The old school of thought tells us of a place within
ourselves. A special place that does not touch, and will not be touched. It
goes by many names and many terms. The most common is Astral, but also the
Silver, or the Void Within is used with frequency within many other cultures.
It is not matter, but has many doors that many use
nonetheless. It’s the place between all other things. The impossibility that
holds together the possible.
It’s the line that divides, but also the line that
binds.
It’s a place of dead gods, dead thoughts and dead
desire. I choose to call it the Binding Force.
See the many fabrics of reality that we know. See the
thing that lies in-between them all. See; and between all of them it is. It
binds minds, it binds matter. It binds thoughts and reality. It is the sea all
things swim in. A force used by many and abused by so many more.
What does this mean? And why should anyone care what
this place is, since it equally claims to be nothing?
Let us surmise what we know:
The astral is everywhere, since we do not know
anywhere that’s cut out from it (excepting the Shadowlie, which
doesn’t exist). This should be our axiom.
I would assume that since this plane has no other
function, it has to be the universal glue that holds everything the senses
tells us to hold true. And here we come to an unanswered fact about this planes
theorems. What about the things the senses do not tell us of? What can possibly
lie beyond the Astral?
What glues the glue, so to speak?
Here comes something interesting: Can it possibly glue
itself? How can anything be the basis for itself? Is this the primal matter; an
endless expanse of silver, holding little, or no energies except that of
binding?
This question remains unanswered as of yet, but I ask
your patience, as conclusions will follow after more evidence have been
established.
The astral does not allow for any sort of divination
except the seemingly random color pools that sometimes appear as a hidden oasis
for many travelers. One can concentrate into these pools and see a specific
location the astral allows a traveler to use as a portal. This is common
planewalker lore. It seems that these colors are tied up to the different
realities that exist. I have failed to understand the exact nature of these
pools, but give me the chance to speculate:
They are the wounds of the astral. They are the holes
in a grand body, which are coagulating with contact with the outside reality.
The different colors represent the different ways of which anti-toxins it uses
to prevent leakage.
A group of magicians that calls themselves
mind-knights, or psionicists, claims the power of individuality over that of
magic. They claim to draw their power from within themselves, from their own
individuality.
I have seen strange manifestations from these students
of the mind, and found one particular ability more interesting than not.
While some mages summon other-planar monsters and
binds them to their will, and the divine agents calls for their god’s servants,
these psionicists summons a monster from the essence of the Astral, or more
likely; binds matter with astral glue.
The psionicist can form these creatures with an
anatomy they choose, but must for some reason give them a shape that resembles
that of creatures the psionicist have encountered previously.
Does this imply that the manifestor cannot change a
universal common order of things, or does it imply that she lacks the
imagination to form bizarre anatomies? I, and I am sure many others in this
room also can, attest to the latter fact as plain wrong. A mind-knight is a
creature that toys with imagination as a tool.
I would on, this flimsy evidence, hesitate to draw a
definite conclusion, but too see it as a hint toward a more interesting notion
is inevitable.
If we draw conclusions based from the knowledge
provided by the psionicists, or rather; the meta-creators, there exists a
thought-pattern to the astral, which forces them to choose what they are
allowed to create.
The color pools are rends in the fabric of the planes,
and if they are in the process of being “healed” this could happen over such
amount of time that it defies our observatory power.
And as is the nature of wounds on a living body: When
something passes through a healing wound it damages the tissue again, making it
more difficult to patch itself up.
But this forces another question of some interest:
What is the blood of the astral? What is the thing that pumps through the
opened color pools into the different planes?
The first thing that comes to mind is off course the
silvery expanse that makes up the scenery on the astral. This silvery
atmosphere is strange. Traveling through it doesn’t require biological
functions. It requires mental focus. One travels through the astral using the
mind. This is a fact that should not be overlooked as to the nature of the silver.
If you draw this fact closer to my theory the silver
is a thing closely related to the mind, or more specifically; to thoughts. What
then happens when this silver leaks through the astral and into other planes?
The obvious answer presents itself: It sparks
intelligent thought.
If this answer is correct, then the astral is the
mother of our brains. It is the father of all thinking, and the urge to
understand things that is not evident.
Before the worlds had creatures, when plants and
simple beasts roamed endless plains in the drive to survive, something happened
on the astral.
Maybe a great battle or a freak occurrence on the
astral caused the first wound to open. When this happened the silver leaked
onto the plains of the simple beasts and infected their minds with it’s simple
function: The function of thinking.
These beasts then evolved and used their newfound gift
to surpass their brethren and accumulated knowledge of their surroundings to
such an extent that they discovered the power to use the wound to travel into
the astral.
Here they found the nothingness that sparked their
thoughts, and seeing that it was nothing more then pure silver what happened
then?
Did they retreat back into their world? Did they
inhabit the astral as the first settlers, or did they simply go mad with the
realization and focused all their newfound power to destroy and wound their
thought-giver as much as possible?
I see the two latter examples as the most probable.
The first one could have happened, but then there
would be only the one color pool and thoughts wouldn’t spread to other parts of
the multiverse.
It is more likely that they either settled it or went
mad inside it.
If they settled in the astral, they could have seen
the need for more people to help them quest for more knowledge and thought.
They could then open more wounds in the astral and spark other races with
intelligence, sharing their gift throughout the many worlds.
If they went mad and caused havoc the result ends much
the same. They could have wounded the silver as much as possible, causing it to
open more pools and spreading thoughts throughout the worlds, the result ending
up as it has today.
Maybe the crazed Astral Dreadnaught is a distant
cousin to these creatures, seeing their beastly shape, and their desire to feed
on the astral traveler.
The astral is then the driving force behind the
workings of the mind. It is not a collection of knowledge, but it is the spark
behind our thoughts, the force that enable us to think. It is present within us
all, and gives us the power to understand.
This power have built empires, and caused others to
wither and fall. They have inspired artists and doomsayers on equal terms. It
has not given us ideas, but it gave us the spark that got the ideas started.
To learn more
about a city that lives in an astral wound check out Golgith, The
Silvery City.