Glossary & Lore

AETHER

The Aether is the greater Multiverse. Within the Aether you can see a cosmic ocean not dissimilar from stellar space, a colorful vivid universe in its own right. It's somewhat metaphysical, there is no air yet you breathe because you expect to breathe. All movement and perceptions are relative, there is no speed limit. Every

"Star" you see are entire new Atheric Bubbles, different realities entirely. Your own sense of scale within this place is subjective, a bubble in the distance could loom like a whole planet orbiting just out of reach, or it could be a crystal sphere between your hands. You can't cause any harm to these spheres, and it could seem like you can pick them up and move them, but it's subjective to yourself, more like you're moving yourself in relation to it but are probably none the wiser. Actually entering an aetheric bubble is challenging but possible in the right circumstance not covered by this cyoa, you can imagine it for yourself.

When a witch forms a pocketspace, it is within the aether that it resides, it's own little sphere. Some Athernauts are adept at seeking out these pocketspaces and indirectly entering them like finding a hidden back door, easier than entering real aetheric bubbles. ↩︎

GENESIS

As you may have picked up by now, Genesis is the source of all creation. It's conceptually similar to a "White Hole", but a dimension, not a point in spacetime. It exists very adjacent to the Realm Sphere such that when within the Realm Sphere but outside of a realm, you can see Genesis dominating one horizon, perpetually in the distance like a great sun you can never grow closer to.

Genesis hosts the home of the Celestials, and within its glory lies Celestial Realms inaccessible and alien to witchdom, with the thrones of the Archangels, and the mysterious leader of the different celestial factions referred to as The One, Truth, Light, The Architect, or The Demiurge.

It's unknown to what extent this figure is involved with Abrahamic religions, The Watchers observe and study this with great interest.

It's believed that certain souls earn passage to the unknown presumed paradise beyond it, but none ever return. Whether they achieve ascension and move on to become a demiurge of their own aetheric sphere, become united and a part of The One, or turned into a Celestial, the fate is unknown all the same. The Watchers are still sorting the details out and fishing for further information. They have their theories, but to reveal them would be like making a statement on real world religions, and so they will remain a mystery, but consensus seems strong that there is a path to apotheosis known to the Celestials... they know more than they can share. ↩︎

THE ENTROPIC REALMS

The oldest realms, ancient and drifting further away from creation, approaching the Void, or nothingness. These are realms in advanced states of entropy, or decay. These realms are worn down and battered, and full of complex alterations to their original structure as their path across the Realm Sphere shell pushed them within the influence of various other interior dimensions, the influence of the Fire Plane heating the realm and kindling new stars for example, or water leaking through labyrinth walls as they pass by the Water Plane, or organic life growing where there may have been none before or overgrowing in proximity to the Nature or Flesh planes. Perhaps the remnants of old civilizations that a god had seeded the realm with for any number of reasons from a private realm for a loyal worshipper, a temporary paradise, or a penal colony of damned souls left there temporarily or to wither and eventually fade away through conflict, or with the eventual loss of the realm to the Void, a lazy river slowly headed to oblivion. ↩︎

THE SYNTROPIC REALMS

The youngest realms fresh from the light of creation, from Genesis. These are the newest worlds or realms, full of proto lifeforms and young stars and little causality behind them. Many of these are raw matter realms full of unspoiled materials, but creations are created from the collective conscience of all life within the aetheric sphere, so a Realm can be born that contains man-made structures in various twisted forms similar as though an algorithm was printing out randomly generated reality bubbles full of features that may or may not share a cohesive theme. You might see a realm that's one endless labyrinth or city, but something is always off about them similar to how you notice something is off about an Al generated image or map. The complexity of realms are random.

Being near to Genesis, these realms are also very bright and vibrant. They gain new attributes over time. ↩︎

THE ELEMENTAL SPHERE
The Elemental Planes of the Elemental Sphere are a thousand times more numerous than the worlds of the Prime Sphere and the peripheral dimensions and offchute realities in the peripheral of those core worlds.

In the Elemental Sphere, there are core central planes that govern the concepts of every element, not in the periodic sense, but in the alchemical and magical sense. There are the four Major planes of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, which are not insignificantly larger than most other elemental planes, but aren't the only core elements. Others include Nature, a plane of plant matter and flora, which is near the plane of Flesh that encompasses all meat, bone, blood, containing all manner of beasts. It's surrounded by subsidiary planes of those individual components, a plane of just meat, just bone, just blood, and a plane with the emphasis on beasts where everything is a living predatory creature, the planets themselves, even the stars, every equivalent to a tree or blade of grass. The plane of Earth or Inorganics is the plane composed of every material element, every metal, mineral, veins of gold the size of nebulas and geode pockets the size of solar systems, an infinite plane full of inorganic matter. It is largely devoid of air, but geological processes among the near infinite possibilities are able to form pockets of atmosphere in great caverns.

In the peripheral to it would be planes specific to a substance, the elemental plane of iron, of salt, or of ruby.

Every elemental plane has a "Proxima" surrounding it, not in space but on a dimensional axis. A position in multidimensional spacetime where the influence of that plane radiates out from it with lesser effects. These proximas are easier for witches to access than the plane itself, within the proxima can be finite pocket dimensions and worlds that are under the influence of the plane while possessing an intersection with other elemental planes. Theory is that most such pocket dimensions are the creation of witches, gods, and other entities throughout all ancient history, left behind for potential eons long outlasting the original creator themselves.

Surrounding every core plane and their peripherals, can be found gestalt planes that are natural unlike the finite dimensions, but exist at intersections between multiple other elemental planes, and as such they are composed of the relevant elements in unison. Similar in nature to the Material World being an intersection of all elemental planes at the center of the atheric heiarchy of planes and spheres, but various elements are missing while others are greatly overabundant. For example, Eden (11), the dimension utilized by the Watchers, is situated in a gestalt plane dominated by Air, with lesser influence from Earth, Nature, and Flesh. The Faewild (15) is a gestalt plane caught between the Nature Plane and the Flesh Plane, and close to the Prime World of Chaos.

There is no Elemental Plane of Light, as all Light is governed by Genesis, a higher aspect of reality that permiates through all planes and dimensions to varying extents, but the Plane of Fire or the plane of Air and it's peripheral Plane of Electricity (Storm) can be especially bright. There is however, an Elemental Plane of Shadow situated near the Elemental plane of Mind that stabilizes the coherence of thought, though it's the Prime sphere that shapes thought and morals. Which isn't to say that free will doesn't exist, just that actions and thought patterns are influenced by or aligned with these worlds, like gears in a great machine, or ingredients in a cosmic elixir of life.

The Mind Plane is one of raw psychological data and constructs that exist in a tangible space, a place where the psyche is made real similar to the Soul Plane where the spiritual is made manifest. When one enters a Spirit World, Mental World, or Shadow World, they enter reflections of the world that are harmonized towards these planes.

These are technically gestalt planes, but only between the elemental plane and the Material World. As you can imagine this extends to all elemental planes, not just the spirit world and mental world ↩︎

The Prime Sphere
The Prime Sphere is the central point of the universe, not spacially but dimensionally. It encompasses reality as you knew it, but it's just one among other spheres, each larger than the previous.

Within the Prime Sphere are peripheral worlds that are near to the material world bit are off centered as parallel dimensions, echos of the Material. Light, Dark, Order, Chaos. They are like the primary supports of the core material world and compose the Prime Sphere, the central sphere of reality. They're similar to Elemental Planes in many respects, but they are the four chief pillars that enable spacetime itself to behave itself as well as creating structure for fate and consciousness. ↩︎

The Realm Sphere is the outer layer of reality and serves as a form of shell encapsulating the interior of the aetheric bubble that forms the universe. Again, on a dimensional level, not spacially, as each layer within can be infinite in scale. Zoomed out great enough and from a higher dimensional perspective, you might conceptualize the Realm Sphere like a literal sphere that forms around its contents, and as you zoom in on the shell you see it composed of a great many individual bubbles of variable size. The Realms.

Realms are individual bubbles of reality like pocket dimensions ranging from the size of solar systems down to the size of snow globes. The Realms are influenced by their dimensional proximity to Elemental Planes as well as to divine thrones. Gods often actively stake claims on Realms as extensions to their dominion, similar to countries claiming islands in a sea Across this shell there is an energy current flowing from one end to the other, dividing the shell into two halves based on their orientation towards Genesis or the Void. Realms are as numerous as grains of sand, in the entire universe of the material plane. ↩︎

TIMELINE

The Timeline. A visible stream of raw and highly compressed information forms a visible tangible stream of light that can be observed on the border between the Realm Sphere and the Divine sphere, dimensionally, but it can be physically witnessed by traveling to its dimension, distilled down to a singular space that acts as the prime observer of the timeline, where it can be seen circling your position in space, dominating all horizons.

The Timeline contains all information about all time, of all within the Atheric Sphere. Every potentiality and every action taken, every word said, every grain of sand that shifted in the distance. All compressed and distilled into this stream. Only one witch is said to have ever witnessed it and recorded their findings, verified through Psychotic delving and memory propogation, and confirmed by a Celestial witness.

Any action that occurs as a result of any metaknowledge of the future sparks a divergent timeline different from the one they resided in previously, though diverging timelines are perfectly normal. Any action results in any number of divegents with all possibilities.

There is the Coherent Timeline that is near to Genesis and Syntropy, and the Incoherent Timeline near the Void and Entropy. The Coherent Timeline is smooth and things make sense, while the Incoherent Timeline is rough or outright broken with improbabilities, nonsense, and full of paradoxes. ↩︎

VOID

The Void on the other hand is Nothingness itself, it is Oblivion, the Absence of creation. The Realm Sphere flows in its direction, where everything vanishes past a point of no return, conceptually similar to a Black Hole, but rather than a singularity of infinite mass, you have the Void. No information escapes the void, where Black Holes release Hawking Radiation that theoretically caries information, and the intense gravity field surrounding them, the Void is simply nothingness. It has ano mass, and it is infinite in scale, as Genesis is infinite. It likewise dominates the opposite horizon within the Realm Sphere but outside of any one realm, but unlike Genesis, you do slowly watch as it dominates more of the horizon until it consumes you, over several billion years.

This absolute darkness, is said to be the final punishment of the condemned, and without the Demiurge, all life and souls would be swallowed up in its nothingness.

The very last point within the Entropic Realms bordering the edge of no return, lies Purgatory and Inferno, together making up Hell- home of the Demons, a finite empire layered and built upon with remnants from the Entropic Realms on their way flowing into the Void. They solve space issues by compressing and recycling biomatter and souls that end up condemned to be part of a wall or eaten.

It's a place for the cast off and unwanted, and the punished. It's precarious position at the maw of the void is its own Sword of Damocles, surviving only with the Demiurge's will that it does, lest it be cast to oblivion with a thought.

The lowest levels of Purgatory are those closest to the void, leaving them faded hellscapes built upon the ruins of countless civilizations and ancient dread souls. ↩︎

The Unlawful World, The World of Chaos.

A mirror world governed by the attributes of chaos.

Nothing makes sense here, all patterns are disrupted, and expectations subverted. Physics is unreliable. A river randomly decides to flow in different directions against the path of least resistance, an apple tree may decide to grow bananamelons, if not tended to by an observer with a soul that can anchor something to give it predictability. The saving grace is that the more outlandish and widespread an effect is the less likely it is to occur or change, so if you find an upside down mountain it will likely stay that way so long as it's observed. Entropy here is random, nonlinear, & nonsense, tomatoes decaying into plums. ↩︎

The Luminous World, The World of Hope.

A mirror world full of light. Everything is bathed in a glow to one intensity or another. Space is a stark white here, yet light carries with it more information and at greater distances, lightspeed itself being far faster than in the material world, allowing a vision of stellar phenomenon that requires scientific equipment and color correction to observe, so space is a swirling parade of lights in the sky. This world is the source of positive feelings and good fortunes, moments of inspiration and hope for the future. The intense blinding light of this world makes it overwhelming for most visitors. Entropy is reversed here, things naturally want to return to their ideal state. Ash slowly forms back into wood. ↩︎

The Lawful World, The World of Order.

A mirror of the material world that is governed by the attributes of order. Everything in this world is aligned with precision, every organism or collection ordered or following specific mathematical patterns and geometries.

Every tree perfect in its symmetry, every fruit the perfect representation of that fruit with the same reliable flavor.

Every tree or fruit of the same type shares the same appearance, every forest of the same tree laid out in the same pattern unless something gets in the way of it.

The only exceptions are creatures with a soul. So every tabby cat will look the same, but not the same as a Siamese cat, and humanoids still have individuality.

There is no natural entropy, no decay or weathering. ↩︎

The Material World, The World of Promise.
The intersection of all other planes and the core pillar of any universe. The unique position is key to the stability of the entire aetheric Sphere (universe).

For related reasons, souls here are of peak importance, as is their psychic harmony. Souls born elsewhere are artificial in comparison, and lack the same weight. The collective intelligence of sapient life here acts as a primary observer that anchors and shapes reality. This effect is greatly destabilized by fundamental shifts in the public understanding of reality and how changeable it is or not. By teaching a rigid perspective, reality is more stable. If the broader world of magic were known, it becomes unstable and chaotic. Whole cities could accidentally disappear from a disturbance, or the conceptual waveform that makes reality "real" could burst, making the universe no better than a dream, fading over time and cut off from the wider aether (or multiverse).

And so, the gods enforce the Masquerade and its veil on the world of magic, keeping it separated from the public consciousness. And that is why you can't just use magic to end world hunger on earth

It's far more than just Earth or Sol, but encompasses all creation that you see from Earth and beyond, that's just where we happen to reside.

There may yet be countless other pockets of life throughout it, but space is so expansive that rarely do two different pockets make contact. It's easier for a witch to slip through the layers of reality to enter into other dimensions entirely than it is to step across infinity. ↩︎

5: The Darkened World, The World of Terror.

A mirror world of deep shadows. Daytime is a perpetual twilight while nightfall is an oppressive blackness. All light is reduced, and light speed slows to be nearer to the speed of sound, allowing for times when there is clear distortion from this lag, and light carries less information, colors being washed out and desaturated. Every light in the sky is dim and distant, few and far between. The sun itself seems sickly and ancient, casting a pale reddish-amber glow. This world is the source of negative feelings and bad fortunes. Moments of despair, nightmares, and bad thoughts. A source of conflict.

Entropy is far accelerated here. ↩︎