every story ends, and every flame blows out, in the end
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So since zeke doesnt have the option of going back to unnamed will you discuss with him about possibley making ten pillars into a full fledged PC?
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We’re about to have that very discussion!
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Alright I cant wait for the post show so we can see what happens
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Hey @AdamKoebel I am wondering this when you said: ‘‘Grave Dirt is stronger than Bahath’’
How is that possible? He is literally a dragon entity that is the closest to the nucleus of the great Fire Lord Imix.
If the corpse of Unnamed is possessed by Bahath and it’s banished to the Void of the Mara, then if the caster breaks the concentration or the time limit is up? Does that mean that only the corpse or the entity within Unnamed will return back?
How did Unnamed’s ‘‘soul’’ even manifest? She was a child of void where souls meant nothing and being brought back was a thing and in form of a dragon to top it all off. Where does that even fit in?
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He’s a former dragon stuck in a void body, so he’s still pretty wimpy by comparison.
The spell works the way it works in the PHB.
That’s a big mystery, but I did explain it briefly during the show…
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Here is a crazy theory I have about CoS cosmology that I want to share. I was originally going to make a figure, then a scientific paper with a bunch of fake citations, but that was too much work for the time being.
On the History of the Fountain and the Void
Scholars (Adam) have indicated that the Void and the Fountain once existed alongside one another, with The World orbiting them. Once Heaven was created, things were reorganized so that the Fountain sat at the top of all, followed by Heaven, and The World. On the opposite side of The World is the Court of the Void, then the Voidplane, and the Void. The theory I present to you today attempts to explain the structure of this new cosmology, the nature of time, and perhaps an eternal folly.
I think that our focus on The World has blinded us to the larger picture. If at one time the Fountain and Void coexisted, it is possible that the plan laid out by Heaven is misguided. The intent of Heaven is to fill the Fountain with purified souls in order to create oneness with the universe. This runs counter to the notion of the Fountain, which not only flows and cycles, but also emits light. The very fact that the Fountain features this emission property suggests that its natural behavior is to empty of energy. The Void, on the other hand, exists to absorb energy. Obviously the Mara’s goal of destruction also runs counter to the original structure in which the Fountain and Void coexisted.
Consider the possibility that the Fountain and Void are actually similar constructs. This would allow for a flow of energy from the Fountain, through The World, into the Void. Eventually, such a relationship would lead to the Void devouring all. But what if our thoughts of this phenomenon is on too-short of a timescale. I propose that upon filling, the Void takes the role of Fountain and vice-versa. This model could be represented as a cosmic hourglass, with all energy but sand. The World sits in the center of the structure, and partially blocks the flow. Veins make the world semi-porous, allowing energy to eventually make way to the Void. The semi-permeability of The World allows the gods of Heaven enough time to recapture souls for their cycle of reincarnation, until they eventually either fall into the Void or get shunted back into the Fountain.
The hourglass shape also helps explain temporal phenomena expressed in the stratified layers. When Berg was in Heaven, time moved more quickly than in The World. He spent years training, but returned shortly after he left. I posit that the wider the portion of the hourglass, the faster time moves. This would suggest that the Void, where time also moved quite quickly, is not immediately opposite The World, or that The World is actually a truncated cone. If it were narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, then the different rates of time could be explained. This idea also suggests that Heaven is not a flat plane, but wider at the top than the bottom.
If such a cosmology is true, then both Heaven and the Mara are acting against the natural state of the universe. For true harmony to be achieved within a framework like this, the cycle must allow the sand to fall until the hourglass flips again.
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SO MANY QUESTIONS but here’s my main one. Correct me if I’m wrong, but to the Wicked Edge Maharib is it’s current wielder and I guess it see’s Berg as a potential wielder. What’s the hammer to it?
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Adam, I think a diety is not affected by anti-magic field, in the spell it exempts them from being effected by it.
Now Theory Time!
So we now know that dragons(demigods) also forget things when they die and can’t be killed… This seem oddly familiar to the void people.
So are the void people demigods? And if a dragon would go into the void(well a normal dragon), then they would not be able to revive and truely die like Unnamed did because they are not in their realm to be revived by the flame(which can’t normally exist in the void)?
This would also mean that the Void people are ‘children’ of the Mara like dragons are.
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Imix isn’t a “deity” in the way D&D thinks of them, exactly.
this is a good theory
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I love your enthusiam and have certain appreciation for your geometric interpretation.
Personally i enjoy the fact that the Court of Swords Cosmology and lore is,… flexible and i’m not here to pick flaws in it’s potential viability. That said i would politely highlight that the there is no definance to the idea that the ‘void devours all’ in this universe. No matter which case you consider it leads to the fountain creating and the void destroying in some sort of linear cycle (ie an eventual end of the universe) or a similar cycle of the fountain constantly creating stuff and the void destroying stuff, that is to say the fountain acts as counter to entropic decay and the void is itself entropic decay. If this leads to an hourglass shape, i will admit i am too moronic to see it. that said I have not seen anything that swings it eitherway.
What is the important part of the idea of harmony? is it the shape of a cosmology? the cleverly calculated pareto front of a difficult multivariate problem? a sandwhich shared fairly among friends? i dont know.
shrug
what i can say for sure is i enjoyed reading your post
good day
Sam
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Interesting, so if the hourglass flips maybe that’s when/how Primordials are destroyed/renewed? There’s definitely allusions to longer cycles both w/in and w/out the cosmos of CoS. (see the latest Live Live Show GM Prep for examples)
Is “the World” an essential bottleneck between the Void and Fountain? The Mara don’t necessarily want everything to fall into the Void per say, and neither does Heaven want every soul to become one with the fountain (see Heaven’s Civil War for details).
I guess one of my concerns is that The Fountain doesn’t “create”? It just gives off light energy? Also, if we take your metaphor of the hourglass, then how does something go back into The Fountain?
I think it has been somewhat established that Heaven (& possible Mara) aren’t really working for The Fountain or “The Void” – merely using them for their own purposes. (w/ maybe the exception of the great green worm doing the lazy river tubing around the Void?)
I’m curious how Ramus’ ideas will play into this. Harmony and duality… does this mean fostering light into the shadow? or trying to deny both the expansion of light and the expansion of shadow? 
Love theory stuff, thanks for it!
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That was such a hard episode to watch, but it was also really awesome to see what all the build up amounted too.
So if Ten Pillars does become a real character is it possible for him to get the Orzhov Representative background, I think the Leverage background ability would be perfect for them.
My thought was
Summary
That the Fountain doesn’t actually create anything, and the Void doesn’t destroy anything. The energy is neither created nor destroyed, just transferred. Both the Fountain and the Void are containers, and one fills while the other empties. All Heaven is doing is taking the energy that should be falling into the Void and putting it back into the Fountain, which seems pretty futile.
Things being “created” and “destroyed” are just the opinions of the shorter-lived. In the larger cosmic perspective this “shorter-lived” category includes the gods, primordials, and mara.
The flip is like the Isaac Asimov short story “The Last Question”.
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I was having a think… and If Zeke was to make a new character, then the New Druid Subclass from the UA would fit REALLY WELL.
It’s a fire elemental subclass that lets you embody flame and take on its various forms.
The Embers of Imix would 100% have someone like that. (If Vaani isn’t already this).
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I’m very curious to see how the results of this affect his character. He’d been swinging towards more humanity/caring for a while with Unnamed but now…? Does he continue on that path or does he swing back the other direction.
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Oh I would love that.
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I think Heaven is trying to try to shape people’s souls the right way to get the energy that they want out of it, which is the point of the arcana/fate.
Though heaven is not the only ones who try to shape people, the primordials seem like they somewhat try to shape people by telling them never put out a flame and etc, though they seem to care less about it than heaven.
I do think the fountain/souls is what we ultimately will learn that gives the choice of power/change, which is thematic to the whole theme of the campaign. We already see this in the void, the fountain is what they use to change things, besides changing themselves when they die(choosing to forget certain memories and etc). But that might be…inherent in every death. Even when a human/orc/etc dies maybe they get the option to change themselves, but they also totally change their body unlike demigods(void people and dragons)? And if they choose to no longer live anymore they go to the fountain, like the void people went to the Void?
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I had a little idea about a possible change for the inspiration system.
Maybe make it so everybody starts with inspiration at the start of every new session, it might make it easier to remember and keep track of that way.
Since all the roleplay is already worth inspiration 
I’ve had a similar theory, except that instead of it being:
- || Fountain -> World -> Court of the Void -> Void Proper ||
It’s:
- Fountain -> World -> CoV -> VP -> Fountain
in a circle. The Fountain’s power spills out into the World and sustains it, which gradually gets “digested” into Po. Po gets transferred to the CotV along with miscellaneous physical objects, which eventually make it in the form of forgotten memories and objects into the VP. Upon digestion, those things are broken down into “fundamental particles” which return to the Fountain to maintain its power and continue the cycle.
The God of Forgotten Memories under the Temple of the Sun in the City of Brass was a holdover from how it was before Heaven - Gods would “digest” the World so that it returned to the Fountain as “fundamental particles”. When Heaven was created, things got different, and the circle as we see it today was created.
The Mara appeared at the same time as those souls that don’t follow the “digestion” method of returning to the Fountain. They are a new thing that appeared concurrently with the first souls achieving Enlightenment and going “in the out door” of the Fountain. I propose that the Mara are related directly Enlightenment in some strange way. Potentially that the Mara themselves are those souls that have attained Enlightenment but opted not to remain as Boddhisattva (such as Emperor Fei), or the “X-Rays” of a soul achieving Enlightenment, like the energy that escapes when something is absorbed by a Black Hole. Something fully-formed that goes “out the in door” from the Void Proper, which previously was impossible.
The Mara are also the only things (other than the PCs) to run contrary to that flow; to go from the CoV to the World.
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