Metaphysics of the Aether

After the Confluence, nature and its laws seemed to have been so deeply altered as to become unrecognizable. In a world overturned from top to bottom, humankind searched for answers, for meaning, for a new framework through which to understand reality. Thus metaphysics, one of the four major branches of philosophy, came to hold a preeminent place within the discipline. Studying the fundamental nature of reality had become a necessity, a safeguard against madness. As Aristotle had said millennia before the cataclysm, it was first philosophy, preceding epistemology, logic, or even ethics. From this necessity arose several generations of thinkers, the most emblematic of whom left a lasting mark on the history of Asgartha.

Aurica - 3 AC/82 AC

Though the Oneiroi had long granted the Tumult Nomads the capacity for Alteration, it was Aurica who first codified its workings by studying this empirical knowledge. Describing herself as an heir to Plato and Aristotle, Aurica developed a theory seeking to reconcile the former’s Theory of Forms with the latter’s hylomorphism. Reusing existing terms — Aether, Quintessence, Empyrean — she constructed her system of thought, ultimately defining the structure of the world as we know it today, even if doing so required her to distort the original meanings of some of those words. “The quiddity of a thing arises from the meeting of Aether and Quintessence, and it is through the mind that they are bound,” she wrote in her memoirs. Aurica’s influence can be found in every metaphysician who followed her. Even today, her thought remains the keystone of our understanding of the world, the pillar around which all Asgarthan philosophy has flourished.

Ascanios Fenn - 58 AC/144 AC

A major critic of Aurica, Ascanios Fenn was nonetheless an eminent metaphysician. To him, the true nature of the world could never be directly perceived. If ideas were the building material of reality, then reality itself was merely the product of the one who manipulated it — namely, human beings. “Reality is only what we make of it; we are both the conjurer and the credulous observer of the illusion,” he wrote. By extension, a line of thought, if followed by consensus, created reality itself through a kind of feedback loop, shaped in the image of the model conceived. For Fenn, reality was volatile and fragile. Convinced of this, he warned of the dangers inherent in Aurica’s model, as well as in the existence of the Factions. Fragmented visions of the world, he believed, would lead it to ruin. Humanity needed to become aware of its own responsibility, and of the consequences that the ideas it promoted had upon the world.

Issur - 140 AC/187 AC

“The world tends toward equilibrium.” This postulate formed the foundation of the Issuran school of thought. For him, the inevitable destiny of the world was the fusion of the Empyrean and reality, and duality was merely a temporary and unstable state. In his Theory of the Two Circles, Issur imagined two spheres, each suspended by a string and set in pendular motion. These spheres were made of complementary substances. They would approach one another until passing through each other, then move apart again to opposite sides. Gravity would then cause them to pass through each other once more, cyclically. At each encounter, the two substances mixed, diffused into one another, and grew more deeply intertwined with every passage. For Issur, the Confluence was neither an isolated event nor an anomaly. Reality underwent regular Confluences, separated by thousands of years. He proposed that mythological ages were the result of these collisions, followed by stabilization phases before the next. Ultimately, however, the pendular motion would cease, culminating in a perfect state of hyper-reality.

Calfuray - 142 AC/208 AC

A contemporary of Issur, Calfuray advanced a thesis opposed to his, and their long dialectic animated the philosophical scene throughout the late second century. To her, the world’s duality between substance and imagination was the sole guarantor of existence — an ideal state and dynamic that had ensured balance between the two spheres for eons. Within her system, the Confluence was an isolated phenomenon, a major imbalance whose symptoms should be studied rather than its nature or origin speculated upon without proof. Despite their pronounced rivalry, Calfuray was the first to go to Issur’s bedside when he lay dying of the Nifir. Despite the health risks, she remained at his side for many days, keeping his mind engaged through long debates and intimate confidences. Beyond their disagreements, beyond the antithetical ideas they defended, a deep mutual respect had always united them.

Odran ruun-Aldana - 170 AC/228 AC

First a student, then an assistant to Calfuray, Odran specialized in the study of the Empyrean. What began as a way to assist his mentor became a calling. Obsessed with death, he hypothesized that the realm of imagination was also the realm of the dead. The deceased continued to exist through the memories of the living, and some even endured across ages as Oneiroi. To him, the Empyrean was a kind of purgatory where the departed awaited oblivion — synonymous with true death. Odran proposed that the ideas constituting an individual were then recycled, becoming fertile ground for the imagination and inspiration of inventors, scholars, and artists. Like Calfuray, he believed that the merging of the world of the living and the world of the dead would result in a negation of existence, where ideas would lose their meaning for lack of souls to invoke them.

Ceinwen El-Amin - 220 AC/324 AC

Considered the last of the great philosophers, El-Amin acknowledged the influence of the Lyra. He began his career as a linguist, and it was his analysis of language — particularly the Heka ideograms — that led him toward the study of meaning itself. Drawing on Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinction between signifier and signified, he highlighted a major societal phenomenon: the evolution of archetypes through the gradual corruption of the original idea as cultures and societies changed. He also noted that alterations in writing itself dictated a transformation of the associated idea. Extending this reflection to reality as a whole, El-Amin conceptualized his schema of reality’s mutation. To think the world was to alter it. Through countless small shifts, even microscopic variations produced a slow drift. Reality was thus constantly reconstructing and redefining itself. Its very nature was transformation.

Recently, in her Treatise of the Demiurge, or The Death of Philosophy, printed by Ibis Publishing, theorist Jiruu Kiet put forward the bold hypothesis that Aurican thought, through its omnipresence, had inadvertently imposed its structure upon the world itself. “If the diffusion of a worldview establishes it as truth, does truth truly exist?” she asks. In her already hotly contested interpretation, the observer generates reality and, through that act, conceals its true nature behind their own conceptualization. Truth would thus be perpetually inaccessible, hidden behind myths, beliefs, and faith. Kiet concludes by urging the reader to change perspective: “In the end, the truth of the world will reveal itself in only one way: through self-knowledge.”