The Echo

Written by Cyborg Starfish

"I am afraid to lose my voice, yet I am also afraid to use it. Whenever it bursts, it cuts through mountains, and the mountains' screams cut through me. I am in a perpetual state of singing and listening to song."

- Loose translation of a hieroglyphic mural found in a cave close to Dreamfall 

The Echo exists in all things, living or dead. It's a combination of sound and movement, which means everything exists in sound and movement. This includes things that don't seem to move or make sound at all. If you pay close attention, you'll notice they do move and make sound, just barely noticeable. All Echoes join each other in The Eternal River.

Manifestation

Since the Echo exists in movement, it is constantly shifting, and with it whatever meaning ascribed to it shifts. The countless languages spoken by the world shift with the Echo in a constant flow of communication. Communication doesn't only involve sound or movement. In the case of Elphin civilization, it involves not only spoken language, but also written language, body language, visual arts, music, performance and even architecture.

Echo Magic

The Echo is the main source of magic. Those who work with the Echo know that magic is a matter of communication, not control. The Echo is fundamentally uncontrollable, it has very much a mind of its own, and thus Echo mages don't actually use it. Instead, they negociate with it and listen to it.

Hazards

Whenever a mage casts an Echo spell, their own Echo temporarily merges with the Echo of the spell's target. This is also the most common threat to Echo mages; if something goes wrong during the time these Echoes are merged, causing the union to be cut off abruptly, the mage might suffer considerable mental and sometimes even physical damage, because they have lost a part of themselves. Thankfully, since the Echo is always shifting, these wounds heal over time, but the caster will never be the same afterwards.

Parallel Realms

It's possible for clusters of Echoes to take on the form of an actual place. In many ways, The Eternal River can be seen as such a place, a place that is both everywhere and (thankfully) impenetrable without a ritual. Places formed by Echo clusters do not work according to physical or metaphysical laws. Instead, they are completely dependent on the whims of the Echoes that created them. Entering such a place will be difficult, and it will usually require a ritual of some kind. Sometimes these realms can be accessed through portal-like rifts, though this only happens when the physical place and the parallel realm have been merged into one, which can happen if the realm exists in the same place for multiple centuries. In these cases, the sudden dissapearance of the realm will also result in the complete annihilation of the physical area it encompassed.

Those who enter these realms run the risk of having their Echo disintegrated, at which point they literally become one with the place they are in. Another hazard one will face when travelling to such a place, is that these places might suddenly disappear without a trace, causing anyone trapped in them to disintegrate on the spot and become one with The Eternal River.

Pulse Interference

It is widely known that the Echo of the Pulse is so intense it warps the Echoes of everything around it. When confined to the center of the planet, the Pulse will warp and twist everything in its environment. These warps and twist are thankfully not noticeable on the surface, but they will become noticeable when the Pulse is exposed through volcanic activity. Pulse pushed to the surface will gradually lose its intensity, but even at its lowest intensity, it can still be dangerous, especially if an Echo spell is cast nearby.

Visual Manifestation

There are several extreme cases in which the Echo can become visible to the naked eye. The most common one is Echo burst, in wich a ripple effect can be seen in the air. An Echo burst can have the power of a tiny breeze or a mountain-shattering hurricane, and everything in beteen. A less common way in which the Echo can become fleetingly visible is during intense rituals or the pronounciation of complex spells. The participants in the ritual or the person that chants the spell will sometimes see a slight flicker of colour similar to an aurora. The colours that are seen during this moment are different each time and seem to be completely random. Opinions are divided if this is an actual visual manifestation or just a hallucination on the part of the mage or ritualist.

The Power of Language

Magic is communication. Language is magic. Its power takes a lot of time and a lot of repeated words to manifest physically. Language can distort, break down and rebuild reality, as long as everyone involved can understand it. When there is no communication, most of its power is either nullified, or distorted, causing confusion, with sometimes deadly consequences. But the most deadly is the constantly repeated lie, which distorts reality to the point that everyone who hears the lie regresses into a dream world, where they can be pushed to commit heinous crimes and see themselves as the heroes. Language itself can be manipulated to amplify its destructive tendencies, words are carefully chosen to present a distorted version of reality, words are erased, meanings are erased, and so the speaker's ability to think critically is erased as well.

But language can also heal. What is erased can be given a new name, a name that restores it and gives it power to fight back against futher erasure. Meanings will always shift and change, and this change is an integral part of healing from erasure. Old names can return and restore meanings that have been destroyed. Language can kill, but it can also breathe life.

Regardless of its usage, language is slow magic, its mass-scale impact might take centuries to manifest, and generations of people devoted to lying or healing from the lie. It is also more volatile than it seems, as its effects are never set in stone. All things have billions of true names, some of these names mean different things in different languages. Language is also limited. It can never fully encompass the full extent of everything that exists, existed or will exist, and within these limitations lie its dangers.

Localization

Cultural Interpretation

The Echo can be understood in many different ways, and its effects will drastically change depending on the context. Different cultural interpretations of the Echo can affect how it works in that particual cultural space.

Different Spaces, Different Echoes

The Echo can be more present in some areas, while other areas might be completely silent. This doesn't mean that there is no Echo whatsoever in these areas, since if there was no Echo, they wouldn't even exist. Instead, these areas are governed by The Silence, a paradox in the cosmology. Those who stay for too long in these areas will slowly fade out of existence. In areas with a high presence of the Echo, doing magic becomes even more hazardous than usual. These are the places where one can easily cause Echo bursts. Densely populated areas are usually louder than empty areas, prompting mages and ritualists to move outside of the city or settlement in order to cast their spells. Depending on the spell that is actually cast, it can also be a strategic move to seek out louder areas, though it is generally unwise to do so unless the mage knows exactly what they are doing.

The Tunnels

In the Tunnels, the behaviour of the Echo is also affected by the flow of air. Communication becomes more difficult if the air is thin, or dangerously easy in the case of thick air.