In 1867 the iron screw steamer Brizo left from Foochow (now Fuzhou), China, heading toward London, heavily laden with goods and passengers. Amongst it’s cargo (which consisted mostly of tea) were several large, suspiciously coffin-like boxes, which aside from the traditional custom stamps had many other markings on them. Strange and occult looking sigils which had no place being stamped on cargo. The Brizo never reached London. She is assumed to have been lost, with all hands, off the coast of Malaysia during a particularly strange storm which was observed from the coast.

Over hundred years later, and in another dimension someone is frantically digging through the snow. Covered in furs and burrowing to find material to burn. Every handful of snow stings their blistered hands, but all the wood is gone – something needs to be found. The cold is coming in and without heat, this person will die.  Finally their frost bitten finger tips find something in the snow. A book, the log book of the Brizo.

Not everything is random. Those events that appear random, if looked at in a larger scale, may be part of a considerably bigger pattern. The occult influences in The Void – be it the Aspects, or the magical lines of energy that wrap themselves around the floating islands, are far from random.  There is a game being played here, by inhuman forces that we cannot comprehend. The people that are transported here aren’t picked at random, there is a sinister pattern to it. Events are in motion in a game that is older than time itself.

It is not only people that are transported to The Void – places often are transported as well, ripped from the earth and set adrift for an eternity through The Void. Giant chunks of land silently moving on the eddies and currents. Occasionally some of these islands collide, creating fractures and throwing smaller chunks out to drift. Sometimes, large metal structures attract smaller chunks of land and through the eons, this land gradually wraps itself around the metal structures. There are physics in this dimension – just not physics we are used to.

With this bizarre set of physics – where energy and magic are the same, where belief can be measured and where spirits can be trapped – how does someone know how to harness these laws? How does someone who may work in an office in the real world suddenly work out the correct sigil to summon a supernatural entity when they are trapped in The Void?

The answer is not as complicated as it sounds. Everything inside The Void is interconnected, both the seen and the unseen. It’s been mentioned before that peons will often share dreams, regardless of the distance between them. This not only occurs over distance – but also can occur over time. There have been many hundreds of thousands of people plucked from the real world and trapped in The Void over our brief existence on this planet. They can dream as one.

When a peon dreams, they have access to the subconscious of every one who has, or ever will be, trapped in The Void. This vast storehouse of ethereal human knowledge (and hopes) is exponentially more information than any single human brain could hold. Only fragments of knowledge will remain when the peon opens it’s eyes. Dream fragments contain hints of occult knowledge, and when a peon is researching, they are recording what they remember of their dreams, as well as looking at what other people have dreamt. Patterns will emerge, hazy recollections of dream images will slowly become more substantial – and discoveries will be made.

This “dream world” provides the key to escape. It provides the knowledge to defeat the Aspects. It has forbidden knowledge that can bend the entire reality of The Void. It is inherently the human spirit, the will to survive and the passion to learn. If the Aspects are aware of this dream place – why do they allow it to exist?

Thanks very much to our amazing Twitter community for voting for this weeks development blog to be about the Lore – there is so much to talk (and tease) about the Fringe Planet universe. We hope you enjoyed this blog post, and let us know what you think! To get more information about Fringe Planet (and vote in future polls) – feel free to follow us on twitter: @fringeplanet

There is a lot more to read about Fringe Planet… why not try:

• Lore introduction – Dev Blog 34
• The writings of Elisabeth Crane – Dev Blog 77
• Occult machinery – Dev Blog 25