Monday, March 14, 2016

Chaos in RPG and Real World Comparatives

"Disregarding physics as you know it, a vortex of mist forms a doorway rippling in space/ time before you!"

Welcome wizards and warriors of fantasy and sci fi. No doubt this post is something a lot of people will enjoy a great debate about. The subject is chaos.  Well, let's dive straight in, shall we? 

The word chaos tends to bring almost instantly to mind all manner of destructive imagery. This is because modern thinkers associate dualities in nearly every aspect of life. So entrenched in this reasoning of comparable opposites, we have rather taken up our entire philosophy in science and spirituality with duality, trinity, and all manner of absolutes. This is also because critical thinkers tend to divide the components of the material world, and its functionality into terms people can comprehend on a human level. 

Got news for ya! The universe doesn't follow human laws. 

In role-playing games like Warhammer, we see chaos as a demonic force owing its allegiance to dark gods of the abyss. However, in 9Portals RPG supplements chaos is treated as a state of nonlinear, unquantifiable, and absolute stasis. 

This concept of stasis is something of a reworking of the arcane mystery in 9Portals fictional lore. In ancient times, occultists believed that chaos was a state of no movement, complete stasis, a lack of kinetic activity at any level. It is the no thing of the universe, the great void that can only be accessed by the experienced dream traveler. Well, the rest of us can at least glimpse some aspect of this absolute void, or as the Norse referred to it the well of Mim Mir. We see the absolute potential when we read of old science fiction later becoming science fact. 

But, now, back to RPG... 

What does all of this philosophy have to do with portals? 

The primary, secondary, and ancient primordial portals of the Nine Portals system are all products of this original state of non being, and these portals operate in a system based on order in the cosmos. That order, for those who have not read Portals Manual, was described in the lore regarding Gygatherion, King Futharion, Lord Veximus, the sisters of poison, and the battle for Talos. 

Now, a chaos portal construct is a teleportation device or platform which transcends the forces of order. In essence, chaos portals operate in a non linear system, and a part of the universe which is unquantifiable. Thus, chaos portals do not suffer any penalty rules for being in close proximity to other portals. This also means that chaos portals can operate in any realm or dimensional world, be it physical or virtual. Water portals tend not to operate well in infernal realms, for example. However, chaos portals work just fine in either infernal or aquatic, or wherever. 

Chaos portals are not bound to the limitations of the space/ time continuum. In fact, chaos portals are the basic building block for many artificial portals. 




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