Ordinal Elements
Impossible Light, Absolute Solid, Liquid Starfire, and Anti-Information (see materials). If elements are supposed to be the smallest or most symbolically meaningful units in a world, then one cannot discuss Phantasmos without the Ordinal Elements.
The name is a play on the Cardinal Symbols of Chinese Astrology, mapping to four (or five) mythic beasts, which are themselves mapped to the elements in Chinese mythology. Elements in mythology are generally things which occur in nature but are utilized by man, such as fire, water, air, and earth. The ordinal elements come from another universe, and represent more abstract concepts such as subjective perception, materialism/physicality, change/energy/mania, and a-logic; a fundamentally different set of universal principles; and are likewise mapped to mythic beings.
Elements are also often mapped to colors, usually primary colors derived from Red Green Blue (RGB) light additivity. Instead, I wanted the color theme of the ordinal elements to be the subtractive Cyan Magenta Yellow Key/Black (CMYK) colors. Going back to the Cardinal Symbols comparison, the "center" of the compass is mapped to mainland China and yellow/gold/brown. Instead, the fifth ordinal element is "void", the absence of object or space, and is colored black/purple/vantablack/null.
The Paraverse
I put the ordinal elements first because they are easier to conceptualize, but I consider the paraverse to be the most important concept in Phantasmos. It starts with a myth:
The gods created the paraverse and so exist as paraterrestrial beings, existing outside the paraverse and not constrained by its mechanics. Mortals cannot perceive reality like the gods, but the gods themselves created the paraverse as a model for their own understanding, and so it is that mortals can, through models, begin to understand reality like the gods. One must be wary of this knowledge as it often comes at a cost, even if only the cost of peace of mind, but certainly there must be value in emulating the gods...
We know some number of gods were driven to create the universe as we understand it, towards some end beyond our knowledge. They needed the nature of the universe to be consistent to meet this end, so they first created a deterministic universe. However, a deterministic universe suffers an observer problem- the gods, as paraversal beings, could not observe the system without altering it. The gods needed to be able to observe the universe, and also needed it to be robust to manipulation from other gods or mythic beings who did not share their intentions, so this would not do.
The next universe was still deterministic, but rather than causality being the linear product of space and time as mortals still perceive it, this causality was an encryption algorithm. The encryption protected it from outside interference, and several toy model universes were created, from which model estimates of the true universe could be derived. In this universe, every bit of information served as its own symbol, with its own inherent value.
The symbolic and deterministic universe would inevitably be compromised, and in any case, compared to the models, it was highly inefficient. Why give every bit of information meaning, when one can derive polynomially more states through conjunctions of bits, as was the case with the models. So, the gods created one more universe, which became the paraverse as we know it. The paraverse is a multi-dimensional space with at least three dimensions of space, at least two dimensions of time, and countless other dimensions which do not map natively to mortal perception and cognition. The paraverse is asymbolic, algorithmic, and probabilistic. To a paraversal being, the state of the paraverse can be inferred from a model of it. The models contain some number of dimensions like a multi-dimensional array, and the distributed weight and activation across the array can be used to infer from the true paraverse. The precision and simplicity of a symbolic, deterministic universe was traded for the flexibility of an asymbolic, probabilistic paraverse.
In this way, rather than causality being the linear product of space and time, it can be more appropriately thought of as like a distributed representation in a connectionist neural network. Changes in activity at nodes "forward" in time(s), "adjacent" in time(s), or along separate dimensions entirely, can lead to updates throughout the whole network, towards the maintenance of some relative homeostasis.
While mortals are not consciously aware of this, and still perceive time and space linearly, in fact a paraversal moment can include activity in the paraverse not within the conscious perception of mortals that meaningfully affects the mortal's conscious perception nonetheless. In other words, the paraverse is not just a set of separate and linear planes like a multiverse, but an entire predictable (but not causal), flexible system. While incursions of paraversal beings or mortals being pulled (or removing themselves) from the paraverse have altered it, thus far it has remained robust to destabilization, given the ends for which the gods desire.
So I realize that "brief" entry has a lot going on, and I'm probably going to keep working on it (at the very least, I'd like to make the writing more flavorful), for now I think that is a decent introduction to the paraverse.
Finally, I will talk about the Astral Plane and the notion of Object-as-Space and Space-as-Object.
The Astral Plane
Not a plane per se, but any hierarchical relationship between dimensions, relative to an object and a space. It is an inherently metaphysical concept- objects and spaces are arbitrary terms, and the mind and body of a sapient agent is even more so subjective and arbitrary. It exists solely through force of will- not just in sapient agents, but in any "thing" which affects other "things". A flow of water over a rock surface to form a river of millions of years has, in this sense, a will, and what is an object (the body of water, the rock surface) and what is a space (the river as a place), is relative to the other objects, agents, or spaces which could be operationalized. It is "psychic" in the truest sense, a "plane" rooted in the metaphysical concept of the psyche and of will, or perhaps the soul. It is a surreal "plane", a subjective gestalt. It is mind and matter and math.
Consider spatial dimensions: the vertices of a simple shape in a lower dimension are the edges of a comparable shape in a higher dimension. If one were to place vectors on the third dimension at the corners of a square, the two-dimensional square would become a three-dimensional cube. To go from three- to four-dimensional space, one could draw vectors along the vertices of the cube, creating a three-dimensional model of a tesseract/hypercube, like a cube within a cube. By "pulling" on the cube within the hypercube, the edges would stretch and change the angles of the tesseract. The metaphysical concepts of objects and spaces can be manipulated in a similar sense.
Objects are defined by what they are not. The distance or orientation between two objects, the continuity or barriers between them, define them. In other words, objects are defined by what they are not, and by their spatial relation to other objects. Further, this suggests an inverse relationship between the freedom of an object, and the parameters of the space. An object in a null-space is completely free, but lacks any context to differentiate that object from the space it inhabits or other objects, like dissociating blood cells in the body or molecules in pudding. By parameterizing the space, such as a single vector "floor", one creates a frame of reference to dissociate the object from the space, so that the object may act as an agent within that space, but the object is now defined by the space that it is not- its platonic form limits it.
The parameters of that space also affect the ability of sapient agents to interact with others, like a literal barrier of land or sea or air, or like skin or emotions. By extending one's consciousness to some higher dimension, one could manipulate their space from the outside, as if the space were an object and the object-agent were the space. It's a physical metaphor for a metaphysical concept. Within this plane, sapient beings are not separated as objects within a space. However, they can affect the spaces themselves, as objects, like interior decorating, to distinguish one agent from another.
That's all for now
So anyway, please let me know if this makes no sense at all, or whether it makes sense or not, if you came out of this feeling like you better understand Phantasmos and what makes it unique. I've been trying to figure out how to relate what makes Phantasmos greater than the sum of its parts, and I'm hoping a bit closer to that now.
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