Scratchpad: The Eternal Wastes

[dɮ the phoneme]

I've had some ideas for a fantasy world floating around in my head for a while. My main conworld (in which all my currently conlangs are set) is aimed at naturalism, and I thought it might be fun to play around with something different for a change. Thus, I've congealed these ideas together into the Eternal Wastes, my attempt at a fantasy conworld. The Eternal Wastes is what I might call a "thematic conworld": it's constructed with exploring a particular set of themes in mind, and it's fairly sparse on details where they aren't directly relevant to those themes. I'm sort of thinking about writing a story set in this world, but I'm not totally sure at present. What I am confident in are the themes the world is built around, and a few of the concrete details. That said, this is still very much a work in progress, so I am happily accepting (read: desperately begging for) any suggestions people have. I'll try to be clear about where details are left out because I haven't found them "relevant", and where they're left out because I just haven't figured anything out yet

Ok, with introductions out of the way: what are Eternal Wastes, anyway?

The Eternal Wastes are a world in a constant and everlasting state of decay. A world held eternally in the shadow of great fallen empires. Arid dunes and vast steppelands stretch out in every direction, interrupted only by rocky valleys and crags, or the occasional oasis. Some say there is a sea, but if there is, it's located far beyond anywhere that will concern us. The atmosphere is thinner than Earth's, refracting much less of the Sun's light, so that even in the daytime the sky doesn't take on much colour (exactly what sort of composition would achieve this effect and still be tolerable to human life I don't know). The stars are at least faintly visible 24 hours a day. This vast and uninterrupted flat land spawns viciously cold winds that blow in from the north, and frequently bring with them duststorms.

The dunes and valleys are pockmarked with relics of civilizations long past. Some, the fairly "recent" ones, may still be in historical memory. We may know their names and be able to read the records they left behind. Others are so distant that all we have are the vaguest traces. The vestiges of these ancient kingdoms seem to stretch back as far as one wishes to dig for them. No "first" can be identified, they only become more and more ancient, more and more alien, and less and less comprehensible the farther down you search. One thousand, ten thousand, or ten million years in the past, you'll find evidence of complex society... though perhaps one very different from your own. Non-human civilizations once flourished, and seem to have flourished many different times in many different ages, but now only humans are left. In the rest of this post, I'll be using the word "person" to refer to any intelligent, society-making beings, but in this world's "present" this does exclusively refer to humans.

The eternal wastes are, in some sense, a deeply chaotic world, but order does exist. In particular, two forms of order dominate the Wastes.

The Two Orders

In this world, "order" exists at two levels or scales.

The first of these is what we will call the low order: this is the order of human (and non-human) societies, and of natural systems which exist on a human scale. It's our roadways and our irrigation canals, our laws and our belief systems and the patches of forest we manage. It's also us: the physical nature of our bodies, as well as of the bodies of every other organism, is an aspect of the low order. The low order is governed by two axioms. These axioms operate in more of a mystical sense than a strict physical one, but they are none the less inescapable. The first is the Axiom of Constant Entropy (ACE): there is a fixed amount of (low) order in the universe, and though it can be moved around, reorganized, and borrowed with relative ease, it cannot be created or destroyed. The universe of the Eternal Wastes is not, as our own world, bound to fall into heat-death. There will alway be order, on a small scale at least, and there will always be exactly the same amount of it. The only thing that can change is its distribution.

This brings us to the second axiom governing the low order: the Axiom of Eternal Replacement (AER). The AER states that order cannot congregate in one area of possibility-space for too long. The details here are yet to be worked out, but in essence, any particular configuration of society or biology or belief or what-have-you is bound to be replaced by another in due time. All civilizations must collapse, all sciences must fall into obscurity, and all species must go extinct. The ACE, however, guarantees that they will each be replaced by another (well, or they could be replaced by something else of similar net entropy). With these two axioms, the "human" world is bound into eternal cycles of collapse and rebirth.

The particular shape which the low order takes at any given moment is largely determine by the personal: by the goals and values of the people and creatures who live there. People make the roads and cities and organize them according to their needs, animals and plants and other organisms shape the environment through an aggregate of individual action. Thus, the low order is imbued with a kind of humanity or personal essence. It makes sense, in the context of the low order, to speak of things as "good" or "bad", "strong" or "weak", "comforting" or "terrifying". As we will see, this contrasts starkly with the other of the two orders, the high order.

The high order might synonymously be called natural law. At this scale, extremely zoomed out, the universe is essentially homogenous with respect to time. From the perspective of the high order, all that was "personal" and individual in the low order is revealed to be mechanical. Every creature is an automaton, guided by timeless and eternal principals of will, over which it has no control. Every creatures strives for survival, every creature fears and every creature hungers for food and thirsts for companionship. The land itself is governed by eternal principals of will: the earth seeks to swallow up, the wind seeks to obliterate, and water seeks to flow. All that is "personal" emerges out of these eternal wills. This doesn't imply, necessarily, a strict determinism. Again, these principals operate mystically, not physically. However, the large-scale behavior of the world is essentially predictable, even though the small scale is chaotic and particular.

The presence of these eternal wills, or natural laws, is the high order. All things in the world are bound to act as they must, and that fact is eternal and unchanging. The high order is invisible to most, though the wisest may see hints of its operation. From the perspective of the high order, it makes no sense to speak of value judgments. Nothing is "good" or "bad", all things are merely the outcome of the wills.

The Two Magics

Just as there are two realms of order, there are two forms of magic in the Eternal Wastes. These two forms are called (for now at least) the Deep Magic and the Esoteric Magic. In a certain sense, each magic corresponds to one of the orders, though there is a bit more complexity to the issue than this. First, we'll start with the deep magic, the "simpler" of the two.

By the high order, all things are bound by an unchanging will, and it follows that the universe itself is bound by a will. This will is the deep magic. The deep magic is not the sort of magic people can harness or control. The deep magic proceeds according to its own, unknowable directive. The deep magic is not conspicuous, at least most of the time. It might be better analogized to "fate" or "God's plan" or just "strange, unexplained occurrences". It is a bit more active than modern Christians typically conceptualize "God's plan", though. The deep magic might extend someone's life well beyond its natural limit, or it might grant someone riches, or it might cause you to wake up in a different era one morning. There are essentially no limits on its capabilities, but its operation is never transparent. It is, by its nature, not a knowable force.

There is an important dualism here, that we'll see inverted in the esoteric magic. The deep magic is ontologically grounded, it is an undeniably real, natural feature of this world. However, it is not epistemically accessible. It cannot be known or understood, even in theory. The deep magic is certainly not indifferent to the human world: as we've seen, it often takes actions that effect that shape of human lives and societies. However, it is neither strictly benevolent nor strictly malicious, and it's exact motives, if such a term is even applicable, are beyond human comprehension.

There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario regarding the deep magic and the high order. Does the high order, and the various wills and axioms it entails, emerge because it is the will of the universe that it be so? Or does the will of the universe itself merely emerge out of the grander law that is the high order? I leave this conundrum as an exercise for the reader.

Next, we have to talk about the esoteric magic. Where the deep magic is unknowable and outside of human control, the esoteric magic is very much within human control. The esoteric magic is, in a word, esoteric: it is wielded through the manipulation of a complex system of arcane symbols and incantations, whose inner-workings are known only to the select few. Those who have mastered the esoteric magic can pull off incredible feats, from healing the sick to conjuring natural phenomena (winds, fires, etc) to reading minds. The esoteric magic, however, is not as powerful as the deep magic. Most prominently, it cannot be used to tell the future, travel through time, or effect fate. Those things are the domain of the deep magic alone.

The esoteric magic occupies much the same role in the societies of the Wastes as science in our world: it is extensively catalogued, studied, and practiced, and is generally used for a wide variety of practical applications. It is highly formalized, in practice resembling (and, as a side note, aesthetically inspired by) abstract mathematics. There are many academies which promise to train students in the way of the esoteric magic, though perhaps "cults" would be a better name for them. They admit few students, and generally demand strict adherence to vows of secrecy about their structure and training methods. We'll come back to these academic later, as they play a key role in the societies of the Wastes.

One question that might be asked is: if the deep magic simply represents the will of the universe, where does the esoteric magic "come from"? Well, the answer is that, in some sense, it can also be said to emerge out of the wills. In particular, sentient beings are bound by a will to make order, and to shape the world consciously to their own ends. This is why civilization will always be remade whenever it falls: because those beings that can make civilization are bound to make civilization. They are bound to shape the world around them into a form which is legible to them. The esoteric magic, then, is a manifestation of the will of the sentient to shape the world. Since humans are the last of the civilizational beings, the esoteric magic of humans is the only esoteric magic present in the world. Other such magics existed in the past, and new ones will exist in the future. These are magics of the low order, and like all things of the low order they are bound to grow and die in cycles.

In a certainly sense, the esoteric magic is pulled out of thin air by those who use it. Its laws are not fixed by the universe, but generated by its users. None the less, the laws of the esoteric magic are still genuinely binding. You can't violate them just by desiring so, they are fixed at least as far as the individual is concerned. The esoteric magic is not, however, a social construct per se. Social constructs like money or language, also elements of human-made order, are useless if you're trapped alone on a desert island (ok, this world has no islands that we know of... but still). The esoteric magic, however, is just as powerful even when you're alone. It can still be used to pull off miraculous feats, even when no when is around to see them.

Unlike the deep magic, the esoteric magic is by its very nature known and understood. It is, as mentioned, dual to the deep magic. Where the deep magic is an inherent feature of nature, but is unknowable to humans, the esoteric magic is a product of humans (and thus extensively known to them), but is in some sense transient and immaterial.

[Ares Land]

Eh, sorry, I completely forgot to comment on this...

I like the idea a lot, and honestly I can't really find a fault with it at this stage, except that of course it needs to be developped further.

Two suggestions, but these are entirely based on my personal tastes, so feel free to disregard them:
- I think the themes could be further reinforced by having that universe subject to 'heat death', except closer to it than we are. I mean that this universe would really be dying. It's a very long process, so they'd still have eons ahead of them, and for shorter time period (anything shorter than a billion year, for instance ) your postulates would still fully apply.
- I'd go for 'shallow magic' and 'deep magic' myself. But again, just personal taste.

[Torco]

I get a strong 'sword and sorcery' vibe. Perhaps it is because its metaphysics is, basically, what the ancient peoples that inspired our mythologies, which in turn inspired Fantasy(tm), seem to have believed. It's strongly reminiscent of how they taught us about the distinction between the modern and premodern mindset at uni, too. The whole post was interesting and enjoyable to read, but if I may offer a bit of a critique, it feels this far... generic, to my taste. like, an answer to the question of "what would have to be true, metaphysically, in order for every RPG trope to make sense". The setting seems tailor-made to have morally unambiguous villains bent on destruction for its own sake, chosen heroes that succeed despite all odds, sorcerers, dungeons, ancient objects of magic, fate, the works.

Of course, as far as I know this might be the point!

[dɮ the phoneme]

So, rereading my post, I realize that I've only covered the metaphysical background issues without getting to the "meat" of this conword, which is the society. The background is necessary, because the social conflicts that exist wouldn't really make sense without it, but there's a lot missing from the picture above. I was planning to post all the important bits the next day, but... instead I procrastinated! Yay! I will (probably) post the rest (kinda) soon! But I can understand how what I've presented so far comes off as generic. The main themes/questions that I'm trying to explore are basically:

1) what is mathematics

2) the sin of pretending to false knowledge

3) the smallness of humanity in the face of deep time, and how we feel about that

Which don't come through especially clearly in what I've written so far, but hopefully with the next post they will.

[Torco]

What is math
baby don't hurt me
don't hurt me
no more