becoming inter-locked from so many individual travel distortions weaving the Realms together. This ultimately results in the increased prevalence of Multiple Sentient Species Worlds and all forms of Magic.