Seonid

The Thousand Realms In the Beginning, the Rulers spoke, and the Realms of Being were shaped from the primordial Chaos, awaking the intelligences that dwelt in the Void. To them, Eil All-Father and his soul-sealed Ashyr offered the gift of power, covenanting with them that there would be a place made that they could grow one day to have power over the Chaos, and order it according to their will. Thus were born the beginnings of the Thousand Realms. In the uncounted eons since that event, innumerable stories have been told, and innumerable stories remain unsung. Here, the interested and curious can find information on the Thousand Realms, their structure, and the beings that inhabit them. This worldbuilding thread will serve as the repository for all publicly released information on the Thousand Realms, including Edassa, Starnet, Hatharin, and the City of Mortals settings. This information is under copyright - please do not use, modify, publish, or otherwise disseminate it without prior permission. Cosmology The cosmology of the Thousand Realms begins with the primordial Chaos. It appears to be a simple feature of the landscape, as it were, always existing and able to be influenced. From this Chaos is formed all of the Realms of Being. The oldest is the Realm of the Unmanifested (also called in various places the Spiritual Realm, the Traveler’s Realm, and the Gates of Heaven, among a whole host of other names). It most closely resembles the Chaos from which it was formed, but it has been stabilized such that even intelligences of the lowest ability can exist and experience safely within it. It is a far more benign place, connecting all of the other Realms, and serves as the base material of the other Realms - Chaos tamed so that other things may be formed. Realms so crafted are often called subsidiary realms or mindworlds. The second, and most important, of the Realms of Being is the Realm of the Manifested (also called the Material Realm or the Realm of Mortals, among other names). It is the most stable of the subsidiary realms - requiring no supporting maintenance, as far as can be discerned. It was created by the Rulers as a place for mortals, where the unembodied intelligences could gain experience in ordering brute matter to their will - the same techniques that enable one to impose their will upon Chaos. It is the only Realm inherently fit for long-term inhabitation by mortals, although a few of the Outer Realms have been crafted in such a way that mortals can live in them for some time. Because this realm seems to be permanent, unlike the others that fade away unless they are maintained, it has historically served as a baseline for measurement both in n-space and time. The remainder of the Realms are the Outer Realms. These are uncounted in number and vary wildly in their nature, based on the personality of their creator. A number were originally created by the Rulers themselves, but of those, many are now defunct, and some have wholly faded away into the fabric of the Realm of the Unmanifested. This is the eventual fate of all of the Outer Realms - they require periodic maintenance by their creator in order to remain, and without it, they begin to fail. Chaos Realm of the Unmanifested Realm of the Manifested The Outer Realms Intelligent Beings Among the Thousand Realms, uncountable numbers of beings work out their existences. Powerful gods manage planes of wonder and beauty, mortals are born, live, and die, and vast numbers of intelligences cycle through lives of non-sapience. But all of these beings are, at their core, of the same substance. In the primordial Chaos, ancient beyond the reckoning of the Creators, dwelt and still dwell intelligences, beings of will and spirit. All who inhabit the Thousand Realms were once as these, and all who will yet dwell there will come from the Chaos in the same manner. It is unknown what the origin of these intelligences is. Some believe that they are simply an artifact of the Chaos, and have existed eternally along with it. Others assert that these beings are created, either by some natural process within the Chaos or by some greater being, transcendent beyond detection or knowing. It is very likely that the question will remain forever open - however, the fact that no known process is capable of destroying the core of an intelligent being may lend weight to the hypothesis that they were not created. The Heynes-Laurel Scale Intelligent beings exist at a wide range of power levels. Over the eons, scholars studying the base nature of intelligence have developed a number of classification systems in order to organize them. One of the first popular systems was the Heynes classification, which ordered intelligent beings based on thresholds of capability. Widely adopted because of the clearly defined nature of its categories - an intelligence was either capable of achieving the referenced use of power or not - it eventually became clear that the the ability to perform certain feats, such as maintaining a mindworld, was a function of both skill and power. The Laurel Scale was proposed as a competing model, ranking beings by the amount of energy they could draw in and channel. This, too, had a number of flaws - not least the difficulty of actually performing tests on how much energy could be safely drawn. Several influential scholars adapted the Laurel Scale as an extension of the Heynes classification, and the resulting Heynes-Laurel Scale is the current standard of measurement. The Heynes-Laurel Scale sorts intelligent beings into classes by power level - a logarithmic scale from 0 to 8 (so far), and then assigns them a subclass, running from A-G, each associated with the ability to perform a particular use of power. An additional subclass - A` - was added after later study. The classes and their associated abilities are given below: Class G: Characterized by not being able to perform any of the tasks of higher classes Class F: Characterized by the ability to travel by imposing will on the Realm of the Unmanifested Class E: Characterized by the ability to maintain a mindworld in the Realm of the Unmanifested Class D: Characterized by the ability to maintain a region of spacetime in Chaos Class C: Characterized by the ability to create immortal bonded shells Class B: Characterized by the ability to initiate and guide the evolution of new biological life Class A: Characterized by the ability to initiate new species of mortals Class A`: Characterized by the ability to tame Chaos over a wide area, resulting in the formation of a region similar to the Realm of the Unmanifested. This class was added to the scale in order to extend it to include Eil and Ashyr. It remains controversial, because it is known that the process requires a paired soul-bonding, and is thus difficult to describe a single being as being of this class. Despite the controversy, it remains a useful shorthand to refer to beings of the class of the Rulers. In addition to the more exact classification scales, intelligent beings are also colloquially classified on the basis of other, less formally quantifiable traits. The most common distinctions are given below, with descriptions of what characterizes a being of that kind. Gods Mortals Ascended Immortals Manifested Unmanifested Nameless

So, random question here. Does anyone know what the word/character limit for a post is on the Shard?

I might be interested, and I have quite a bit of DMing experience with d&d 3.5 (the spiritual predecessor of Pathfinder). I don't have time to participate until may, though. So if this hasn't gotten if the ground by then, or if it has but you've reached a place where it makes sense to add another player, I'd be interested.

I hate you, Wilson. There’s no way I’m going to have enough time to play this one - and I've wanted to for a while. Ah well, I'll take a spec doc link, and seethe with jealousy of the folks who actually get to play

Is it awful of me that I would prefer turn in nothing and receive an F on an assignment than turn in a poor one and get a C?

This isn't ok. That type of lashing out on his part is potentially very dangerous. I don't know what to say to help - but I'd advise doing the best you can to get out of the situation, if that's an option.

Sorry Twi. Brain weasels are no fun at all. Right now, I've got a hardcore case of them about my worldbuilding/writing stuff. Even after everyone on the forum who's said that they're excited and think the stuff I write is amazing, I still find it difficult to believe that anyone would be interested if I posted anything. Oddly enough, the more I write, the worse it gets in some ways. Like, it used to be "Nobody will be interested in that, it's not fleshed out enough yet." Now its "gosh, you put waaay too much detail in there. Even in the unlikely event anyone was interested in the first place, putting out so much is going to dissuade them." Logically, I know that they're wrong. But it's not about logic.

Where is Falchion located again? If he's in or near The Dalles, he could fight Paladin - though I'm not sure how that would turn out. Mastery of a sword is a good thing, but atium-like precognition is a whole separate ballgame.

That sounds awesome! And I understand your feelings. I'm not that great with creating characters, but my worldbuilding is rather decent. If you are interested in posting some of what you're doing, I'd love to see it. (If not, that's totally cool too.) Wow. I didn't know that my last RP was that popular. It kind of fizzled out quickly enough - partially due to my suddenly increased lack of time to put into it, I think. I'm actually kind of flattered that it's remembered fondly enough that folks would get all excited over the prospect of me starting a new one. That might be enough to get me actively thinking about a new RP setting. There were 5 left over in Edassa that we hadn't even touched yet, but I think Edassa is tricky to do stuff with because I know so much about it. A place where there is more discovery left - on my part - would be a better RP setting for an Edassa-style RP. On the other hand, I could take a look at putting together a module more like traditional Dungeons and Dragons - maybe even modifying the D&D 3.5 ruleset for the setting and a forum experience. Look at me. I definitely shouldn't be thinking about this now. At all. I still have to think about graduating. After that, we'll see. *sneaks away to start brainstorming RP rulesets*

Well, not really an RP. More a grand compilation of background information. I don't have time to run another RP. If there's enough interest, after I graduate (this May) I may start up a new Edassan RP, or even a sci-fi one set in the Starnet. Or even, if you beg and plead enough, one set in Hatharin or the City of Mortals. I'd have to do a lot of discovery writing to figure those settings out, though. Which probably wouldn't be a bad thing for me.

So I have almost 6000 words now in my Thousand Realms Master Worldbuilding document, and I still haven't even gotten to the theoretical basis of mortal magic or godly powers. And after that, there's still an entire cosmological history to revise and insert (the original is great as far as it goes, but some of the underlying structure has changed since then, and it needs to be updated to reflect that). I begin to wonder if I am going overboard with this... Nah. I'm just getting started. After I finish this, Edassa is next. I'm actually getting very close to where I think I can start my worldbuilding thread. That's equal parts exciting and terrifying...

From my experience, the more I adult, the more confident I get at doing it. When you're out from your toxic home environment, that will come even faster for you. I predict that a year from now, you'll be in a comfortable job with full confidence in your ability to live your own life without relying on your parent's support. I'm excited for you!

I ought to mention that I love this little piece - I remember it inspiring me to write up my own cosmological history for my fantasy setting. (I'm not sure if that memory is accurate, because the dates are weird for that, but it's beautiful enough to have inspired me to do so even if little nitpicky things like dates say otherwise. Off-topic question - Kaymyth, did you post an earlier version of this in a Random Stuff thread? Or maybe one of the Question threads?) Mostly, I just wanted to say that I have much praise for this (since somehow I never posted about it before), and am delighted to see that it has found renewed attention.

You need to. They are almost as good as the Reckoners series. Some of them may be better

On the other hand, Brandon has said that he needs to write the Elantris sequels before he can get into the next (Era 2 if you count Alloy as 1.5, or Era 3 if you counts Alloy as 2) Mistborn trilogy. It could be that he intends to resurrect Dominion in those books, and not really deal with Trell until then. (Assuming Dominion = Trell, which isn't certain, but is an interesting theory)

What was so wrong with Interstellar? If you don't want to drag this thread off-topic, feel free to move your answer into a PM

I see we have a budding horror writer here...

I asked this in the random stuff thread, but I thought it would be a useful question here too. How interested would you folks be if I were to post a thread dedicated to my workshops and settings? Just trying to see if there's enough interest at this time to make the project worthwhile.

Alright - just gauging interest here. How interested would folks here be if I were to start a thread about my worldbuilding, settings, stories, etc.? Do y'all think it would be a project worth pursuing (for you folks, not me - I'm going to be writing it all up regardless)?

I should be writing my lab report. Or doing my arabic homework. Unfortunately, neither is happening at the moment. In good news, though, I've finished one section of my Massive Comprehensive Thousand Realms worldbuilding document. (Specifically, the section on the primordial chaos - fun stuff)

You know, Twi, I think that you're being just a wee bit overly paranoid here. They gave you the offer, you accepted it, you're on your way to fill out the last requirements. They won't have changed their minds without telling you. Decent people don't do things like that. Even (especially?) government agencies.

That's why I recommended it to you. I don't know how guaranteed any particular brand of turkey bacon is to have been slaughtered/prepared in accordance with kosher guidelines, but I'm sure there has to be one out there somewhere. No idea if they sell one in Australia, though.

I prefer my steak medium rare. Still red is a no-go, I'm afraid. And chicken must be cooked all the way through. Sausage should be crispy, bacon can go either way for me, I enjoy it all. Turkey bacon is actually pretty good, and I'd recommend it to Delightful (if you can find it kosher, of course). The flavor is similar enough. But in all cases, I actually prefer meat as a flavoring, and not as the main meal. Meat in casseroles, on pizza, in pasta dishes? Love it. Large steaks or chicken breasts as the main course with few side dishes? I'll enjoy it once or twice, but if it becomes a regular thing, I get tired of it real quickly.

Welcome back! Glad to see you around these parts again!