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Postfest V: The Supreme Enemy of Orders |
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| Posted on Tue, July 12, 2005 by Dongul |
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Tzelios writes "I invite you to read about the supreme enemy of all forms of orders and coordinated action, like guilds, societies, knighthoods, or even individual coordinated action towards perfection.
The Supreme Enemy of Orders
By: Stylianos Scarlatos, aka Tzelios
Used with Permission. Do not repost without obtaining prior permission from the author.
Introductory Note (Letter to the Father of Obedience)
My Oppressive and Still Master,
Let your empire grow ever larger and stable.
Upon your request, following you will find my investigations on the dynamics of everything on the Lord of Stasis. To collect evidence I had to walk the paths of espionage, infiltration, and monastic study. I had to seek the evidence in places as diverse as the scholarly circles of the north, Kelos, beyond the Crystalmists, and the partially absorbed and technologically advanced world I revisited through the web of Lolth. Throughout the research, Yragerne material was the most informative. From Lolth´s web I deliver unavoidable science, and from Kelos essential etymologies on the matter. Moreover, I had to adopt the clarifying language of the Murlynd volumes. The outcome seems occult, but it is of pure reason.
It is important to not be fooled by the views of prominent sages like the redoubtable Pluffet Smedger who find polytheism convenient. The poor savants may lack the necessary epistemic basis, almost totally absent on Flanaess. The present treatise does not threaten polytheism. Rather, it identifies the outmost being, the overgod of all gods. By its definition Master Entropy effects the appropriate inertia on seekers when they pursue his existence, so that they believe that they reasonably deny him. Thus another name of him, Lord of Inertia.
Largely based on Zagig´s theosophical studies on the four human characteristics that bring Tharizdun closer (greed, lust, pathos, and sympathy), my suggestions will be fathomed by Your Unmistakable Prominence. If you want your plans to be safe from the Supreme Enemy of Orders, you must accept the truth behind Entropy and its relation to the One Who Shall Not Be Named. Your understandings shall supersede your competitors.
Yours inferiorly,
Brother Scarlator
Master of the West Wind
Preliminaries on Entropy (Zagig´s Theosophical Studies)
Perspective readers of the Gord novels with a natural sciences background should have realized that Master Entropy is no more than the deification of the physical quality of entropy. In order to use Entropy for game play against the orders, it is necessary to understand what entropy stands for in physics, as well as other etymological investigations that provide further insight.
Think of a warm hut on a cold mountain. The hut is warm due to a fireplace. Once the fire is over, inside the hut, time passing, will become the same temperature as its surroundings at the fastest rate. This is effected by the workings of Master Entropy. The initial order and inhomogeneity (two different temperatures that can be ordered mentally) will become disorder and homogeneity (one temperature, no discernible order) irreversibly. Any innovative action that increases order will be to no avail. For example, if you open a window to increase order in the flow of temperature the hut will acquire the same temperature with its surroundings even faster. Otherwise, if you put more wood in the fire, you will slow down the entropy effect inside the hut. However, once you believe you are winning Entropy, in reality you speed up the total victory of the Lord of Inertia. The more wood you use to maintain your personal victory, to sustain order and inhomogeneity, the more you increase disorder (the word not to be confused with chaos as the antithesis of law) and homogeneity outside your hut. You will need to cut more trees, and less trees is less order. On the overall, Entropy (en tropy meaning in(trinsic) change) is the winner. The intrinsic spontaneous change to equilibrium will occur at the fastest possible rate, given the constraints (say, closed windows in our hut example).
Then, life, one could claim, is paradoxical to Entropy, since a born child for example increases order (the word not to be confused with law as the antithesis of chaos). Thus the name encountered of the being occasionally, Master of Devolution. Alas, evolution also functions for the aid of Master Entropy. While the being is indeed of devolution, any evolution benefits the entity similarly. Life increases order, but only locally in temporal and spatial space. New life to support herself will need to consume more order than the order introduced by her. Hence, Lady Tolerance spawns new possibilities, e.g. life, but these are subject to inertia brought by Entropy, and benefit Entropy in the long term.
The above truths pervade all, not just physics and evolution, but perception and learning as well. Hence Entropy is all, me, you, St. Cuthbert, the fireplace, the whole multiverse. The being is omnipotent and omnipresent, and we are parts of its body. Now, imagine a borderless plane where there is absolutely nothing in it. This is the ideal homogeneous and lack of order state of maximal entropy that we may call the null space (see section Iggwilv’s Null Space). Thus another name for Master Entropy, the All and Nothing being.
Once we have shown that Entropy is the cosmos, this paragraph will prove that Entropy is indeed a god. We need to do this to refute Pluffet Smedger and his ilk. This is achieved by the fact that the cosmos is god, per the etymology of the word. The word has undergone through the ages the transformations from theos to deus, and then to god. Theos is the object of the activity to theaomai, which means to watch, observe, or investigate, usually with admiration (the subject is the man). But the object of any investigation is also the cosmos. So, cosmos is theos equals god, which proves Zagig´s claim that Entropy is god. Then, theaomai is a passive verb, which indicates the way Entropy should be approached, viz. with respect and not so energetically, ideally via monasticism.
And now it is time for the interesting part. Animals are more evolved than slimes, and the man more evolved than animals. While animally intelligent beings do indeed consume order more efficiently than less evolved life forms, Beory is near equilibrium when only animals and lesser forms of life inhabit her. Time works in favor of Entropy as always, slowly though in this case. Even more efficient in order consuming than the animals are intelligent life forms, because they are more evolved than the animals (remember that even though the entity is of devolution, more evolution better aids it). When such evolved life forms increase in numbers the process of order elimination is further faster. When these increased in numbers intelligent life forms are partly greedy or lustful, Beory is far from equilibrium. Soon, resources shrink and species extinct, due to ultra fast order elimination. A part of the diminished resources will fuel greed and lust, and not instinctive survival. Both greed and lust pathoi, like all pathoi, are transferred to others through sympathy, and even more efficient order elimination is attained. Therefore, the correctness of the Mad Mayor’s theosophical studies. Soon comes Tharizdun, who restores All to Nothing.
Game use of Master Entropy
The enigmatic being has slipped the attention of priesthoods and savants so far, besides his numerous per Savant Sage interventions. Few are the entities that may know some detail of Entropy. Prominent members of the Cabal of Balance erroneously consider Tharizdun to be the most powerful figure in the multiverse, Master of Nothingness and All being the second one. These few would advice that the being is not to be trusted.
The being speaks in slow, icy, and emotionless voice, sometimes monotonous or as if rhyming to a slow rhythm. He is invisible to anyone, because he is formless. Nothing but reason can identify its presence.
The being is readily mistaken to be of ultimate chaos. In reality it is pure neutral. He may be the head of the Cabal of Balance. It will benefit from order introduced by Tolerance or instigated by him if necessary. He will cherish chaos and rest in it, until randomness is consumed.
Life, innovation, evolution, and evil, all plunder entropy but locally in spatial and temporal space, since each unholy word and means employed hastens Entropy’s rule faster than this would have been realized in silence. Those who deny his victory mistakenly think they are succeeding in their own plans.
Entropy is the denial of any activity. Therefore, in order for the PCs to succeed optimally they should rely on monasticism, the closest activity to the definitions of Master Entropy. The achievements of monasticism can easily be evaluated in the battlefield, when monastic practice is combined with martial arts. Entropy is the antithesis of economic and political power, but harmonious to the somatic and mental fulfillments of monasticism.
He is nothingness and everything in their proper states. The proper state of nothingness is the null space. The proper state of everything is interesting to ponder. The evolutionary leap of the birth of logic (tightly related to logos which means language) imbues a responsibility for those who master it. When logos is used as it should, i.e. to investigate truth through logic per the etymology of the word, as opposed to rhetoric and grammar, it leads to the appropriation of Entropy. Such process leads to the more balanced action of the logical beings, according to the nature of the body of Entropy they live inside. Rhetoric serves to the sustenance or increase of power by the politicians, and this astray from Entropy. Grammar is used for the everyday communication that may serve the increase of sympathetic links among its users, which favors the advent of the tool Tharizdun.
He may assist by providing knowledge, but this would drain part of his force, since this defies all he stands for. The receiver of this knowledge gains class levels, while Entropy is weakened. However, he may lie blatantly to the liars. Such a lie may be uncovered only by solid reasoning, which is absent in those that live in realities far from the proper state. When he works counter to his own definitions he brings nothingness forward by billions of years. Entropy may rest on a focal place or person; then aging effects occur until the annihilation of anything it rests, and class levels are gained more easily for those outside the focal place.
Entropy may insinuate lethargy to people. Finally, he may hide a character in his secret realm, i.e. Iggwilv’s Null Space.
Iggwilv’ Null Space (Alteration)
Level: 10
Components: V
Range: 0 rounds
Casting Time: 27 segments
Duration: 27 rounds
Saving Throw: None
Area of Effect: 9 creatures + 18 spectators
In the beginning, prior to the existence of time and space, was Iggwilv’s Null Space. Of course, the crone is not the creator of the null space; she is the creator of the spell. The spell functions like the spell rope trick, but protection is against any creature or any god (save Master Entropy). Visitors perceive the non-place as shape without form, illumination without light, existing in timelessness. Inside it there exist no directions, places or discernible order. The spell enables the caster to tailor the place for up to eight more occupants, capable to communicate with each other, plus spectators, unable to decipher conversations. The spectators can only be summoned by the occupants to appear, but they can be of no real use. Master Entropy, a.k.a. All and Nothing, with his aspect of nothingness, is the sole and absolute ruler of the realm. No act of aggression is allowed to occur in the Null Space, as it will collapse at the second combat round, nullifying all occupants.
If an Iggwilv´s Null Space is cast inside the null space, a new world is created balanced around the alignments of the occupants. Give the characters who figured such an novelty the opportunity to develop his or her own world.
References
- Chaos and Complexity Related Computations: lecture, by Ioannis Antoniou (student of the Nobelist Ilya Prigogine)
- E. Gary Gygax; personal communication
- Come Endless Darkness: by E. Gary Gygax
- Sea of Death: by E. Gary Gygax
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Average Score: 4.5
Votes: 12
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Re: The Supreme Enemy of Orders (Score: 1)
by mortellan on Sat, July 16, 2005
(User Info | Send a Message) | wow. That was the just the type of mind twisting metaphysics I'd expect from you! :D
I also like the Iggwilv name spell. It props up her mythic power all the more. |
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Re: The Supreme Enemy of Orders (Score: 1)
by Argon on Thu, July 21, 2005
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Great right up but I think I know why their is no order because the more order you tend to acheive the more disorder occurs. Therefore Entrophy is inevitable. See I can understand you. |
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