Cosmology of Creation: Difference between revisions
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[[Category:Epic Path]] | [[Category:Epic Path]] | ||
==Note to Players and Referees== | |||
This Cosmology section is simply here to provide you with an understanding of the way Epic Path has been constructed. This is most evident in the Spells and Monsters sections of the rules. | |||
If you want the 'purest' experience, with maximum mystery and all the surprises, then by all means, Skip This! Nothing here bears directly on any mechanic you will use in a combat. The Devils and Demons and things that go bump in the Night will be perfect surprises, and if that is what you like, then stop reading here. | |||
If you are curious as to how the Game Designers decided to 'hook everything together', then by all means, read on! Just be aware that this may make things less of a surprise later. | |||
You Have Been Warned. | |||
==Over-arching Cosmology== | |||
First, last, and forever, there is the Astral Plane. The Astral Plane, the Silver Sea, the Forever Endeavor, is the true, utterly unending and Infinite (in the third meaning of Infinity) Place. All else is contained within, or is a dark reflection of, the Astral Plane. | |||
Running next to, and formed as a reflection of, the Astral Sea is an equally infinite and endless place, the Deep Dark, the Last Cold, the Outer Madness. The Outer Madness is created by the existence of the Astral Plane, and will finally end when the Astral Plane is undone in some impossibly far-distant future. | |||
Within the Astral Plane there is a place where the Sea experiences a strange degree of turbulence, a place where there are titanic stresses on the Tapestry Argent. Indeed, this is a place where the Astral Sea twists up so tightly that it actually sparks and burns and consumes itself, and thus creates the Fountain. | |||
The Fount of Reality is a place where unimaginable energies are born of the Astral Sea, and spew forth in a titanic spout of potential and light and ever-evolving spectacle. As part of that colossal foaming turbulence of pure energy, there are occasional pockets of relative stability. Those pockets of stability tossing wildly about in the energetic stream of the Fount of Creation are universes. Similarly, in the Deep Dark, as a reflection of the Fount, there is a place where the cold, hateful fabric of the Outer Madness is twisted up and crushed together, and under that awful, infinite pressure, the Nascent Seed bursts forth. | |||
The Fountain is born of the peaceful Astral Plane, yet paradoxically, it's massive energies are full of screaming violence and are utterly sterile. | |||
The Nascent Seed is born of the dark and terrible Outer Madness, yet paradoxically, the Seed is full of gentle potential, bursting with fulsome, fecund,fertility. | |||
The Fount is the source of all the bright energy of all creation, but it is a pure, unliving brightness, utterly clean and eternal. | |||
The Seed is the source of the living seed, the life force that sparks all germination, that which makes possible all life and unlife. | |||
The Fount bursts forth from the Astral Plane, a thousand universes scattered in its flow like gemstones in a flow of saturated fluid. | |||
The Seed pours the essence of Life into those universes, causing them to burst forth with a million times a million forms and types of life. | |||
Balanced in the very focus of those two gigantic forces, there is a single universe, the largest and most fortunate of all universes. That universe is the Prime Material Plane, that place where the adventures of Epic Path are played out. | |||
Swirling in the turbulence around the Prime Material are dozens of other entire, separate realities. | |||
Some of these realities are in places of stable flow, swirling in eddies created by the wash of the Seed against the Fount. These universes are the domains of the Fundamental, Elemental, and Rudimental Beings. | |||
Some of these realities do not enjoy natural stability, and are instead tied to the Prime Material, through the actions of tremendously powerful Gods. These Deifically attached universes are the Outer Planes, those places where nigh-unknowable Beings hold utter dominion, and trillions of uplifted or benighted souls live out their lives. These places are the dwellings of beings high and bright, or abyssal and dark, and everything in between. | |||
And some of these lesser realities are not stable at all, and those poor, doomed realities drift away, settling further and further from the Silver Sea, until they eventually sag down into the Deep Dark, and drift ever further away, into the True Night...and yet, even these poor doomed realities give rise to Existence, of the most terrible sorts. | |||
The manifold universes which are far from the Fount and barely able to stay in the Astral Plane are the home of the untold trillions of the Crool, the race which exists eternally, doomed forever to the struggle to stay afloat. | |||
The far larger number of universes which have fallen into the Deep Night and succumbed to the Final Indignity molder, and decay, and eventually give horrid un-birth to the night-black legions of the Atropal. The less said of their horror, the better. | |||
Completing the structure of the cosmology are the reflections. | |||
As the Astral Plane shines it's silver existence through the universes within it, each of those universes casts a bright and wavery reflection upon the face of the Deep Dark. That bright reflection or each universe is a seperate, lesser, version of each reality. This is called the Ethereal Plane, and every Material Plane of any sort has an associated Ether. | |||
As the True Black stares eternally at the True Silver, the universes block the view. The sucking hunger of the Fuligin Well pulls so hard on the structure of the material planes that they form a dark, terrible, twisted shadow of each material plane. That dark, twisted shadow formed between the Material and the Outer Madness is the Plane of Shadow. Every material plane forms its own Plane of Shadow, and terrible indeed is the life that lives there. | |||
That, then is the overarching cosmology. The eternal Silver Sea creates and mirrors the Eternal Madness. The Astral Plane twists into the bright, hot, energetically sterile Fount of Reality, in which a multitude of Material Planes are created. The Prime Material is the largest and most stable, and has sat upon the Fount for untold millenia. The warm, life-giving reflection of the Fount is the Seed, where the dark well of the Outer Madness is destroyed to create the Spark of Life. The Spark infuses the Material Planes and life arises, fed and powered by the Fount. | |||
The Prime Material has a number of stable satellite realities, both naturally and through the agency of the Greater Gods. A far larger number of realities are doomed to drift and molder forever, which is the domain of the Crool, and the Atropals. The second largest reality, the most recently evicted Prime Material, is the closest reality to the Prime Material. This is the weird, wild, reality known as the First World, and is a place of manifold dangers as it begins it's long, slow slide into the Dark. | |||
Finally, every material plane casts two reflections, one the bright, insubstantial Ether, the other the dark, far-too-real Shadow. | |||
This is the stage upon which adventures are drawn in Epic Path. | |||
==The Prime Material Plane== | ==The Prime Material Plane== | ||
''Excerpts from the book, <u>'''The Nascent Seed'''</u>, by Elliard Baskerbury III'' | ''Excerpts from the book, <u>'''The Nascent Seed'''</u>, by Elliard Baskerbury III'' | ||
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===The Unterwelt=== | ===The Unterwelt=== | ||
Inside the Prime Material there are many structures. Natural forces have eddied and curdled in a reality as large and old as the Prime Laterial in a trillion, trillion different ways, and then on top of that, un-numbered hordes of deities, demi-gods, and arch-fiends have wrought their will on the fabric of the Material. | |||
Miles below the safe, sensible ground of the Prime Material, the unseen, the mad, the bad, and the merely desperate have eked out an existence that dates back to the First Day. This titanic underground realm is in every report far lerger than the surface lands, and filled with all manner of hungering fiends, species, clades, races, cultures, and Empires. Refugees from the fall of the First World, cthonic Early Life, degenerate but invincibly vital sports, monsters, castoffs, leftovers, mistakes, and trash from the surface world litter ever darkened inch of this titanic underground realm. | |||
Indeed, it is so large that the very name, "Unterwelt", means 'World Beneath'. Because it is an entire world down there, with terrors and treasures enough for a thousand lifetimes. | |||
===The So-Called "First World" of the Elves=== | ===The So-Called "First World" of the Elves=== | ||
The Elder Prime was the last reality before the Prime Material Plane to sit upon the Fount, bathing in the largesse of the Nascent Seed. It is old, old, and wise, and bitter with the knowledge of its impending doom. Many inhabitants are tremendously mighty, and utterly, ineffably alien, compared tot he Prime Material. It is a place of wonders, terrors, and awe, a place of heart-tearing beauty laid into lovely ruin, and a place of bloody aching wounds for the unwary. | |||
==The Elemental Planes== | ==The Elemental Planes== | ||
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Positive, Negative, Light, Dark, and Force | Positive, Negative, Light, Dark, and Force | ||
an opposite of the Outer Madness. | |||
The first pair consists of the Positive Energy Plane (from which the animating spark of life hails) and the Negative Energy Plane (from which the sinister taint of undeath hails). Energy from both planes infuses reality, the ebb and flow of this energy running through all creatures to bear them along the journey from birth to death. | The first pair consists of the Positive Energy Plane (from which the animating spark of life hails) and the Negative Energy Plane (from which the sinister taint of undeath hails). Energy from both planes infuses reality, the ebb and flow of this energy running through all creatures to bear them along the journey from birth to death. | ||
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==The Wards of the Will== | ==The Wards of the Will== | ||
These are unstable sub-realities that have orbited near the Fount, via the Will of the Greater Gods, for untold ages. They are home to weirdly alien cultures and races, with strange and terrible Ways of Power. | |||
===The Deific Agencies=== | ===The Deific Agencies=== | ||
These are sub-domains of the Wards of the Will, places where the Reigning Deifics are of a more kind, positive bent. Woe betide any who fall astray of the guiding strictures of a Deific Agency, however! | |||
===The Realms of Hell=== | ===The Realms of Hell=== | ||
These are sub-domains of the Wards of Will, places where the Reigning Deifics are not kind, or positive, but hellishly efficient nonetheless. If you can stomach the guiding strictures here, you will certainly prosper. | |||
===The Demesnes of Daemonkind (The Abyss?)=== | ===The Demesnes of Daemonkind (The Abyss?)=== | ||
These are sub-domains of the Wards of the Will where the ruling Deifics consider all other life to be either fodder, food, thralls, or, reluctantly, allies. If you go here, be an ally. The other options are not...palatable. | |||