Soma
Purusha's not only a great friend of mine, he's also an
accomplished planewalker. We've never met face to face,
but I've received many letters from him as he travels
from planar burg to planar burg. Anyhow, you ain't
interested in me, you want to learn philosophy, right?
Well, Purusha's got a slant, that's for sure.
Soma
Purusha's had more than one brush with dubious moral
activities -- I'm sure he won't mind me telling you that
much. Doubtless you have too. But have you ever stopped
to consider the emotions that've been generated when
you're doing whatever it is you're doing? The adrenalin
thrill when you nick something and get away with it. The
buzz of the dark when you bob a cony. The
self-satisfaction when you give a quipper your last
green. But you never gave it another thought,
right?
Well,
think of it like Soma does: If you get that emotional
burst when you're living your -- lets' be honest --
insignificant life, imagine what the Planes must feel
like. Yeah, you heard me. Just think about it: An
infinite expanse which embodies an emotion, action or
moral duty. Stop for a second and try to imagine the
boundless buzz of emotions which could be running through
the planes like rats through the Hive Ward. Beggars
belief, don't it.
I
have to say "could be", of course, because some of the
planes sure don't look like they're alive.
Appearances can be deceiving, reckons Soma -- the planes
are more sentient than they let on. Like great beasties
they huddle together in the Void, feeding on belief and
swapping stories of ideas with their neighbours. 'Course,
these infinite creatures only sit next to the ones they
get along with best -- hence the order of the Great
Ring...
Notice,
cutters, that even Limbo remains in the same place. Now
think: If it really were the Plane of Chaos, would it
remain in the same place? Unlikely. As it is, the only
two infinite creatures which'll put up with it next to
them are 'Ysgard' and 'Pandemonium', so that's where it
stays.
"How
do the Layers fit in then, Voilà!?" I hear you
ask. Well, bashers, Soma's a little cagey on that one.
Perhaps they're aspects of the Infinite Creatures'
personalities, or maybe they're groups of beasts rather
than single ones. At least that's explain how layers can
shift around. Picture sites and burgs on the planes as
their possessions -- they can be handed about (when a
so-called Planar Conjunction Occurs), or get lost
altogether. When the creatures communicate with one
another, portals are opened and close -- planewalkers
make use of these threads of thought by stepping into one
and out the next!
And
the Lady of Pain? Well, she'd be the Lion Tamer, perhaps,
keeping these beasties in line, or maybe they've chased
her up the Spire. When you're speculating as much as Soma
is, it don't really matter. It's the thought that
counts.
But
I digress (and by rather a lot, too!) While I don't go as
far as Soma on the "planes are alive" front, I'm keen on
his idea of emotions pulsing through the planes. These
are probably created by actions and thoughts of
inhabitants of the planes, as well as belief drawn from
the Primes...So all the malicious thoughts of cruelty and
hurt get funnelled into the Abyss (by some mechanism best
left imagined!) and gather there.
If
you've ever seen a mixture of liquids, say lamp oil and
water, you'll understand this next bit. Strange as it may
seem, they simply won't mix. They're the same state
(liquid), but different "phases". Shake 'em up and they
churn around, but they'll separate out again. Same with a
box of rocks, in fact...shake them up and the big ones
rise to the top and the small ones go to the bottom
(shows that gravity don't always make sense too,
that!).
Now
I reckon the Outer Planes are a little like that. Each is
made of morals and ethics that are broadly similar, but
subtly different. It's the broadness that separates plane
from plane, but it's the subtlety that makes one layer
above the next. On Baator, for instance, it's no accident
that the most heinously evil layers have sunk to the
bottom, to make Nessus. "Evil's a heavy weight to bear",
as they say. Similarly, the goodest of the good on Mount
Celestia has risen to the top to form Chronias. All over
the planes you can see this principle -- the most pure of
any belief rises or sinks to the place it
belongs.
By
this token, a shift in the distribution of morals on a
plane could cause the layers to bob like corks. Perhaps
if the Lord or Lady or Baator (a blood learns to keep his
options open) built a new palace on Caina, the icy layer
and Nessus'd swap around. Who knows?
"What
of one-layer planes?" You ask...Mechanus simply mixes
better than the rest. Limbo couldn't get much more mixed
up than it it -- in fact, it looks almost as if someone's
shaking it up right now. They say there used to be five
layers; maybe they'll return if the shaking stops? Even
the Outlands is organised in rings. The most neutral of
the neutral floats towards the Spire. Look where the
rilmani ended up, after all.
'Course,
none of this neatly explains the Lady of Pain, does it?
Funny that...
