The Alaskan region is both the wilderness above the Shadowdweller city and a seasonal destination in the Shadowdwellers’ migration cycle. Though their city lies miles beneath mountainous terrain, the changing length and darkness of the nights above still govern when they travel and how they rest.

Setting and Light

At just past noon, daylight burns across the Alaskan wilderness, but none of it reaches the city burrowed beneath the mountains. Its inhabitants sleep in a perfect, soothing blackness that protects them from light. Their distance underground does not erase their instinctive rhythms: they still follow the light in choosing their resting cycles, and as seasons turn, they migrate in search of the longest, darkest nights.

Seasonal Destination

The region is a point of return within this cycle. As winter approaches, the Shadowdwellers prepare to migrate back to Alaska from New Zealand, where the Senate’s active season is also about to resume. The region’s significance therefore extends beyond geography: its seasonal darkness helps organize both the community’s movement and the timing of its political life.

Travel and Its Limits

For Shadowdwellers, traveling aboveground can be dangerous. The Shadowscape offers a safer alternative: they can Fade into this parallel dimension, where moonlight is the only light. Because moonlight does not hurt them, the Shadowscape provides safe passage, but only temporarily. After a maximum of two days, its otherwise ideal conditions can produce an unrecognized euphoria that may keep travelers there until their minds are destroyed. The route thus makes movement possible without making it limitless: even the darkness that protects them carries its own peril.