Philosopher's Information Concerning Limbo

Dear those who would cross the endless chaos,

You ask how to go, and how to remain long enough to do work, in Limbo, the place without shores. Though I do not enter such a place, for my bonds do not allow it, I keep my watch and see all that passes too and fro, and compile this guide to from the footsteps of those who travel into chaos.

First: travel there is a matter of deciding. Fix a direction in your mind and your body drifts that way, no faster than your ordinary pace. Do not kick, do not swim; spare your limbs. Agreement helps. Settle on forward together, so even the weak and uncertain can be carried by shared intent.

Second: you may still the local churn of disorder and chaos. With a firm act of intellect, you can hold a space about the size of a small camp steady for a day. Treat it as you would a tent in wind: modest in span, well-placed, and checked often. Make your steadiness before any long working or any kind of rest; the plane takes less offense when you prepare your ground. With effort, a skilled imagination, and strength of mind, one can force order for a span of weeks or longer. But be warned! Such effort will fail for all but the strongest minds.

Third: the same effort turns nearby, unworn matter from one lifeless shape to another, and lets you tug or set adrift loose things within reach. Favor plain forms. A flat floor, a simple wall, a dome like a tortoise shell will stand when clever lattices and proud arches betray you. Save your ambition for the tale you will tell on your return.

Fourth: know the limits that undo the unwary. While a strong mind can steady the chaos, if that mind is destroyed, the force of Limbo will exert itself tenfold. And a stronger mind can wrest it away control: those with iron concentration have taken a held pocket from its maker as one might take a tethered boat and push off. Name one shaper before you cross. All others defer. It is better to hand the task over cleanly than to quarrel with the ground under your feet, for competing imaginations will encourage the unmaking of the space into its native chaotic form.

Now, a few sights and signs worth heeding. The chaos there is not only threat; it is also spectacle. Travelers report snow that rings like tiny bells as it falls, and then softens into smoke; rivers of dust that lift like geese and wheel through a sky of molten amber; ruined halls drifting past with candles still burning inside, until the wax flows backward into marble and the whole thing becomes a hill of glass. Take time to look. You will not see their like again.

Danger is rarely far, and has tells if you learn them. When the air quilts into faint squares before your eyes, it is about to harden: slow your breath and stead your mind, for only the strongest intellects can hold against the collapsing breath when the very air turns to glass or stone. When sound thins and words begin to echo, keep your party close, for distance grows strange when the world goes quiet, and a step of a few paces may seem as if a leap of miles. If the ground beneath you begins to shine like wet stone and the shine climbs your boots, lift off at once; such gleam often means the stuff of the place is about to forget it was floor and remember it was once fire and will be again. The memories of the screams of those entombed in solid flame haunts my tales.

This is the sum of it: decide, then drift; make your steadiness small and honest; keep your shapes simple; rest only inside what you have made; read the signs of change the way a hunter reads weather; and remember that will is a tool that tires like any other.

May your journey be fruitful and may I see your footsteps again on this side after your passage.

Signed,
The Marchkeeper of Chaos
On behalf of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Philosophers