Right? You can generally tell when a dumb person tries to write a smart person because the dialogue disappears up its own butt in the first three sentences. Like someone watched Rick and Morty and was completely mystified by it, then had a window open to a youtube clip of the Architect monologuing from the Matrix and there you go.
That said, this method of showing how different peoples observe the cosmos is far better than an entire expansion where we literally go there. Have a little bit of mystery, a bit of unknown.
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i guess i prefer magical textbooks written by mortals as compared to chronicles or the grimoire of the shadowlands, thatās true. iām just thinking itāll be really funny reading that book as a mage, lock, or priest, and having your immersion actually ruined because it turns out your wizard is just too dumb to interface with the material meaningfully
Just looked at the link again and it says there is 6 Vertices in the 20 Planes of Existence.
Shadowlands, Gardens of Life, Twisting Nether, Realm of Order, the Light and the Voidā¦
Or is that wrong?..
We think we know what the Vertices because the Titans assume they know what it isā¦
Azeroth means A-Zereth I have no doubt considering the Aspects says her Power is not Titan. The 20 Planes wants a Zereth adding a 7th to the set. Zovaal wanted to destroy the Zereth while also wiping out the Cosmos and Dominating it.
Of course Locus Walker mentions that Azerothās Song is similar to something on Kāareshā¦
The Void isnāt one of the 6 Vertices like the Titans and Shadowlands assumeā¦ Itās the 7thā¦ The solution awaiting itās opportunity. Kāaresh is the Zereth that the Void corrupted and if Kāaresh is slain(likely in the Final Patch of War Within) it will be drawn into the Void and become Zereth Inanis(Cornerstone Void) bringing the Vertices in the 20 Planes to 7.
The Void dreams of Infinite Truths and wants to make them a reality and fears Shadow so much that Ra-Den states āCome. I will reveal the masterās glory and liberate you from darkness!ā
The Nathrezim and Denathrius serve the Shadow(centered upon Zereth Umbrae) despite the First Ones shoving Denathrius into Zereth Mortisās tech so that he may serve Death in an Automa body.
Maybe they are moving towards a wheel cosmology chart like Forgotten Realms 5e has.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Wheel_cosmology
6 + 6 + 6 = 18 which means 6 of the 18 Planes created Vertices centered around Zereth Mortis(Death/Light/???), Zereth Umbrae(Shadow/Darkness/???), Zereth Ordus, Zereth Vitae, Zereth Lumen and Zereth Tumultus.
We saw what the Realms of Death look like.
Imagine what the Realms of Void will look like once Zereth Inanis is in the Void creating those Realms! The Void was once singular in form but once Zereth Inanis is there the Void will gain Infinite variations!
A new addition to the Pattern. The Pattern gets ugly until something decides to balance it out. Cue the Titans heading to Azeroth to make it a Zereth to the balancing counterpart of the Void whatever it may be and thus enforce the One True Path.
Once the Titans lose in The Last Titan the Zereth known as Azeroth will become Zereth Chronos(Cornerstone Time) spawning Infinite Stable Universes.
Void with itās Infinite Truths and Time with itās Infinite Truthsā¦
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Shadowlands still to this day didnāt make any sense. Atleast with Diablo and Warhammer from both Sci Fi and Fantasy made sense with Heaven and Hell or pieces of chaos that kinda looks like Hell from 4 forms of the Chaos Gods.
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It seems like the Arathi view on magic could fix one of Wowās biggest inconsistencies. As much as I liked Chroniclesā codification, I thought the cosmic chart was one of its weakest points. Wow magic domains appear to overlap way more than Chronicles would suggest.
- Necromancers create undead via Fel or Shadow.
- Titans and Titan constructs call upon Light, the Elements, and Life.
- Mages manipulate the elements even if it is in a mechanical sense.
- Eluneās blessings manifest as Light, Shadow, Arcane, and nature.
- Paladins and Mages can both counter Fel magic.
- The Shadopan appear to wield the Light to purify the negative emotions of the Sha.
*The Venthyr also manifest and harvest negative emotions.
- Monks cultivate their inner spirit, while Shamans commune with outer spirits.
- Arakkoa and Tauren blend Nature/Elemental magic with the Light.
- The First Oneās aesthetic is a cross between Titan and Naaru motifs.
While not exactly blending magic, the Scarlet Crusade tends to be susceptible to Fel or Void because of their zealotry. Zeal and pride are Sha and negative emotions tend to be coupled with the Void. So I am also counting this as a kind of interaction.
Warhammerās Chaos Gods feed on their concepts from all sources including Necrons who according to the Lore donāt generate Warp Energies which means that the means one uses to scry into Reality through the Warp is also a means for Daemons and Chaos Gods to feed.
As for DnD Cosmology:
There are 17 Outer Planes(each with multiple Layers each Infinitely Vast) in the Great Wheel Cosmology, 26 Outer Planes in the World Tree Cosmology and 18 known chunks of Planes floating in the Astral Sea of the World Axis Cosmology.
The 17 Outer Planes of the Great Wheel Cosmology each land on a spot on the Moral Alignment Chart:
1.Nirvana = Lawful Neutral
2. Arcadia = Lawful Neutral/Good
3. Mount Celestia = Lawful Good
4. Bytopia = Lawful/Neutral Good
5. Elysium = Neutral Good
6. Beastlands = Neutral/Chaotic Good
7. Arborea = Chaotic Good
8. Ysgard = Chaotic Good/Neutral
9. Limbo = Chaotic Neutral
10. Pandemonium = Chaotic Neutral/Evil
11. Abyss = Chaotic Evil
12. Tartarus = Chaotic/Neutral Evil
13. Hades = Neutral Evil
14. Gehenna = Neutral/Lawful Evil
15. The 9 Hells = Lawful Evil
16. Acheron = Lawful Evil/Neutral
17. Outlands = True Neutral
The Layers of each Plane each seems to have a grand theme:
Of Mount Celestia for instance:
- Lunia is Infinite Starlit Moonlit White Desert Island surrounded by an Infinite Starlit Moonlit Sea of Holy Water
- Mercuria is an Infinite Indian and Japanese Jungle eternally lit by Sunset
- Venya is an Infinite version of the Shire
- Solania is Infinitely sprawling Chinese and Dwarven Mountains
- Mertion is Infinitely Vast European Kingdoms with European Castles
- Jovar is an Infinitely Vast Underground Vault with Jeweled Trees and Cities
Of course most Planesā Layers arenāt so specificā¦
Thank God.
Honestly ā because the afterlife being created by a 3D printing machine by some wannabe boogaloo rip-off titans āThE fiRst oNeSā where theyāre ran by robots ā Sort of feels insulting to the whole āafterlifeā theme and had retconned MASSIVE amounts of lore referenced towards the realms of death in the first place.
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From what I can gather the fact that Zereth Mortis used to be a desert before the First Ones added plants to the place indicates that the First Ones first managed to bring the Zereth to the Infinite Desert of the Shadowlands then added Plants so that the Zereth can be exposed to Death and thus better embody Death by creating Realms of Death.
The Zereths are Planes of Existence that the Pattern was born from. The Zereths create Planes that embody the aspects of the Plane the Zereth was in at the time.
20 Planes of Existence at the start and 6 Zereth-Planes among them creating new Planes of Existence. That is my theory.
There has never been any confirmation of any such thing. This is yet another unreliable narrator claim written down and discovered by us. Just because we find a letter written by a sunday morning televangelist saying that if you pay for his limousine youāll get three extra days in the great cotton candy room in the skyā¦ that doesnāt confirm any existence of the cotton candy room. It just means there is another claim possibly believed by a televangelist guy.
In terms of a real life writer living in California putting this into the gameā¦I donāt think it is serious lore at all. I think it is them making a joke as an analogy to how silly we view the astronomers of classical greece who couldnāt explain why it seemed like some planets occasionally moved backward in their orbits and then went forward againā¦so they theorized various glass spheres and convoluted magical corrections going onā¦ when in reality all those problems disappeared when future astronomers started over with the premise that Earth is a planet going around the same sun that those other planets areā¦and so the moving backwards thing is only an illusion because the Earth moved in between all those observations too.
tell me you havenāt read the almagest without telling me you havenāt read the almagest lmfao
Something tells me the 7th force is going to be āmortalsā as the surprise tweeeeest
All the cosmic forces are angling after the world soul because they donāt want mortals somehow corrupting it to be the champion of mortals in the universe
Yes, this is exactly right. I think the 8th force trapped the 7th in the material plane. The 7th force is the syzygy of all the other forces in a state of dualisric harmony.
āThe First Ones had parceled out their gifts, but gave no child all of them. No wonder these offspring bickered with such incessant jealousy. Their very nature was one of denial.ā This invokes the myth of Prometheus, there are variations but the Orphic variation is the following. God lacking forethought gave all the gifts of the Gods to animals, and when they came to humans there were no more gifts left to give, so Prometheus gave humanity wisdom instead. Itās reductive to think of all the Cosmic forces as individual factions warring for supremacy but instead see them as parts or fractals of the same source.
āSix forces pointed towards the seventh, and yet denied it.ā I think this is referring to the cosmic chart as being a Metatronās cube.
The 7th is the Great Cycle, āthe geometry took shape in my mind. It was both Six AND seven. The six were one, and the seventh the other.ā I think what Firim is trying to explain here is that are two beings, one an amalgamation of the six cosmic forces, and a seventh which was separate. āDid they desire a union?ā divine dualism.
āThe song seemed to say otherwise.ā This is where Firim left it up to mystery. I think itās because it still hasnāt been revealed the last part of the knowledge to solve āthe Song.ā
āThe song must not be allowed to end. Do the First Ones still sing it? If they do not who will?ā
I wrote a whole breakdown of Firimās notes and what they mean.
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I mean, that makes sense. We have a good amount of evidence that the Shadowlands themselves existed some time prior to being established as āThe Shadowlandsā by the First Ones.
That said, this was some of the deeper lore of Shadowlands that most probably donāt know.