Outside realms & their denizens
yannoshka
Thunda birb
- Location
- Smartarse cramschool
Outside realms
Outside realms are called such by the simple dint of them being outside the paradigm of the realized world, mirroring, refracting, dispersing, and distorting the realness of the world, without quite achieving reality of their own; or at least that is what the common wisdom claims.
As is so often the case with the 'common wisdom', the actual case is somewhat more involved and complicated.
To gain a better insight into the true nature of the outside realms, one must step far, far back and delve into the murky and oft ineffable depths of cosmology.
To the nature of the reality, and the gods.
It is said that there is a god for every concept, but that is far from the truth. There are many concepts - powerful concepts, important concepts - that have never and in all probability will never germinate into a divinity within the arcane womb that is the aether.
And nowhere is that more apparent than with the concept of thought, of sapience, of sophoncy. Not that most mortals will ever be aware of that due to the small plethora of thought-adjacent gods.
Since gods are, at their quintessence, a concept rich and ripe with arcane power, given thought, therefore it follows that the concept of thought must predate the existence of all but the primordial three gods whose act of actualization gave birth to the entirety of the existence.
So, why is all of that important to know, to understand the true nature of the outside realms and their denizens?
Simple. As the advent of the primordial three also resulted in the genesis of the prime reality, so too did the emergence of any following gods gave rise to the formation of new realms, albeit in a much more limited and a rather more narrowly specialized fashion.
But, unlike the gods that can and do grow, change, dim and ultimately die, the realms remain far more stable, even those born of ultimately chaotic underlying concepts.
Also, just as the gods, the Realms are not exactly static. Will-ye, nill-ye, they will emanate and exert influence beyond themselves. The difference from the gods is that their emanations/influence are unguided and undirected, which causes clashes and collisions between the outside realms and the prime reality.
And then, there are some cases where the formation of a new god went... Well, not quite awry, but maybe more... sideways? Topsy turvy?
Whereas, under usual circumstances, the power released from the formation of a god that forms a new realm is no more than equal at most and often times a fraction to that of the emergent god, sometimes something happens that results in disproportionately powerful realms and/or defective divines.
A prime example of such realm(s) is(are) the fay realm(s). The one that is four. The timeless lands.
Formed around the concepts of 'seeming'/'illusion'/'fake'/'false'/'simulacrum'* (the very term 'Fay' is an old word for false; unreal).
*it is a single concept, human language is simply insufficient to properly describe it, and thus closely aligned adjacent concepts are used in lieu.
Finally, there is the concluding, oddly shaped, piece of the puzzle. Outside realms can and do get compounded, either by the direct will and efforts of the gods, by crashing into each other seriously enough or by some other, mysterious mechanism.
For the sake of simplicity, the outside realms can be separated into three distinct categories:
1) Divine realms - homes of divine servants (angels and demons), which are fairly similar to the prime reality, and whose denizens are fairly analogous to the mortal races in their behavior, only twisted around the axis of the conceptual nature(s) of their god(s) and realms. They are usually, but not always, compound realms.
2) Elemental realms - homes of beings wholly wrapped into the concept from which they spring forth. Elementals are pseudo-intelligent, in that they are capable of decision-making and information analysis. That said, their thought processes are completely and utterly mechanical and devoid of abstractions, even when their central concept is abstract in and of itself. Usually, but not definitely, elemental realms are not compound.
3) Aberant realms - The realms that defy categorization, that came forth of the divergent and anomalous realm and god formations. There is little to no rhyme nor reason when these realms are in question.
Fay realm and the fay
Fay realm is as queer as they come.
It is a singular realm, and yet it is disjointed into four.
Technically, it is a compound realm, but it is compounded by and into itself.
The Summerlands, Lands of the youth, Underhill, and Fields of plenty.
While each of the four sub-realms seem to be intricately connected to the seasons as they are understood by the mortal denizens of the prime reality, the ordering seems to be reversed, thus, as an example, The Summerlands are strongest in the depth of winter.
The Fay can roughly be separated into two groups - the seelie courts of the spring (autumn) and summer (winter) ruled by Immortal monarchs Childlike Albrih and Wast Titania, and the unseelie courts of autumn (spring) and winter (summer) ruled by Alder-king Khernonus and the Spirits-queen Meadhbh.
It is theorized that the four Immortal monarchs are but the four facets, or mayhap the split shards of personality, of the False-god, whose emergence gave birth to the fey realms.
Within their domains, which they can never leave, each of the four are as powerful as any god (effectively upper tier 3).
Outside of them, their powers and influence are extremely situational.
Of all the realms, the Fay realm is the most alike to the prime reality. It is just as biodiverse, culturally diverse and diffused, and the races of fay, at least on the surface, are indistinguishable from the mortal races.
Scratch a bit bellow, however, and the falseness of their existence becomes clear. None of the fay ever get born nor die.
They do not eat, drink, nor shed refuse.
Though, were they desirous of doing so, they are quite capable and adroit at mimicking the processes in question.
And while they can act as any regular person, there is an underlying note of wrongness, of oddness, of treachery in their behaviors.
Ultimately, the underlying concept beneath it all is one of an excellent but ultimately untrue copy to the reality.
A/N: Whew, I'll freely admit that this one has gotten away from me.
Even now, I'm not quite clear of the fugue.
So, please, if I went off into rambling, as I am sometimes wont to do, point it out to me, and ask for any clarifications, because I myself am unsure of just how clear the information of this post were presented.
Outside realms are called such by the simple dint of them being outside the paradigm of the realized world, mirroring, refracting, dispersing, and distorting the realness of the world, without quite achieving reality of their own; or at least that is what the common wisdom claims.
As is so often the case with the 'common wisdom', the actual case is somewhat more involved and complicated.
To gain a better insight into the true nature of the outside realms, one must step far, far back and delve into the murky and oft ineffable depths of cosmology.
To the nature of the reality, and the gods.
It is said that there is a god for every concept, but that is far from the truth. There are many concepts - powerful concepts, important concepts - that have never and in all probability will never germinate into a divinity within the arcane womb that is the aether.
And nowhere is that more apparent than with the concept of thought, of sapience, of sophoncy. Not that most mortals will ever be aware of that due to the small plethora of thought-adjacent gods.
Since gods are, at their quintessence, a concept rich and ripe with arcane power, given thought, therefore it follows that the concept of thought must predate the existence of all but the primordial three gods whose act of actualization gave birth to the entirety of the existence.
So, why is all of that important to know, to understand the true nature of the outside realms and their denizens?
Simple. As the advent of the primordial three also resulted in the genesis of the prime reality, so too did the emergence of any following gods gave rise to the formation of new realms, albeit in a much more limited and a rather more narrowly specialized fashion.
But, unlike the gods that can and do grow, change, dim and ultimately die, the realms remain far more stable, even those born of ultimately chaotic underlying concepts.
Also, just as the gods, the Realms are not exactly static. Will-ye, nill-ye, they will emanate and exert influence beyond themselves. The difference from the gods is that their emanations/influence are unguided and undirected, which causes clashes and collisions between the outside realms and the prime reality.
And then, there are some cases where the formation of a new god went... Well, not quite awry, but maybe more... sideways? Topsy turvy?
Whereas, under usual circumstances, the power released from the formation of a god that forms a new realm is no more than equal at most and often times a fraction to that of the emergent god, sometimes something happens that results in disproportionately powerful realms and/or defective divines.
A prime example of such realm(s) is(are) the fay realm(s). The one that is four. The timeless lands.
Formed around the concepts of 'seeming'/'illusion'/'fake'/'false'/'simulacrum'* (the very term 'Fay' is an old word for false; unreal).
*it is a single concept, human language is simply insufficient to properly describe it, and thus closely aligned adjacent concepts are used in lieu.
Finally, there is the concluding, oddly shaped, piece of the puzzle. Outside realms can and do get compounded, either by the direct will and efforts of the gods, by crashing into each other seriously enough or by some other, mysterious mechanism.
For the sake of simplicity, the outside realms can be separated into three distinct categories:
1) Divine realms - homes of divine servants (angels and demons), which are fairly similar to the prime reality, and whose denizens are fairly analogous to the mortal races in their behavior, only twisted around the axis of the conceptual nature(s) of their god(s) and realms. They are usually, but not always, compound realms.
2) Elemental realms - homes of beings wholly wrapped into the concept from which they spring forth. Elementals are pseudo-intelligent, in that they are capable of decision-making and information analysis. That said, their thought processes are completely and utterly mechanical and devoid of abstractions, even when their central concept is abstract in and of itself. Usually, but not definitely, elemental realms are not compound.
3) Aberant realms - The realms that defy categorization, that came forth of the divergent and anomalous realm and god formations. There is little to no rhyme nor reason when these realms are in question.
Fay realm and the fay
Fay realm is as queer as they come.
It is a singular realm, and yet it is disjointed into four.
Technically, it is a compound realm, but it is compounded by and into itself.
The Summerlands, Lands of the youth, Underhill, and Fields of plenty.
While each of the four sub-realms seem to be intricately connected to the seasons as they are understood by the mortal denizens of the prime reality, the ordering seems to be reversed, thus, as an example, The Summerlands are strongest in the depth of winter.
The Fay can roughly be separated into two groups - the seelie courts of the spring (autumn) and summer (winter) ruled by Immortal monarchs Childlike Albrih and Wast Titania, and the unseelie courts of autumn (spring) and winter (summer) ruled by Alder-king Khernonus and the Spirits-queen Meadhbh.
It is theorized that the four Immortal monarchs are but the four facets, or mayhap the split shards of personality, of the False-god, whose emergence gave birth to the fey realms.
Within their domains, which they can never leave, each of the four are as powerful as any god (effectively upper tier 3).
Outside of them, their powers and influence are extremely situational.
Of all the realms, the Fay realm is the most alike to the prime reality. It is just as biodiverse, culturally diverse and diffused, and the races of fay, at least on the surface, are indistinguishable from the mortal races.
Scratch a bit bellow, however, and the falseness of their existence becomes clear. None of the fay ever get born nor die.
They do not eat, drink, nor shed refuse.
Though, were they desirous of doing so, they are quite capable and adroit at mimicking the processes in question.
And while they can act as any regular person, there is an underlying note of wrongness, of oddness, of treachery in their behaviors.
Ultimately, the underlying concept beneath it all is one of an excellent but ultimately untrue copy to the reality.
A/N: Whew, I'll freely admit that this one has gotten away from me.
Even now, I'm not quite clear of the fugue.
So, please, if I went off into rambling, as I am sometimes wont to do, point it out to me, and ask for any clarifications, because I myself am unsure of just how clear the information of this post were presented.
