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It was inevitable

14 (41.2%)

Winners don't do drugs

6 (17.6%)

I'll be back

2 (5.9%)

Drink the Kool Aid

6 (17.6%)

Groovy

3 (8.8%)

Insane in the membrane

3 (8.8%)

Total Members Voted: 34

[Lenglon]

I sigh
"This is the kind of thing I wanted to avoid. but sure, gimmie a moment. It's hard for me to access those memories, I get a massive data overflow because my brain isn't really meant to handle that stuff, but I can if I really try."
I close my eyes and take several slow deep breaths, straightening my posture at the same time, and when I speak again my voice is somehow a little off, mildly unsettling, though it sounds the same it... isn't?
"In the beginning of time, there was nothing. There was no darkness, no light, no time, no space. Everything is void. Then... out of nowhere, a sentience had developed. This sentient being, dubbing itself 'God', is capable of manipulating itself to its will. With its power, the entity had created the universe.

But soon after, it grew bored, and destroyed that universe and returned everything to void. Then, it had an idea. An idea thought up by a race of sentients long extinct. Democracy.

Soon God created several omnipotent beings, known as Deities, to be his advisers. But still God is bored, so he left the multiverse, leaving his shell as a machine that would operate to serve the majority and alter the universe according to their wills."
I shudder and return to my normal posture, taking several more deep breaths before finally opening my eyes.
"Please don't ask me to do that again."

[DarkArtemisFowl]

((Going on a family trip. Will most likely not have Internet access in the next two days.))

Zechariah looks between Ike and Irine before speaking up. "I guess it's only fair to mention a bit of the Medium as well. A bit of where I came from. Eido went great lengths to explain that, ultimately, he was not a god, or, rather, the God. Even he did not know whether there was a higher power that made him and the other beings that existed with him. He never went too far into detail, but I knew that, out of all of the beings that existed with him, only him and one other being remained. The force that killed the other beings was known to us as the Shadow. In short, Shadows are the "negatives" of everyone's subconscious. Normally, these Shadows aren't malevolent, at least not on a wide scale. But something provoked the Shadows and corrupted them, forming them into a cancer that continues to spread across every realm that exists in Eido's domain. If living beings are not strong enough to confront their own Shadows and help others to do so, then they will inevitably be consumed by the never-ending tide of Shadows.

Since the Shadows are able to span multiple dimensions, Eido created a system that would allow living beings to also connect multiple dimensions. This is known as the Medium. This system connects the physical, mental, spiritual, and temporal aspects of a person's existence, allowing them to project spiritual force as physical power. Technically, anyone can use this system, but there are always ten people who are naturally endowed with a special, natural sense for this connection. Within a single generation, they each represent one major aspect of life. We call them 'Guardians,' as they protect their facets of life against destruction. There is also one additional person - a 'Medium' - who trades direct power for the ability to cross universes, not just dimensions. There were tons of other details about this system, but it would take too long to explain. This was the most recent iteration of the Medium. I have no doubt that Eido changed it too many times to count, as he has been constantly searching for a way to stop the fall of universes to the Shadows.

In my existence, four universes with four generations of Guardians were created. That meant forty-four people in total; by the end, that number had been cut down greatly. We were supposed to be the last ones. If we failed, Eido would simply stop and conserve the rest of his power to prolong the inevitable death of all living things in our multiverse. Eventually, it came down to the last battle, and..." He sighs. "Well, you know what happens from there, at least to me. I destroyed the Medium and the Shadows connected to it, and since practically all of the malevolent Shadows had descend upon the last universe, that meant that it was over. Of course, it cost me my soul - or, at least, that was what I thought. Now it's over. I have no idea if I succeeded or not. I did have one last guarantee in case I failed, but I have no idea if it came down to that."

[Harry Baldman]

I sigh
"This is the kind of thing I wanted to avoid. but sure, gimmie a moment. It's hard for me to access those memories, I get a massive data overflow because my brain isn't really meant to handle that stuff, but I can if I really try."
I close my eyes and take several slow deep breaths, straightening my posture at the same time, and when I speak again my voice is somehow a little off, mildly unsettling, though it sounds the same it... isn't?
"In the beginning of time, there was nothing. There was no darkness, no light, no time, no space. Everything is void. Then... out of nowhere, a sentience had developed. This sentient being, dubbing itself 'God', is capable of manipulating itself to its will. With its power, the entity had created the universe.

But soon after, it grew bored, and destroyed that universe and returned everything to void. Then, it had an idea. An idea thought up by a race of sentients long extinct. Democracy.

Soon God created several omnipotent beings, known as Deities, to be his advisers. But still God is bored, so he left the multiverse, leaving his shell as a machine that would operate to serve the majority and alter the universe according to their wills."
I shudder and return to my normal posture, taking several more deep breaths before finally opening my eyes.
"Please don't ask me to do that again."

"Ooh, that's a pretty cool exposition voice you have there. And that does kind of answer my question, too! Seeded by God at the start of time, some period of creation-time follows, after which there's a short period of life-time. And then a sudden collapse."

"Hm. You think maybe it was God again? The one that collapsed your universe, I mean."

((Going on a family trip. Will most likely not have Internet access in the next two days.))

Zechariah looks between Ike and Irine before speaking up. "I guess it's only fair to mention a bit of the Medium as well. A bit of where I came from. Eido went great lengths to explain that, ultimately, he was not a god, or, rather, the God. Even he did not know whether there was a higher power that made him and the other beings that existed with him. He never went too far into detail, but I knew that, out of all of the beings that existed with him, only him and one other being remained. The force that killed the other beings was known to us as the Shadow. In short, Shadows are the "negatives" of everyone's subconscious. Normally, these Shadows aren't malevolent, at least not on a wide scale. But something provoked the Shadows and corrupted them, forming them into a cancer that continues to spread across every realm that exists in Eido's domain. If living beings are not strong enough to confront their own Shadows and help others to do so, then they will inevitably be consumed by the never-ending tide of Shadows.

Since the Shadows are able to span multiple dimensions, Eido created a system that would allow living beings to also connect multiple dimensions. This is known as the Medium. This system connects the physical, mental, spiritual, and temporal aspects of a person's existence, allowing them to project spiritual force as physical power. Technically, anyone can use this system, but there are always ten people who are naturally endowed with a special, natural sense for this connection. Within a single generation, they each represent one major aspect of life. We call them 'Guardians,' as they protect their facets of life against destruction. There is also one additional person - a 'Medium' - who trades direct power for the ability to cross universes, not just dimensions. There were tons of other details about this system, but it would take too long to explain. This was the most recent iteration of the Medium. I have no doubt that Eido changed it too many times to count, as he has been constantly searching for a way to stop the fall of universes to the Shadows.

In my existence, four universes with four generations of Guardians were created. That meant forty-four people in total; by the end, that number had been cut down greatly. We were supposed to be the last ones. If we failed, Eido would simply stop and conserve the rest of his power to prolong the inevitable death of all living things in our multiverse. Eventually, it came down to the last battle, and..." He sighs. "Well, you know what happens from there, at least to me. I destroyed the Medium and the Shadows connected to it, and since practically all of the malevolent Shadows had descend upon the last universe, that meant that it was over. Of course, it cost me my soul - or, at least, that was what I thought. Now it's over. I have no idea if I succeeded or not. I did have one last guarantee in case I failed, but I have no idea if it came down to that."

"Were there any aliens in this multiverse? I'm trying to get a picture of the scale. One of those solar system-sized affairs, then?"

[Lenglon]

"I'm sure it wasn't."

[DarkArtemisFowl]

"Um, yes and no. Each universe had a different outcome, so each world I visited looked completely different. They each had different moons, compositions, organisms, and plant life. In terms of the Guardians, most were humans, or at least as close to ordinary humans as possible. The first generation tended to have a wide range of eye, hair, and skin color; the second had humans crossed with the traits of other animals; the third involved humans with a wider range of proportions and a natural penchant for magic; and the fourth was like the first, but a little closer to what's expected as natural. I don't know if any of the worlds had contact with actual aliens yet."

[Harry Baldman]

"I'm sure it wasn't."

"How so? Dude's got the means, the knowledge and the motive, no?"

"Um, yes and no. Each universe had a different outcome, so each world I visited looked completely different. They each had different moons, compositions, organisms, and plant life. In terms of the Guardians, most were humans, or at least as close to ordinary humans as possible. The first generation tended to have a wide range of eye, hair, and skin color; the second had humans crossed with the traits of other animals; the third involved humans with a wider range of proportions and a natural penchant for magic; and the fourth was like the first, but a little closer to what's expected as natural. I don't know if any of the worlds had contact with actual aliens yet."

"So... no idea? Seems a little weird if there'd be aliens that had nothing to do with your multiversal threat. Just chugging along after that one sentient race in the corner of the galaxy got snuffed by their own psychic emanations or something."

[Lenglon]

"No motive."

[Harry Baldman]

"No motive."

"Sure there is. Got the notification the universe was done, took a look at it, decided to pack it back in. Wasn't impressed with the results, maybe - I imagine God's a bit hard to please if the Bible is anything to go by. Or maybe he had better things to do with his creative apparatus. Or maybe he just decided to undo creation and start it up again with different advisers to see if things get more interesting. Or maybe he was struck by inspiration and decided to make the next universe a bit more personalized."

"Makes more sense than some dick just popping in and breaking time for laughs, doesn't it?"

[Lenglon]

"No."

[Xantalos]

"No."

"Why?"

Alan you eavesdropper.

[Lenglon]

"I said no."

[Harry Baldman]

"Sure, you say that, but isn't God's whole schtick that he's bored and easily distracted? Universes are dime-a-dozen if you're omnipotent. Or hell, even possess a method of multiversal travel. I dunno about you, but I could easily imagine someone like that looking back on this universe he made on an off day and go like 'yeah, probably should just shelve this already' and just collapse it and everything in it. After all, anything he makes he can easily remake, and anything he remakes he can iterate upon. Shouldn't overestimate one's importance in the face of an uncaring demiurge."

"Come to think of it, that meshes pretty well with the God-figure a lot of people think was in our universe. They say he noticed that the planet was kind of fucked and infested with giants and so he just wiped it clean with a great flood save for a small population of people he thought were all right and a bunch of animals."

[Lenglon]

"I said no."

[Xantalos]

"I said no."

"But why?"

Ah, the most annoying query of small children.

[Lenglon]

"I. Said. No."