Dimension

Okay, so in the interest of getting back into the spirit of the blog I’m going to tell you a little about the substance of Reltash, how I’ve chosen to place in the scope of the multiverse and how that placement sets it apart.

First and foremost as ever one must look at Earth, and as I am the writer, that happens to be the Earth I grew up in. Since I was a tiny little fingy I’ve always had an interest in the occult, despite (or because of) being given several firm prods towards Christianity. After I started reading fantasy, I was interested in viewing Earth in the same way, with a firm set of principles to govern ‘magic’. I wanted a clear set of rules and regulations, definitions, labels – you know. Librarian stuff.

DeLorian through time a few years once I became a bit more sceptical and a lot more well read and you will see numbers. Not maths, but a clear and present force of numeration across the High Fantasy realms. In The Book of Atrus the number five has a recurring effect within the world of Riven, so too does Vivec state that on Nirn five is ‘the number of the limit of this world’. Garth Nix has the Old Kingdom, a ‘bubble’ existing within another world, governed by nine great spirits who split Death nine ways between them. Tolkien proclaims that his great work is the ‘Middle-Earth’, which implies three Earths already exist at the very least.

It has therefore fallen to me as the only one crazy enough to notice such things to assign a number to our own world, and though it is tempting to let that number be ‘1.618’ I chose ‘7’ because it is prettier.

Why seven? That’s the Christianity coming out of me. It’s also a great number to work with because there is plenty of space on each side of it, and plenty of room to approach the idea of what the numbers mean.

In doing so, I decided that once they were laid out it was best to view them chronologically. World 1 is the first world, World 2 is the second, World 3 is the third, so on and so forth. But why in the multiverse would anyone wish to create more than one Earth? What are they driving at here?

Observe:

World Zero:

With a sparkle of the imagination, Disc World. Isn’t a disc just another type of Zero waiting to be discovered? (ha ha). A chaotic and unstable place that hardly manages to stay upright.

World 5:

Equally Nirn, Riven and Middle-Earth. In these places magic exists, but it isn’t exploding from every pore. There are certain rules in place – particularly in Riven – which govern the world and keep it stable. Magic is a far off entity drawn into existence by certain objects or people.

World Seven:

Earth. Magic is hidden and debatably non-existent, held by ‘miracle workers’, ‘gods’ and ‘demons’. Most magic isn’t seen as an independent force, but is granted to followers of certain powerful beings. Most recently in history we have played witness to a decline in mysticism, with science and reason coming to the foreground as immutable factors in the universe.

World 9:

The World of The Old Kingdom. This can be interpreted in two ways: either that of the original world, where science has existed in absence of any gods and religious worship, or that of the Kingdom itself, where magic is governed by Charter Symbols used to draw upon the elements of the Nine Great Spirits. I for one opt for a bit of both. The Spirits can be seen as an underside to the cold technological world, who never impacted it directly until forming the ‘bubble’ that is the Old Kingdom. It was by bridging this dichotomy that magic entered the Ninth World, though the initial barrier was greater than any of the worlds that came before it.

So if you bear with my madness, you can probably see what I am driving at. The creation of these Earths is an attempt to sever a world from the source of Magic, whatever that may be. On one side we have the chaos of Discworld and at the other we have the sterility of Nix’s Ninth. I chose a mix; something close to the exact science of our own Earth blended in with the unpredictable element of magic. My world is the Sixth, where magick is governed by an ironclad set of laws which can only be manipulated through careful study and practise.

As to what separates it from our Earth, I turned to the weekdays we name for the seven days of Genesis. Our seventh is Sunday, the day of Rest. Without rest, The Sixth World immediately became Reltash, ‘The Restless World’, because that is what set it apart from our own. Classically this is seen in the original actions of Reltash’s sculptor, Volianor, who was not satisfied with the world he made and left the universe to create another (His Seventh. Naturally I do not associate him with Yahweh, or suggest he made Discworld or Middle-Earth or any of those places. Reltash was just his sixth world, and just because Earth was Yahweh’s Seventh doesn’t mean Volianor and Yahweh and Terry are all the same person).

In the course of leaping from conclusion to conclusion I happened upon what is now one of my favourite words: Hexaemeron. Hexaemeron is the name of the first part of the book of Genesis, detailing creation as it was in the first six days. Thus Reltash had to have its own Hexaemeron – an equally holistic and interpretative text of similar authorship. The main difference between the two is that the Hexaemeron of Reltash could not be written by the universe’s creator, because he had moved on without pausing to consider his creation. Instead that task fell upon his ‘daughter’, a by-product of creation who acted as witness to everything that came after him and who gathered what information she could about what came before she was born. This was Selayuth, the goddess of Mystery (all the deities have a particular domain) and it was her who ultimately unleashed magic on Reltash.

Giggle. I’m getting ahead of myself here. This post isn’t about Selayuth’s Hexaemeron, but rather about Hexaemer. Hexaemer was how I separated Reltash from the other worlds. Put simply, it is the written substance of reality, which Volianor used to shape the universe. I focused on the symbol

Which as you can see is made of six intersecting lines of equal length, six in six, if you consider perpendicular lines, which makes twelve. Ironically twelve is as important as six in Hexaemer, but more on that later.

The importance put on the value of each degree of ‘unmagiciness’ can’t be overstated. Each line is essentially another absolute law which has to be present in everyone and everything in the world in order for it to exist. The best way to look at this is through the scientific understanding of ‘dimensions’.

Since the dawn of geometry, three laws of dimension were immutable: an object has length, an object has width, and an object has height. Without one of these – no matter how small – an object is said not to exist. This is of course pure supposition and we can laugh at mathematicians because they can’t actually prove something won’t exist without one of these dimensions until they break their own rules. Ha ha. Anyway.

Then last century a fellow came along and said ‘what about time?’ and everyone else was like, ‘What about time?’ and he was like, ‘Well, an object can’t exist without being pinpointed somewhere within the spectrum of time either, so time is one of the cardinal dimensions’ and they were like,

‘Oh. Whoops.’

So now time, width, breadth and height are the four cardinal dimensions of our universe. That we know of. Naturally there is a good deal of argument about this, because there are supposedly dimensions human beings cannot fathom with only five senses, and others that they can’t prove to be essential one way or another. That’s where Hexaemer steps in.

To make things more confusing I inverted the lines. Blank spaces are representative of laws or ‘limitation’ whereas visible lines symbolise freedom and ‘possibility’. This is because rather than creating a world from nothing Volianor is in fact negating possibilities with strictures so as to shape structures, get it? Good.

Anyway, the most important of all the Sigils is the ‘Eternity’ symbol, and is the face of Hexaemer:

It also stands for other things like ‘possibility’ and ‘limitlessness’ (and ‘womb’ for the Kerowackians out there).

Next come the half-measure removals, things like

. There are twelve of these, and they are Reltash’s Absolute Dimensions.

Hang on, didn’t I just say there are only four dimensions on Earth? Why yes, esteemed reader, you are right. Have a biscuit.

I added and conjoined a few. Namely; temperature, illumination, density, size, time, corporeality, speed, sound, spectrality, colour, direction and meaning. I’ve decided that once these things reach any actual ‘zero factor’ the universe starts acting too darn strangely to be classified as ‘within the bounds of its universal dimensions’. What lies outside of those dimensions is another story.

Exciting, isn’t it? Not only do I get to write about diverse subjects such as history, biology and cosmology, but it falls to me to reinvent the very laws of nature. It’s slow work, but incredibly rewarding. I also expect at least some of my theories will be proven right over the course of time.

For example, Speed is considered a scalar quantity while Direction is a vector. This is a problem. I don’t know why, but it is.

I had to consider a new way to think of Direction as a scalar quantity. This wasn’t so hard. All you have to do is keep adding directions – which is fairly regular, since most things are moving down and elsewhere at the same time. I suppose the real problem is with the intensity of the Direction. For instance, Speed is scalar because no matter the number of speeds applied to an object it will still move, and that movement has a set rate. Direction can have any number of directions resulting in one overall trajectory, but that trajectory doesn’t have any degree of intensity... until you consider it as a tug of war. If several things are pulling an object in a single direction then it does have intensity, even though that intensity could easily succumb to a single larger pull in another direction. The trouble with science is that everything is always touching – temperature determines density determines size determines speed determines sound determines meaning etc. It all eventually blurs together – which is why without any of these things, I believe the rest would fall apart. Sure, I settled on twelve, but I’m sure there are more. Those twelve were just the focal point for a good story – and hey, I’m a writer before I’m a scientist.

Hexaemer is a language unlike any I have seen attempted in a fantasy setting – one that does not evolve or adapt, because it is considered perfect and sacred in its original form – kind of like how Sanskrit, Hebrew and Latin are viewed today. It also does not follow the classic function of most languages in that it is not meant to be easy to use or allow any instantaneous transfer of information. Its primary function is to describe something completely, along with its past and future, all it has caused and all it has affected. What’s more it is not so much a transcription of data so much as it is an ‘aura’ of data written into the very fabric of an entity, and even more pointedly, that fabric itself. The best way to look at it, I suppose, is as the smallest divisible unit of matter. As such even the most basic elements that comprise The Sixth World are made of words, whose bonds are in syntax and grammar rather than energy and valence. It isn’t difficult to imagine what it might be like; having one image made up of a thousand smaller images, and one of those images made up of a thousand more.

‘Magick’ on Reltash is a matter of knowing or ‘reading’ what makes up an entity, and then erasing certain words to substitute them with something else. It would be a highly complex field of study which requires years to breach.

Yet even so, I have to admit I am a great fan of the Dungeons & Dragons phenomenon, not only for the storytelling aspects but also for the strictures of the gameplay, where there are precise ‘classes’ to define what exactly a character can do. This ‘class’ system has carried over into so many different fields today that it is almost standard to think of books as a ‘magic story’, a ‘thief story’, or a ‘warrior story’ depending on the protagonist.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of sitting around eating junk food with four or five friends rolling dice and rescuing fair maidens from the clutches of dastardly pony-thieves, there are two main magic-based classes in D&D: The wizard and the sorcerer. The wizard relies on intelligence and education, and is the more bookish – kind of what you would expect of Merlin or Dumbledore, locked up in a tower reading books and preparing everything in advance. This sort of fellow fits fairly well into the Hexaemeric universe. You can almost imagine him searching through ancient spellbooks for the name of one of the 602+ Sigils in the Hexaemeric alphabet to correctly structure a Hex with greater efficiency, and then painstakingly copying out streams of these runic letters to form a larger symbol.

The other kind, the Sorcerer, posed to be a bit of a problem. Sorcerers are ‘natural’ spellcasters, meaning that they are intuitively linked with the forces of the universe and can bend them at will. They do not have the brilliance of wizards, and thus their control over the forces of magic tends to be limited, but in whatever field they do have natural finesse they tend to excel all others. For example a sorcerer may have a knack for defensive spells and can conjure up barriers with ease, but unlike a wizard they cannot link their understanding of barriers to destructive spells because they have no true understanding of the ‘principles’ or ‘rules’ of magic.

On Reltash, sorcerers can be linked to natural speakers or talented musicians, who understand where to put notes and words to maximise their effect without really having an understanding of grammar or vocabulary. They have the ‘it’ factor, like when someone writes a book that just matches up with the thoughts and emotions of its readers without needing any complexity or schooled literary spirit behind it. Remember – everything in Reltash is made of words. Even gestures, exclamations and feelings can align to form a new phrase, and that phrase comes to life as magick.

I’ve gone a bit off track (and been hit by a train, no doubt) so I think I’ll end this one here.

The important points:

• Reltash has 12 dimensions.
• Reltash is made of words.
• The 13 original words are the 12 dimensions and the concept ‘eternity’.
• Reltash is the Sixth World in a line of several attempts to eliminate ‘possibilities’.

'Bring your reader to work' Day

It is dark outside. Technically as a day lasts 24 hours it still counts as a day, but in classic form the churning of many universes are preventing me from sleeping within my allocated 8 hour REM cycle despite self-hypnosis and that baby I ate two hours ago - jelly baby. That jelly baby I ate two hours ago, packed with simplistic amino-acid compounds that should have sent me into a sugar coma by now.

As you can see I am tired, I just can't sleep.

Picture, if you will, three objects in line. One of them is a super-mass structure with an insatiable gravity well, like a black hole. On the other end is a matter-less void - an equally insatiable vacuum sucking in whatever it can at the exact same intensity as the black hole. In the middle is World 1, the first world of creation. Because the Sixth World is made of 12 dimensions, the First World was made of 2. Behold my visual representationary prowess:

Working off the idea that the Dimensions are effect fields with fixed centers which generate a world when those fields overlap, and that those fields are affected by gravity and displacement or whatever their extra-dimensional equivalents are, we can assume that the shape of the world remains linear. There is an equal amount of force on each side, and thus the distribution of the dimensions is 1-1.

Skipping forward a few bagazillion millennia the first world collapses into a mini-well, and Volianor moves on to the Second World, a place with four dimensions which, I remind you, can border one another and overlap to a degree, but cannot occupy the same space:

Now the 'no simultaneous occupation of the same space' rule enforces a certain-if-not-definite rigidity in structure, but we can assume that if the dimensional fields have any wiggle room at all, they will be pulled towards the left, because there is now a greater force of gravitational attraction to the left (2-1). Later we have the Third World, Artash, a place with 6 dimensions:

This is where it gets interesting, because the 'no simultaneous occupation of the same space' rule has to be bent - five of the Dimensions can exist outside of the jurisdiction of the others, but the Sixth Dimension has to exist within 2 other dimensional fields, negating the property of independent existence. What's more it affects the other 2 dimensions, because now they exist within an additional dimensional field, implying co-dependence with the odd-Dimension-out.

While this is all very interesting, and could make for the basis of a great story, one also has to consider the integrity of the Dimensional Field: do they have to be circular/elliptical, or can they take up other shapes after they react to contact with other Fields and the pull of the spectral constants? For example, the above 'no simultaneous occupation of the same space' problem could be solved with oblongs:

This idea appeals not only because it's easier but there is no breaking out of any rule; merely the addition of another rule, such as, 'The field of effect surrounding a dimension may become irregular when exposed to external forces, but internal forces demand the volume of the field remains constant'.

From this point on we have not one possible universal form but two (three, actually, but I'll get to that in a minute): one in which fields maintain their integrity but dimensions cease to be independent, and another in which Dimensions maintain their integrity but fields cease to be independent. What's more important: the independence of the field, or the independence of the nucleus?

The real question being posed is whether the field is an area of decreasing dimensional effect, or if it is of equal value to the nucleus throughout its form. Can there even be 'degrees' to which a dimension applies? What are the properties such a state might imply - the ability to ignore or resist Dimension? Maybe. I'm always willing to accept possibilities.

Field Integrity suggests something different - that there are no degrees. A dimension either exists or it doesn't, and if it doesn't you cease to exist within the 'world'. This more closely represents the scientific beliefs of our own universe, but that is by no means any indication of accuracy.

The third thing to consider is whether or not moving towards the Vacuum increases the force acted upon the World by the Vacuum, as well as whether distance from the Gravity Well decreases the gravitational pull. Such additional considerations may actually balance out the force applied by the generated Worlds, and ensure that the dimensions remain equally-spaced. Considered further, that would deny the ability to change the Dimensional Fields' shapes to anything but other Dimensional Fields.

*Sleep overwhelms, thank goodness*

Assuming the effects do not balance, and continuing with the Uniform Field theory, we encounter the Fourth World and can imagine it looks something like this:

The more Dimensions I add, the more rigid the structure becomes, which is good. We now have 3 Dimensional Nuclei forced to reside within a minimum of two other fields, implying that those Dimensions themselves are an integral part of the others, as Socratic theory dictates an object cannot accept a quality into its form and remain stable if that quality is of an unlike state to the object.

The Fifth World:

A clear pattern is emerging where each dimension effects the 2 dimensions next to it.

At last, The Sixth World:

So that's model 1. I have, of course, assumed that Dimensional Nuclei attempt to establish a regular and equally-spaced form, and that's another of those things we can only make assumptions about on the 'what works small works big' principle. Such a compound is clearly highly resistant to external forces, because its internal bonds push it into an exact shape of minimum conflict (through polarity).

Naturally the question arises as to how we can be certain these laws work as they do, and as a simple librarian it isn't really my place to take up that battle. That's physics, and is a whole different field of inquiry.

As the curator of the Sixth World, it isn't my place to argue the physics on a representative level and mete out on such forces as 'probability'. My job is to record what I have discovered about the Sixth World, and from those facts that I know define the 'possible' laws that actually do apply in this small and singular situation. I am not a scientist in this sense, because I know I'm not going in blind. I already know that the Dimensional Architrave of The Sixth world is a crescent, like this:

This diagram, now that I am looking at it, implies several things:

1. In Volianor's Totality, Dimensional Nuclei have spherical fields of influence around them.

2. The 'energy' within these fields is not uniform, but is pushed away from other Dimensional Nuclei, resulting in large areas with little influence and 'lines' of maximised influence.

3. The dimensions are organised in a crescent on the side of the Mass Field.

4. 3 Cardinal points have allocated Dimensions. From top to bottom these are Time, Spectrality and Meaning.

5. More dimensions exist within the lower half of the crescent, implying an outside force is pulling more powerfully in that direction than the other (or a force of repulsion is acting on the upper crescent). This is possibly the Fifth World.
   
   

In the end we are forced to consider a mixture of the two possibilities: the circle is the natural state of the field, as is field uniformity, but this natural state cannot remain stable in the presence of outside interference, and the field becomes elliptical and varied. In this way the nucleus is never directly exposed to the core values of another nucleus, but it does (given the presence of 6 or more dimensions) come into existence within another Dimensional Field, provided the Dimensional Nuclei do not arrive simultaneously. Either way, the fact that the spheres of influence touch explains why no single dimension can be affected without causing changes in the others. I'd even go as far as saying that those which border one another have direct relationships, while those that do not have indirect relationships.

So yes, all of this because I wanted to know why the Dimensional Architrave is a crescent. Being an Artist is a difficult quality to describe. Unlike scientists, we do not answer questions. We already have answers. Most of the time they just pop into your head and you think "Oh! That makes sense!".

What we can do is question those answers, and hope more things pop into our brains. To but it plainly, Artists work off different laws to those of the natural world, while scientists consult only the natural world.

A more complete look at Volianor's Totality can be seen below:

This image takes into account several cosmic events, such as the Third World Exodus, when several sentient species were propelled across the multiverse into the Sixth World, damaging the bindings on the dimension of Temperature; and the relocation of the Dragon Dream, when a parallel Sixth World (Asjai) began to fall apart and slowly funneled into the substance of Reltash, purportedly due to the actions of Demani, the Dream God.

All that's missing here is the creation of the seventh, eighth and ninth worlds, and the worlds I have not even begun to contemplate.