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Things to consider

Time and space

Time and space in Neverwhere are by far less straight and normal than in our reality. Space especially may be distorted. Ground level alleys may end at doors leading to the lowest levels of the catacombs underneath the city while a set of rungs in a wall in the sewers may lead to the highest roofs. Places adjacent in normal reality may be far apart in Neverwhere or vice versa. Some people may know shortcuts others cannot find or use without them.  A place may only be reached by first visiting a series of other places or it may be reached only at certain times.

Speaking of time, this commodity is not as reliable in Neverwhere either. While it still passes in a mostly linear fashion, it may stretch and bend and make unexpected turns. It may pass more quickly or slower than in the real world, so that it can occasionally be night in Neverwhere and day outside of it. Somehow, though, people who meet in Neverwhere always agree as to what time it is, although they may have experienced the timeflow differently when they were apart.

People passing fully into Neverwhere age differently - usually slower. Some may have lived through centuries, some may even be immortal, if not invulnerable. A select few may even learn to traverse time like they can space; Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar may serve as examples for that. Nevertheless, even they have to follow rules. While they may turn up in different periods (they say they had tortured to death the inhabitants of a 16th century monastery just before they took the current nowadays assignment), they still have to enter the time stream of their current assignment, do whatever they have to do in consecutive order, and afterwards may not return to change things or even just observe themselves doing it all so perfectly. While they may live through every second of the time stream they may only do so once for each second.

To reflect the ability of navigating the special time-space continuum of Neverwhere this setting uses a skill called Dysorientation. This skill is governed by Intuition. It enables its possessor to find routes from one place to another, possibly figure out relations between places, get used to the time stream and its eddies and keep track of the general passing of time. On a successful roll it also allows the user to know when and where the next Floating Market or May Fair will be. There may only be one roll per instance, you cannot roll twice to learn about the location of the upcoming market. Also, the roll is only possible shortly before the market begins; the vendors are usually the first to know and they begin to set up shop immediately.

Time travel such as Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar are wont to do will only be possible by using some kind of magic.

To see or not to see

People living in the real world do not notice things belonging to Neverwhere. Even if these things (or people) stare right in their faces, they will react to them only for as long as needed to get away and then forget about the experience promptly. As a result, if something or someone from Neverwhere doesn't force an outsider to take notice, there will be no interaction.

People from Neverwhere may see the outsiders perfectly well. They can hear them, manipulate their surroundings etc. Communication, however, is an arduous process, usually one way, and only good for the shortest of exchanges. If you write a letter or record a message, it will still bear the taint of Neverwhere and go unnoticed. If you take something away, it will pass into Neverwhere and be utterly forgotten.

Money, being one of the most important facets of our reality, is utterly useless in Neverwhere. As a consequence, any action requiring direct use of money (purchasing a ticket from a machine, using public phones, getting cash or paying with a credit card) will automatically fail. While you may still use private phones (for which of course the owner will get billed), the other side, if an outsider, will either not hear anything or react adversely ("wrong number!" - click).

In Neverwhere, exchange of goods functions by trading goods or favours. Dwellers of Neverwhere have a very different understanding of value than an outsider. So different, in fact, that they can hold a Floating Market in the midst of the huge London store 'Harrod's' without touching the items offered by the store at all.

Things forgotten and lost pass into Neverwhere. Once someone from Neverwhere takes them for keeps, they pass over for good. Sometimes this may even happen to people. While some of them (called Borderliners or Halflings) may live in both worlds, such people usually fade from reality into Neverwhere. These are either those who drop through the cracks of society, having no family and friends, living on the streets etc., so that they eventually pass over with or without noticing it, or those who somehow are touched by Neverwhere and ripped from reality by the experience. The latter is what happens to Richard Mayhew in the novel/series. This only happens to people who are somehow apart from outside reality. They do not really understand the trappings of everyday life, dream a lot, do unexpected things or play roleplaying games. Some part of their soul may already be in Neverwhere. Once they have crossed over, something which can be provoked by the slightest contact with Neverwhere, they may never (never?) return. And even if they find a way, such as Richard does, they will see that their bleak everyday lives hold no value whatsoever and soon return to Neverwhere for good.

Lost ideas

One of the strangest commodities on the Underside consists of lost ideas, or rather the realization of such. Great minds may have developed amazing things, yet even more amazing are the machines and gadgets they could only dream of building. These contraptions survive in Neverwhere. For instance, Door's father had a machine which looked like a blend of TV and video recorder as it would have been if Sir Isaac Newton had dreamed it up - that's exactly what it was. Some of Galileo's most outrageous inventions may have survived in Neverwhere side by side with the ideas of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. But such items should be rare indeed - after all, no single item will have been dreamed of more than once by its wouldn't-be creator.

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