Quintessence

One Horse Town · August 09, 2008, 08:48:27 AM

This idea will hopefully follow Stone Horizons, some way down the line. It comes from a long-standing Rolemaster campaign i ran a couple of years ago. The metaphysics of the game world are explained below by a learned scholar and are not generally known - although most recognise the results.

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Being a transcript of, 'A Theory of Everything: Part 1'. A lecture performed by Marshall Travers at the Halls of Scribing.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My thanks to the faculty for allowing me to present my theoretical paper tonight.

The purpose of this lecture is to lay out how the world works and how we interact with it. I have coined some phrases and made up terms to explain my theories and will try to clarify my meaning as we proceed. Any questions? Good, I shall begin.

For as long as we have stared at the stars and wondered 'what is our place', there have been men and women who have strived to provide an answer. In order to reach any kind of conclusion, one must first examine the mechanics that run the world around us. Tonight, I will look at the mechanics with which we interact on a daily basis and leave it to you to decide what our place is.

Our gracious patron – The Sage, has provided us with this institution so that we may collate and build libraries of knowledge. As a Power of the world, he has great influence and this building gives him more. How? Well that is what I am going to try to expose this evening. To build an understanding, however, we must first look at the micro scale, not the macro.

The world is suffused with magic; it is within every stone, it surrounds every animal and human, it courses through rivers, and lays latent in every plant. You could say that we are magic incarnate, even the smallest parasite has magic coursing through it. We all understand this – it is the cornerstone of our civilisation. We know that magic is the very stuff of life and that without it all that we hold dear would vanish.

Knowing this, we can make predictions on how magic affects our lives; even use it for our own purposes. For the purposes of this lecture, I have named this magical force the Aethyr. The Aethyr not only suffuses everything, it surrounds us all in what I call an Aethyric Field – every single one of us has this field surrounding us. Imagine the skin of a drum. Now imagine that each living (and non-living) thing is completely surrounded by this skin. That is our personal Aethyric Field; the thing that defines us. It is the raw stuff of magic and we all interact with it constantly. Every thought we have, every action we conduct and every quirk of personality we expose gives our personal Aethyric Field a unique flavour. Our fields are moulded in our own image.

If we continue with the drum skin analogy, every action, thought or persona quirk makes what I call an Imprint on the Aethyric Field. When you poke a drum skin with your finger, the skin deforms – causing it to bulge outwards. When we perform an action, we are poking a finger into the drum skin.

Now to take that analogy a bit further, imagine if all actions, emotions and thoughts left a different and unique Imprint upon that drum skin. One might look like a handprint, another a spiral, and another a perfect square. What you end up with is a personal Aethyric Field that represents your impact upon the world around you.

These terms can be confusing; after all, I'm talking about magic here aren't I? You may ask what is the point of all these terms and what does it have to do with how magic affects our daily lives? Well, the drum skin analogy is an important one. It not only demonstrates how we affect those around us and how we are all unique, it also explains how we manipulate the magic that runs through our veins.

We've all seen the remarkable feats that people are capable of if they are able to control magic. You don't have to be a Magister to do this; we all do it routinely, every day. The man who runs 20 miles in a day without tiring, the boy who manages to hold his breath for an hour, so that rescuers can reach him. These are all things that have been achieved via controlling our own Personal Aethyric Fields. No spells are uttered, no incantations prepared. These feats are achieved by moulding your Aethyric Field. The Imprints that I mentioned earlier are fleeting – the handprint in the drum skin does not persist for long (except in certain cases that I will review later in the lecture). Shortly after the Imprint is made, the skin of the drum starts returning to its starting shape, removing the Imprint. It is this reforming of the Aethyr which we use to power our magic. When it returns to its normal shape, energy is released that we can use to great effect. The man who ran for 20 miles left an Imprint in the shape of a hexagon in his Aethyric Field – because he continued this activity for some time, he was able to fashion the energy from his field into keeping him from exhaustion. The boy who held his breath was able to fashion the energy into stopping him from drowning for a time – not because of his activity, in this instance, but because he was a strong swimmer and conducted this action frequently.

That is the crux, you see. The more commonly you perform an action, fall prey to a certain emotion or quirk of personality, the harder it is for the skin of your Aethyric Field to return to normal. The Imprint starts to take on a more permanent nature. This is why people who are more skilled at fencing are able to perform feats that make the novice gasp in awe. Their field has started to affect their performance. I call this mechanism Imprint Manoeuvres. You fashion your Imprint to perform actions that otherwise you would be unable to do. The deeper and more permanent the imprint you have made, the more energy returns to you when the drum skin tries to return to normal.

So that explains why even the most uneducated among us can perform what in ancient times would be called magic. But what of the wider world, I hear you ask? What of the spirits and the powers?

Well, this is where it gets complicated. In the world I have just described, if you viewed it from above, all you would see is a plethora of spheres, within each one hides a person, a plant, a rock, or the ocean itself. Every one of these spheres would have Imprints crawling across their surface, as those encapsulated went about their lives. We know that the powers exist and have a hand in our daily lives; the Sage is learning incarnate, the Warrior is war and fighting incarnate. How did they come to be? Well, now that I have laid down the foundation of my theory, it is not difficult to expand it to take the powers into account.

I have explained how every single thing around us is cocooned within an Aethyric Field and that everything we do makes an Imprint on that field. Now imagine another field that is separate from us – one that is not in direct contact with anything yet is everywhere, another drum skin that is removed from our personal fields. It takes a lot to reach this second drum skin, the Imprint must be very strong indeed, or be so repetitive that the Imprint may as well be permanent. Well, when these Imprints occur, they start to deform the second drum skin, only this skin isn't as flexible as our personal fields – the Imprints stay in place. Over time, these secondary Imprints become so large that it threatens to tear the very fabric of the Aethyr. For example, we all feel love at some point in our lives; all of us make an Imprint based on that emotion. Add up those Imprints from all over the world and you'll get a permanent Imprint on the second drum skin.

I've heard it said that nature abhors a vacuum. This is not true - nature hates a mess. So when an Imprint starts to threaten to tear the second skin, the Aethyr expels it, so that it can once more repair its uniformity. These expulsions result in a magical entity in the shape of the Imprint - an Aethyric Embodiment. These embodiments reflect the activity that created it. They have form, they have will and they have intelligence. These are the powers of the world, Embodiments of an Aethyric Imprint.

Now that the Embodiment has been expelled from the second Aethyric skin, it acts as a magnet for future Imprints. Imprints based on the Embodiment no longer affect the Aethyr – they meld into its form, granting it increased power.

We give worship to these Embodiments, some of us become Agents to promote the activities they represent, and some are gifted parts of the Embodiment itself to aid them in their goals. In this way, the Embodiment grows still further and in fact their Agents join them in death as living spirits within the whole.

Which brings me to spirits. They seem to be everywhere don't they? Well, put simply, that's because of us. That little drum skin that surrounds us all doesn't just vanish when we die – it is cast off in much the same manner as a snake sheds its skin. This cast off Aethyric Field contains all that made us what we were whilst we lived; each is unique. These cast-offs flap around us all the time. There will be dozens within this lecture hall alone. That's not to say that we all have a nice cosy life after death to look forward to. Only the strongest and most determined spirits manage the transition without harm. Many spirits are little more than a collection of emotions, just like the Spirit of Hate we found in the well last year – no doubt the result of a particularly strong Emotive Imprint.

Eventually, however, most of these spirits will join with one Embodiment or another, sucked into the collective intelligence of the powers.

That ends the lecture for tonight! I once more thank the faculty for this opportunity and invite any questions that members may have!

Quintessence

One Horse Town