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Just what does The Continuous and our multiverse look like?
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Seril
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Just what does The Continuous and our multiverse look like?
PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 01:43 PM

Okay, in light of the discussion in the other thread, I thought I'd start this up again. I went around previously and pestered a bunch of people about this topic, trying to piece together some sort of diagram to make sense of it all. This is what I came up with:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/Elyvin/Multiverse.jpg

~The sound of Wayne spewing out what sense of sanity he had left~

--whoops, sorry. That was the first draft.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/Elyvin/Multiverse4.png

...there we go.

Okay, this is how I have it from my understanding:

The Gray: The Void. The stuff that exists around and encompasses...
The Blue: The Continuous. What The Creator and co. carved out of The Void to create space for our multiverse. The task of making a space like this out of the Void is extremely difficult, and nobody (nobody) currently alive in canon should be able to replicate something like this.
The Yellow: I forget what this is. Someone ask Lucent, he'll remember.
The Red: The Multiverse. Where the Eternals and everyone else reside. Except for, of course...
The Green: The Vireverse. The positioning of it on a grid like this is what I got from TK, so hopefully it's correct.
The Empty Black Boxes: Destroyed and abandoned uni/multi/verses. These were seen in the final round of RT:Legacy.


Anyways, that's what I have so far. Comments, suggestions, pie?


Revision the sixth.

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Peptuck
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 06:37 PM

Yellow area is the Plane of Creation, i think. Wasn't it described as the core of the Multiverse in RT:L?

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Alexander Krizak
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 08:20 PM



Alright, the cyan bit in the centre? That is the Plane of Creation, where the entire multiverse takes root.

The white branches extending from the Plane of Creation are realities. The "length" of the branches is actually the fourth dimension, time; going lower on the branch puts you in an earlier time. As time passes, each reality branches out more and more; each new branching point is a new core reality.

The eerie cloud along the edge of the branches are all the iteration realities. Note that they are kept between the core reality branches and the dark black Void.

The faint shadowy branches beneath the core reality branches are the Vireverse, which lies "beneath" the regular Multiverse.

The blue lines travelling along the branches are the multiversal planes, including the Continuous. They touch every reality, but are separate from all of them.

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Onyx
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 09:05 PM

This thread is a perfect example of why this shit is getting too complex and convoluted for its own good.
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Helmar
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 09:24 PM
Last edited by Helmar on Thu, October 19, 2006 09:32 PM; edited 2 times in total

If you think this is complex, wait until I throw Möbius into the mix.

Kidding.

Though as far as complexity goes, this is still far simpler than anything DC or Marvel has done or any work you care to name with an equivalent number of different writers as we've had.

To simplify, think of it as a metaphor of a tree (metaphor is really all we're left with once we try drawing three- or four-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane).

If the Plane of Creation was the roots of a "tree", and Continuous was the trunk of the tree, and the branches of the tree were Core Universes, and the leaves of the branches were Iterations thereof, the Vireverse would be a second tree hanging upside-down from the roots of the Multiverse's tree.

Crummy ACSII go!

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;;:::==:::;;;
;;;:::==:::;;;
;;;:::==:::;;;
=========

||||||||||||||||
=========
;;;:::==:::;;;
;;;:::==:::;;;
;;;:::==:::;;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;


Multiverse
Vireverse
| Plane of Creation
= "Tree-trunk"/Continous
: "Branch"/Core Reality
; "Leaf"/Iteration
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Thirdtwin
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 09:25 PM

I dunno, I think it's just an example of people being bored. Sure, do we NEED this? I don't think so; I always assumed it was relatively clear how the Multiverse "looked" just taking the descriptions applied to it previously, and at the same time these drawings are clearly (very) rough renderings of the selfsame concepts. But, why not just let it be what it is?

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Onyx
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 09:36 PM

Helmar wrote:

Though this is still far simpler than anything DC or Marvel has done or any work you care to name with an equivalent number of different writers as we've had.


Marvel and DC have also had decades to do this. At the rate we're going, we'll reach their current level of "WTF" within a few years, assuming there will be enough people still interested in participating in these things.

Either way, it doesn't exactly make things accessible or newcomer-friendly to have the EMC be a convoluted mess. Even if you compare it to something even MORE convoluted, it doesn't magically make the EMC by itself simple. I'd say even the Star Wars EU is less convoluted (and has been around longer and a lot of writers), and that's pretty freakin' convoluted.
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Wayne
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PostPosted: Thu, October 19, 2006 10:35 PM

You're missing the point. More information is never a bad thing-- the more you have established, the less room there is for things to go wrong in the future. The thing is, these diagrams of the EMC (and humorously, none of us have the same conceptualization of it) are drastically less complex than even a rudimentary map of our universe. And just as you don't need to be completely aware of string theory or how dark matter works in astrophysics to write a sci-fi show (in fact, being an expert is probably a detriment, heh, I don't think anyone would want to watch a show that a literalist like myself would come up with), you don't need to even care about this stuff in order to host or participate in a tournament. It's just there if you do want to know-- which is vastly preferable to the alternative (it not being there).

The reality is, Matt, the bigger the scale you're working with, the more data you have to manipulate for things to "make sense" (more or less). DC comic writers can make great stories about cities and are decent enough about politics and psychology, but most of them have no clue how multiple universes can or should interact, or how to work continuity among parallel stories. Much like how the Xenosaga guys had no business trying to tell a story of the scope they were shooting for (and thus failed miserably by most accounts), comic book writers end up having to retcon each other all over the place because some writers are simply not suited for certain stories, and [apparently] few even keep track of what each other is doing anyway (this strikes me the most in the D&D books I read-- designers have totally different ideas of what balance should be, and as a result you get Ur-Priests and Bone Knights alongside Entropomancers and Acolytes of the Skin), so the problems compound.

All of that being said... I actually agree that "charting out" the Multiverse isn't really necessary, and may in fact be counterproductive-- the interaction of universes, planes, dimensions, etc. essentially can't be represented artistically anyway, and the concept of layered reality is something that none of us can really relate to, as it doesn't exist in "our" world [at least not that anyone can prove] and it only causes problems when introduced into fiction (I mean, what plot devices cause more problems that alternate realities and time travel?). I mean, like I mentioned before, Krizak, Helmar, and myself all have different ideas of how to describe this mess anyway, and chances are everyone else does too if they stop and think about it (not that I suggest such a course of action >_>). I don't think this step is necessary, but there's nothing wrong with taking it.
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Bowling Pin
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PostPosted: Thu, January 18, 2007 12:28 AM



The real multiverse.

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Peptuck
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PostPosted: Thu, January 18, 2007 10:35 AM

Pin wins.

Again.

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Dareon
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PostPosted: Thu, January 18, 2007 07:59 PM

It's not a big truck, it's a series of tubes!

(Also, how is Peptuck able to reply without noticing he has a PM?)
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JSG
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PostPosted: Thu, January 18, 2007 09:53 PM

He may have popup notification off (or a popup blocker on).

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Peptuck
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PostPosted: Thu, January 18, 2007 11:24 PM

What he said.

I also read the PM, I just....haven't gotten around to replying yet.

(for what its worth, Dare, GO FOR BLOKE. I like the idea Very Happy)

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PostPosted: Fri, January 19, 2007 12:54 AM



The Omniverse.

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Soujiro Seta
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PostPosted: Mon, January 22, 2007 02:09 AM

I'd draw a picture, but I don't have a scanner at hand, and my skills in the realm of digital art are near-nil, so a textual explanation of my perception of the multiverse will have to suffice.

I imagine the multiverse as a giant bowl-shaped thing - a strangely shaped bowl that actually comes to a point on the bottom, but expands outward and upward, looking in a cross-section sort of like a parabola. Taking that two-dimensional cross-section, we can look at it like this.

The width of that figure represents the multiverse's expanse in terms of spatial area. The height represents the multiverse's expanse in terms of chronological time. At the bottommost tip of that figure is the Plane of Creation - it's smaller than a universe, but extremely important, and more importantly, it is the beginning of what I refer to as the multiverse's "Central Axis."

Within this huge figure that represents the multiverse exist smaller figures - figures that start with a tip and bulge out, then eventually converge back, like turnips with two tips, or those bulbous hand-blown glass Christmas ornaments that look like spinning tops. Each of these is an individual universe, with its own central axis. A universe starts with a single point, then expands, and may continue on indefinitely, or eventually shrink and close off, ending its timeline. Universes that have been "completed" in this way can only be accessed by the Memory Pools, since all events and possible ramifications of events have already been written. Think of those universes as "closed books" that cannot be further altered, or at least not to the extent that it would change the length of that universe's lifespan.

Each universe hangs in the multiverse sort of like that, not directly connected to the plane of creation, but enabled to exist because the plane of creation was the 'starting point' for the multiverse, which we can see now resembles a larger (and more tubular, since it has not shrunk, and its lifespan is potentially limitless) universe.

The universe that exists directly on top of the multiverse's "Central Axis" is what we know as The Continuous - the universe that plays host to the majority of EMC's original characters, worlds, and events. This was one of the foundational universes in the multiverse, and because it intersects with the multiverse's central axis, the continuous has several unique properties (such as its inhabitants being on-scale powerful compared to each other, but notably more powerful than comparable counterparts in other universes, and (I think - correct me if I'm wrong on this) being a non-iterative universe).

Now, take that model and look once again at the shiny ball at the bottom of the multiverse we call the Plane of Creation. Now, imagine countless, incredibly thin threads weaving up through it, curling throughout the multiverse, through universes, branching at countless points. These strands represent "The Flow," and their proximity to any given universe, galaxy, system, or even planet determines how strong (or even how accessible) supernatural arts such as magic are in that world/galaxy/universe/whatever.

Now that we have this giant parabola-like structure plotted in cross-section on an x and y-axis chart, with the plane of creation at (0,0), imagine a shadowy, somewhat intangible reflection of this multiverse descending along the negative vertical axis. Like a reflection in the water, we can't really see how far down it goes, how many - if any - universes are in it, or really what's in it, other than that it appears to be an "afterimage" of the true multiverse above. This is the Vireverse, of which many - especially TK - are more knowledgable than I.

Everything outside the line that defines the multiverse (and I suppose the Vireverse too) is the Void.

That's my take on it, anyway. I think I need to make an illustration sometime in the future - it comes off as a sensible explanation to me, but writing it out made it seem more complicated than I'd regarded it as before.
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Tenshi Kain
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PostPosted: Mon, January 22, 2007 09:48 AM

No, I like that idea, personally- it's the most appealing image I've seen er, well, heard, yet. Smile

Wherever we may place the "Vireverse" I only know that it's not a real Multiverse, as Vire might have suspected at the end of SXVI- it is, however, definitely "negative" in nature and has mostly become an inverse of the Multiverse at large, an afterimage like Tenk said or a "photo-negative." I wanted it to be at least mostly inaccessible by normal means (no Memory Pooling) save via the waters of Zurvan at Carpasia, but E19 introduced the idea of a forcible entry, though obviously the...kinks need some working out.

However, one thing I did want to begin implying during Vire/Ceriseth's cameo in E19, and which you can probably pick up on if you go back and skim it, is that the Vireverse is innately unstable. Although I didn't know about or otherwise consider the Plane of Creation during SXVI- I dunno if the concept even existed yet, heh- I suppose that might explain why that is, being a universe on the "flipside." But it came about as sheer accident and its existence is a precarious one- it may be something that should not exist, but were it to collapse or dissipate or otherwise meet an end, the ramifications might be felt across the Multiverse proper as well.

That's all filed under "The Epilogue I Have Yet to Write and Sequel I Will Probably Never Host," though, but I only want to mention the instability in case it factored into how we see the Vireverse represented in these diagrams.[/s]
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Dry
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PostPosted: Mon, January 22, 2007 04:10 PM

Tenk's idea reminded me a bit of this poster.


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Cray Wolfen
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PostPosted: Mon, January 22, 2007 04:28 PM

I have that same exact picture on my dorm room wall in poster form, Dry XD
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