Tern Messabout
Tern Messabout
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? kusuri posts: 37
, Possibly the Bosonest Boson to ever be a Boson in CO, USA, EARTH, MWAY, UNIV ever.
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I feel like I need to work this place out some more. Some of this is true fax (as regards this unrealistic concreation), and some of this is only what the people think is true enough. This is going to be really rambly, sorry.


First up: triad of triads which this is all based on:

(Low / Middle / High)
Divine: Order / Restriction and freedom / Chaos
Magical: Fundamental or mindless / Logical or mindful / Spiritual or creative
Mundane: Earth, Land, Mountain, Rock / Water, Sea, River, Rain / Air, Sky, Wind, Breath

Tern moves backwards and forwards to and from Purely Ordered and Purely Chaotic. In the current era of Freedom, Tern is moving towards Chaos — meaning for any world I stick in this project that the end is getting awfully nigh.

Tern is a universe un-filled not with space, but filled with an acktual magickal substancke.
The world of the Archlands, my current area of focus, floats in this AMS-thing and is separated into nine layers: (many, but not all, worlds in Tern follow this format)

The Inners

The Core
This is the center of the world, the single idea, concept, wish, want, will, would which propels the rest. It is absolute movement - everything moves away from it until everything reaches the End, literally and figuratively.  When an unstoppable force sees an immovable object in Tern, it starts turning around.
The Haven
Where souls reside, in a constant dance with the Core, merging with and separating from it, breaking and mending it, simplifying and complicating it.
The Wall
The boundary between the conceptual and the actual; home to the "muses", guardians of new thought. Extremely difficult to cross while alive and/or real.

The Midworld

The High Garden and High Stone:

This is where spirits reside between life and death; while souls are the core essence of a person, a spirit is a single manifestation of that essence; spirits are what move the body and guide the mind. Or they can affect the world in general in a minor way through the will of living people (i.e. via prayer power). Or they can just piss around in the Garden.
Muse-allowing, a person may connect directly to their souls and experience divine inspiration. The odd human may occasionally wander in, with luck.
The Middle
A technically infinite plane that creates itself as it is found. This is where all of the comprehensible action is at.
The Low Garden and Low Stone
The boundary between the actual and the impossible. The garden is empty. Do not enter. Do not cross.

The layers of the middle world interact to a degree, but less than that of the outer or inner worlds. A person can in theory go from the Middle to the High or Low Garden by simply going up or down far enough. In practice, it is found that when one digs deep enough, one begins encountering more and more of a tough, lightly magically-charged, black stone, until one passes a certain point and that becomes all that one can find.
The High Garden is not somewhere infinitely high up, it is actually infinitely to the side. Not to say that it is somewhere very far to the east or west, but that it is just to the left or just to the right, neither forwards nor backwards, but a simple turn away - a tricky distance crossed best with the help of spirits.
Likewise, the Low Garden is both right there and extremely far away.


The Outers:

The End of the World:
Exactly that. Formerly a solid concept, holes were put into it several thousand year ago, and the boundaries of this world have been gently dissolving since.

The House of Mysteries:
Home to unintelligibly grand things, beings, automata, processes formed of the mana, and the dregs of the world's conceptual teacup; they interact with the world in slow and strange ways. If your cult needs an idol, look here.

The Rest of the Universe, all the mana that this world rests in.


Next post, the weather, and the furious whisper of handwaving at an almost shameful pace.