[GM Notes] 15/09: Exploring the mess of fantasy cosmology, Part 2
Where I try to figure out how to start
So as I talked about in Part 1, I’m currently playing with the existing cosmology of fantasy settings such as Golarion (Pathfinder 2e) and fantasy cosmology in general (since Golarion’s cosmology is very similar to D&D and other systems in broad terms). As always these notes are messy and informal and exist as a way for me to disentangle my ideas.
Cosmological Goals
My goal is to keep as many individual elements as feasible, keeping the bottom-level detail of creatures, magic, domains, etc.. to still be usable in play while reworking the top-level logic in order to better fit my intent with the stories I tell, a better “ideological fit” to the These Twilight Years setting. To summarize that goal :
Constructing a setting based on Historical and Dialectical Materialism (the philosophical materialism, not the “I like stuff” kind) rather than Idealism.
The Historical Materialist approach also means the acceptance that faith changes with human societies, meaning the cosmology also has a complex history, it is constantly changing.
Getting rid of Idealism means getting rid of the idea of a finite and perfect model of cosmology that neatly describes everything. A model only shows a partial and time-specific understanding of the world, often with contradictory elements.
In general this leads to everything being more “human-centred”, because it puts human realities and societies more at the front.
Figuring this out in a dialectical model, meaning while material (corporeal or incorporeal) reality is important and determines a lot of the ideas people have, sufficiently strong and socially practised ideas then change material reality. In this context, while human realities determine the kind of faith people write for themselves (humans “make” their spirits and gods), the faith then becomes real and influences humans in the opposite direction (spirits and god are now incorporeally real, not just projections). A fantasy world allows for this dialectical process of material/ideal, corporeal/incorporeal and base/superstructure to become very tangible.
Stuff needs to generally match better with “real-world” anthropology and belief systems, when possible.
A big part of that is getting rid of the strange modern, western monotheistic bias in how gods are seen, how faith is structured and how worship/ritual works. For example, a lot of fantasy settings have the nonsensical combination of a polytheistic pantheon but with monotheistic worship.
That’s quite a lot.
My biggest obstacle has been “Well how do I even start?”. I can change a lot of the specific details, re-imagine or rewrite particular gods and invent fun belief practices, prayers and rituals; I can shuffle around a lot of the planes and planar denizens. But what I need to do first so that this makes sense is figure out the very basics, the building blocks so that I can keep the rest straight in my head.
Now, as I said in my goals the advantage here is the understanding that a “model of cosmology” is never perfect, it’s always something people build for a purpose and it never fully describes reality. It’s idealistic, it tries to abstract all of the grey and blurry mess of reality into neat little concepts, and it is tied to a very specific point in time since everything before and after it is a continuous gradual change into something else.
But for the purposes of writing, and for the homebrew setting, I still need to figure out, right-here right-now (in the setting), how things work. Or at the very least how people in the setting understand the world, how they describe it. This means I can also present this alternate cosmology through the lens of an alternate viewpoint in the setting : through a specific person, author or faith that views the world and the gods differently. In any case, I need it to figure out how my characters think about it, how they talk about it and why. This doesn’t even need to be complete and precise, it doesn’t need to be all explained to potential GMs if this were an official setting, but I need to grok the core structure otherwise I will just unconsciously remake the pre-existing writing.
Sketching the Model
Golarion already has a lot of elements that make a fairly consistent model, it describes all the building blocks such as the soul, the quintessence, the positive and negative energy planes, the four elements, the outsiders, the planes, the gods, the body/mind divide, the magical traditions, and so on. The trick is to keep those but redefine them, put them in a different setup that does what I want it to do but can still include all the cool stuff like fey, outsiders, planes, elementals, etc.
In order to fit my goals better, I’ve decided that I need a cosmology that is also dialectical, and one that gets rid of Idealistic concepts and avoids separating everything into discrete categories. Everything is on a changing spectrum rather than sorted into idealised separate groups. Another way of looking at this is a cosmology that acknowledges that all its varied elements can change into each other, that all of it is part of a fluctuating whole. After some thinking and discussing, it seems like adapting concepts from Taoism would work pretty well, given how neatly the relationship of yin and yang matches a dialectical view, as well as the very useful concept of qi as a cycle between a condensed and diluted state. I also like how it describes elements and their relations, and I think it’s just neat and different from how fantasy cosmology is usually defined.
So let’s start defining and making little drawings. Everything here is subject to change since I’m still trying to make everything fit.
Energy
Let’s start at the beginning. Everything in our (fantasy) universe is made of a broad concept called Energy (could also be called Breath of the universe). It exists in varied states between the beginning and end of a cycle. The “poles” of this cycle go together, one only exists because of the other, they cannot be separated and they exist simultaneously. Often divided by traditional scholars into two distinct “planes”—the Positive Energy Plane (also called Extropia) and the Negative Energy Plane (also called Entropia)—but this divide is a misunderstanding. They are not opposites or extremes, they are two names describing the same process in different directions.
The two poles exist as one whole and represent the cycle going-in and going-out of Energy in its condensing or diluting state. Each “state” is a changing one, a process rather than a static definition and each state immediately begins changing into another. Rather than separate concepts, what we describe as “positive energy” or “negative energy” are the same energy but either in the process of condensing (breathing into the universe), of transforming (changing form within the material world), or of diluting (breathing out of the universe). Everything is the same Energy at different stages of the cycle, in different states similar to how water can be vapour, liquid or solid.
In its diluted (and thus in the process of condensing) state, Energy is nothingness, undefined, indeterminate, and thus indefinite potential. This condensing state is called Potentia.
In its intermediary (half-way between condensing and diluting) state, Energy exists in varied and complex forms combining indeterminate and determinate states, using its potential to transform and reincarnate into various things, it exists in the liminal space between infinite burning potential and dead cold ash. This intermediate state is called Materia.
In its condensed (and thus in the process of diluting) state, Energy is stubborn, defined, determinate, it has lost almost all momentum and settles down into a sediment for the new, fertile remains for new potential. This diluting state is called Vestigia.
I’ll stop here for now. This already creates something interesting to me which is that the two “extreme states” of completely diluted and completely condensed are not clearly placed on the model. You can imagine, of course, that the pure diluted state is at the very top and the pure condensed is at the bottom, but it would be impossible to experience. The process never stops, the instant energy is sufficiently condensed it is already re-diluting, changing, re-condensing, etc.. and eventually “dies” back into a diluted form, but the instant it is sufficiently diluted it is already condensing again.
Another important distinction is that these poles where energy is undiluted are not really “places” that you can go to, they are not planes you can visit. They exist cosmologically but they are not separate from the universe, rather they are a way to describe the cycle of energy of the universe itself. The universe and these two poles are one and the same. In general the more abstract planes I can merge/remove from fantasy cosmology the more convenient it will be: It’s not that I dislike planes, but I don’t find the completely abstract ones (plane of fire, plane of air, plane of positive energy, etc…) to be interesting. Planes need a geography to be useful.
So far it matches what I want in terms of constant dialectical process, removing discrete distinctions, and it carries a bunch of ideas I like from Taoism. Something that is still missing is the idea of memory, of things having a History rather than endlessly-repeating cycles that (paradoxically) never change. Rather than a pure cycle where everything at the end is the same as in the beginning, I prefer the idea of “spirals”: The cycle repeats similarly but not exactly the same as last time, spirals rather than the same circle being drawn over and over. For this, I need the end of the cycle to carry some things over to the next one, for the old cycle to have a direct influence over the new one (which is why I called the diluting process Vestigia, meaning traces or remains).
What do you think, have you found glaring problems, obvious contradictions, annoying exceptions, lingering confusion? I hope not, but if you have I’d rather know!
Next time I’ll try to figure out what the fuck a Soul is supposed to be, and what is Life. This is a funny sentence to write, isn’t fantasy neat?