Introduction

The Tangle is the name for a roughly spherical network of interconnected worlds, or “Strata”, as those aware of their nature and existence have taken to calling them. Whilst some are very similar, depending on their relative position and proximity to one another, each Stratum in the Tangle is its own entity, with its own lands, its own peoples, its own technologies and cultures, and oftentimes, its own magics. It’s a precious few of these worlds that are even aware at large of the existence of the Tangle and their place in it, and for the vast majority of other Strata, only a chance few individuals ever happen upon the secret. 

Despite the interconnected nature of the Strata of the Tangle, however, it’s widespread praxis to treat the worlds contained therein as their own independent worlds first, and parts of a whole second. This is because the widespread discovery of the Tangle as a whole is by no means a guarantee or inevitability of many different Strata. Such discoveries and revelations require the dominant sapient species(es) of the Stratum in question to have developed and societally integrated advanced systems of Technology, Arcanum, and Reality Bending, as a certain species-wide capacity for at least two of these arts has been observed to be the minimum required to artificially open a way into the greater Tangle. 

However, many realms, societies, and peoples never even live to see the possibility of such developments, or are inherently incapable of one or the other due to some nature of themselves or the Stratum on which they reside. Most scholars and Wayfarers who flit about the Tangle for whatever reasons they may hold tend to adhere to a doctrine of viewing the Tangle as a simple all-encompassing term for the interconnectedness of worlds to which they voyage, rather than some gestalt entity to be treated in universal conjunction.

History & Cosmology

Ancient History and Origins

The origin of the Tangle as it is known is turbid, because by all accounts it predates sapient lifeforms on nearly every Stratum within it.  That is to say, all but one.

After its discovery following the very first, smallest wave of worlds awakening to the existence of the Tangle around them, it took no small amount of archaeological effort to determine that the one world that stood at the exact center of the Tangle had once been known as Enida Xalar by those who had once lived there. Enida Xalar had been a world of majesty and plenty, with golden spires of industry dominating the skyline of every city. Centers of sciences, magics, and more yet-poorly-understood disciplines dotted the world, and what remained of their texts told stories of millenia of absolute prosperity,  a whole world free of such trifles as war, famine, plague, and poverty. Enida Xalar had been, by all accounts, the perfect world, the absolute ideal apex of all possible advancement in all fields capable by the minds of mortals.

When it was finally discovered by the first of the Wayfarers, boldly stepping foot outside their worlds of origin for the first time to explore, Enida Xalar had been dead for thousands of years.

The cities were in ruins, their skies burned and sundered. Reality bubbled and boiled in pockmarks of untenable territory around the world. There wasn’t even a single corpse anywhere to be found, not even of animals. The scientists were forced to carbon-date fossilized plantlife to determine just how long the golden cities of Enida Xalar had been so destroyed. But what proved impossible to determine was just what had caused the world’s complete devastation. All that was able to be deduced from the perilous expeditions into the Tangle’s centermost carcass of a world was the fact that the rending of Enida Xalar temporally lined up roughly consistently with the collective dates of the first emergences of sapient life on nearly all other Strata in the Tangle. 

There are theories. Some say that Enida Xalar created the Tangle, and destroyed themselves in the process, though such circles of thought differ as to how much an accident or on purpose that was, and whether their destruction was self-inflicted or a punishment from some divine power. Some believe that Enida Xalar’s citizens struck out to populate the other worlds of the Tangle, spreading their gift of intelligent life to the infinitude of barren worlds that had always surrounded them. Some don’t even believe that Enida Xalar exists, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary. There are nearly as many different theories as there are people who have ever studied the subject, but none of them are at all conclusive or without holes. All that was possible to glean from the ruins of the first world to ever live was stripped clean and archived, and Enida Xalar has been cordoned off from the rest of the Tangle by the relevant authorities ever since. 

As it stands, nobody knows how the Tangle came to be, if it was a thing that ever did not exist in the first place. For the most part, most people tend to simply not think too hard about it. Life in the Tangle is complicated enough without such quibbles. And besides, after it all shakes out, a floating and mysterious corpse of a world sitting in the middle of a multiverse ends up being one of the least interesting things there is to see.

Strata, Substrata, and Layer Realms

Whenever referring to any given world, or Stratum, within the Tangle, it is generally customary to view the ‘base’ form of the Stratum to be the largest and most populous domain of reality within that Stratum, typically an Earth variant or a different material terrestrial equivalent. However, it has been observed that many, if not most, Strata come to develop at least one Substratum and/or Layer Realm as the world and its native species develop and mature. Substrata and Layer Realms not accessible from outside the main Stratum, and methods of accessing each individual extra reality domain can vary wildly, but all are consistent in one characteristic: their entire existence is dependent on the maintained belief, or at least conceptualization, of their existence by the sapient species of the Stratum. 

Substrata, and the entities that reside on them, should any do so, are usually manifestations of widespread cultural concepts or ideas, such as religious afterlives the culture of the main Stratum developed. However, it should be noted that in such cases, while the function and operations of many Substrata at least give off the impression that they align with the cultural concept their existence lends its nature to, Substrata do not function as a totalitarian afterlife on any known Stratum. Depending on certain factors, it is possible for a certain number of souls who die within that Stratum to be collected by the connected substrata, but the numbers are always far from one hundred percent accountability. Whether or not there is a further afterlife that accounts for all other souls who perish within the Tangle is still unknown writ large; Reapers and comparable entities are always quick to dodge such questions, on the exceedingly rare occasions that scholars are able to lock them down for questioning.

Examples of common Substratum manifestations are: Heaven, Hell, Elysium, Hades, Valhalla, etc.

Layer Realms, unlike Substrata, are domains of reality present on a Stratum that are inherently bound to the structure of the base Stratum world, functioning as a reflection reality, often with comparable geography but with different rules. Layer Realms are generally much easier to access from the base Stratum than Substrata are, as all it takes is someone with a basic ability to traverse between planes and a decent sense of where they’re going to penetrate through, as the consistent geography between Layer Realms means that a reliable entry and exit point is always assurable. It is not uncommon for Layer Realms to represent a force or power that regularly bleeds through the overlap and into the base Stratum as well.

Examples of common Layer Realm manifestations are: Fairy, the Dreaming, Purgatory, etc.

Cluster Strata & Outskirt Strata

As the construction of the Tangle is that of a large sphere, at least to the perceptions of those gifted enough to be able to view it from such an enlightened perspective of wholeness, it has been observed that the general density of worlds within it varies a significant amount based on the proximity to the center. 

Curiously, in addition to the proximity and density of Strata varying from the Cluster outwards, it is also observable that the general variance of construction of worlds diverges in a similar pattern. With the sole, perplexing exception of Enida Xalar, sitting dormant and ruined in the very center of the Cluster at the core of the Tangle, every single Stratum within the Cluster is extremely similar, with only the occasional difference making them distinct from one another. This “baseline” of reality that Cluster worlds almost unanimously adhere to is that of a Tier 0 Galactic Technological material world, with the dominant species of the single planet featuring sapient life referring to themselves as ‘Humans’, and their planet ‘Earth’. So-called ‘baseline’ humans have no capacity for any form of Arcanum or Essokineticism, and only a rudimentary species capacity for technological advancement, both due to environmental and species limitations. So similar are the worlds within the Cluster, especially those closest to the very center, that it is very common for multiple copies of the same person to exist on thousands of different worlds, living nearly identical lives. As a matter of fact, there are certain worlds within the centermost heart of the Cluster that scholars still have yet to determine any identifiable uniqueness to them when compared directly with their neighbors. 

However, as one progresses further outside of the Cluster, the differences in worlds begin to slowly diverge from the supposed ‘baseline’ that the core of the Tangle sets as a standard. It begins gradually, with the occasional historical event alteration or splash of supernaturality being trackably present throughout worlds in the outermost parts of the Cluster and innermost parts of the Proximal Ring, but differences begin to become brazenly apparent the farther out one gets from the Cluster. Geography and reality makeup begin to shift, multiple sapient species emerge, and worlds gradually grow to become not just unrecognizable from the baseline, but also completely incomparable to each other, even when neighboring. The farthest from the Cluster that a world self-identifying as ‘Earth’ has been found has been just slightly past the midpoint of the Orbital Ring, and even that world is intensively altered from its counterparts in the Cluster.

The divergences reach a peak at the Outskirts, where most of the disparate worlds present are so utterly removed from what can be comprehended by most peoples, to the point that 99 percent of Outskirt worlds have gone completely undocumented and unobserved. That is, except for the most brazen and foolhardy of Wayfarers, who see fit to flit about the Outskirts in their lawless, adventurous ways. 

It is important to note that not all worlds present within the Tangle feature a form of dominant sapient life. The majority do, as establishable by observance of the Cluster baseline, but dead and barren worlds are not entirely uncommon to come across. Some of these worlds once held sapient life, which has since gone extinct from some threat or other happenstance, whereas some of these worlds cannot be said to have ever evolved intelligent life, or in some cases, life at all. The reason for this is, like most of the secrets behind the Tangle’s origins and makeup, unknown. 

Triplanar Reality

It’s been discovered, mostly through arcane means, that existence as a whole within the Tangle, regardless of Stratum, is defined by three different planes, on which different elements of being can be said to reside. 

The Material Plane is the plane on which physical objects and bodies exist, and the plane that the vast majority of beings are capable of perceiving with their senses.

The Animus Plane is the plane on which the Animus of all beings and things exists, a pale reflection of the Material Plane. In the past, and in other places around the Tangle, there has been the projection that a being’s “mind” and a being’s “soul” are separate aspects of their being, but scholars have discovered the two attributes to actually be one in the same, coming to be referred to as “Animus”. Not much is understood about the Animus Plane, as there are few known Arcane methods to reliably enter or perceive it, but enough natural and arcane concepts coincide with it and interact with it for its existence to be deduced.

The Essential Plane is the third and final plane, and the subject of the most intensive study and query, as not even the most advanced scholars have too good an idea of what this plane actually contains in its entirety. Some have speculated that the Essential Plane contains the “essence” or the “quiddity” of all things, with the reflections of them on the Material Plane and Animus Plane being represented by visualizations of their defining essences on the Essential Plane, hence its name, but as no recorded mortal interaction with the Essential Plane has ever occurred, or at least so the records of the grandest libraries in the Tangle would indicate, all this is simply speculation.

Stratal Deities

Deities are an interesting form of entity that can be found within the Tangle. For the most part, most traditional definitions of what a “deity” is, even backdated cultural ones, tend to be fairly good descriptors of what such entities are. However, this is because it is the very culture, belief, and worship of these entities that caused them to manifest in the first place.

Deities, similar to Substrata, are entities dependent entirely on the belief, cognition, and worship of sapient individuals on the Stratum they are attached to in order to maintain their existence. Cultures and religions begin on their own, through whatever influences they normally do, but once the culture reaches a majority cognition state within the populace of a Stratum (not necessarily to say that over half the population believes in the deity, just that over half know of the concept of the deity at least), a deity at least roughly matching the existing domain, description, and attributes can manifest. Depending on the deity, the deity’s presence can have a drastic impact on the functioning of the reality of the Stratum on which they have manifested, or it can be an almost imperceptible change to nearly all of the individuals on the Stratum.

Notably, Deities are one of the only known entities to not exist on all three planes of reality. Deities, at least in the vast majority of incarnations, only have true presences on the Animus and Essential planes. At times, some deities may choose to either manifest or imbue an Avatar for themselves on the Material Plane, but this is not a true representation of the deity itself, and its destruction will not harm the deity. The only way to kill a deity that is known is either through incredibly intensive magic, the implementation of a handful of legendary artifacts, or to eliminate the existing belief and faith in their existence from their home Stratum. That belief and faith is what sustains a deity’s existence, after all. 

It should also be noted that deities cannot, under any known circumstances, travel to or expand their influence to different Strata unless there are no longer any believers in their existence remaining on their home Stratum, but there are believers in their existence elsewhere in the Tangle. It is possible for an avatar of a deity to traverse the Tangle, but whenever not present on their Stratum of origin, they will be greatly diminished.

Depending on the context of the faith that makes up the deity’s being, the deity usually has some degree of influence over the Stratum on which it manifested, and the people upon it. However, it should be noted that, even though many, if not most, cultures would say differently about their deities, a true deity with any degree of control over Animus, or the afterlife, should there be one, has yet to be recorded.

The Weave and the Waves

It’s often been a point of wonder among scholars exactly how the Tangle maintains its spherical shape in the alignment of the many Strata that construct it. What lies in between the different Strata, while not anything physical or discernibly existing on any of the three planes, has come to be referred to simply as “The Weave”. 

The Weave, when observed by the naked eye, appears as an ever-expanding void of lurid, overlapping and shimmering shades of colour, puffing and entwining like a midway point between a liquid and a gas. Given the fact that this Weave is not touchable by anything physical, it’s unknown if this is the true nature of some form of substance, or if that is just how the mortal cognitive mind chooses to interpret a sight that it was never evolutionarily designed to process. How exactly the Weave holds the Tangle together in the shape it maintains is unknown, as it is also unknown what might exist outside of the Weave itself. The scarce few reports that are ever submitted to scholarly sources by Wayfarers and native Outskirters never mention a discovered “end” or “Edge” to the Weave, the Outskirt Strata are defined as that simply because they lie at the periphery of accessible Strata, not due to proximity to a defined, notable edge to the Weave of the Tangle itself. However, while it isn’t necessarily a space one can enter, this isn’t to say the Weave is utterly inaccessible; in fact, traversing the Weave through its Waves is the only way to travel between Strata, for those who lead such lives.

Waves are a unique phenomenon contained within the Weave itself, perceivable as a gateway randomly connecting to a Stratum in a random place, extending off into the unknowable Weave beyond where sight can perceive. When a Wave touches a Stratum like this, the Weave will bleed into that contained area of that Stratum slightly, creating a gateway, called a Terminus, through which objects and entities can “enter” the Weave. When something does enter the Weave through a Terminus, its entire being dematerializes on the original Stratum, and after a short time of presumably being whisked through the Weave by the Wave, will rematerialize through another Terminus on a different Stratum. Waves and Termini can manifest randomly, and often do, but there have been many technological and arcane methods invented to artificially open these gateways between Strata, and even direct where else in the Tangle they lead. Advanced worlds use Artificial Waves for things like travel, commerce, and communication between one another regularly, and the Waves and Termini used for such commutes are usually standardized, regulated, and highly secured. Despite the interconnectedness of the Tangle as a whole, it’s actually something of a rarity for many people to ever choose to hop between Strata often. However, as ever there are exceptions to general rules, there are Wayfarers to break this mold. 

Stratal Classifications

Due to the diversity of worlds and realities within the Tangle, a series of classification systems combine to more or less categorize Strata by a series of tags, allowing outsiders to form quick conclusions regarding the possibilities and traversability allotted within any given Stratum. The following is a list of the classification systems used writ large, along with the different classifications afforded to different worlds via such systems.

Reality Makeup: 

• Galactic (The Stratum contains a perceivably infinite and ever-expanding network of planets and solar systems, some or all of which may be inhabited/inhabitable)

• Multi-Solar (Featuring more than one solar system, but not unlimited)

• Solar (Featuring one active solar system only)

• Terrestrial (Featuring only one inhabitable material space, which serves as the center of its reality

• Layered (Featuring multiple inhabited material spaces, but all within one cohabitating system),

• Integrated (The Stratum contains within itself multiple systems of other identifiable worlds or Strata, which would be better categorized individually)

Materiality: 

• Material (The dominant plane of the Stratum is unquestionably the material, with the Animus and Essential planes having little to no isolatable impact on reality)

• Mixed (The Animus and/or Essential planes have a small amount of isolatable impact on the Reality that remains primarily defined by the Material)

• Blended (The Animus and/or the Essential Planes have equal bearing on the proceedings and makeup of reality as the Material Plane)

Innate Capability: 

• Lame (The Stratum possesses no native Arcanum or Reality bending capability, and its upper capacity for technology is limited)

• Technological (The Stratum possesses no native Arcanum or Reality Bending capability, but its capacities for Technology are impressive)

• Dabblable (The Stratum possesses some native arcanum or reality bending capability, but it is limited by its native technology)

• Progressable (The Stratum possesses native arcanum and/or reality bending capability, and its capacities for technology are impressive)

• Heightened (The Stratum possesses advanced capacities for technology, arcanum, and reality bending)

Tiered Advancement: 

• Tier 0 (The Stratum does not and will never possess the ability to discover the Tangle with its native capacities)

• Tier 1 (The Stratum can theoretically discover the Tangle with its native capacities, but is meaningful developments away in multiple fields from doing so)

• Tier 2 (The Stratum can theoretically discover the Tangle with its native capacities, and has achieved the level of advancement theoretically required to do so, but has not yet)

• Tier 3 (The Stratum has achieved discovery of the Tangle, but has not fully integrated itself into the interconnectivity of Tangle-enlightened worlds)

• Tier 4 (The Stratum has fully integrated itself into the interconnectivity of Tangle-enlightened worlds)

• Tier 5 (The Stratum has fully integrated itself into the interconnectivity of Tangle-enlightened worlds, and has reached the absolute theoretical apex of its own capabilities in technology, arcanum, and reality bending)

• Tier X (The Stratum was once interconnected with the Tangle, but has since been cut off or destroyed for one reason or another)

Importantly, while standardized, these classifications do not account for the full scale of variability present throughout every Stratum within the Tangle; outliers exist, as no realistic classification system can account for the sheer degree of variability present within the Tangle, especially within the Strata of the Remote Ring and Outskirts, but these systems are sufficient in 99 percent of cases. 

Relative Fictionality

One final sticking point, in terms of the bizarre interconnectivity of Tangle Strata, has arisen upon the advent of fictionalized culture within the many Strata of the Cluster, which boggles the minds of academics. As it happens, there is a strange regularity in the phenomenon of common fictional works present in certain worlds of the Tangle uncannily resembling truthful events, persons, and worlds existent elsewhere in the Tangle. This is not necessarily true for every world, nor every piece of fiction, but the regularity of the phenomenon goes far beyond the possible argument of mere coincidence. 

On average, this phenomenon tends to most commonly manifest as fictional written, auditory, or animated works, though live-action video manifestations of this phenomenon do happen as well. In such instances, it is inconsistent whether or not the truly-existent individuals will physically resemble the actors portraying them in another world’s fictionalized version of their story. It does not appear that distance or proximity between Strata has any effect on this phenomenon’s manifestation.

Multiversal Conventions

Government

Whilst affairs are generally preferred to be left to the governances and legal jurisdictions of individual Strata wherever possible, there is the inevitably occasional cause for greater management in terms of some interstratal affairs. When such a need arises, it is customary for the High Vocationary Parliament of the Tangle to meet and vote on matters. The Parliament is composed of 121 democratically-elected officials, referred to as Speakers, one each from the first 121 Strata within the Tangle to integrate into broader society with one another. 

Speakers are subject to reelection by the citizenry of their home Strata once every eight Cycles, with a term limit for each individual serving Speaker being three terms as a standard, with some exceptions. It is frequent for the elected Speakers to be preexisting political figures, religious icons, or even occasionally deities, as a result of this purely democratic process. As a rule, a minimum of 75 Speakers must be in attendance at any meeting to declare its proceedings valid, and the number of Speakers present must always be odd. Uniquely, while the Speakers themselves can be anyone, the total makeup of the Parliament also has a series of diversity checkboxes that must be met by its company of Speakers in order to become a source of valid governance. If an election period ends, and the elected Speakers in total do not meet the requirements, some reelections are in order. 

These requirements are: At least 50 mortals, 10 immortals, 30 men, 30 women, 20 individuals of nonbinary gender, 10 genderless individuals, 10 transgender individuals of any gender, 40 non-humans, 10 non-humanoids, 5 constructs, 5 convicted criminals, 10 scientists of any type, 10 arcanists of any persuasion, 2 Essokineticists of any degree, 10 humanitarian officers, 20 individuals who have served as Speakers in the past, and 30 individuals who have never served before. Any one Speaker can contribute to any applicable number of these requirements. Depending on the matter being discussed by the Parliament whenever they meet, the number of votes required to pass a motion can be a majority, a two-thirds majority, a nine-tenths majority, or a unanimity.

Tangle Time

Much like all aspects of baseline reality, the relative passage of time between Strata becomes more and more variable depending on the Stratum’s relative distance from the center of the Tangle, with worlds close together within the Cluster experiencing passages of time that are almost perfectly 1:1, to worlds in the Remote Ring and Outskirts being capable of demonstrating passage rates of time anywhere from hundreds of times slower to hundreds of times faster than the Cluster baseline, seemingly at random. Due to such variability, and the general uselessness of the highly relative term ‘year’, Tangle-wide time has come to be measured in ‘Cycles’, which are unilaterally equivalent to the passage of full solar rotation in Enida Xalar, the centermost Stratum of the Tangle. 

It is not uncommon for people to have more than one calendar on hand as a result, one for gauging local time’s passage within their current world of inhabitance, and a second for keeping track of the passage of Cycles throughout the greater Tangle. For those inclined and wealthy enough to afford it, there are both technological and arcane means of synchronizing one’s own aging process to the passage of Cycles rather than whatever given local time one may be subject to, which can often significantly extend the lived time of one’s life. 

The current Cycle is 48726 A.F.E.X. (After the Fall of Enida Xalar)

Beyond the boundaries of established society, however, between Outskirters and Wayfarers and Enigmatic Beings of all sorts, it is much more regular to see a bartering economy come to be, with objects of value being up for trade in exchange for anything from other items, to services, to even such immaterial things as memories or time, depending on what each individual partaking in the transaction views as personally valuable.

Education

Seeing as the interconnection of the enlightened worlds of the Tangle bodes for millions if not billions of students requiring advanced education every year, each coming from all sorts of worlds and walks of life, the business of education enjoys a flourishing profit. It is not uncommon for universities of the higher arts to become the core economical linchpin of the local economies of entire Strata, catapulting the world into wealth and high society due to simple academic association. The most notable such case is the Stratum of Daoclyre, home of the Tangle-renowned Grand Epicentral University of Daoclyre, or Geu Dao informally, though many other such institutions exist in rivalry. These universities often come to feature almost every conceivable discipline in their class loads, with sprawling and wealthy campuses and eventual student bodies that number in the millions, if not more. 

Transportation

Whilst transportation within any given Stratum is left to the conventional, and likely intuitive, mechanisms available therein, interstratal transportation within the Tangle is done almost exclusively through the use of Terminus Stations. Terminus Stations are a regularity within most cities of established and integrated Strata, occupied by porters who are in charge of operations and maintenance of a number of established Terminus entry points, all of which connect in sequence to all other established Terminus stations in all other worlds of the Tangle, with each approximately ten-minute window of time per connection being scheduled rigorously. With an average of five to ten Terminus entries per station, it is generally reasonably achievable to schedule Terminus transport via stations as one might schedule a flight.

For example, when attempting to travel to the city of Ingnish, on an example Stratum called Troth Grein, a traveller would look up their local Terminus station’s schedules, identify that the next cycle for Ingnish would be from 2:13 to 2:20 PM at Gate 2 in two day’s time, and schedule accordingly. Once the day arrived, the traveller would proceed to the Terminus station and pass through security and ID check, and make sure to be standing outside of Gate 2 at least a few minutes before 2:13 to get ahead of some of the line of others also taking that connection, and walk through the Terminus as soon as the connection shifted into place at 2:13, materializing at one of the exit gates in Ingnish’s Terminus station a few moments later. Passes to freely use Terminus stations as such are available to Tangle citizens at a standard of 120 Rult per Cycle.

There are, of course, other means of opening and using Termini other than established Terminus stations, but such means are restricted to those with the appropriate skills and abilities to do so, and are generally established on the gray side of legality, as the High Vocationary Parliament tends to prefer to regulate such things as inter-Stratum travel as much as possible.

Language and Communication

For the most part, it has become commonplace for most people on established and integrated Strata of the Tangle to possess an ORCL Phone, a form of handheld smartphone produced by the ORCL archanotech corporation, whose proprietary technology is one of the only known ways to reliably send messages, signals, and even calls between Strata, no matter how distant the worlds of the sender and receiver may be. Alternatives exist, but they tend to pale in comparison, needing to make pains to imitate and duplicate ORCL’s proprietary arcanotech in often slightly lacking ways. Every ORCL phone is attuned to its owner’s Animus imprint, making theft and misuse unlikely, however, this is a feature that some choose to jailbreak their phones to evade, understandably untrusting of the potential consequences of allowing a piece of little-understood technology to access the imprint date of their Animus itself. 

It is through this connection to the user’s animus, however, that ORCL phones grant access to the Linguosphere Network, the Tangle’s artificial universal translation service. The Linguosphere Network is a painstakingly-maintained Tangle-wide enchantment put in place by a network of tech-magi, which assures that even though the languages of the Tangle are as diverse as its worlds, and far more numerous at that, none who travel between worlds are ever faced with a language barrier to get in the way of diplomacy. When accessing the Linguosphere, all spoken and written language is perceived in the user’s native tongue, and all of the user’s spoken and written language is perceived by others around them as being in their own native tongue, though it is often that this automatic arcane translation results in the occasional bit of odd phrasing, or a bizarre accent in the case of two particularly incompatible languages.

As written, the Linguosphere Network is only supposed to incorporate the languages of established worlds of Tier 3 and above, however, it is not uncommon for language data from undeveloped worlds to also be fed into the network by Wayfarers and those who skirt the law by conducting their business in undeveloped worlds, allowing the Linguosphere to be ahead of the curve whilst having the arrangement be mutually beneficial.

ORCL phones have an indefinite lifespan, and are difficult, but not impossible, to break. First-time purchases are at a lower price for common convenience’s sake, but replacements are well-known to be exorbitantly expensive.

Common Laws and Legal Proceedings

As with governance, it is the general preference throughout the Tangle to leave the matters of crime and punishment to the jurisdictions of the localized Strata and territories therein in which the crimes in question were committed. However, there is the occasional time in which a criminal action is severe or unique enough to warrant the intervention of the Parliament’s authority. In such cases, the Speaker responsible for the section of the Tangle from which the offending individual originates will appoint a pair of judges, one mortal and one divine, to preside over the defendant’s hearing, and a random other Speaker will be responsible for appointing the party of the opposition, most notably including the plaintiff for the case, who may be any individual they choose. A jury will also be present, comprised of thirteen individuals - three chosen by the defendant, three by the plaintiff, and the remaining seven appointed at random from the populations of Strata affected by the crimes in question. 

It is this jury’s responsibility to determine guilt or innocence for the charges, and the responsibility of the judges to preside over the court proceedings and apply punishment as necessary in the case of a guilty verdict. Uniquely, the judges in such cases are given free reign to devise any manner of punishment that they deem appropriate, so long as both appointed judges agree on the warranted nature of the punishment in question.

It is extremely rare that such a case of trial is ever necessary, however - with the exception of egregious crimes against the Tangle itself, which are an extreme rarity given their sheer severity, the most common crime that could possibly even fall into such a court’s primary jurisdiction would be the crime of interfering in the affairs of undeveloped worlds. However, due to its very nature, that is an extremely difficult offense to effectively police, and it is at this point a rather open secret that the agents of the Wayfarer’s Guild do this regularly with effective impunity, meaning that the affair tends to fall below the notice of the Parliament anyway.

Strata & Settings

The Tangle is home to an uncountable millions of worlds, many of which have their own substrata and nuances to them that further complicate and variegate the field of possibility within the Tangle as a setting. Whilst almost anything is theoretically possible within the Tangle as a whole, when viewing the setting from a top-down and all-encompassing perspective, the landscape presented may actually be simpler to comprehend than might be expected. Of all the worlds in the Tangle, fewer than one percent of them are ever expected to be natively capable of discovering the Tangle on their own, meaning that they will never develop and integrate into Tangle politics and connectivity writ large. As such, the so-called ‘connected’ worlds of the Tangle end up being a marked minority of the total worlds present within it, meaning that keeping a thumb on the scales is indeed possible, at least when given a few guiding landmark Strata that serve as cultural meccas and linchpins to the Tangle’s connective society.

Notable Strata Examples (will be updated progressively in future, as needed)

Daoclyre

Classification: Tier 5 Terrestrial Heightened-Mixed

Layer: Orbital Ring

Description: Academic and arcane mecca world, culturally and economically dominated by the Grand Epicentral University of Daoclyre, the Tangle’s most prestigious interstratal university, the campus of which covers nearly a fifth of the world’s total land mass.

Inbrailan

Classification: Tier 4 Solar Mixed-Progressable

Layer: Remote Ring

Description: A world with no natural life of its own, which was co-opted and inhabited first by outcasts and adventurers setting up communes, the remains of which now dot the desert landscape. While mostly uninhabitable, the parts of it that are hospitable to life have grown into a society of hardy, ingenuous folk disinterested in life closer to the established ‘connected society’ of the Tangle. Also the location of the Wayfarer’s Guild home base.

Reality Marbles & Pocket Worlds

Reality Marbles and Pocket Worlds, two terms for the same concepts at different scales, are small dots of empty potentiality dotted around the weave of the Tangle, separate but often adjacent or connected to existing Strata. There is nothing in these small pockets but empty void and potentiality, indicating that they are simply leftover raw space and material from whatever messy natural processes must have resulted in the creation of the many worlds and structure of the Tangle itself. However, given an adequately skilled Deity, Arcanist, or Reality Bender, such spaces can be made use of, with such individuals often creating their own bespoke worlds or living spaces within these pockets of potentiality. 

As could likely be expected from such a tantalizing and freely-available resource, these spaces were quick to be labeled as property and bought up, and are now frequently leased out to the individuals that can make use of them, much like how one might rent an apartment or flat. They’re remarkably expensive, and quite the ordeal to set up, oftentimes, but to the sort of person who is looking to set up their life in a private realm all their own, created and curated to their exact design and specifications, these are hardly enormous concerns.

Worlds Die, Worlds are Born

Given the fact that world-scale events are happening every day, in millions of different worlds throughout the Tangle, it only makes sense that some worlds would eventually die out, whether upon being faced with threats they could not weather, or through internal strife tearing these worlds apart from within. Thankfully, this is not an indicator of absolute finality of all worlds of the Tangle being an inevitability - curiously, the Tangle has been known to naturally spawn new worlds whenever provided the raw material needed to do so. 

In the case of a world being so utterly unmade by its own apocalypse that it collapses back into void and potentiality entirely, no action from outside forces is required, and the Tangle will eventually coalesce this world-scale void back into a fresh Stratum, beginning a new history that may or may not resemble the previously-existent world in any way. In other circumstances, though, when a world that ends is left barren and lifeless, but still existent, the High Vocationary Parliament of the Tangle may make the decision to employ a talented essokineticist to manually collapse what remains of the world, so as to allow the natural forces of the Tangle to have their way.

Some have attempted to influence the nature and structure of fresh worlds being manifested by the Tangle in this way, through a variety of means, though no success to this end has been definitively identified, with perceivably semi-successful attempts at determinism often being mostly attributable to coincidence.

Technology, Arcana, and Essokineticism

“Magic”, as it were

Given the diversity and often wild incompatibility of the forms of supernaturality present throughout the Tangle, most enlightened individuals tend to come to view ‘Magic’ as a… generally unhelpful bubble term that the undereducated or over-fanciful tend to use to simply describe anything that is accomplished with more than the sole application of technology and physics. 

Despite this variability, most scholars tend to find it most helpful to separate the grand bubble of ‘magic’ into two… slightly less unhelpful and much more specifically tailored groups of supernaturality: Arcana, and Essokineticism (or Reality Bending, casually).  Whilst both of these groups contain within them countless different and varied disciplines, with different methodologies and effects diverse enough to make any attempt at rigorous categorization futile, they are at least all subject to the single litmus test that comes to determine which of the two categories each subdiscipline is sorted into: The Arcane Arts are practices in which, in observance of the natural laws of reality, one introduces new and complimentary laws and rules in targeted ways, so as to produce and intended effect. Conversely, arts of Reality Bending involve the practice of breaking the established rules of reality entirely, so as to produce an intended effect. 

Whilst it is true that many forms of Arcana and Essokineticism can end up producing comparable results, their classifications are more about the means required to achieve the ends, rather than the resultant ends themselves.

Arcana and its Forms

Significantly more common and widespread throughout the Tangle than its counterpart domain, Arcana is the creation and impression of one’s own will upon the world around them, in observance of the preexisting natural laws of reality. Nearly every Stratum throughout the Tangle with any capacity for the Arcane will end up with an entirely different system, and thus practice, of Arcana. Sometimes, the practice of the Arcane requires material components to use as tribute or as material for transmutation. Sometimes, it requires incantations or meditations to channel energy towards the completion of a spell. Sometimes, all that is truly required is willpower and energy. 

The rules of Arcana are just as varied as the many worlds in which Arcane Arts appear, and it is frequently observed that very few Arcane Arts tend to serve as transferable skills between one another. Sometimes, an Arcane Art will be entirely locked to the dominant species of the world in which it spawned, as that dominant species may be the only species in the Tangle that are naturally born with the required internal reservoirs, bodily circuits, or spiritual attunements required to perform it.

What is interesting, however, is that all forms of Arcana tend to have a varied potency depending on which Stratum the Arcana is being performed on. Arcane Arts are always at their most potent when performed on the Stratum from which they originate, or in the rare circumstances where the same art is native to more than one world, any of its progenitor worlds will do. Whenever performed whilst physically present in a Stratum that an Arcane Art is not native to, the intended effects will still occur, but they will be noticeably diminished, such as a spell that would normally allow the user to breathe underwater indefinitely now only allowing them to do so for a short while before fading, or a bit of alchemy that would turn lead into gold now requiring a significantly higher amount of energy expended to produce the change. More so, whenever any form of Arcana is performed on a Stratum with no native form of Arcana whatsoever, the Arcane Art being practiced will be greatly diminished in effect, even more so than when performed on a Stratum with an incompatible, but still present, native form of Arcanum.

Essokineticism/Reality Bending

Reality Bending is the practice of breaking the rules of reality around you, such as the boundaries of physics, logic, and possibility, in order to produce a result. Unlike with its counterpart in Arcanum, Reality Bending and its practices are significantly rarer, and almost entirely unstandardized. Whilst most forms of Arcanum can be learned and trained for like a skill, Reality Bending is almost unilaterally an anomalous trait in individuals who possess it. Such individuals are certainly capable of improving their skills and abilities at their craft, but unless someone is already a Reality Bender, in most cases, it is completely impossible by all conventional methods to become one. Very little is known in any Stratum as to how or why certain individuals manifest the capacity to bend the reality around them to their wills, and the extents and limitations of such individuals’ capabilities tend to vary. However, it is undeniable that this phenomenon is Stratum-based, rather than universal to the Tangle’s gestalt reality itself, based on the fact that some worlds undeniably manifest reality benders at higher rates than others, whilst many other worlds have yet to manifest any form of Essokineticism or wielders thereof in any way.

Due to the sheer nature of Reality Bending, it is extremely difficult to definitively determine a limit to what essokineticists are theoretically capable of, with the more powerful Reality Benders often being more or less restrained by their own imaginations alone, frequently resulting in such individuals rising to degrees of problematic power both within and outside of their worlds of origin, and needing to be dealt with by the relevant authorities. It is also common for inexperienced Reality Benders to not be in full control of their own abilities, and to change the reality around them in subconscious and accidental ways, which can be highly problematic in its own way.

Inversely to Arcanum, which is dulled in its impact whenever performed on a Stratum that it is not native to, Essokineticism has been observed to be markedly easier to perform within worlds that have not been known to natively manifest Reality Benders from their own populations. This has caused some scholars of the subject to liken the influence of Essokineticism on worlds that produce it natively and worlds that do not as comparable to the reactions of vaccinated and unvaccinated bodies to foreign contagions.

Technology, its Prevalence, and its Applicability

Whilst not every Stratum world within the Tangle will natively harbour some form of Arcana, or naturally produce any amount of Essokineticism, at the very least, all Strata are universally capable of the progression of technology, the only art of species advancement that relies solely and entirely on the presented reality’s rules being hard and fast. 

Unlike the limitations of Arcana and Essokineticism, the extents of which are often arbitrarily estimated and occasionally in need of academic reassessment, a given world’s theoretical peak of technological advancement is often quite easily predictable via observance of the amount and variability of natural resources present within the world. Wood, copper, nitrogen, carapace, these are all raw materials that serve as barriers for entry to fields and expansions of technology that will render themselves simply inaccessible to any worlds that do not feature such natural resources natively. 

In some cases, given worlds with abundant and varied natural resources, it is regular for Strata to advance their technologies to extents that would seem to mimic some of the possible effects of the Arcana and Essokineticism that their worlds may lack naturally. However, the considered peak of possible advancement for mortal beings within the Tangle is considered impossible without the possession and co-application of both technology and magic, a combination that many worlds throughout the Tangle are unfortunately naturally incapable of. 

Oddities and Unexplainables

As with all things in the Tangle, there are always edge cases and exceptions now and again that defy all reasonable attempts to rationally categorize anything at a Tangle-wide scale. Whilst extremely rare, it is not completely unheard of for a Stratum within the Tangle, usually an Outskirt Stratum, to manifest a form of species advancement that is not technological, nor definably Arcane or Essokinetic in nature. Given the rarity of such cases, and the fact that such cases are so rare and so far removed from general interconnected Tangle society as a whole, no real attempts to further categorize such manifestations have been made. Some choose to seek these arts out, in the hopes of study or the accumulation of personal power. Most, though, prefer to go about their lives pretending that there is nothing in the Tangle that exists that nobody can explain.

People of the Tangle

Sapient life and peoples come in many forms in the Tangle, with each Stratum developing its own kinds of unique races given their differing environments. However, there is some consistency in the general anatomy of most sapient and dominant races throughout the Tangle, at least on average: one head above a broadly simian torso, arms to the side connected at shoulders, and legs below a pelvis, standing upright with a generally straight spinal structure. This is the standard structure of what could be considered the ‘Baseline Human’, as shown in the race of Humanity present throughout the Strata of the Cluster, but nearly every form of sapient life throughout the Tangle is at least comparable to this model. 

Whilst many surface-level and deeper differences are noteworthy, somehow, unexplainably, it seems as though the vast majority of sapient races of the Tangle are visually discernible as being of the same genus of entity, despite evolving on entirely different and separated worlds. This baffles arcanically and technologically trained minds alike. At the very least, while it is certainly far from the point where many species could be mistaken for belonging to a different race than their own, such similarities does make diplomacy and friendship between Strata more possible in the instances when it is established.

It is important to note, however, that due to the variability of worlds and the species thereon, it is not unheard of for a sapient species in one world to be extremely comparable, if not identical, to a distinctly non-sapient species present on another. Most people who deign to travel between Strata are generally well-served by brushing up on the species makeup of wherever they’re heading as a result, lest they make the mistake of attempting to strike up conversation with a Minotaur or Lizardkin whose cognitive facets may happen to be much more monstrous than their counterparts in other worlds. Stereotypes and prejudices borne from these comparisons and similarities are inevitable, but enlightened society at the least socially tries its best to not allow such issues to be legally consequential. Tries, very much being the operative word.

Staple Species

Whilst every world of the Tangle, especially those beyond the Cluster, has the chance to bear one or several of its own wholly unique forms of sapient life, there are a few “staple species” that have a tendency to follow along with certain other manifestations within Strata. This is not necessarily an entirely consistent guide, nor are these species of people necessarily called by their most common name in every Strata in which they come to be, but they are at least more or less reliable sights and touchpoints for Wayfarers and travelers to keep track of.

Humans: Existent in some form or another in nearly 90 percent of all identified and catalogued Strata in the Tangle, though some small biological or essential differences may apply.

Dreams: Tend to be present as sapient entities whenever The Dreaming, or some identifiable variant of it, manifests as a Layer Realm within a Stratum.

The Fey: Tend to be present whenever Fairy or some identifiable variant of it manifests as a Layer Realm or Substratum within a Stratum.

Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Halflings: Tend to be present in most high-arcanum, low-technology worlds that experience an iron age, for unknown reasons. 

Androids: Technological worlds tend to unilaterally invent artificial lifeforms at some point in their progressions, presuming their worlds do not end themselves for some reason before their technologies progress that far. Names, original intended purposes, and arcane additions to these lifeforms vary. 

Demons: A very broad term for innately evil or chaotic beings, varyingly viewed as anything from pests to the scourges of their native Strata, depending on the cultures of the other native species. These beings, and their origins, general alignments, and functions, vary wildly.

Coalescent Beings

Reality has proven to be a very difficult thing to break. Any essokineticist will be able to attest to the world around them shifting and adapting to any warping or bending they create, even in ways that they themselves don’t understand and certainly aren’t in control of. Any time traveler, in such Strata where such a thing is possible, can attest that the flow of time, even when interrupted, will endlessly repair and readjust itself to account for any alterations or damage. It is a clearly evident fact of reality within the Tangle that paradoxes are accounted for and adjusted for accordingly. One such paradox, evidently, is the potential coexistence of more than one of the same person existing on the same Stratum at the same time. The way that the Tangle’s reality adjusts to counteract this possibility is with the creation of Coalescent beings. 

A single individual existing on multiple Strata at once is something quite excessively rare outside of the Cluster, where sheer divergence of baseline reality makes it highly unlikely for the exact circumstances of any birth to recur across more than one Stratum and timeline. However, within the Cluster, where worlds are significantly more similar, it is very possible, and even regular, for a person to come to exist in more than one world. Normally, these multiple versions of the same individual simply live out their lives on their own worlds and die there, completely unaware of the existence of other worlds and other versions of one another, and definitively as separate beings, despite being the same person in all ways that matter. This changes, however, upon the chance of any single copy of a person becoming exposed to the raw Weave of the Tangle, most commonly through accessing a Terminus for the first time. 

The instant a person first makes contact with the Weave, a peculiar thing happens to them: every single version of that person who currently exists on any other Stratum of the Tangle is abruptly plucked out of their realities and merged together with the version of them who was exposed, creating a Coalescent - one gestalt version of the person, who had once existed in multiple iterations across the Tangle, but who now only exists singularly. The Coalescent version of the individual retains all knowledge, memory, and skills from all of the versions of themselves who were merged to create their Coalescent form, including versions of themselves who were deceased previously to the merging. 

Depending on the situation, and the numerosity of the versions that combine together to create the Coalescent, the resultant individual may be either extremely similar or markedly different to the version of themselves who first was exposed to the Weave in order to trigger the convergence. In the case of versions of themselves of different species, sex, or gender, these aspects will often merge and average themselves out in the final Coalescent individual, occasionally causing Coalescent beings to come out as wholly unique species in their own right, given the case of a broad species diversity in their pre-coalescence selves. 

Fascinatingly, if more than one version of the individual possessed an amount of skill in the same field before their Coalescence, it is common for the two degrees of skill and proficiency to add together cumulatively, instead of the Coalescent simply adopting the skill level of whichever of their combined parts happened to be the most skilled in that field. This results in Coalescents often ending up leading their fields, and being highly sought after as athletes, scientists, and arcanists. 

In some cases, the realities of the Strata their component selves were ripped away from will adjust for their absence, and the worlds they came from will adjust themselves to proceed as though the lost version of the new Coalescent never existed. This is the extreme minority case, as in most Strata, the person will simply have gone missing without a trace, only ever to be seen again if the Coalescent version of them sees fit to visit - often for a ‘goodbye tour’, as has become customary amongst Coalescents.

Interstratal Organizations of Note (will be updated progressively in future as needed)

The Wayfarer's Guild: A guild and union of world-hopping adventurers and explorers of various persuasions throughout the Tangle. Initially constructed in a desperate bid to regulate the escapades and reach of individuals fickle enough to lead the life of Wayfaring, the Wayfarers’ Guild leadership has since developed into a much more defensive body, serving far more often to defend its certified members in official and legal capacities when they do break a written regulation, rather than discouraging and punishing such indiscretions within itself.

Outskirters' Magazine: A raunchy publication, popular among the integrated Outskirts and Remote Ring worlds, using the eccentricity of its castings as its selling point.

It’s Playboy, basically, but for magic world-hoppers, featuring magic world-hoppers.