Udlmaster
They/Them- 6,906
- 2,108
So, a few weeks ago, I was tasked with creating a respect thread for World of Darkness, I've done my research, I've checked it twice, and now I'M DONE BEING NICE!
MAUAHAHAHAHA!
All jokes aside, this has been rather fun, but I've had to cut it short. And I'll explain before the End of this post:
The Introduction:
So, this has been a fairly long time coming, and finally it's here to state you of all your desires for want for World of Darkness, and I hope I can provide.
But before I begin, I will note that World of Darkness is an insanely large franchise, and I plan to cover it all in due time, but I do need to get the basis out there first, so we can at least get an understanding of the verse.
Additionally, I'd like to give a big thanks to these guys for helping me with the scaling and being super patient with me:
I understand, it's unrealistic that everyone is going to sit a read through the entire blog so I'll give you a TL;DR.
With all that said, let's get into the revisions proper.
The Revisions:
Given the extensive nature of these revisions, I am dividing them into two parts: A brief explanation of the Cosmology of the series, and an explanation of where this leaves the character's tiers. This will be much easier for me to Manage that way:
The Cosmic Cosmology of World of Darkness:
World of Darkness is in short, a massive headache waiting to happen, with there being layers upon layers of realms that both overlap each other, to even visualize them, it would look like a Non-Euclidean shape and mess.
So, to save you the headache, I'll go over each part of the verse:
The Tellurian:
Literally everything, the book nails home specifically that this is all reality, everything everywhere, everywhen, every-not-when etc.
The Tellurian is above everything in the verse (In terms of cosmology) and ranges from upwards of 9-D to 11-D+ (Scaling done with Azzy)
Also being described as God and beyond transcendent beyond all thought and language.
The Tapestry:
The Tapestry is where the base Reality is and what it is called within World of Darkness. The Tapestry makes up infinite possibilities and Higher dimensions.
While there's many parts outside the Tapestry, the Tapestry is very important for holding the World of Man, to which the Angels and Demons love so much.
The Tapestry scales anywhere from Low 1-C (6-D) to upwards of High 1-C (11-D) with the introduction of Superstring theory, which echos the metaphor for the Tapestry, which is beyond words and even understanding.
To destroy the Tapestry is to destroy the Mundane Internet, which has been stated to possess 6 Dimensions.
The Umbra:
The biggest headache of my life, the Umbra is a realm made up of 3 regions, High Umbra, Mid Umbra and Low Umbra, each possessing Sub-Realms of themselves, I'll mainly go over the High Umbra as it is the most notable of the three, but the other two are worth a read.
Additionally, scattered throughout the entire Umbra and not contained to a single region are:
Digital Web: Metaphysical reflection and the essence of the internet, a realm made up of nothing more than data.
The Maya Dream Realm: Source and/ or reflections of dreams, possibly linked to the lost Faerie Dreaming. Comprised of a baffling number of layers, none of which might actually be real to anyone except the person experiencing them.
The Faerie Dreaming along with the Umbra are locked outside Time and Space.
The Mirror Zone: Mysterious lost space where the normal order of things as they appear to the observer seems to be inverted.
The Null Zone: Infinite corridors between the earthly world and Umbra realms; might be the current shape and/ or appearance of the Old Roads as seen by other travelers who've stumbled across them.
High Umbra:
The Vulgate at the bottom being this:
The region of common concepts. To quote: "Here, the truly weird aspects of the High Umbra begin to manifest: flying eyeballs, four-dimensional temples, Escherian landscapes, and snowing geometry… that sort of thing. In the Vulgate, you can find endless hallways filled with doors; rivers that speak in human languages; glass-tree forests where each leaf is a memory; places where the local reality takes on the flat, brightly colored, and caricatured appearance of an old-school comic strip… complete with word- and thought-balloons. Libraries where books that were never written can be found, philosophical paradises in which abstract theories like Communism and anarchy really do work the way their proponents say they should work… If you took the analogy of Plato's cave (which actually exists here, by the way), where people see the shadows cast on the walls and believe it's reality, the Vulgate is where the watchers start to turn away from the wall and begin to see the things casting those shadows."
Next is the Spires:
Conceptual mountains of rising abstractions including the Courts and peaking at the Epiphamies. Above the Vulgate "peaking upwards into infinity" is where the spires are found. It is the realm where it reflects "Higher consciousness". The Spires are not physical, and climbing them is not a matter of physical effort, but Metaphysical ascent. Only the mind can move up the spires.
"Rising here and there throughout the Courts, rooted in the Vulgate but peaking upward into infinity, you'll find the Spires: reflections of the idea of higher consciousness. As with so many other things in the Otherworlds, the Spires turn abstract concepts into concrete forms. Some of them appear as towers, minarets, or mountains that make Everest look like a speed bump. Many resemble glass cathedrals with spires that fade into the sky. I've seen beanstalks leading into the clouds and literal stairways to heaven. They're all Spires. So if you want to get your head in the clouds, then you'll often have to climb these things."
Then at the very top:
Realms in name only, the Epiphamies are regions too abstract and ephemeral to the even the lower tiers where the constructs of reality lay. The mysteries of the Epiphamies are too transcendent for the Mages to perceive for more than a few moments, with it being a mere fragment of the true realm. The place where the Archetypes exist.
"There are said to be Realms within this domain where mortal minds cannot go at all ― regions too transcendent for human consciousness to grasp."
"Imagine the love-child of Salvador Dali and Dr. Seuss. Now imagine it as a world. And now imagine that it exists because you imagined it. That's the nature of the Ephiphamies. Fleeting concepts get smaller worlds, whereas lasting concepts, backed by millions of minds over hundreds of years, have massive regions with something approaching a stable nature. Within the Epiphamies, you might find a Fortress of Government that represents the symbolic might and futility of that concept; a River of Language that flows with the sounds of every dialect ever spoken on Earth; a titanic chiming clock with a thousand hands, each one marking some measure of Time; the realm of Platonic ideals, which exists perhaps only because Plato imagined that it might. There are tortured halls of Art and mindscapes so bizarre that Dali himself might have been amazed by them. You'll find realms based upon not only our popular images of holidays (though those exist as well) but around the very ideas those holidays represent. In short, the Epiphamies are as boundless as imagined consciousness itself."
I thought it would be best to quote the writers themselves, as they explain the realm far better than I could translating it.
The Realm is vastly above all others in the verse (Besides the Whole Umbra and the Tellurian), locked outside Time and Space, with the scaling done by Azzy (Thank you again) we got 9-D to 11-D reality.
The Tiers
So, here we are, the Tiers. Having covered the Massive Cosmology of World of Darkness, I want to make this part as seamless as possible. Naturally, I won't go every character.
Note: I haven't gone over Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade because they deserve a respect thread dedicated to the two alone, I've only gone over Demon: The Fallen and Mage: The Ascention.
Lesser Beings: The Mortal Gods such as Hermies and Apolo and such do appear in World of Darkness, fighting on the 6-D level of the mundane Web, attempting to control it, so they may control Humanity.
For this, the Lesser Gods would scale to Low 1-C at most, 2-A at worst.
The Mages, Technocrats and Marauders: Beings that warp reality, tapping into the thinest echo of God's power, these Mages change reality, for better or worse, yet there are rules for such powers, and thus cannot truely become Gods until they ascend.
The Marauders are Mages who have lost all sense of Reality, getting so insane they force their views of Reality onto others and the Reality around them, causing people to cease to be, stopping the action of breathing and much more stranger things.
The Marauders are stated to have fought on a 8-D Chessboard (A location of important that multiple beings and Factions are fighting over), with the Mages of the past creating Atlantis, a City that exists in Several Metaphysical layers of Existence at once.
The Technocrats creating Pan-Dimensional (Existing in all dimensions) weaponary and tools to win their war against the Mages and take control of Reality. They've been shown to make Spirit Nukes, capable of doing so much damage, they rend the borders between Dimensions.
In total, the Mages, Techncrats and Marauders scale to the Reality they Manipulate, of which scales from 6-D to 11-D: Low 1-C to High 1-C.
The Archmages are vastly more stronger, being able to manipulate the Tellurian as a whole, chaning it to their will, creating Realms or throwing them around as they please.
Thus, they scale to the power of the Tellurian as a whole: 9-D to 11-D+.
The Angels and Demons:
Ironically, the Creators of the Verse in God's name, the Angels and Demons created the Tellurian for God, being nothing more than fragments of his Power.
With knowing this, we know the Angels scale at least to the Tellurian, being 9-D to 11-D+.
The One Giver (God):
The Big E herself, the Angels on record calling him the infinite infinities, as well as being the Tellurian and everything within it.
The Verse would cease to be if God had not been there before Time, Space and existence was given form.
God is vastly above his Angels and the Demons which turned on her, slaying over 1 million of them for the murder of the Angels.
God effortlessly scales to the Angels, being 9-D to 11-D+.
Why have I cut the respect blog short?
Well, soon there's to be V5 for World of Darkness after a couple of years of silence from World of Darkness, so this may change the verse quite considerably, so, I thought I'd get this out as I have completed the Cosmology and finished most of God's abilities (Which directly scales to the Angels, and vice versa).
Additionally, Vampire and Werewolf are so big on their own they deserve their own respect thread.
Conclusion
I understand that this is a lot to process. Even my attempt at a summarized revision became gigantic, but this is due to the highly complex nature of the series and the necessity to explain everything to people.
And for this, I thank you for reading this far, and I hope we can discuss this civilly.
MAUAHAHAHAHA!
All jokes aside, this has been rather fun, but I've had to cut it short. And I'll explain before the End of this post:
The Introduction:
So, this has been a fairly long time coming, and finally it's here to state you of all your desires for want for World of Darkness, and I hope I can provide.
But before I begin, I will note that World of Darkness is an insanely large franchise, and I plan to cover it all in due time, but I do need to get the basis out there first, so we can at least get an understanding of the verse.
Additionally, I'd like to give a big thanks to these guys for helping me with the scaling and being super patient with me:
- Antvasima (Ant's been picking up after my poor formatting, so Extra-Round of applause for him)
- First Witch
- Dragonmasterxyz
- Sera EX
- King of Negativity
- And many more
I understand, it's unrealistic that everyone is going to sit a read through the entire blog so I'll give you a TL;DR.
With all that said, let's get into the revisions proper.
The Revisions:
Given the extensive nature of these revisions, I am dividing them into two parts: A brief explanation of the Cosmology of the series, and an explanation of where this leaves the character's tiers. This will be much easier for me to Manage that way:
The Cosmic Cosmology of World of Darkness:
World of Darkness is in short, a massive headache waiting to happen, with there being layers upon layers of realms that both overlap each other, to even visualize them, it would look like a Non-Euclidean shape and mess.
So, to save you the headache, I'll go over each part of the verse:
The Tellurian:
Literally everything, the book nails home specifically that this is all reality, everything everywhere, everywhen, every-not-when etc.
The Tellurian is above everything in the verse (In terms of cosmology) and ranges from upwards of 9-D to 11-D+ (Scaling done with Azzy)
Also being described as God and beyond transcendent beyond all thought and language.
The Tapestry:
The Tapestry is where the base Reality is and what it is called within World of Darkness. The Tapestry makes up infinite possibilities and Higher dimensions.
While there's many parts outside the Tapestry, the Tapestry is very important for holding the World of Man, to which the Angels and Demons love so much.
The Tapestry scales anywhere from Low 1-C (6-D) to upwards of High 1-C (11-D) with the introduction of Superstring theory, which echos the metaphor for the Tapestry, which is beyond words and even understanding.
To destroy the Tapestry is to destroy the Mundane Internet, which has been stated to possess 6 Dimensions.
The Umbra:
The biggest headache of my life, the Umbra is a realm made up of 3 regions, High Umbra, Mid Umbra and Low Umbra, each possessing Sub-Realms of themselves, I'll mainly go over the High Umbra as it is the most notable of the three, but the other two are worth a read.
Additionally, scattered throughout the entire Umbra and not contained to a single region are:
Digital Web: Metaphysical reflection and the essence of the internet, a realm made up of nothing more than data.
The Maya Dream Realm: Source and/ or reflections of dreams, possibly linked to the lost Faerie Dreaming. Comprised of a baffling number of layers, none of which might actually be real to anyone except the person experiencing them.
The Faerie Dreaming along with the Umbra are locked outside Time and Space.
The Mirror Zone: Mysterious lost space where the normal order of things as they appear to the observer seems to be inverted.
The Null Zone: Infinite corridors between the earthly world and Umbra realms; might be the current shape and/ or appearance of the Old Roads as seen by other travelers who've stumbled across them.
High Umbra:
The Vulgate at the bottom being this:
The region of common concepts. To quote: "Here, the truly weird aspects of the High Umbra begin to manifest: flying eyeballs, four-dimensional temples, Escherian landscapes, and snowing geometry… that sort of thing. In the Vulgate, you can find endless hallways filled with doors; rivers that speak in human languages; glass-tree forests where each leaf is a memory; places where the local reality takes on the flat, brightly colored, and caricatured appearance of an old-school comic strip… complete with word- and thought-balloons. Libraries where books that were never written can be found, philosophical paradises in which abstract theories like Communism and anarchy really do work the way their proponents say they should work… If you took the analogy of Plato's cave (which actually exists here, by the way), where people see the shadows cast on the walls and believe it's reality, the Vulgate is where the watchers start to turn away from the wall and begin to see the things casting those shadows."
Next is the Spires:
Conceptual mountains of rising abstractions including the Courts and peaking at the Epiphamies. Above the Vulgate "peaking upwards into infinity" is where the spires are found. It is the realm where it reflects "Higher consciousness". The Spires are not physical, and climbing them is not a matter of physical effort, but Metaphysical ascent. Only the mind can move up the spires.
"Rising here and there throughout the Courts, rooted in the Vulgate but peaking upward into infinity, you'll find the Spires: reflections of the idea of higher consciousness. As with so many other things in the Otherworlds, the Spires turn abstract concepts into concrete forms. Some of them appear as towers, minarets, or mountains that make Everest look like a speed bump. Many resemble glass cathedrals with spires that fade into the sky. I've seen beanstalks leading into the clouds and literal stairways to heaven. They're all Spires. So if you want to get your head in the clouds, then you'll often have to climb these things."
Then at the very top:
Realms in name only, the Epiphamies are regions too abstract and ephemeral to the even the lower tiers where the constructs of reality lay. The mysteries of the Epiphamies are too transcendent for the Mages to perceive for more than a few moments, with it being a mere fragment of the true realm. The place where the Archetypes exist.
"There are said to be Realms within this domain where mortal minds cannot go at all ― regions too transcendent for human consciousness to grasp."
"Imagine the love-child of Salvador Dali and Dr. Seuss. Now imagine it as a world. And now imagine that it exists because you imagined it. That's the nature of the Ephiphamies. Fleeting concepts get smaller worlds, whereas lasting concepts, backed by millions of minds over hundreds of years, have massive regions with something approaching a stable nature. Within the Epiphamies, you might find a Fortress of Government that represents the symbolic might and futility of that concept; a River of Language that flows with the sounds of every dialect ever spoken on Earth; a titanic chiming clock with a thousand hands, each one marking some measure of Time; the realm of Platonic ideals, which exists perhaps only because Plato imagined that it might. There are tortured halls of Art and mindscapes so bizarre that Dali himself might have been amazed by them. You'll find realms based upon not only our popular images of holidays (though those exist as well) but around the very ideas those holidays represent. In short, the Epiphamies are as boundless as imagined consciousness itself."
I thought it would be best to quote the writers themselves, as they explain the realm far better than I could translating it.
The Realm is vastly above all others in the verse (Besides the Whole Umbra and the Tellurian), locked outside Time and Space, with the scaling done by Azzy (Thank you again) we got 9-D to 11-D reality.
The Tiers
So, here we are, the Tiers. Having covered the Massive Cosmology of World of Darkness, I want to make this part as seamless as possible. Naturally, I won't go every character.
Note: I haven't gone over Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade because they deserve a respect thread dedicated to the two alone, I've only gone over Demon: The Fallen and Mage: The Ascention.
Lesser Beings: The Mortal Gods such as Hermies and Apolo and such do appear in World of Darkness, fighting on the 6-D level of the mundane Web, attempting to control it, so they may control Humanity.
For this, the Lesser Gods would scale to Low 1-C at most, 2-A at worst.
The Mages, Technocrats and Marauders: Beings that warp reality, tapping into the thinest echo of God's power, these Mages change reality, for better or worse, yet there are rules for such powers, and thus cannot truely become Gods until they ascend.
The Marauders are Mages who have lost all sense of Reality, getting so insane they force their views of Reality onto others and the Reality around them, causing people to cease to be, stopping the action of breathing and much more stranger things.
The Marauders are stated to have fought on a 8-D Chessboard (A location of important that multiple beings and Factions are fighting over), with the Mages of the past creating Atlantis, a City that exists in Several Metaphysical layers of Existence at once.
The Technocrats creating Pan-Dimensional (Existing in all dimensions) weaponary and tools to win their war against the Mages and take control of Reality. They've been shown to make Spirit Nukes, capable of doing so much damage, they rend the borders between Dimensions.
In total, the Mages, Techncrats and Marauders scale to the Reality they Manipulate, of which scales from 6-D to 11-D: Low 1-C to High 1-C.
The Archmages are vastly more stronger, being able to manipulate the Tellurian as a whole, chaning it to their will, creating Realms or throwing them around as they please.
Thus, they scale to the power of the Tellurian as a whole: 9-D to 11-D+.
The Angels and Demons:
Ironically, the Creators of the Verse in God's name, the Angels and Demons created the Tellurian for God, being nothing more than fragments of his Power.
With knowing this, we know the Angels scale at least to the Tellurian, being 9-D to 11-D+.
The One Giver (God):
The Big E herself, the Angels on record calling him the infinite infinities, as well as being the Tellurian and everything within it.
The Verse would cease to be if God had not been there before Time, Space and existence was given form.
God is vastly above his Angels and the Demons which turned on her, slaying over 1 million of them for the murder of the Angels.
God effortlessly scales to the Angels, being 9-D to 11-D+.
Why have I cut the respect blog short?
Well, soon there's to be V5 for World of Darkness after a couple of years of silence from World of Darkness, so this may change the verse quite considerably, so, I thought I'd get this out as I have completed the Cosmology and finished most of God's abilities (Which directly scales to the Angels, and vice versa).
Additionally, Vampire and Werewolf are so big on their own they deserve their own respect thread.
Conclusion
I understand that this is a lot to process. Even my attempt at a summarized revision became gigantic, but this is due to the highly complex nature of the series and the necessity to explain everything to people.
And for this, I thank you for reading this far, and I hope we can discuss this civilly.
