Verselia (aka. The Horrendous Magic System)
Verselia is defined as “a primordial matter that constitutes the “soul” of all things, places and beings” (thereby carrying this thing’s “essence” and “information”, meaning its history). It is present throughout everything. Everything has verselia, and it is like an altogether alternate form of matter with its own states.
I technically never refer to this as magic within the world, but it is basically magic. It has many bullshit rules, but also just does what I need it to. By the way, there are a couple guys in here that I mention that I don’t have a lot of intention of including narratively. They exist only for the hell of it. (One such guy is the Keeper).
The Rules™ at a glance:
- In reductive terms, this shit is sorta like “soul-magic” but it can also screw with the laws of reality.
- I have some vague shit going on of one’s divinity equating to the levels of bullshit they can control. Complete divinity would be someone like the Keeper, who can alter basically all verselia in existence (since he ostensibly IS existence).
- Verselia has a tendency to want to congregate into one massive entity again until sapience is achieved by accident. Then it becomes autonomous and chaotic. These beings are called Images. Basically everything that is sentient is an Image in some form.
- Human souls are Images, the Archeophim are fancy Images, the Shepherdess is more or less an Image made of xeiris, the guy who made everything is an Image, basically everything is an Image except the Abstract Consciousness. Since this is more of a cosmology page, see here for more on Images.
- Were a mortal to “wield” verselia like the gods, the most typical way to do this is to become a progeny. This means you can basically screw with select laws of the universe in different ways.
- There are three planes on which verselia exists; it splits into the mind/body/soul tria prima because everything comes back to triangles with me. The stuff that exists between these dimensions is essentially “negative” verselia, and is called xeiris. It returns verselia to a “zero” state, meaning it negates will.
- Verselia’s pretty cold. Like just feeling it, it tends to run cold. This means fuck all.
Different forms of verselia
Chaos: the REALLY primordial version of verselia. It’s constantly cycling through everything everywhere all at once, so exposure to it would basically just kill someone. Looking at it drives the mortal mind insane.
Does not have a manifest entity (arguably, it’s the Keeper), but the realm is sometimes referred to as Aporia.
Blank: clean, blank verselia that has no information on it. Verselia in its purest form. Tabula rasa.
Manifest entity is the Keeper.
Oblivion/Boundary/Xeiris: inverted/negative verselia, or the manifest substance of “boundary”; the substance within the spaces between the different verselian planes. What you do unto it, it returns in equal strength, but it has a tendency toward zero (so it makes you sleepy). If ordered verselia is another form of entropy/chaos in terms of the universe experiencing itself in compoundingly strange ways, then xeiris is negentropy.
Manifest entity is the Shepherdess.
Abstract: less a verselian state on its own and more the metaphysical manifestation/reflection of the information in the verselia. If the metaphyiscal was secretly actually “physical” as well.
Manifest entity is the Abstract Consciousness, a.k.a. All.
Ordered: verselia that has information on it. It’s not just purely blank. The moment blank verselia enters the physical realm, it becomes ordered.
Manifest entity is the Abstract Consciousness.
- Possesses a few sub-forms:
- Aedifene: the crystalline form of aedifene. Forms the basis of physical material.
- Dust: unintegrated verselia that typically occurs when there is an excess of verselia, has been specifically extracted or conjured, or as a result of distortion.
Oneiric: again less of a verselian state and more of a plane that rose from the abstract when conscious thought was thought for the first time by the Keeper. See below for more about oneiric fields.
Manifest entity is Farael, the Arbiter.
Distortion: when verselia’s integrity becomes weakened due to wear (typically from divine shenanigans and very intense wills), it becomes more susceptible to information permeability and errors. It horseshoes back around to being another form of chaos, but is still very different from chaos. A result of the entropy from the universe experiencing itself. Too much distortion can weaken the entire realm’s intergrity.
Has no manifest entity… or it’s just Images.
Here’s a really ugly chart that sorta puts everything together.
“Shades” are the Archeophim and their dichotomies, as created by the Keeper. I am unsure whether Objectivity and Subjectivity will make it into the text (it is unlikely), but they’re there if I need them.
Shades of verselia
Basically just how the Archeophim break down and how they specifically manipulate verselia. They’re meant to represent different cycles or dichotomies. If a human were to become a “magic-user” in this story, then they would need to become a progeny of a Archeophim. Progenies cannot to use these abilities to the same degree as the Archeophim.
Creation / Destruction
The channeling of verselia in or out of the physical realm. Creation channels it outward (and turns the aedifene into actual material). Destruction is the permanent consumption of verselia, returning it back to its blank form in a separate space altogether. It is the pure erasure of information.
- A lack of Creation in the world means that everything remains stagnant and is left to decay. Things can only be taken away. In eras of Destruction, people are left to die out. No new human life can propagate. Their traces are left in subtractive art forms like sculptures.
- A lack of Destruction in existence means that everything is only left to propagate. People do not die, society becomes post-scarce, it’s utopia, but then resources stratify and become artificially scarce, a lack of death leads to people feeling like they have no meaning.
Unity / Division
A fairly self-explanatory dichotomy; when verselia gets combined into new information, or when it becomes divorced from itself. The way in which the separation occurs can vary. Literally splitting something in two is not very difficult, selectively removing a particular piece of information from an entity is more difficult but feasible, but then cutting through physical space or even dimensions (oneiric/abstract) is exponentially more difficult but again feasible. It’s how Akadriel became split in half. All the same applies to unity, it’s just combining two or more entities.
- A lack of Unity means that digestion does not occur, so almost everything starves immediately, the conception of a zygote does not occur, etc. Basically nothing “comes together”.
- A lack of Division means that cells will not split, so nothing grows.
StC!Edges also become blurred, and everything would kinda become like verselian soup.
Light / Darkness
Messes with the physical properties of verselia (and physical material). Light is associated with high temperatures, zero-gravity, and extreme speed. Darkness is associated with low temperatures, increased gravity, and slowness.
- An absence of Light would mean that everything is basically weighed down in a weird darkness. Time moves the same, but it would be like being perpetually stuck at the bottom of the ocean.
- An absence of Darkness means basically everything floats, everything’s hot as fuck, everything’s glowing so much you may as well be constantly looking at the sun, and everything’s moving so quickly and probably smashing into each other on accident that it’s literal hell on earth.
Recurrence / Continuance
StC! The “time” related dichotomy, though it is not the true control over time since there is no such thing as destiny or a predetermined future in this universe. Recurrence is related to the past in that it has to do with tendency to repeat itself due to what has been inscribed and learnt. Continuance stands in for the present and future, as it is the forward motion, and is akin to “will” or the continuance of existence. It does not manipulate what the will will decide to do, but is the spark to act or not—it determines if the will is present or not.
- Without Recurrence, the world physically does not appear outright affected, but basically EVERYTHING gets a mass amnesia. Things will “remember” shit once Recurrence returns to normal functioning, but basically things have no idea who or what they are, and they wander aimlessly.
- Without Continuance, everything becomes stagnant and nothing moves, resembling everything falling asleep. In actuality, the self-will has become so utterly stagnant that nothing has any drive to do anything other than sleep.
Subjectivity / Objectivity
StC. This is sort of like a truth/lie dichotomy. Subjectivity would be able to distort the way that verselia is perceived by an individual being, and objectivity is the inverse of this. This dichotomy functions similarly to distortion. Objectivity would serve as a buffer against distortion, though it would be imperfect, and subjectivity’s effects would mimic distortion, though the verselia would not be truly “distorted”.
The verselian planes
I don’t commonly refer to this shit as “corporeal, surreal and ethereal”, I just thought the united naming scheme sounded good.
To explain the “archeophim cut-off” thing, those fuckers had their interdimensionality cut off way back when by the Shepherdess. (This event also created their weapons on the side, as they basically had a dimension taken out of them, manifesting in their weapons). They used to have perpetual access to both the surreal/oneiric and ethereal/abstract planes, but now they only have their oneiric/surreal connections, reducing them to the same “consciousness” as a mortal (this doesn’t mean much; they’re still way more powerful than a mortal or whatever). To regain their abstract connection (aka. to temporarily return to their previous, highly devastating power), they have to skewer themselves on their weapons. Since doing this breaches divine boundaries/the xeiris, black ooze pours from the wound and eventually solidifies around them, rendering them unconscious for an extremely long period of time (like maybe several thousand years unless they’re manually dragged out of this state).
Corporeal/Physical/Body Plane:
Where the mortal body resides. There’s not a whole lot special to say about this realm, other than it’s very similar to our world in terms of functioning, and it’s like its own form of chaos.
Surreal/Oneiric/Mind Plane
Where the soul and its oneiric field resides. These fields are called oneiric fields, and they’re basically literal mindscapes. What is done unto the mortal body is done unto the oneiric field, and vice versa—oneiric fields are shaped by life experience. They function as little islands on an infinite sea of xeiris. Beyond this xeiris boundary is the abstract domain.
Ethereal/the Abstract/Soul Plane
Where the soul and its field rose from, and where one’s fundamental concept domain resides. This doesn’t mean a lot, but for the Archeophim, it’s where they previously drew a fuckload of their power from before it was cut off.
Here is a really awful, kinda outdated cosmological graph of how everything stacks up. These are all the verselian planes. The blackhole-looking stuff and the weird borders are sorta outdated as well, but they haven’t so substantially changed that they need to be disregarded.
