Cosmos

The Canvas of Infinite Threads, Stretching On Into Eternity And Beyond

“There is no “before” and there is no “after”. There was never a starting point, nor will there ever be a destination. The Cosmos didn’t “start”: it simply was. Endless and unchanging, a colorful void stretching for infinity in all directions, its vastness beyond the understanding of a mere mortal mind. Trying to imagine the Infiniteness in the Befortime is as pointless as explaining the concept of an ocean to a tadpole. But if you truly desire to glimpse at what it once was, take a look at the stars on a clear night and let the existential dread and wonder in equal measures slowly seep into your soul as you begin to feel like a meaningless moment in time, without a start nor finish. But even the almighty Time as we know it once was abstract and chaotic: it simply existed, but did not function - it was like a cloud of smoke that stood in one place, shifting and moving, but always static and not going to any particular direction. There was no concept of “here” or “now”, there was only a dormant eternity, filled with possibility, but lacking the will to act. It needed a push, a spark, a sudden shift somewhere within. It needed the energy to start moving somewhere. And so it sat there for an eternity of eternities, waiting, slowly accumulating the energy to act, the will to be, the instinct to take shape. There was only one thing that could provide desired energy, that divine spark that would ignite creation, the seed that would impregnate the Cosmos and have it birth an infinite amount of stars, nebulas, and planets – the Flow. The breath of the Infiniteness, her heartbeat, rhythmic and constant, and its infinite tendrils enveloped the entirety of that endless nothingness, which was our Cosmos in the Befortime. And so it all was dormant and unchanging, like a bubble of air frozen in a sheet of ice, only the Flow soared through the infinity, connecting little spaces which would become start systems, slowly but surely bringing it all closer, until the tension became too much and in one glorious moment it all snapped like a string, sending waves of devastating vibration through the endless void. Like a seedling at the beginning of thaw, like a bubble released from its icy prison, like a drop finally gaining enough weight to fall from a leaf – the Cosmos moved. Shifted from one side to another like a sleepy beast, and the Flow altered its course. The Awakening had begun. The Flow gained the will to act and an instinct to create. The Cosmos was still empty, but no longer static. Chaos created patterns of order. Existence itself came to exist. Clouds of colorful dust collapsed and birthed stars, their remains spun around the stars, and the newly created gravity slowly but surely turned them to planets. There in this now active Flow, The Colorful Void gained consciousness. But it was too vast, chaotic, and abstract to contain one singular consciousness, and so it has divided itself into segments, each and everyone – unique in its own way. These consciousnesses then gained the freedom to evolve on their own accord, and so they grew inside these new planets like birdies in their eggs, becoming stronger, gaining the ability to communicate with each other, combine each other’s will and use the Flow to further the creation of this endless and no longer empty space. There were millions of these consciousnesses: some of them fused together to form a new entity, others collapsed and became worlds within worlds: the Astral Plane, the Dreamscape, the Void... But those who survived and evolved perfected the art of creation to such a point that at some point amongst the trillions of random actions and reactions there appeared Life. Life as we know it suddenly became the Cosmos' greatest achievement. It was such a moving event, that even the Flow itself reacted to it. This planet, this one small blue dot in the orbit of a bright red star, became the most important thing to ever exist. The Flow enveloped it in its thick shroud, seeped its tendrils into its core, shielded from the devastating cosmic heat, embraced it with colorful clouds, hiding it from the cold of the infinite emptiness. Then some of the consciousnesses gazed upon this newly created world and became overwhelmed with the instinctual desire to create. Some of them, who would stay throughout the process would become our creators, our gardeners, our Gods. Once they began moving mountains and planting trees in the newborn valleys – that’s when the glorious and magnificent Era of Creation began…”
from Archmagister Albassar of Three Towers' presentation at the Royal Academy