The Corridor of Shade isn't on any maps, and neither is the land it leads to. You don't receive an invitation to it, seek it out, or even know it exists. Its name doesn't appear in any legends and no secret diaries alluding to its existence have ever been found. You just turn a corner one day, in an infinitely familiar place, a corner you've gone around a hundred times, and find yourself in a shadowy tunnel you've never seen before in your life.

Trailing the tips of your fingers along the smooth surface of the wall, you cautiously make your way down the twilight hall, never really entertaining the thought of turning back. The sort of person who turns away from unfamiliar territory will walk past the entrance to the Corridor a thousand times and never find it.

The end of the Corridor isn't so much a clear line as it is a subtle gradient. The lights come up slowly, the floor beneath your feet gradually softens to sand, or moss, or grass, or hardens to bare rock, the walls begin to bulge and fade, until you're in a wide-open space.

At first, it seems you're alone in the world, in the desert or the forest or whatever sort of land you've found yourself in, but after a little bit of exploring, some walking, some courage, you find other people. Camps of them. Towns. Even a few cities. And they're all full of explorers and dreamers and adventurers, gathered into loose alliances that shift and change on a whim.

One group or another will tell you there are whole continents left unexplored in this place, seemingly endless expanses of new lands to find, and ask if you'd perhaps like to join their next expedition. Of course, you say yes, because, like them, that's what you've always dreamed of doing. And not a one of you will ever really question the hows and whys of this place, or wonder at the strangeness of its existence. You're not the philosophical type, after all.