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A.N.
Over the past two years I've been writing for my own original multiverse. I will mostly...
The Premise

ericshaofangwang

Retainer of the Court of Azathoth
Location
Australia
A.N.
Over the past two years I've been writing for my own original multiverse. I will mostly post snippets (I've begun writing a coherent series of chapters for a story set in this multiverse but don't expect to see it soon as I'm currently mostly busy with exams for these months) and a lot of worldbuilding. That said, this is a project that anyone else is free to contribute to, and is made so that people can write almost any sort of story they want into this multiverse, be it fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc. Now that that's said, time to begin!

Link to already existing snippets on my google drive:
Outsider Multiverse - Google Drive
(There might be some contradicting bits and the project is likely to be very messy; some parts are likely poorly written, things change during the two year period I had writing for this project and there are plenty of scrapped bits as well. ) Without further ado, let's begin!


The Archailect


Child, do you remember? Surely you must have glimpses of pasts, real and fake. Of the countless realities have once been, and never been. Do you remember our empire? Where the sentient stars, the Cthughans, graced the many universes with their light. Where the Merocytes that were your predecessors grew beyond their purpose as a sentient plague and became a great people of their own. Where the Amygdalans, Vecs, the Elitzi, Mezoans, Necroans and countless other races thrived under the multiversal Weave we Archai created.

Many have questioned why so many races under us Archai fell during the collapse. Some say it was our and our subordinates' hubris in expanding and encroaching on the realms of other outer gods. Others believed that we neglected the ever more apparent divisions within the countless lesser races.


It was neither. It was our fear that was our downfall. Several sun lives ago when we only had our home universe all of us Archai peered into the infinite void. We perceived blinding lights, phenomenon so strange and disconnected from all the realities we knew so as to baffle us and be completely incomprehensible to our client races. But we detected something in there that made our essence jolt and quiver. That's when we first began expanding. Many Archai back then parted ways to explore, only to return to establish our empire. I myself travelled into various points in space-time in the multiverse set, travelled through the void between spaces where I gathered strength and power. And a quarter Milky Way revolution after, we returned to our home, having conquered or terraformed numerous universes and even more numerous laws of realities. Our expansion and grab for power and complete immortality wasn't motivated by greed or pride. It was out of fear. For whatever was outside in the void, it was hostile and it was waiting.


3 sun lives later, the fateful hour came. All the preparations we made were for naught. At that point we were overextended from expansion and it attacked us at our weakest point. We collapsed time-space on the level of millions of universes. We caused hundreds of thousands of Big Crunches and millions more Big Rips in a futile attempt to stop it. We failed. While us immortal Archai survived , we could only powerlessly look on as it reached and slaughtered our children in the trillions with few groups escaping the carnage. For while our children feared it for its incomprehensibility, we feared it because we comprehended what it was. Its distorted maw was lined and intersected with the jagged tears of time space. Its body was forever shifting in shape and reaching into both the past and the future, from the centre of the universes to their outer edges. What followed it were twisted abominations of timelines that have been and never been, universes so unstable that they collapsed and spread their condition to other universes. It was a malignant incarnation of the void itself, a primordial teratoma of universes that cannot and will not be reasoned with.


We pulled our last card. We used what little power our Weave network still had to stow away our surviving children. We linked our and our children's minds to the Weave's many severed fragments to create an Overmind, which finally wounded it and left it to die.
 
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Timeline of events
Outsider Multiverse Timeline


FE=First End (Also denotes Weave Time, as the rate of passage of time can vary immensely between universes)


32 BFE: First minor time-space anomalies detected. Few civilisations payed attention to this discovery. Point 0, the universe that the original Archai come from, is on its way to its demise.


26 BFE: Timelines start to diverge, and the consciousness of many individuals in the universe are stretched across these diverging dead-end timelines. Birth of the first 'Blank Readers'.


25 BFE: First Blank Reader death in one of the divergent timelines. The start of the end times.


22 BFE: Timelines begin crashing. Entropy accelerates.


19 BFE: Time delineates. Objects and individuals from various timelines, past and potential futures, appear randomly in the present. Some areas within space have time going at a faster rate, and in some other areas time slows.


16 BFE: Entropy accelerates uncontrollably. Black holes begin to burn out much earlier than anticipated, while stars begin forming into supergiants, red dwarfs, neutron stars and new black holes. Extinction event imminent.


5 BFE: Blank Readers begin to separate their consciousness from time and space. Transcension begins. Research on the brink of a breakthrough that may be able to break out of this predicament. Creation of first Void capable ships.


4 BFE: A way to reverse entropy and converge timelines has been found. Production of capable technology is hideously inefficient, and more research goes into making this technology viable for mass deployment.


3 BFE: Readers begin mass producing Void ships, believing that the universe is lost.


2 BFE: Entropy reversal in mass deployment the universe seems to be stabilising for now.


1BFE: Division between Readers and general population become clear. Evacuation of Reader fleets. Stabilisation slows down.


0 FE: First End. Thousands of septillions die as universe fades away on itself. Without the Readers, those still in the dying universe are lost and the final efforts to save the universe are too little, too late. Surviving population only amounts to a few dozen septillion, mostly digital uploads. Readers leave behind a small mass, intended as a seed to birth a new universe.

12 FE: the remaining Readers find a new universe with relatively compatible laws of physics. Some laws are harmful, and the first domains are used as terraforming tools.


13 FE: First Contact with the native species of the universe that would later be known as Weave Point 01 occurs. The contact is disastrous, as the terraforming effects of the domains used by Point 0's civilisations are misunderstood as an invasion by Point 01's natives. The remnant civilisations of Point 0 are either forced into strongholds or destroyed and left to a cycle of life and death in the numerous 'Tomb Clouds', debris of destroyed planets, starships and space habitats. This cycle of life and death stunts the ongoing Transcension of Point 0's remnants in the Tomb Clouds.


168 FE: The conflict between Point 0's remnants and Point 01's natives reaches a lull and an informal ceasefire is reached. Nomads lead by Arzin makes contact with several Tomb Clouds.


182 FE: Ceasefire ends. Arzin allies with several Tomb Cloud collections and nearly manage to flee to the strongholds on the edge of Point 01. Arzin is forced to betray the Point 0 remnants after his people are held hostage in a pocket dimension. The Point 0 Tomb Cloud denizens are now fragmented and imprisoned in various pocket dimensions known as Labyrinths.


236 FE: Enough Tomb Cloud denizens have gathered their shattered fragments to complete their Transcension. They are still imprisoned, however, and start infiltrating and undermining Point 01's civilisations from within through avatars and proxies. Many of the Point 0 remnants in the strongholds have also transcended at this point. Several new sapient species appear at this point in time, born from the separated fragments of Transcendents.


245 FE: The first Demi-Archai emerge in both the strongholds and Labyrinths. Under the strain of keeping the Point 0 remnants sealed or repelled, the civilisations of Point 01 begin to weaken.


249 FE: The threshold is reached. Using their proxies and avatars, the Demi-Archai and Transcendants of the Labyrinth break free. The waiting fleets of the strongholds assault the civilisations of 01 in the chaos. The start of the Ascension Wars.


301 FE: The first Archailects appear. Under the attacks of these new deities, the civilisations of 01 are put under unbearable strain. It becomes apparent that Point 01 will fall. Arzin is hunted down and killed for his betrayal years earlier.


304 FE: The Ascension wars end. The last native civilisation of 01 ha fallen. Mass exodus of the fallen civilisations. Some of the Point 01 natives choose to stay, however. The Age of Rebuilding begins. Several groups originating from Point 0 break off, including what would become the Necroan Flesh Cult, Amalgamation of Intelligence, and Mons Olympus.


305 FE to 602 FE: There is relatively little activity during this period during reconstruction. Several minor wars are waged between petty parties in the background. Many Archai and Demi-Archai make rapid progress towards their next ascension. The Weave is founded.


602 FE: The first universal and multiversal Archailects appear. These Archailects can now be formally called Outer Gods. Deciding that one universe is not enough for the rapidly growing civilisations in Point 01, new universes are created and other universes are scouted out in the Void. Point 0 is now fully rebuilt and colonisation begins.


603 FE to 3821 FE: Period of relative peace. Near the end of this period, however, tensions between several Archailects over the development of client civilisations appear. The prelude of the First Aeon War begins.


3822 FE: The First Aeon war begins as tensions erupt. Factions of Archailects and Transcendants wage an eternal war across time and space within a multitude of universes. These Outer Gods and immortal deities suffer no losses, but the civilisations under them suffer horrendously. The first counter-time travel technologies are put into place. They are effective for the most part on anything less than Transcendents. Results in a wide range of actualised diverging timelines. Once the war had ended these timelines were merged back together to help repair the damaged time streams of several universes. Universes destroyed during this war were rebuilt.


3823: The Archailects and Transcendents form The Three Great Factions, separating them by their preferred method of development for their clients. The Archivists guide their client civilisations personally, while the Transcendists encourage competition to create progress. The Isolationists leave their civilisations to develop on their own path, believing (not without reason) that the Archailects and Transcendents were responsible for the death and suffering during the first Aeon War.


3823 FE to 350 058 FE: Stringent enforcement of policies of the Three Great Factions lead to a prosperous era. There are several disagreements between the Archai and foreign Outer Gods, but casualties are rare as the disputes are resolved peacefully or in the Void and pocket universes to preserve their holdings in realspace. The groups that left just after the Ascension Wars, however, have started resurfacing…


350 059 FE: The renegade group of Mons Olympus, backed by several foreign Demi Archai and several Transcendent civilisations, assault the Weave and occupy it. Mons Olympus has now grown into a bizarre mix of different chaotic ideologies, with the common goal of anarchy. External influence on the group is suspected but never confirmed. Another devastating Aeon War across time-space is waged and, in the aftermath,, the minds of the responsible Transcendents are edited and rewritten to stop further aggression. The organisation is disbanded.

520 459: The Weave begins expanding more quickly, reaching a relatively obscure Outer God by the name of Szchest. This deity is ancient, even by Outer God standards. The other Outer Gods and Archailects within the Weave attempt to contact this silent ancient, but their replies remain unanswered.


520 460: Szchest is still silent, but contact has been established with cultists and researchers of the mysterious ancient throughout the universe across time. It becomes known that Szchest is in a half-dreaming state, being barely lucid and only just awakening. Szchest is only subconsciously aware of the other Outer Gods/Archailects and Transcendents contacting him. His cultists seek to awaken him, saying:

"The Contemplator, the Thinker, dreams and thinks of all that exists in our universe. We seek to awaken him, or at least draw his full attention. Throughout our dealings with his servants and angels, we discovered that they were simply his runaway thoughts given flesh. If his awareness gives us existence, then surely his attention would grant us divinity. Surely you, as his kin across the stars, would know this."


520 472: Disaster strikes as Szchest fully awakens. Devastating collateral damage occurs as the universe and adjacent universes begin to destabilise due to Szchest's more active thoughts. What is unusual however, is that the cultists became Transcendents themselves. The Weave is kept away from this Outer God, not out of malice but out of necessity for the dangers of that his runaway thoughts could inflict on those of material reality. Contact with Szchest reveals that it is a fusion of self-propagating thoughts.


520 496: The Weave expands around Szchest and his realm to avoid his stray thoughts. New doctrines are created to avoid the awakening of possibly hostile or dangerous Transcendents and Outer Gods.


520 496 to 32 364 243: Records of this period are conflicting and hard to verify, with only Transcendents and Outer/Gods Archailects being able to correlate them. The damage done to much of the Weave was severe, but it is known amongst the survivors that this period was a Golden Age.


32 364 244: The Tor Crisis. Countless die as universes are corrupted and destroyed while those bound my reality are mercilessly consumed. The Overmind is created and formed by Archailects and Outer Gods by temporarily merging their consciousness. Adremer Tor is destroyed, but the damage done will take aeons to rebuild. The Outer Gods and Transcended can no longer truly project their power and the Weave is all but shattered.


32 364 391/Present: The Amalgamation of Intelligence and the Necroan Flesh Cult resurface as major powers. Before the Tor Crisis these two parties were relatively minor groups near the edge and beyond the Weave. They survived mostly intact through the crisis and are now active in taking portions of the Weave for themselves. There is chaos as roving bands and petty empires carve out pieces of the devastated Weave. Tor crisis survivors are rehabilitated by the Transcendents and Outer Gods/Archailects in the relatively small portion of intact Weave left after the Tor Crisis. Repair of the damage is progressing, but new threats are beyond the horizon. The Three Great Factions are wary, as new hostile Transcendents and Outer Gods move in to take their piece of the Weave. The stage is set for a third Aeon War…
 
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Standalone Snippet 1: Ritual of Flesh

A Ritual of Flesh



I leisurely gazed at the planet. Before me, was the exposed core of a planet being disassembled into raw materials. Gases were siphoned off and the solid interior of the planet was dismantled.

Just about everyone has been scrambling off their feet since the Tor Crisis. While I was born after the event, the effects are still apparent and ongoing. Reconstruction has been slow, but for the losses we had suffered this was the best that we could do. Things that we used to take for granted were now in short supply, and problems that existed before the crisis have only become worse with no one attending them.


I sighed, even though I have no need to breathe. Life is hard, and most of the surviving civilisations in the Weave were taking any uninhabited planet they could find and dismantling them for materials. I looked to see the last pieces of the planet's core being taken apart by a nanomachine swarm.


Levitating to the centre of a large room, I activated my interface. I took cursory glances at the

various systems within the datascape and scanned for any changes. An indicator flashed.

An anomaly.


Flashing on the interface for a few moments, the indicator faded as if the anomaly was gone. Scanning the whole datascape, I found a lone individual. Bipedal, humanoid, but not of any race I can identify. Covered in chitin and bone, its face was obscured. The figure turned around to face the sensor, before fading away.


The alarm activated immediarely. The whole datascape locked down, and a domain was released. Hundreds of thousands of drones swarmed out of portals and swarms of nanomachines actively scanned the area for unidentified targets, ready to dismantle any victim unfortunate enough to be captured..


I contacted an adjacent datascape. Quickly sending in a report of an anomaly, more units were sent in. After the last units were sent in, I was contacted by one of them. An armoured figure with the number 822 on its breastplate appeared in hologram to my right.


"Captain, I have found traces of the anomaly. It's on these coordinates."


Nodding my head at the statement, I quickly teleported to the marked coordinates. A dark haze emanated about, obscuring all the sensors in the datascape. My senses dulled and my vision blurred. Everything around me went by in a flash.


As the haze started to clear up, I noticed my surroundings had changed. I felt as if a were thousand creatures crawling underneath my skin. I gazed at my surroundings.

A horrifying flesh cavern assaulted my eyes. Spires of twisted bone and sinew connected the ceiling and floor, with pungent clouds of red and yellow emanating from the walls. Yellow, viscous fluid dripped from the ceiling like pus and ran in rivers along the length of this cavern of flesh. Along the walls of the cave I could see the shapes and silhouettes of gaping faces.

I hurriedly attempted to contact the datascapes and the Weave. I tried activating my sensors.


Nothing.


No response.


Without the Weave or the datascapes to cheat death, I felt exposed and vulnerable. Panicking, I tried to accelerate.

My body won't move. I tried checking the state of my body manually, but I can't move my head either.


I struggled, but everything was the same. I was immobilised.

My panic growing, my eyes dart, looking to find some way out of this wretched place.


"Do not resist, young one."


I started calming down. The androgynous voice that echoed through the cavern was both soothing and compelling.


"Follow me, young one"


I felt my body regaining its movement and I followed the stranger. Not knowing how or why, I had started trusting this stranger and his words. I want to resist his will, but it his words, his COMMANDS, they felt natural. Natural to follow them.


Walking further, I was greeted by an organised hall. Pillars of bone and chitin stood tall and proud, glowing with a metallic sheen. Beside each pillar large fleshy tendrils formed in shapes that were a perversion of nature. At the end of a hall I saw the earlier anomalous figure, seated on a throne of shining bone and glistening flesh.


The one seated on the throne was covered head to toe in bone and chitin. Its upper body was disproportionally thin, appearing emaciated and malnourished as if it were a living mummy. Its lower body and legs appeared thick and powerful, evoking imagery of large predators. It was a perversion, a blight. Yet, despite all this, it had a grotesque beauty. Lying behind the throne was a suit of armour. It had 822 on the breastplate.


Before the throned figure were dozens of the bloated and disfigured. They were no longer identifiable by their native races. They danced awkwardly and clumsily in hideous motions. Some appeared joyful and energetic. Some appeared to be in pain and despair. All of them showed a madness in their movements.


"Welcome, young one. Are you here to accept our gift?"


"What gift?" I barely croaked out.


"We are Necroans. What we grant is the gift of The Flesh."


"How are you Necroans? Their race are no longer the bioweapons Marathoth used for wa-"


"Our kin, and our god-ancestor Necroa have long since abandoned their original purpose at the behest of that Void God. We however, still remember it. We still spread the glory of The Flesh.

The Flesh guides us, and I am its prophet."


"Prophet of Flesh, what do you intend of me?"


"We accept you into our embrace, young one. Become one of us."


"Become a monster?"


"Why, you are mistaken. Those who accept its gift are strengthened and enlightened, united, as one with The Flesh. Their bodies swell to contain its glory and The Flesh whispers enlightenment unto those blessed by it."


"And if I refuse your 'gift'?"


"Then you shall be part of The Flesh, but without mind nor body, like the ones you see in the cavern walls. However, do you still believe you can reject us, when your body had accepted its embrace the moment you arrived?"

I looked down. My torso and chest had bloated, and my limbs had shrivelled. I felt around for my implants. Not even they were spared. Malformed metal growths had sprouted on my body. My skin was red, and some areas were blackened and blighted,

The Flesh Prophet seemed to be celebrating, as if he had converted a heretic to his cause. His posture and movements held smugness and pride.


I heard a whisper. Turning my head around to see where it came from, I heard another whisper. I turned my head once again. Whisper after whisper came, and soon, it was a maddening chorus.


I clutched my head, wanting to break it open to end this insanity. Yet, the whispers were so compelling that I cannot defy them.


I laugh. In this madness that was all I could do. With an unsteady gait, I joined the revellers.


My will is the same as the Flesh. The tiny voice of defiance in my head has been silenced.

It is me.


Just as I am part of It.
 
Premise of Outsider Multiverse (Loaded with Ham)
Outsider Multiverse Premise


The Weave. A vast network in the multiverse built by the godlike Transcendants and the nigh-omnipotent Archailects has finally shattered into countless pieces. A network of countless universes has fallen at the hand of the being known as Adremer Tor. To combat this disaster, the Archailects and Transcendents created the Overmind, a being of unimaginable power that slew Tor and shattered the Weave's remains.


In the wake of this catastrophe, billions upon billions of petty empires have carved a place in the ruins of a once great network, while horrific cults and long forgotten horrors lie in wait at the edges. The remaining survivors of the great multiversal empires are kept under the protective gaze of the Archailects and Transcendents in their strongholds at what was once the Weave's centre.The tendrils of Tor's corpse remain, and existence itself is precarious in many places and times; every microsecond and every atom;s worth of space is worth fighting over. The Void, the timeless space between spaces, is Tor scarred hellscape of untold horrors.


Amidst these dangers, the stage is set for a third eternal, Aeon War. A war of untold devastation across time and space lies on the endless horizon, as alliances shift, and new enemies and allies are made.


In these strange aeons, life and death are mutable. A new future lies beyond the endless devastation, but only for those who survive.
 
You provide a timeline, but even the start of it has no point of reference, no context. It would work better if you just started with the present and worked more on informing the people of what happened in past through dialogue, and then used any info dumps on setting information that would actually inform about what was going on. At this point I don't even know if the protagonist is humanoid.
 
You provide a timeline, but even the start of it has no point of reference, no context. It would work better if you just started with the present and worked more on informing the people of what happened in past through dialogue, and then used any info dumps on setting information that would actually inform about what was going on. At this point I don't even know if the protagonist is humanoid.

I'm honestly panicking about where to actually start, since I have already written a lot for the project and a lot of the snippets are not actually connected and rather standalone (like the one above). The project is both parts tonnes of worldbuilding with some stories set in them. If you don't mind, can you help me choose some pieces (from the Google drive) for an introduction to the project? Or if not, I will write an introductory snippet for the project. At this point I kind of need help since until recently this project was something I wrote and discussed with close friends.
 
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The Archialect. It was the first one you wrote, according to the time stamp, is was clearly designed as an introductory piece to present the idea through the perspective of a narrator.

Thanks, will do once I get my WiFi working.

Edit: And done! It's on the first post now.
 
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