Layonaran Cosmology: Difference between revisions

<span id="TheAllAndNothing" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

The All and Nothing is both nothing and everything. This is where everything that was sucked up by The Thread (see below) resides, waiting for any entity occupying the Sovereign to realize its potential and move it to the mortal planes, either again or for the first time. The Mother is the only being who can see within the borders of this plane and recognize the potential it holds, rather than mistaking it for empty space rife for expansion.<br />

<span id="TheSovereign" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

The exact border of this plane with the All or Nothing is unclear, and is probably only clear to the Sovereign's sole occupant at this time, a creature called The Mother. What the nature of this creature is, and whether she is a goddess or something else, is something of which even The Mother is uncertain. Suffice it to say that she just is.

<span id="TheMists" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

Separating the Sovereign from the next plane, the region known as the Heavens, is a kind of foggy cloud-like substance called The Mists. This place has no exact dimensions, and while one can travel through it, no matter how long one travels from the Heavens towards the Sovereign, one will never get there. The distance from the Heavens to the Sovereign is effectively infinite.<br />

<span id="TheHeavens" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

<span id="TheSheet" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

Separating the Heavens from the Mortal Coil is a barrier of utter [[darkness]] known as the Sheet. To those in the Mortal Coil, the sheet is seen as the darkness that is the night sky. Most of the stars that are seen in the night sky are representations of the realms of the various deities in the Heavens, and are moving constellations on the firmament. Other stars are the suns of distant worlds further up or down the Coil. These other stars do not appear to move as the deity constellations do, because they are not part of a constellation of a deity who is followed on that particular world.<br />

<span id="TheMortalCoil" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

The Coil is where the mortal worlds are found. The various worlds are arranged along an endless spiraling string, which is why it is called the Coil. Here one can find not only [[Layonara]] but also any other world where mortals live. As with any string, the Coil can resonate on many different frequencies, and every frequency is an alternate reality. The higher the frequency of the resonance (or put another way, the faster the string vibrates), the more energy a reality has. At very high frequencies, the energy is so high that the inhabitants of these frequencies seem to be beings of nearly pure energy on a world such as Layonara, which is located nearer the &quot;normal&quot; frequencies. At very low frequencies, the energy is much lower than that found on Layonara. The beings who inhabit these frequencies consequently also have a lot less energy and are mere husks or shadows compared to beings of midrange frequency worlds.<br />

<span id="TheBinding" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

The spiraling string of the Mortal Coil wraps itself along an endless cable of five intertwined cylinders. Four of these are the building blocks of the planes - the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water--while the innermost cable is the Pits of Endless Strife. These cables are kept or perhaps somehow bound together by what seems to be nothingness. This apparent void between the cables seems to provide enough space between each of the four elements to ensure they do not touch one other. What is strange is that even though the space between the cables seems to consist of nothing, it also enforces the structure, binding them together. because of this characteristic, the nothingness between the cables is called the Binding Void.<br />

<span id="TheFourElementalPlanes" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

<span style="color:brown;">The Desolate Rock</span>- One of the four building blocks of the planes, this cylindrical plane is called the Desolate Rock, and is dominated by the element of earth. Barren wastelands of all types of earth, soil and rock dominate this plane; the presence of the other three elements is scarce at best. The second most common element in this plane is fire, which is mostly concentrated near the border shared with the Pits of Endless Strife, followed by water and then air,. There is air to breathe in some places on the Desolate Rock, mostly in pockets of air made by large caverns. There is also the occasional patch of water, but those hardly ever amount to more than a small puddle or a drip. Fire hardly manifests itself, unless it is as molten rock near the border between the Desolate Rock and the Pits of Endless Strife. Life in this plane consists mostly of creatures made of living rock or earth.

<span id="ThePits" class="ANCHORNAME"></span><br />

Also known as the Pits or as the Strife, this is the central cylinder around which the four elemental strands wrap. The Pits of Endless Strife borders and touches each of the four elemental planes, and this region of the planes is home to countless'and mostly nefarious'creatures as well as any conceivable type of hellish place.

These vary from areas with burning infernos to glacial wastelands, to rosy sweet realms filled with flowers (yes, this is hellish for some). The Pits borrow building blocks from the near Elemental planes, and often it is very difficult to tell where an elemental plane ends and the Strife has begun; the Binding Void does not enforce separation between the Pits of Endless Strife and the elemental cylinders. This also accounts for why the Pits are a lot rougher than what one might normally encounter in the Mortal Coil.

At the very center of the Pits of Endless Strife sits the Thread, a narrow string of what might be void which possesses a diameter no wider than a man's wrist.<br />

One should be wary not to get too close to the Thread, as it will pull everything in and spit it out again into the All and Nothing, to be forever lost until it is deemed usable again by the occupant(s) of the Sovereign and reinserted into the cosmos.<br />

<br />

There is no difference in the rate of the passing of time in the various planes; a month in the Pits is a month in the Heavens and a month in the Mortal Coil. However, time will pass faster or slower if the frequency is different. On lower frequencies time slows down, and on higher frequencies time speeds up.