Gridwalkers

Gridwalkers are Puzzlebox inhabitants, usually of Downwarp, that hold to a particular set of holistic animist beliefs. Puzzlebox faction catalogs sometimes refer to active and visible Gridwalkers as a faction called the "Gridshamans," but it's hard to find actual evidence of large-scale faction-like organization, or the use of that term by Gridwalkers themselves, though their belief system does have many features in common with shamanism (including work with spirits, altered states, and sometimes even an initiatory 'death'). Instead, Gridwalkers simply say that they have a particular way of looking at and interacting with the world.

Worldview

To the Gridwalkers, all of creation, whether it be material, conceptual, or somehow something else entirely, is part of an infinitely complex living system called the Grid. They believe the Grid arose when something in unformed primal chaos first somehow became aware of itself, first creating a loop, then splitting out into boundless forms by further self-inspection and differentiation. Thus, everything in the Grid is tied togethers with connections of meaning and concept, and each node is, in some sense, aware and alive. At the heart of the Grid, that primal loop can still be found, now called the Circuit, the endless cycle of creation, formation, breakdown, and re-creation.

Since most Gridwalkers live in a world filled with artifice and technology (even if much of it tends to be cobbled together or in poor repair), their greater powers have a decidedly urban bent. The three main stages of the Circuit are called Spark (Creation), Steel (Pattern), and Smoke (Change), and their approach to animism pays just as much attention to the spirits of buildings and roads as it does to those of trees and stones.