Alpha0 – Appendix II

That is a good question.

I know how it is handled in the Abyss. It has an absolute value function built in.

Now, the Outer Planes are reflections of the Material Planes and “created by the gods”

I.e. the gods create their own little universes in the region called “the outer planes” If the god is animus based, the outer plane will be animus based. If the god is antimus based, the plane will be antimus based.

Thus you have “good gods” and “evil gods” –sort of– you really just have animus and antimus gods. They tend to stay away from each other/do their own thing and most work to stomp out the opposing polarization when it pops up in their domains.

So basically you have these gods that create their own private planes (7 Heavens, etc) and stake out space on the Material Planes to “raise” worshipers to feed them mana.

If I were an Atheist (note the cap A–this is a term that is introduced in next Alpha) I would argue that gods and their material churches are sort of like cattle ranches or gardens in which they farm mana.

So when opposing polarity animus pops up in their garden, it’s like a very deadly weed that will consume their mana supply by stealing their animus “plants”. So they stomp it out.

Now that being said. Not all of the gods see it quite this way/this framework. This is one necromancers explanation of Unlife. That does not mean it’s 100% accurate.

Interesting thoughts.

You may note there has been much discussion of Eve and Lilith and Adam and Sammael. Whatever happened to that garden they had?

Doesn’t the existence of a Garden of Eden, Sammuel, Eve, Adam, and Lilith also imply the existence of a God who created them all, and then kicked Adam and Eve out? I mean, wouldn’t Sammuel’s enemy, the Demi-Urge, who we assume to be the God of Christianity, then be their creator?

In different forum post you said Adam and eve left the garden but sammael, don’t know if I spelled that right, and lilith stayed in the garden to be “immortal”
Who’s to say they left.

I guess I need to reread some old stuff. Things actually haven’t changed.

At it’s simplest level (as the gods/demons know it)

The multiverse contains the Material Planes & their associated Etherial Planes, Elemental Planes, Demi-Elemental Planes, Outer Planes, Limbo, Purgatory, Abyss.

The “Planes of Man/Elf/Orc” aka Midgard, the Material Planes are a collection of material universes each with different laws of physics/magic/etc.

What Astlanian’s call the localverse is a single universe, same timeline. All the “planes” or “worlds” within the localverse are different planets in different (presumably) star systems (could be in the same one). Therefore the laws of magic/physics/etc are the same on all of the worlds, and while exact spells for doing stuff may differ, that’s because of history/culture, not any law of nature. Thus whatever works on one world will work on the other.

The people on individual worlds do not necessarily know this though. They do know that the spells to get there are a bit different, but not radically different from traveling to a world in a different universe.

You cannot however use world hopping spells to change your timeline from with your own universe. You would have to use a time travel sort of spell. It’s sort of a quantum frequency thing.

It is, however possible to go to other timelines in other “distant” universes. The more distant, the more timeline options are available, thus people from Astlan can get to multiple versions of Earth, as long as they are very stable/long lasting timelines. It is very hard to get get to the less stable timelines, and/or more accurately it’s not safe because if you enter an unstable timeline/alternate version and it collapses back onto its major timeline, you could get edited out. (unless you are a singular being–see below)

Ouch.

Can gods do this with relative impunity? Some can. Not all, but some.

Now Astlan and other worlds in it’s localverse are a bit perverse because they have a very strong history of interacting with beings from the Abyss and Outer Planes.

The more a universe’s main timeline interacts with “singular beings” the fewer alternate timelines there actually are. I.e. gods and demons, at least powerful ones, tend to collapse timelines.

In a sense, you could say that the arrival of singular beings within a universe acts as a “measurement” of that universe and thus the timeline becomes defined/known. All the ifs/ands/buts/might have beens get collapsed to the version the singular being goes to.

One of the things the appendices talks about a bit is how when an individual from one timeline visits say “the abyss” all versions of his/herself are temporarily collapsed to the one in the Abyss. When they leave and return to the material plane, they are reexpanded. This tends to explain near-death experiences and such in many cases.

So, when a singular being visits a plane, you tend to get the reverse effect.

Which is why I long ago swore off time travel as the “solution” to Rupert’s parentage. Nope, not going to happen.

Trig is from Gormegast, it’s a fairly mana rich technology universe and they get a fair number of dimensional hoppers, much like Astlan. Same with Visteroth.

So there are not that many “alternate timelines”

As a rule, the gods tend to be much more active on mana rich worlds where magic does function in some form or the other. Simply because it’s easier to screw with them. They have their pools, etc. But working in mana poor worlds is sort of like needing to have a mana spacesuit.

Note Sammael’s thoughts on his battle with the Demiurge.

So…long story short, the less mana rich worlds tend to have more alternate timelines as the gods show up less often.

Now, back “in the old days” Earth had fewer timelines as well. It used to have a much better mana supply (the Demiurge has been sort of hoovering it up) In those days, the Greek, Egyptian and other gods were far more active; but that basically started dying off post Ragnarok; levels started to decrease and gods sort of started losing active interest. Therefore more bifurcations happened and were able to stabilize.

That being said, it was never anywhere near as mana rich as full magic worlds, in large part due to the laws of physics for that universe. this is where the Lords of Law start coming into play. The higher tech worlds tend to be closer to “Law” where as the magical worlds are closer to “Chaos”