Foundations
The Shape of the Cosmos
The planes behind the world: the Material Plane, the Anchors and the Harmonics, the Resonant Zones where planes press together, the Veil, the Outside, and the Dissonance, the world’s own shadow held in the Veil.
Overviews
- Principles of the Cosmos 6The universe is a finite bubble of Order suspended in an infinite ocean of Nothing.
- The Anchors 11The planes where matter is dense, physics holds steady, and life can live: the Material Plane at the centre, with the five Deficit Planes and the five Surplus Planes around it.
- The Harmonics 10The ten planes made not of matter but of law, each a Prime's current given structure, from the Crucible of fire to the Frozen Moment of time; every one of them is both a place and a principle.
- Resonant Zones 30Places where a Harmonic presses through into an Anchor and overwrites its law for a while, for an hour or for an age.
Most Named in This Part
- The Veil PrincipleThe fluid space between places that connects every plane, a fog whose face changes towards each plane it borders and which takes its price from travellers, most often in what they remember.
- The Material Plane PlaneThe central Anchor, also called the Equilibrium: Caeldon's own plane, the hub of the Veil, and the only plane where free will truly works.
- The Dissonance PrincipleThe out-of-tune reflection of the Material Plane, held in the Veil close against it: the world's own shadow, a maze that swells and fades against the true world, known to almost no one.
- The Crucible HarmonicThe Harmonic of Ignis: energy, heat, and transformation, the engine of change that destroys the old and makes it new, and the concept of fire given form; its beings include the magma-bodied Forgers…
- The Frost-Bound PlaneThe Deficit Plane without warmth, a world of stillness where nothing changes; its people are the Frost-Born, and travellers go there to recover lost memories, to lay up dangerous objects, or to seek…
- The Scourge PlaneThe Deficit Plane without safety, a world of constant danger whose scarred people are the Scourge-Born; it is reached through War-Gates, and those who stay too long risk the Blood-Fury, a rage that…
- The Harmonics HarmonicThe ten planes made not of matter but of law, each a Prime's current given structure, from the Crucible of fire to the Frozen Moment of time; every one of them is both a place and a principle.
- The Primes PrimeThe ten foundational forces of the cosmos, which differentiated one after another from a single Original Potential; they are forces, not persons, and their currents run through everything.
- The Silence PlaneThe Deficit Plane without meaning, the cruellest of the five because what it takes is the self; its natives are the Hollows, and its Quiet Gates are libraries where nobody reads any more and places…
- The Eternal Record HarmonicThe Harmonic of Memoria, with Verba often joined to it: knowledge, history, and memory, the universe's library, where coherent Echoes are held in Record; its Archivists only observe and record.
- The Ashen Wastes PlaneThe Deficit Plane without energy, where warmth and strength drain away; its people are the grey Ash-Walkers, and its Cold Gates are volcanic vents gone cold and deep caves.
- The Radiance PlaneThe Surplus Plane where truth is absolute and privacy impossible; its people, the Illuminated, glow from within, and its Oracle Gates are places of judgement, confession, and mirrors.
- The Apex PlaneThe Surplus Plane of perfection completed, where nothing can be better and so nothing changes; its people are the flawless Apex-Born, and visitors who stay too long are perfected into smiling…
- The Gilded Cage PlaneThe Surplus Plane of absolute order, where freedom is the only crime; its people are the metal-skinned Gilded, its Enforcers reset offenders rather than kill them, and the way out is the Exit…
- The Parched PlaneThe Deficit Plane without sustenance, where water and food are absent and every living thing must consume before it is consumed; its people are the Dust-Eaters, and those who stay too long fall to…
- The Weave PlaneThe Surplus Plane where separation is impossible; its people, the Linked, carry the feeling of the collective, and beings wholly merged into its network form the Chorus.
Terms
The Boundary · Cascade Failure · Counter-resonance · The Deficit-Surplus Axis · The Edge Realms · The Equilibrium · Fate · The Fear of the Void · The Great Filter · The Great Unfolding · The Nothing · Pattern · Planar bleed · The pull of the extremes · The Resonance Principle · Storm-steel