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Old 02-07-2013, 03:30 AM   #1
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Infinite Worlds, Cabal Cosmology, and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

I've been tossing around ideas for an Infinite Worlds campaign where, it seems likely the Cabal will play a significant role. But on reflection, I'm not sure I like what appears to be the "standard" way of mixing the Cabal and Infinite Worlds. It's suggested that the multiverse of Infinite Worlds is just one small part of the broader Cabal cosmology... which seems to clash with the general philosophy of Infinite Worlds.

The Infinite Worlds philosophy I'm referring to is the idea that on wordlines with mythic elements, each worldine has its own version of the mythic elements and none is "truer" than any other. Orichalcum and Leviathan have their own versions of Atlantis, and neither has a better claim to being the "true" Atlantis. Orichalcum and Madland both have their own versions of gods, but neither's gods are any truer than the other's gods. The Cabal cosmology seems to mess with this, for example, by elevating the archangels in the Iconic Realm to greater importance than any archangels that might exist on any particular worldline.

I'm thinking of deciding for myself that the Cabalists are deluded, and the Astral Plane and Iconic Realm are just particularly weird corners of the multiverse that Cabalists happen to understand relatively well, and a desire to believe they've got the true secrets of the universe worked out has led them to inflate the importance of these weird little places. Thoughts on doing that?

OTOH, part of me wants to break with the Infinite Worlds philosophy by making all TMWNMTK on all worldlines somehow connected. Would set up a nice big "main threat" for a campaign that eventually ends up with an epic scope.

Your thoughts?
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Old 02-07-2013, 08:18 AM   #2
William
 
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Default Re: Infinite Worlds, Cabal Cosmology, and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

IW mentions that Homeline officers have been to (what appeared to be) Briah, and it seemed like just another world to them, if extremely weird. So that's possibly a point in support of your proposal. However, those reports seem to be quite limited, and that could simply have been an issue of limited perception on the materialist I-Cops' part. Personally, I figure an infinite Briah will have regions corresponding relatively well to regions of the worlds, so a near-Homeline Briah would be a relatively straightforward Iconic Realm with much less of interest in plain view than those near Cabal areas.

If I understand the philosophy behind your question here, you're wondering about how to set up a cross-planar threat in a multi-world cosmology. Much like the concept of anchor timelines, this is doable (IMO) by having unique threats inhabit or be connected to worlds with some unique features. In a magical game, this is easier, since any world with access to the Plane Shift spell is not limited by quantum, and all such worlds can have access to and from a specific world; likewise, parachronozoids will be reasonably able to access it, including parachronozoid threats.

For instance, suppose Cabal decanic theory to be reasonably accurate magical "physics." Then a large cross-worldline threat could indeed originate from a plane of Briah, or from the Abyss, or from the sphere of Mars within Geburah. When I wrote up my Divided Land setting for Pyramid, I proposed that an elemental plane of Earth has reasonably strongly unique magical features that would make it a natural meeting point for planehopping adventurers from numerous magical worlds. TMWNMTK could be qlippoth, esentially making both the Cabal and Infinity wrong about at least some aspects of reality.

Finally in this vein, perhaps Infinity is perfectly correct about worldline physics, but it just so happens that Quantum Zero contains only a single world, and that one is of some root importance compared to the others -- furthermore, your TMWNMTK are fully aware of the concept of anchor timelines, and there aren't terribly many of them. Perhaps there's some way to affect all anchor timelines at once by working on some common feature they have that radiates throughout the lattice of worldlines. That's enough to affect almost all of an IW setting.

One last idea: perhaps the TMWNMTK has doubles like any other entity, but all of its doubles are aware of and linked to the others. Then for all practical purposes it's a single entity existing cross-timeline, and its threat potential could be indefinitely great.
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Old 02-07-2013, 10:05 AM   #3
martinl
 
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Default Re: Infinite Worlds, Cabal Cosmology, and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
OTOH, part of me wants to break with the Infinite Worlds philosophy by making all TMWNMTK on all worldlines somehow connected. Would set up a nice big "main threat" for a campaign that eventually ends up with an epic scope.

Your thoughts?
I think it's deliberately ambiguous so that GMs can do what they want. Go nuts.
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