Time differences between planes
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[quote=Maou;745]Does Astlan have other planets, and if so why hasn’t a free demons just left the planet, found another planet or moon to settle on, created a gate back to the abyss, and then just stayed their so as to avoid the summons of the AM’s.[/quote]
I would think thats pretty boring. But even then, we dont know that they did not do that.
But if someone did that, my money would be on dragons doing that.As you know, there are two moons. One is twice as far away, but the same size.
They distance to them from Astlan (the planet’s name, not technically the plane’s name–no more than Earth is the name of the one you live on) is on the same scale Earth’s moon.
And there are other planets, other star systems etc. it’s a full universe. (in fact the Author guy makes noises about writing other stories in the same universe but on different planets–i.e. he’s lazy and doesn’t want to have to reinvent a magic system–but wants a totally different history etc.)
That’s too far for a teleport spell. With enough mana you could do a gateway, but you gotta get there first, and nothing flies very fast.
Dragons would be the best bet, I would think. A demon too, mainly because they are immortal and don’t need to eat or breath (like demon dragons)…but the demon would sure get tired and bored flying millions of miles at less than 100 mph.
However…I can’t say too much about this without spoilers. The rest of Astlan’s fierdal system will be of interest in Book 2.
OK…I know this is getting weird, I keep hinting at an implausibly wide variety of things that are going to be in book 2 and how the hell they go together seems implausible…but they should make sense when you read it all together and understand who all the players are.
Do realities with magic have it permeate everything, in pockets, overlap without intersecting a non-magical reality, or does it behave differently?
From the first book are determine that the Abyss has buildings and architecture drawn from a variety of worlds; that some of those worlds are more advanced than Tom’s Earth; and that seemingly modern buildings have in fact been around for centuries.
Does this mean that some worlds are the same as Earth but on a different point-in-time? Think Sliders. Or, does this mean that the planes do not have a synced time progression, e.g., people from different times can become demons out-of-order from the perspective of their home plane?
Yes, that is exactly true.
However, there are some gotcha’s. I think I mentioned this somewhere else, but finding it on the forum is painful.
The infinite worlds of maybe theory does apply, however, most alternate choices that people make turn out to be insignificant, and so while there might be a temporary alternate universe created, it quickly fades/collapses back into the dominant timestream.
For example: If on one day you decide to eat grapefruit for breakfast instead of your normal oatmeal, you might end up with two short timestreams where in one universe you had grapefruit but in the other you had your normal oatmeal.
In the long run, what you ate one time some time ago doesn’t really effect your destiny (unless it’s poisoned) so the alternate universes that were created merge. And even for more significant things events, most of smaller things get smoothed out, merged back into the main time stream.
(this is why, I mentioned somewhere else, memories are hazy and two different people can have two different memories of the same event sometimes it’s bad memory, sometimes it’s merged timestreams where one person’s preference was for the other timestream).And these minor alternate timelines aren’t really accessible to people of other time streams, e.g. someone coming from Astlan. They can’t focus tight enough to “pick a time stream” they just get the largest/most major/primary stream).
Thus only major events that change a world’s destiny create true, long lasting branches in reality.
It’s only after two tightly related time streams have diverged sufficiently can an outsider truly see them as different planes.
So anyway, you note that early on, Boggy says “Oh, so you come from one of the Earth’s” by this he means one of several different variations of a world like ours. So in short, there are not an infinite number of alternate universes that are similar, but there are quite a few.
There are also lots of planes where the world we see isn’t an Earth. It’s an Astlan, or a Westeros, or Midgard or some Galaxy Far Far Away…
And in fact one confusing thing is that sometimes a traveler can think there are two different planes, but they are really just different planets in the same universe.
Inter dimensional travel is very tricky and hard to understand and figure out. And while the Astlanian’s are good at it, they have real limits, hence their myopic view of people from the Earths.
A large number of the demons in the Abyss are from an Earth. This is because it’s the Astlan like planes that tend to summon most of the demons, and these worlds are all just out of sync enough that they see people from Earths as demons.
All that being said…time does seem to be somewhat linear.
Almost all Earths are right about the same point in time. The more advanced Earths are generally the result of prior branches where technology leaped forward rapidly for some reason. E.g. the Alexander the Great’s dynasty lasted, or the Roman Empire continued or something similar.
So for example, a demon who came to Astlan from, I don’t know, say Ancient Egypt, has been here (The Abyss/Astlan) for about 3000+ years…depending on when in ancient Egypt they left.
Not completely sure I get the full gist of the question.
But, you find about every possible combination.
Most planes have a relatively flat ambient magic level. It may be high or low. Basically determing how powerfull and effect is, or how much work/effort it takes to produce the affect.
The lower level the plane, the more wizardry is required.
Some planes do have regions of magic concentractions, such as ley lines or other accumulator objects or races. Typically such concentrations or sparse regions seem to be caused by something (e.g. sentient actions in the past, or concentrations/formations of elemental presences etc)
Does Astlan have other planets, and if so why hasn’t a free demons just left the planet, found another planet or moon to settle on, created a gate back to the abyss, and then just stayed their so as to avoid the summons of the AM’s.
[quote=Tizzy;759]
[b]Dragons[/b] would be the best bet, I would think. A demon too, mainly because they are immortal and don’t need to eat or breath (like [b]demon dragons[/b])…but the demon would sure get tired and bored flying millions of miles at less than 100 mph.
[/quote]Is the first Dragon an shortening of Demon Dragon or are there two kind of dragons?
One demonic one not?Well, there really aren’t too many “cities” so to speak.
At least not “public cities”
by which I mean, open/free cities that are large. The Courts is the largest city, since that’s where the Cofactors, Triumverate and Supreme Septat hold court.
In fact the “Courts” are multiple courts
The Court of Co-Factors
The Court of the Triumvirate
The Combined Courts of the Quintenal Cabal (a joint session of the Co-Factors and the Triumvirate)
The Synod of the Supreme SeptatSo it’s big, huge.
There are a few other smaller towns/cities that are public/neutral ground. None are huge, maybe a few thousand demons in the largest. And a good number of these, while technically “public” are actually groups of loosely aligned demons who group together for protection. So while “public” they aren’t necessarily friendly to outsiders.
What other “cities” there are, are really enclaves/villas/domains/etc of various Demon Lords and Princes. These are their “private” cities in which they and their followers/henchdemons etc live. I.e. this is where they bunk their demonic hordes, their armies, etc.
These can, however, be quite large. However, no one really officially “knows” how large any are, since this is considered sensitive information.
Do demons from similar planes try to recreate their home in the abyss and make cities based on that? I know the city Tom was in had many elements from his Earth and he was likely from a central reality as he recognized elements of cities in his world in the demonic city. I ask this as demons are all shunted to the abyss. This means that demons will have variances based in part on where they originate and where their summoners originate. I’m curious as this means the abyss is likely populated by demons from countless worlds and realities. It also makes the boom gate much more practical as it would allow for quick transport between the extremely distant cities as the abyss is in all likely hood a plane that is near many other planes.
Demons will thus likely group with other demons from a similar world to share in past culture and due to similar idiosyncrasies that might exist across a single world. They will also likely take interest in their summoners world. Wizards from other worlds will have difficulty finding the name of a demon created outside their plane. Those from their summoners plane will be the people they most often interact with, and thus be the ones with whom they will have to be indentured to as names do not travel as often.
That is what the speculation is. Maou is dead on with that.
However, no one that I know, knows for sure. Apparently, later generations still don’t like humanoid demons very much. So it’s very painful to try and ask them.
Dragons are demons without human souls, but with the souls of some reptilian beings that dislike humans. A long time ago some dragons escaped the abyss and settled in Astlan. Their descendants then started to populate the place. They look quite different from what the Astlanians think of as demons and are scattered throughout the land, so they are mostly thought of as intelligent magic creatures of whose origins they do not know. All dragons are simply nonhuman demons whose species name I do not know. Dragons don’t look anything like a human so people often aren’t repulsed by them, so most simply fear them.
Do demons exist in more dimensions at one time than a human, and if so is it possible for the demon to split itself apart and exert an influence on multiple words at the same time? It may have been mentioned that some of the gods exist in more than one world at once, so I was curious to whether or not demons where capable of the same thing.
I don’t.
I don’t know anyone that does. Other than maybe a god. But I am not sure that even the gods do.
They can travel among the planes at will, but I’m not sure how many, if any, of them are splitting up and acting simultaneously on multiple planes. Not saying they can’t or don’t…
The closest I’m familiar with is when a very powerful Time Warrior (animage) splits him(her)self temporally to surround their opponent.
I’ve seen four or five splits; I’ve heard of six splits. It’s pretty awesome, unless you are their opponent.
However, these are generally of short duration (objectively to observers) of a few minutes at most, typically less than a minute–it’s very depleting.
When Ramses (for example) get’s going with both blades and starts splitting, it generally doesn’t take him long to finish his opponent, especially since some of the splits know what his opponent(s) are about to do, before they do it.
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