Everywhere has a smell. Be it a restaraunt kitchen or a garbage pit, a wild meadow or a sterile hospital, all things lend an aroma to the environment.
So why should the Afterlife be different?
Some spots seems obvious, like the cloying ashen odor of the Maw, or the old-meat-and-vinegar stench of Maldraxxus’ plagued fleshpits… but what scent hangs in the air of Bastion, or lurks in the fogs of Revendreth? What fragrance drifts through the woods of Ardenweald, or haunts the dizzying misty halls of Torghast, or even passes through the noses of visitors to the Eternal City of Oribos itself?
Just a nice bit of thought-exercise to add to one’s roleplay.
Bastion, I imagine, smells like sunbaked grass, and a warm breeze just after a gentle rain. Ardenweald is a heady blend of moist leaves and some intoxicating aroma that you can’t quite place.
I imagine the Endmire smells like a bog, sort of damp and mossy, while the Ember Ward smells like hot dirt and stone. If you’ve ever hiked in a rocky area with little vegetation on a sunny day, I imagine it smells like that. I imagine the more woody areas of Revendreth smell like a forest on a cold day in late autumn or early winter, earthy but pleasant.
I bet the Venthyr keep most of Revendreth smelling pretty good. They don’t seem like the kind of people that allow foul odors to linger in their presence.
I always imagined it to have a petrichor scent, along with a wisp of something … more – that you ‘just can’t quite place’.
I always imagined Revendreth to smell like a mixture of a strong scent of stone, with a subtle smell of burning paper & something ever so slightly delectably sweet that makes you thirst & hunger.
The Books of the Shadowlands are usually infinite in length despite the small size of the Books themselves!
That means that when Mad Scientists invent a way to physically enter Works of Fiction(and you know they will considering they are insane and don’t care about consequences) people will be able to bring the infinite books of the Shadowlands into Reality.
Of course the crazy Mad Scientists will need Trial and Error to actually get the machine that takes one into Fictional Worlds that it brings to life to create a book that is actually infinite rather than cutting off as soon as you stop reading it & take it out of the Fictional World!
Regrettably, I know precisely and exactly what a decomposing deer corpse in the height of summer smells like, and it’s a smell that pops into my brain more often than I’d like when I think of Maldraxxus.
I sort of imagine Bastion smells almost overpoweringly of perfume. Maybe just when the weather event kicks in and everything gets all pink and misty.
