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Akashic Record

Source Occult Adventures pg. 244
Deep within the Astral Plane lies a demiplane called the Akashic Record that forms a critical part of the ancient wisdom at the heart of occult philosophy. The Akashic Record is a visual library of perfect psychic records of every moment in the history of the multiverse. Those who find their way here can observe scenes from any moment from the recent to distant past, going all the way back to the beginning of the multiverse. When a dead creature’s untethered astral body sees its life flash before its eyes as it awaits judgment in the Boneyard, its consciousness ventures to the Akashic Record. When a psychometrist divines a touched object’s past, he really gains impressions from scenes stored in the Akashic Record.

Unlike the history books of mundane existence, the Akashic Record is a perfect recording of events as they actually happened. Two creatures observing the same event in real time might come away with very different subjective understandings of what just occurred, but such confusion is impossible in the Akashic Record, which occultists speak of as the memory of nature. It is also known as the Book of the Lipika by the mysterious cloaked aeons who act as the Lords of Karma and who record every event in a mortal’s life to measure its rightful place in the afterlife.

A visitor consulting the Akashic Record simply turns her attention to the moment she wishes to observe, and it appears before her, not as a two-dimensional image like an illustration on page, but rather all around her, as if she were actually present witnessing the desired moment in history. The actors before her are unconscious of her presence, as they are but reflections. The observer can’t change or affect their actions in any way.

The observer can set the pace of events. He understands perfectly all communications within the record, even if he would not otherwise understand languages read or spoken, or the importance of cultural norms and signals otherwise foreign to him. If the event in question is from the observer’s own life, he may choose to view it as an outsider, or may inhabit his form and live out the event again, re-experiencing the emotions associated with the event the first time around.

Traveling to the Akashic Record, which abuts the mysterious Dimension of Time, is incredibly difficult. Spells that allow for planar travel, such as plane shift, cannot take a seeker to the Akashic Record. While occult lore suggests several methods to “enter” the Akashic Record and influence the visions seen there (for example, to rescue a character from some past scene and escape with her to the Astral Plane), those doing so risk becoming lost in the currents of the Dimension of Time, marooned in the real past of the observed event, very likely never to return. Such meddling with the affairs of time risks drawing the ire of the Lords of Karma, unleashing retributive time elementals or inevitables, or attracting the bloodthirsty otherworldly predators known as the hounds of Tindalos.

The Akashic Record has the following traits.
  • Flowing Time
  • Finite Shape
  • Static