Into the Fold

Into the Fold

Lucrezia Sague, University of Gwylim Press, 3E 409

Centers of the arcane arts are often built in exceptional locations, leveraging the expertise of their faculty in their very construction. The Imperial Battlespire, a spike of marble and spellcraft piercing the Void itself, was the best known of these. Though its makers created an unparalleled feat of arcane engineering, the design of the Battlespire ultimately rendered it vulnerable to the very dangers that caused its tragic breach and ultimate loss.

Unlike its infamous counterpart, Gwylim was constructed entirely within our mortal plane, though one cannot see it with the naked eye -- or indeed, with any instruments of any complexity. Gwylim, and the space it borrows from the world, exist in a kind of "pocket", entirely concealed to all observers. Visualizing this phenomenon can be difficult for the inexperienced, even those accustomed to study of the Great Mysteries. How, indeed, did Gwylim's "pocket" of Mundus come to be?

Imagine a simple substrate, like a piece of paper; perhaps this very page. Paper can fold, of course. If one were to crease a corner of this page, one would observe just a such a fold. Now, imagine a tiny traveler wandering across the surface of the page. Our intrepid wanderer would perceive the world bending up and then down, or left and then right, or the other ways around, perhaps not even realizing such a change in their heading. One could even, with skill, create an animal figurine, or a model building, or a pouch. What, then, would the miniature traveler see while roaming over the multitudinous edges and shapes?

Of course, reality is not paper. Warping of the very fabric of reality requires powers of an order far above such trivialities. But the principles, the fundamental forces at play across the surface of these very broad and small realities -- these are the same. A paper page is but a trifle in the scope of the Grand Design, but it is nevertheless a part of that Design. The principle that permits the manipulation of paper implies a principle that permits the manipulation of greater substrates, by greater powers, at greater scale.

Long lifetimes of study have revealed to us only a fraction of the infinity of shapes -- the infinity of Principles -- that govern the world we inhabit. While we remain blind to the method of their shaping, we live our lives in their creases.

Gwylim was built into an adjacent fold of our world, discovered in ancient times by talented mystics. It is a work that eludes understanding and frustrates our best efforts at replication, but its very existence demonstrates the scale of our ignorance. How many other such "pockets" exist beyond our sight? What treasures might they conceal? What horrors? We cannot know.