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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GlyphicEngineer" data-source="post: 9833987" data-attributes="member: 7042623">Over the course of my most recent reread, I've gradually been putting a theory together to address a small portion of the mysteries presented by the story hour thus far, as well as some unanswered questions from Planescape canon. Among these mysteries and questions are the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-56#post-1975536" target="_blank">What happens to those who go over the edge of Sigil?</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-88#post-2299671" target="_blank">Why was there an obelisk in the Lady's Vaults depicting the Spire without Sigil? Furthermore, why was there an exit to those vaults into a courtyard with an open and empty, sky, once again with Sigil absent?</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/post-3441700" target="_blank">What's the deal with the Vale of Frozen Ashes?</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What's the commonality between the uninterpretable text seen on the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-13#post-1588741" target="_blank">Lady's Maze Markers</a> and <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-168#post-4267739" target="_blank">Leobtav's prayers to Vor'Nel'Thraanix</a>? For that matter, <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/#post-6293375" target="_blank">why is the name "Vor'Nel'Thraanix" itself seemingly immune to translation</a>?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-3#post-6308126" target="_blank">What happened to the souls of Leobtav's victims?</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-31#post-7590389" target="_blank">What is the purpose of the Oblivion Compass?</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-41#post-8130289" target="_blank">What lies beyond the Clockwork Gap?</a></li> </ul>To avoid filling the whole page with my post I've put the meat of the theory behind a spoiler.[SPOILER="Degenerate Theorycrafting"]There are numerous hints throughout the narrative that the current iteration of the multiverse is not the first or original such iteration. Most of these are musings from the perspective of the various Baernoloths. However, two hints are of particular note. The first can be found in the story of Cilret Leobtav's first contact with the Ashsinger. As with previous Vale snippets, the events of the Vale are described as occuring in both the past and the future simultaniously. However, This snippet describes the Vale as having "precipitated out of nothing mere moments after the third furnace had solidified."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-151#post-3441700" target="_blank">1</a>] This is interesting because it implies that there is a distinct physical beginning point for the Vale, at least as it exists in this version of reality.The other hint of note comes from Leobav in direct communication with his god, when he says, "Everything that you told me in Gehenna will come to pass as it did once before. But this time perfect. This time as it should be. This time without their interference."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/#post-6275864" target="_blank">2</a>] To examine the significance of this quote, I'm going to turn to (bear with me) TMH's theory of a finite reality, which can be found <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/truths-and-principles-towards-a-united-metaphysics-of-magic.699685/#post-9121226" target="_blank">here</a>, under the "corrolary theories" spoiler. To greatly simplify, TMH theorizes that the laws of magic indicate that the multiverse is essentially finite, and that every permutation of matter and energy within the multiverse can be expressed in terms of a mathematical function, which I'll refer to hereafter as the "Universal Function" because it sounds suitably portentious. The Universal Function describes all potential paths of development, via cause & effect, the Multiverse could take- all possible timelines. However, TMH further theorizes that it is possible to "derive the mean of the slope of that function, revealing a set of configurations to which reality will inevitably revert."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/truths-and-principles-towards-a-united-metaphysics-of-magic.699685/#post-9121226" target="_blank">3</a>]So we have a model we can use to examine this idea of multiple universal iterations. Like successive Big Bangs, the Multiverse is created time and time again, and in successive Big Crunches, it is reverted to its base conditions (represented by the mean of the slope of the Universal Function). Now, I'm not suggesting that Shemeska was using precisely this same model when writing his lore; that would be absurd. However, it's a convenient lens by which to examine the apparent eternal recurrence present within his version of Plansecape. Through this lens, it becomes clear that this iteration of the Multiverse is somehow different than the ones that came before. The reason for this difference comes back, ultimately, to Vor'Nel'Thraanix, the Bearnoloths, and the conflict between them.Evil, it seems, was once unified and indivisible. As the Architect's story claims, "The Architect was the first child of the unformed substance of Evil, the singular godhead of malevolence before it fractured, split, and grew to a myriad of other names and identities."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-baernaloth-cycle-lazarius-ibn-shartalan-the-architect-1st-of-the-demented.483594/#post-6875350" target="_blank">4</a>] Granted, this is framed as a potential lie, but I believe that it's merely the Architect's claim to primacy that is the lie, and not the idea that Evil used to be a singular thing. In the event of a Big Crunch, it makes intuitive sense that all moral substance would re-unify according to the most primordial, driving intents of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos, just as the real-life Big Bang split up a unified singularity into the endless permutations of matter and energy we have now.If such a unified Evil were to exist, we would expect it to be related in some way to the Grey Waste. After all, the Baern are said to have emerged from the Waste itself. However, the Waste still exists, and though an awful place, it's still just that- a place, not an entity. However, that the Waste is unconscious- or perhaps just sleeping- now doesn't preclude the possiblity that it might have possessed consciousness at some point. It could be this very consciousness that fragmented to produces the many discrete personalities of the Clan of Baern, who formed individual bodies for themselves out of the Waste's substance.Why such speculation on the waste and on unified Evil? Because of this single, forgettable boast by Leobtav towards the Rilmani: "I feel His touch carried on the wind. I see Him in every drop of blood I spill. I hear Him in every scream for mercy, and echoing in every death rattle when I give no quarter. The Waste itself spoke to me and I opened my soul to it. Now He whispers, I listen, and I obey."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/#post-6264694" target="_blank">5</a>] Usually, Leobtav refers to his patron as an active agent with he/him pronouns. However, midway through this boast, he switches to it/it's pronouns, and in the process directly identifies his god with the Waste itself. However, at all other times, it is made clear that Vor'Nel'Thraanix is something outside reality. For example, when Alex unwisely interacts with one of the dead of the Vale of Frozen ashes, the narrative states, "His eyes met not the solar’s damned and frozen orbs, but the thing staring through them from somewhere unimaginably remote, infinite, blasphemous. Less able to find purchase in this reality than even his familiar and the intelligences of the Far Realms that he served..."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-15#post-6753875" target="_blank">6</a>] So what's going on here?I posit that Vor'Nel'Thraanix is, in fact, no more or less than the consciousness of the Waste, and thus of Evil itself. At the start of time, that consciousness fractured and produced the Clan of Baern and the myriad varieties of Evil. And at the end of time, reality will revert to the mean of the slope of the Universal Function, and the Baernoloths and all other types of manifest Evil will be reabsorbed into the Waste as the consciousness of Vor'Nel'Thraanix reemerges. But what if the Baernoloths found out about this fate? Would they go gentle into the annihilation of their individual existences? Some of them, maybe; Evil is Evil, after all, and committed as they are to Evil as a goal, many Baern may well willingly sacrifice their individuality to create a purer form of Evil. But I believe some Baernoloths resisted the inevitibility of the Ashsinger's return- at least 13 of them.Let's set the stage. It's the end of time and the Multiverse is resetting to default. The forces of Good and the forces of Evil are all geared up to go at it in one apocalyptic final battle. In the midst of all this, the original consciousness of the Waste is reborn at the site of the conflict, asserting its malign vision over local reality, Yugoloth and Celestial alike. And then, like Leobtav said, the Baernoloths interfered. Somehow, they removed both themselves and Vor'Nel'Thraanix from the Universal Function, leaving reality to reset and a new iteration of the Multiverse to re-emerge without affecting them. When the new iteration of the Multiverse emerged, the Baern placed themselves back into it, reintegrating with the Universal Function- but Vor'Nel'Thraanix, the consciousness of the Waste, they left behind, leaving him to languish outside of reality.Nor do I believe the Baern were the only individuals to accomplish this. In fact, I think the Lady of Pain did something similar, and brought her city with her. It is hinted in the early entries of the Story Hour that Sigil is not fully present within this iteration of reality. Note what the party found, so deep under Sigil: "Above them there was no ceiling of rock or stone, but only an empty, open sky that stretched out into a featureless blue-green nothingness. Underground, four miles below the streets of Sigil, they looked up and saw the sky above them reaching out over the walls of a room that was otherwise like the other two, save what was there that should not have been. They all walked into a courtyard in the depths of Sigil open to a sky that should not have existed."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-88#post-2299671" target="_blank">7</a>] I think that in this scene, the party sees the sky of the Outlands as it ought to have been- with the interloper Sigil not present. This explains why anything that goes over the edge of Sigil is seemingly annihilated; it is essentially attempting to enter a reality that no longer exists, severing it from the Universal Function.This also explains the commonality between the Lady's script and that of Vor'Nel'Thraanix, with each set of characters (along with the Ashsinger's very name) being uninterpretable and untranslatable even by magic. Divination magic works via the idea that reality consists of interpretable information states, but the Lady and the Ashsinger are both uncaused causes external to the ordinary tapestry of cause and effect. Their scripts cannot be intepreted because they cannot be said to truly exist. Similarly, the area where Vor'Nel'Thraanix's servant Leobtav was most active on Pandemonium became imperceptible to divination magic; as Doran said, "the whole area is just as useful as a dead magic zone as far as that entire school of magic is concerned."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-29-jan-2014.77613/page-165#post-4089447" target="_blank">8</a>] Divination can't function where the causes for effects originate outside of the Universal Function. (Once again, I should emphasize that the idea of a Universal Function is just a model to make it easier to understand Shemmy's cosmology, not a term which is canon to that cosmology. However, I think it's a good model, given Leobtav's former association with the Mathemeticians subsect and Lariset's study into a hidden Universal Axiom that may well have been Vor'Nel'Thraanix itself.[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-29#post-7478089" target="_blank">9</a>])Finally, this explains the curious state of the souls of Leobtav's victims. To quote Doran again: "You can determine if a soul is held captive elsewhere, merged with a plane or deity, and you can also determine if a soul has been consumed by a fiend or otherwise destroyed. None of those applied in this instance... The souls just weren't extant. Not there, not bottled in a gemstone, not destroyed. They were gone as if they'd never existed in the first place."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-3#post-6308126" target="_blank">10</a>] Leobtav sacrificed the souls of his victims to Vor'Nel'Thraanix, but VNT is held entirely external to the standard Multiversal reality, as defined by the Universal Function. The souls that were sent to him were sent essentially outside of time. As such, any attempt to determine the soul's provenance would report that it never existed in the first place. (In fact, if this theory is correct, an attempt to resurrect someone who leapt over the side of Suicide Alley would produce the exact same sort of "404 soul not found" error. If this is the case- and such resurrections have undoubtedly been attempted in-universe, and their results may have been recorded- it would be strong evidence in favor of this theory. Care to weigh in, Shemmy?)So, what now? Well, it seems like whatever the Baernoloths are planning, it still involves the Ashsinger in some capacity. The Clockwork Gap appears to be a means by which they can monitor him and remain in some level of communication with him despite him existing outside of time. Additionally, the Vale of Frozen Ashes appears to have been something the Baern deliberately brought with them into this reality; at the very least, they don't express dismay at its manifestation, and the eventual reemergence of the Ashsinger that it promises. Whatever the Baern are up to, they have a massive prophetic advantage, having essentially lived through all of these events before- this may explain why the forces of Good seem perpetually on the back foot, as it's unclear if any Good paragons made the transition from the prior reality the way the Baern and the Lady did. Despite this, they felt the need to construct the Oblivion Compass, which (in the words of Laughing Jane "Winnow away the potentials and possibilities, dragging reality down to the foreseen and rendered, engineered conclusion of The Thirteen."[<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/shemeskas-planescape-storyhour-updated-27july2025.352957/page-31#post-7590389" target="_blank">11</a>] I interpret this to mean that the Compass acts to somehow alter the Universal Function, preventing the realization of potential outcomes that would prevent the Demented's plan from coming to pass. However, I can only guess at what that plan might be.[/SPOILER]Thoughts, counterarguments, and additional evidence for or against are all welcome!</blockquote>

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