So….The Ghost Field.
As the book says the Ghost Field is intentionally vague which I like – it’s really something the GM and players can define in play. I can clearly see the influence from Apocalypse World’s Psychic Maelstrom here. The Ghost Field is a ubiquitous thing anyone can “open their mind / attune” too but how that looks will differ from group to group.
The book offers some (possibly intentionally) contradictory explanations of what the Ghost Field actually is. It’s the energy stored in the Lightening barriers surrounding the city. It’s another world that erupted during the cataclysm. It allows players to see echos of previous events. It allows players to communicate with the spirit world. It is all of these things. Some of these things. It could be different things also.
So my question to the community is – What is the Ghost Field to you? How has it changed and developed during play? What can and can’t players do with it? If it’s the energy stored in the lightening field then….what happens to the many spirits that are destroyed through cremation? Can the echoes of their deaths be seen or are they lost during this process never to enter the Ghost Field? How does ectoplasm link into the Field? It’s distilled life essence from ghosts and leviathan blood but what does that actually mean….how does that contribute to the field itself and how do you use it in play?
Lots and lots of open questions here and interested in how people are interpreting it in different ways.
This is how I originally envisioned the ghosts…
youtube.com – Saving Conan/Fighting off the spirits – Conan the Barbarian (1982 (HD-720p)
There’s a line somewhere in the book about how this realm used to be a high fantasy, D&D style world that had a cataclysm, so we took that and ran with it. Planes collapsed on top of each other. The Ghost Field is what is left of the Plane of Shadow, now much more easily accessible from the Material Plane. So we treat it like that. It’s a dark reflection of the normal world, think like the Upside Down from Stranger Things.
Also the Astral Plane is flooded and makes up the oceans, which is where the Leviathan’s go when they dive deep. But I’ve always been a big fan of the planar stuff.