Alterna-Porte

[Being a new sorcery envisioned by Lucian Smith for twice-blooded Porte/Glamour mages, borrowing heavily from Porte magic and Nacht (the sorcery from Die Kreuzritter).]

Koshchei the Undying has taught you a unique blend of Porte and Glamour. Porte allows you to reach out and touch a mysterious Barrier, beyond which strange creatures seem to dwell. By sacrificing your ability to perform [X]-based knacks, you gained the ability to pull yourself *to* the Barrier, though not through it. You now walk in a world between this one and the one beyond the Barrier--the Dark Paths.

The Dark Paths appear to be in a perpetual state of twilight. The "sky" is a translucent white membrane that constantly undulates. Occasionally, as when you first step through to the Paths, this membrane is pulled towards the earth--Koshchei explained that Porte gives humans the ability to pull it towards them, tear it open, and step through to beyond the Barrier. Strange shapes sometimes press themselves against the Barrier from the other side, trying to get through.

The ground is pitch-black and featureless, and gives slightly when stepped on. The hills and valleys of the real world are duplicated here, but you see no living creatures, plants, or structures. You can still see their shadows, however, which drift across the landscape following a nonexistent sun. You also find no bodies of water, making entering the Paths while swimming or from a ship rather hazardous.

Though no wind blows on the Dark Paths, an icy chill saps your strength while you stay here. This can be staved off for a number of rounds equal to your Resolve when you first enter the realm, and thereafter saps one point of Resolve for every round you remain. You are additionally limited in your movement to 50 feet/action. You haven't stuck around long enough to reach 0 Resolve yet, and you're not keen on finding out what would happen should you do so.

When within the Dark Paths, you can feel a slight, familiar pull in several distinct directions, pulling you towards an item you have blooded and left behind in the real world (blooded items you bring with you seem to have no special properties). When standing directly between two such blooded items, you can faintly see a red-tinged path leading from one to the other. When standing on this path, the chill you normally experience here dissipates--no further Resolve is drained, though to regain lost Resolve, you must still return to the real world and rest.

Furthermore, if you being running along a path, you find you are able to accelerate continuously, eventually bounding over terrain at tremendous speeds. Each time you speed up, you must make a Sprinting + Finesse check at your new speed to keep from falling and taking damage. The TN to keep from falling (and the damage you take if you fail) is as follows:

Movement	Speed	TN	Damage
Sprint	.25 miles/minute	15	1k1
Cheetah	1 mile/minute	25	4k3
Arrow	4 miles/minute	35	7k4
Modern jet	16 miles/minute	45	10k5

You must make one more Sprinting + Finesse check at the end of your run at your old speed to slow down again without falling. (If you want to slow down but continue running at a slower speed, you may do this as well; you will need to make another check when you finally decide to stop.) You may run for up to an hour plus one hour per rank in long-distance running at whatever speed you choose before you must stop and take a break.

If you 'overshoot' the item you're heading towards, you fall off the path, immediately take falling damage according to the above chart, and start taking chill damage if you don't immediately return to the path.

Methods to travel faster may exist, but you haven't discovered them yet. (I almost put 'learned', but you're the only one doing this exact thing--who's going to teach you?)

Once you reach a blooded item, you can see it where it lies in the real world as a jet-black solid shadow within a roiling reddish mist. If you grasp the item, you are immediately pulled back into the real world, standing as you were in the Dark Paths. The only other way you know of is to exit along with another entity who has their own method of exiting. You may also be able to come up with another method--you suspect that, along with so many other things, it would involve blood.