Han'ya/OFUE

An Exalted Theory Of Everything

The Wyld is chaos. That's not so difficult a concept.

The Wyld is real. This might stretch the mind. It's not some elaborate illusion created by the Fair Folk, it's not any less real than Creation. It just...doesn't...have...any...rules. Therefore, it is entirely possible that red clouds can sing arias about the sins of your unborn children while you ride a flaming giraffe towards Las Vegas (which is upside down), as long as it takes place in the Wyld.

If the Wyld is real, and has no rules, how is it then that anything cohesive exists? The logical result of ruleless reality would be a sort of "white noise", as it were. The Wyld, for the most part, fits this description. The only time it does not is in the presence of one of the Fae. Why is this so?

It is so because of the fundamental units of reality. Let's call them "abstracts". An abstract is the fundamental unit of being. Like atoms, abstracts bond to each other. Each individual abstract and grouping of abstracts will therefore interact with others in certain ways. There is a certain grouping of abstracts, for example, that creates the object "cloud". In the Wyld, there is absolutely no reason why grouping "cloud" could not bond with the abstract or abstract grouping that imparted the quality "red", or "given to a stillborn child", or something else that does not really go with "cloud" as humans understand it.

The Fair Folk are different from unshaped Wyld in two ways. Once created, they remain in existence. Also, they are capable of shaping the Wyld. Shaping, for the purposes of this writing, shall be defined as "bringing about and sustaining an arrangement of abstracts and its interactions with other individual abstractsor groupings of abstracts." Raksha is unaware of how the Fair folk accomplish this, and why there are varying degrees of prowess.

Creation, then, can be described as "a locality shaped by the Loom of Fate." The Loom exerts a continuous shaping force on Creation, creating natural law and Creation's physics and metaphysics.

Let it be theorized that nothing can be created that is alien to its creator. The logical extension of this is that, at least in a sense, the Primordials shaped Creation in their image. When they forced order upon chaos and permanence upon constant change, they ordered the abstracts that made up Creation in a fashion similar or identical to the way that they were arrayed within the Primordials themselves. The reason for the fact that the Primordials embody or epitomize primal concepts is that the primal concepts were derived from the Primordials, rather than the other way around.

Why does the Underworld order itself when the Loom of Fate does not hold sway within its depths? For the same reason that Malfeas does. Both realms are comprised of the very bodies of the Primordials, who by their very natures cannot fall victim to the ambient chaos of the Wyld.

How is it possible the Neverborn were slain, when death is a lesser thing than the Primordials? Because they were not truly slain as humans understand it. When their fetich souls were destroyed, it created great gaps where abstracts had been torn away or shed. For some reason, these gaps were filled by new abstracts, a great many of which are associated with death, decay, rot, and oblivion. These fundamentally altered Primordials became the Neverborn, as the new elements of their being totally redefined the way their component abstracts interacted with each other and the world without. The changes eventually were completed (or mostly completed) and the Underworld was born. One of the groupings of abstracts that bonded to all of the Neverborn shall be dubbed for the purposes of this piece "the Element of Gloom." The Primordials, who had been beings of Fire, Air, Earth, Water, Wood, and other stranger elements, were irrevocably changed by the introduction of this new element, which was associated with stagnation, stillness, decay, collapse, and, funnily enough, gloom. Gloom and darkness are not the same thing, mind you. It made the Neverborn slow and cold, like glaciers. From within their sepulchres they began to reach out and extinguish the light and heat and motion of the world and draw it all into Oblivion.

What is Oblivion, then? It is not nonexistence, nor the opposite of existence, nor the absence of existence. Rather, it is stillness. If nothing moves, then nothing interacts, then for all intents and purposes nothing is. Oblivion is like a computer with the power cable unplugged. Where once there was motion and interaction and change, now there is not. Oblivion is cold. Oblivion is dark. Oblivion is entropy. Or rather, it is Entropy. Capital "e".

Why is Malfeas so alien to Creation, if Creation was derived from the Primordials, who became the Yozis, whose bodies make up that infernal realm? The reason is much the same as the reason the Underworld is so different. When the souls of the Primordials were torn away, slain or disfigured or permanently altered, vast tracts of abstracts were lost or exchanged for others, the Primordials collapsing into new and different configurations. The defeated Primordials, as part of the working of their imprisonment, were bound to Theion To, the sublime acid, called by lesser beings vitriol, as the slain Primordials bonded to Gloom and became the Neverborn. Theion To shaped them, changing them utterly and making them into the Yozis. Corruption, which was a part of the sublime acid, which mortal minds cannot begin to comprehend, became a fundamental part of the Yozi's being. As entities that had had corruption, and therefore weakness, made into a fundamental part of their being, the Yozis became vulnerable to being shaped further by the gods and Exalts, making their servitude and defeat inescapable by virtue of the very nature of their being. Theion To, which is no part of Creation, defines Malfeas in a way no Gaian element does Creation. It is alien becasue of the presence and effects of Thien To. What is little thought of is that every time a demon enters Creation, it carries with it a little of that alien Element, releasing it into Creation simply by its presence. Most of it will break down or fall back to Malfeas, but some will remain, changing Creation to be even a little bit more like the element's place of origin. The Neverborn, the dead, the Deathlords, and their Abyssal servants do the same with Gloom.