------------- Chapter 5 - Planar Cosmology

To understand the nature of the universe is only a small piece of what you need to know. The multiverse is so much more than that. It encompasses our reality, all of the other realities that are merely quantum variations of our own, and those realms beyond reality as you know it. These regions of reality are connected and they are separate, many overlap, and some are as removed from this reality as Apos is removed from the center of the galaxy. In terms that can be understood by mortals, the multiverse is a great mobius, twisted into a figure eight that crosses from both sides through our reality. This mobius floats through a vast nothingness, a wilderness of desolation, surrounded by the primal forces that existed even before the multiverse was formed. The mobius, as I have described it, is the Spirit Realm. It connects to all things, and transcends the regions between Heaven and Hell, from Tarterus to Elysium, from Gladsheim to the Abyss. Those who die pass through the Spirit Realm to the appropriate final destination. So if the Spirit Realm is thought of as a great road, and each plane of existence a village or a city along the road, then the wilderness that it crosses is The Void. A vast expanse of nothingness that was created when primal energies and matter were drawn together to form the multiverse. Outside of that wilderness, past the borders of reason and understanding, lie the remnants of that primal matter, loosing ground daily to the reason of existence. That region is called The Beyond, and those who have attempted to travel there or to tap into the energies or communicate with the creatures therein have been struck down by the insanity of non-existence, the complete lack of order to the point that reason itself fails. So here we are, as man has always drawn himself, sitting at the center of a vast multiverse of existence, an infinite number of infinities, piled one on another, interconnected by gates and portals and ribbons of sunlight, faerie glades and moonlit nights. To pass from one reality to another sometimes requires vast energies, sometimes it does not. Sometimes all you have to do is die. But beware, to step off the road into the Void is to invite disaster. For The Void is a region of nothingness, but it is far from empty. Though it stretches to infinity in all directions and is as hard a vacuum as the deepest space between the galaxies, it is many times larger than any single universe. And in those unending expanses of nothing, realms of forgotten and lost Gods float like inviting jewels hidden in the folds of its black velvet. Creatures of unimaginable power ply the winds that stream between The Beyond and the Spirit Realm. And travelers of arcane races and lost starship captains seek their ways home. Any who travel there intentionally are not to be trifled with, for only the most powerful may go there and hope to come back. Even the Gods shy from The Void, for some have been lost there for eternities unending. Even more disturbing are those entities that embrace The Void and call it their home.

-- Gailen Anders McGillivrey, opening remarks to Planar Cosmology class at the Academy of Mystics in Crystallis, fall semester, 18561.