In a recent mission I had the opportunity to use an Alchera and had alot of fun with it. Always wished we had more info on Alchera, Astral Shallows , Metaplanes and the Deep Metaplanes. Anyone have any interesting stories involving these places or willing to share some they've created/used in their games?

Grey Places.

My two cents is that regular astral space is somewhat exciting too.

A lot of people play it like it's the PCs personal playground. However while not that densly populated, it's wild territory. There are other mages, spirits and watchers whizzing around mostly minding their own business. Though perhaps they're having trouble getting where they're going and need directions, or think the PC is attractive and wonder if they're free later.

However you also get other stuff. Astral "gangs" of whiz kids, free spirits up to who knows what, toxic spirits up to no good from who knows where, crazy mages and shamen, tribes of NAN magicians out for a stroll, the occasional easterner all the way from the other side of the planet for a little jihad, dual creatures that can fly, as well as other astral critters.

And all of it set to the vibrant background of a city, framed by the wards on a lot of the buildings, and tinted by the varying levels of background count.

Thanks AH saw movie with carhenge in it recently hehe.

Something else thats always had some trouble with. When making astral locations what makes a place a deep metaplane? By all rights the metaplanes can come in any number of metaphors so other then alien nature what sets deep metaplanes apart?

Deep Metaplanes
Scholars are unsure what makes these metaplanes different, but many believe there is a link between the difficulty of reaching these metaplanes and the ambient mana level on Earth. (From Street Magic pg.129)

Other then insects and perhaps the shedim do we have any other exapmples of these "alien" deep planes or there inhabitents? I know past edition stories of the bridge and perhaps even the home plane of the horrors that may still lay out of reach but what can be reached?

It's basically a matter of access.
They are farther away from the physical and astral plain than the normal (inner? higher? lower?) metaplanes.
To reach the normal planes, it is enough to be an initiate and pass the treshold.
The deep metaplanes are so far away that you need an astral gateway to get there.
Their alien and remote nature results in the fact that their denizens, like bugs or shedim, start to fade on the physical or astral world without an appropriate anchor.



One or several metaplanes of death, presumably modelled after earthly depictions of the afterlive.
Besides that, i don't know any examples, but there should be some more and i suspect them to be not more friendly than purgatory or the hive...

Besides that, the place where the horrors come from might be even more remote than the rest, being unaccessible with a simple astral gateway.
I picture it as concentric rings, with the astral at the center, the normal metaplanes as the innermost layer, surrounded by places like the hive or purgatory, and even farther outward the horrors.

But the term "deeper metaplane" could also imply that it's the other way around, that the astral is the outside and you go farther inwards from there.

How very Ptolemy. Or is it Gnostic?

Don't know too much about Gnosticistic cosmology, but yeah, it's like the Ptolomaean model.
Or the 7 spheres in TDE...or a bit like D&D cosmology.

A metaplanar atlas would be a nice supplement, now that i think about it...

Ghost, I pray that never happens.

Well 4 editions and is has'nt happened yet so think your safe. All info is helpful and stuff that I've gone over. Guess was just wondering were you draw the line when designing astral encounters, is it a metaplane or a deep metaplane?

I draw the line at cosmologies - SR isn't really built for them and they mislike me.

The biggest problem with astral journeying (and by extension, TMs in Resonance realms) is the exclusion of the other characters. Generally, that means you need to break out your idea helmet to involve the group: Harlequin's Back and Survival of the Fittest are two examples, and I've used a couple other variants myself - one in which the other players play their characters as aspects of the magician's own psyche (which has the downside of no Karma for an adventure, but then death doesn't mean anything to them either, so players tend to have fun), another where the players can accompany and interact with the magician to an extant, but not significantly affect the course of the astral quest (an ethereal peanut gallery narrating the quest MST3K style, in other words), and of course the ubiquitous astral gateway.

Aspects of the magician's own psyche.

I've used this since I saw it show up in Street Magic it's great way to involve everyone when you want to GM somthing Astral. Bring the Astral to them with Alchera. And of course the gateway.