Grand Designs
Oct. 4th, 2012 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cmdr_zoomI can't recall ever putting down my personal theories on Amber cosmology in this journal, but I was thinking about them this morning, so here goes.
The Logrus and the Pattern are not fundamentally different; both are examples of a class of reality-stabilizing construct which I call "Designs". The Logrus is the most stable construct that could be built on top of pure Chaos, and is in fact what allows the residents thereof to maintain a given solid form for more than seconds at a time. A more fixed and "orderly" Design like the Pattern could only be drawn in a cosmos in which another already exists, as an "anchor."
Before the drawing of the Pattern, the only direction possible was toward or away from the Logrus (or orbiting around it); before the Logrus, as a fixed reference point, not even that was possible. Pattern and Logrus together, two points, define a line or continuum. However, there are an infinite number of possible paths between them, so it's better to think of them as two poles or antipodes on a sphere. Travel "north" from one, or "south" from the other, and you will always eventually arrive at the second.
Now what happens when you toss in Corwin's Pattern, which (as I recall) was drawn slightly past the midpoint between the two? Well, first, it has the potential to be even more "solid" and/or "rigid" than the previous two Designs, as it exists in a cosmos where the first two have already stabilized reality. Second, IMO, it constricts and limits the possible paths through Shadow; its presence exerts "weight" or "pull". Imagine an hourglass, narrowing to a waist (but not a single point) in the vicinity; traveling from Amber to Chaos or vice-versa, a Shadow-walker must pass through "the neighborhood", Shadows in which some form of Corwin's Pattern and/or its "gravitational" influence exists - his version of the Golden Circle.
I further posit that the creation of Corwin's Pattern allows access to a sub-cosm, accessible only via that Pattern and effectively "tangent" to the previously existing cosmos at that point. Around the neck of that hourglass, imagine a torus (or "doughnut") of Shadows, also potentially infinite in number but all strongly influenced by Corwin's desires, nature etc as he was drawing it. Only those attuned to Corwin's Pattern can enter this sub-cosm, and if they travel far enough in any direction they will find themselves back where they started. It's a torus, a closed loop.
And that's just three Designs. Things get even freakier if any of Oberon's other kids ever drew, or in the course of a campaign, draw their own; an hourglass with two "necks" is the simplest topological nightmare you're going to get out of such an arrangement. (If someone gets into the Shadows of Corwin's Pattern, forex, and draws another Design there, they'd constrict the torus at that point and create another torus of Shadows, at "right angles" to the first one, completely separate from the "prime" cosmos...)
The Logrus and the Pattern are not fundamentally different; both are examples of a class of reality-stabilizing construct which I call "Designs". The Logrus is the most stable construct that could be built on top of pure Chaos, and is in fact what allows the residents thereof to maintain a given solid form for more than seconds at a time. A more fixed and "orderly" Design like the Pattern could only be drawn in a cosmos in which another already exists, as an "anchor."
Before the drawing of the Pattern, the only direction possible was toward or away from the Logrus (or orbiting around it); before the Logrus, as a fixed reference point, not even that was possible. Pattern and Logrus together, two points, define a line or continuum. However, there are an infinite number of possible paths between them, so it's better to think of them as two poles or antipodes on a sphere. Travel "north" from one, or "south" from the other, and you will always eventually arrive at the second.
Now what happens when you toss in Corwin's Pattern, which (as I recall) was drawn slightly past the midpoint between the two? Well, first, it has the potential to be even more "solid" and/or "rigid" than the previous two Designs, as it exists in a cosmos where the first two have already stabilized reality. Second, IMO, it constricts and limits the possible paths through Shadow; its presence exerts "weight" or "pull". Imagine an hourglass, narrowing to a waist (but not a single point) in the vicinity; traveling from Amber to Chaos or vice-versa, a Shadow-walker must pass through "the neighborhood", Shadows in which some form of Corwin's Pattern and/or its "gravitational" influence exists - his version of the Golden Circle.
I further posit that the creation of Corwin's Pattern allows access to a sub-cosm, accessible only via that Pattern and effectively "tangent" to the previously existing cosmos at that point. Around the neck of that hourglass, imagine a torus (or "doughnut") of Shadows, also potentially infinite in number but all strongly influenced by Corwin's desires, nature etc as he was drawing it. Only those attuned to Corwin's Pattern can enter this sub-cosm, and if they travel far enough in any direction they will find themselves back where they started. It's a torus, a closed loop.
And that's just three Designs. Things get even freakier if any of Oberon's other kids ever drew, or in the course of a campaign, draw their own; an hourglass with two "necks" is the simplest topological nightmare you're going to get out of such an arrangement. (If someone gets into the Shadows of Corwin's Pattern, forex, and draws another Design there, they'd constrict the torus at that point and create another torus of Shadows, at "right angles" to the first one, completely separate from the "prime" cosmos...)
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Date: 2012-10-04 05:26 pm (UTC)