# What's your craziest worldbuilding idea?



## Wansome (May 3, 2019)

Hi fellow worldbuilders or just fantasy fans!

A few days ago, I came up with a really crazy idea! In a world, there live humans in huge trees on top of a giant's head. I dug deeper into the consequences of such world and came out with something really interesting. For exemple: How do those humans get water and food? Where do they live?

Want to see more? Here's the link to the full explanation:





So now I am really curious for your craziest worldbuilding ideas, tell them!

Greetings
Wansome


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## pmmg (May 3, 2019)

Crazy ideas. Sounds like fun. I think this is far removed from any world I would write, but maybe some point in the future. I think my current world is probably the craziest as I went for a very unique planet situation, which is present in the background, but transparent to the characters. I am not sure, given the style of the writing that it will ever come out. One aspect of it is the world is covered in a grey haze, not a very thick one, visibility is still quite far, but people on the surface would have a definite limit to what could be seen and have never seen any but the brightest of objects in space (kind of like those living one east coast ). From a dwellers perspective, this is just the normal state, and so they don't think anything of it. Another aspect is that tress are equally likely to be purple as opposed to green, and the seasons are strange. But...again, it is not something characters really stop and contemplate, they just live with it. They have other things to do than ask why is the bright spot in the sky covered in haze.


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## Seira (May 3, 2019)

I don't tend to go for crazy stuff because it can become too complicated and for me the setting isn't the most interesting thing.
But right now my world consists of the dream world that is controlled by a Sharman.


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## Gotis (May 3, 2019)

That is really cool and very creative!  I think the oddest world I've made is in a story for my niece. It's a world on a flower. The flower has six petals, each a different color. All the plant life reflects the color of the petal it's on. Each petal has a microscopic nation run by a different fantasy being. Fairies, unicorns and goblins with three nations to be determined. The flower sits in my niece's room in a pot with a stone statue of a sprite. Whenever there's a problem in need of a hero, the statue comes to life and teleports my niece to adventure!


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## ThinkerX (May 3, 2019)

Probably the 'Nexus' in 'Strange Exit.'  A tubular realm in the midst of the etheric void, where gravity is always 'outward' making it possible for characters to stand at 90 or even 180 degree angles to each other and thought equals motion.  Also in the etheric void, a city built on nothing where time does not function normally - have to get back to that one some day.


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## Orc Knight (May 3, 2019)

I've found I take the 'Everything and the Kitchen Sink' approach to much of my world building and particularly fantasy (there's several kitchens to take from it). Not sure what I'd call crazy for much of it though, given my approach also means coming in at it from a different direction. Eld itself is perhaps the full crazy for my world building though. Sure, on the outside it's a world of standard fantasy with almost all the races accounted (no hobbits or halflings, sorry), dark lords, dashing hero's, loyal knights, pirates and airships and world tree's and dragons and all you expect in it.

Then come the details, kind of taking a bit of learning from Discworld and some other fantasy worlds, it has turned Eld into an absolute mess. Undead apocalypse, they happen. Though in some fantasy with an alarming regularity. It is now a post apocalyptic fantasy world that's only a couple decades past being almost destroyed and trying to pick up the pieces and not fall on old ways. The undead still lurk, the magic is connected to the world and the undead are parasites that live on the magic and don't cycle it back into the world when they die (again). And with the way the world is, if they fall back the undead will reap the benefits and Eld will die. Not everyone is fully aware of that particular consequence.

The world can also once again flourish and magic can come back to the heights it used too. When the big magical beings tossed astroids on their enemies, mountains were sundered and coasts were rearranged and gods died at the hands of mortals (good times!). And connected to that is a Chosen One of sorts, but it's more story stuff. And people have to make the connection to it all anyways. So far survival is good enough for them, but Eld might say different in time.


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## Wansome (May 4, 2019)

pmmg said:


> One aspect of it is the world is covered in a grey haze, not a very thick one, visibility is still quite far, but people on the surface would have a definite limit to what could be seen and have never seen any but the brightest of objects in space (kind of like those living one east coast ). From a dwellers perspective, this is just the normal state, and so they don't think anything of it. Another aspect is that tress are equally likely to be purple as opposed to green, and the seasons are strange. But...again, it is not something characters really stop and contemplate, they just live with it. They have other things to do than ask why is the bright spot in the sky covered in haze.



Hi pmmg!

That's a nice idea! It really gives a sense of mystery to your world (for the reader, not for the characters) and could create some interesting situations... I also really like that the characters just see it as the status quo.

Greetings 
Wansome


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## Wansome (May 4, 2019)

Seira said:


> I don't tend to go for crazy stuff because it can become too complicated and for me the setting isn't the most interesting thing.
> But right now my world consists of the dream world that is controlled by a Sharman.



Hi Seira

It doesn't always have to be high fantasy and I agree that sometimes the setting isn't the most important, the characters are.

Greetings
Wansome


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## Wansome (May 4, 2019)

Gotis said:


> That is really cool and very creative!  I think the oddest world I've made is in a story for my niece. It's a world on a flower. The flower has six petals, each a different color. All the plant life reflects the color of the petal it's on. Each petal has a microscopic nation run by a different fantasy being. Fairies, unicorns and goblins with three nations to be determined. The flower sits in my niece's room in a pot with a stone statue of a sprite. Whenever there's a problem in need of a hero, the statue comes to life and teleports my niece to adventure!



Hi Gotis

Wow, that's a really cool idea! I especially like the idea of your niece being the real hero of the world!

Greetings
Wansome


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## Wansome (May 4, 2019)

ThinkerX said:


> Probably the 'Nexus' in 'Strange Exit.'  A tubular realm in the midst of the etheric void, where gravity is always 'outward' making it possible for characters to stand at 90 or even 180 degree angles to each other and thought equals motion.  Also in the etheric void, a city built on nothing where time does not function normally - have to get back to that one some day.



Hi ThinkerX

Wow! That world sounds really cool! Yeah, I'd love to read a novel about it!

Greetings
Wansome


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## Wansome (May 4, 2019)

Orc Knight said:


> I've found I take the 'Everything and the Kitchen Sink' approach to much of my world building and particularly fantasy (there's several kitchens to take from it). Not sure what I'd call crazy for much of it though, given my approach also means coming in at it from a different direction. Eld itself is perhaps the full crazy for my world building though. Sure, on the outside it's a world of standard fantasy with almost all the races accounted (no hobbits or halflings, sorry), dark lords, dashing hero's, loyal knights, pirates and airships and world tree's and dragons and all you expect in it.
> 
> Then come the details, kind of taking a bit of learning from Discworld and some other fantasy worlds, it has turned Eld into an absolute mess. Undead apocalypse, they happen. Though in some fantasy with an alarming regularity. It is now a post apocalyptic fantasy world that's only a couple decades past being almost destroyed and trying to pick up the pieces and not fall on old ways. The undead still lurk, the magic is connected to the world and the undead are parasites that live on the magic and don't cycle it back into the world when they die (again). And with the way the world is, if they fall back the undead will reap the benefits and Eld will die. Not everyone is fully aware of that particular consequence.
> 
> The world can also once again flourish and magic can come back to the heights it used too. When the big magical beings tossed astroids on their enemies, mountains were sundered and coasts were rearranged and gods died at the hands of mortals (good times!). And connected to that is a Chosen One of sorts, but it's more story stuff. And people have to make the connection to it all anyways. So far survival is good enough for them, but Eld might say different in time.



Hi Orc Knight

It appeals to me that your world was very "ordinary fantasy" in the first place, but then got messed up by an apocalyps. It's a nice twist to the genre.

Greetings
Wansome


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## ThinkerX (May 4, 2019)

Wansome said:


> Hi ThinkerX
> 
> Wow! That world sounds really cool! Yeah, I'd love to read a novel about it!
> 
> ...



PM me an email, and I'll send you a copy of 'Strange Exit.' About 21,500 words.


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## Gotis (May 4, 2019)

Wansome said:


> Hi Gotis
> 
> Wow, that's a really cool idea! I especially like the idea of your niece being the real hero of the world!
> 
> ...



Thanks! My sister has four kids and I'm working on stories for each of them. Of course they each get their own world to be heroic in. My avatar is how I appear in them.


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## Wansome (May 4, 2019)

Gotis said:


> Thanks! My sister has four kids and I'm working on stories for each of them. Of course they each get their own world to be heroic in. My avatar is how I appear in them.


Oooh! That's so nice of you, are you going to publish those stories or just keep them personal?
Greetings
Wansome


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## Gotis (May 4, 2019)

Wansome said:


> Oooh! That's so nice of you, are you going to publish those stories or just keep them personal?
> Greetings
> Wansome


I plan to publish them if my laziness doesn't get the better of me.


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## Devor (May 4, 2019)

.....ohh my gosh where to begin.

My worldbuilding ideas aren't "top of a giant's head" crazy, but they can get pretty intricate. I have lot of settings and ideas that can feel pretty fresh and distinct.

The craziest, hands down.... it's a setting with high-fantasy societies based on Native Americans, before the Europeans, who are invaded from the west by a nation based on Japan. It was supposed to be a battle of the mythologies, with lightning birds fighting skull demons, but it's light years outside of my ability to actually write it.  I wish somebody would though because it could be amazing.

My next craziest has got to be time travel. When I was watching Fringe I had this theory that the two dimensions were created because of timetravel, which is why there were only two dimensions, and why there was so much risk of one of them collapsing: One of them wasn't meant to exist. Well, that's not what Fringe did. But I took that idea and ran with it, and ended up with an outline of several different futures that were falling apart because of how many futures existed, and so they were trying to evacuate, or invade, into the present day to survive. The timetravel mechanics I used made it work out better than you'd expect.

Finally, I have the War Omen Tournament.  Every country on a fantasy continent has to send a fighter to a tournament every few years.  The continent was cursed so that whatever happened in the fight would reflect what happened between the countries they represent. It's supposed to be a parody of the genre, with absurd characters and wacky nations coming to darkly comedic ends. For example, one fighter was supposed to be a "vampire-wannabe" who didn't realize vampires were real. He finds out during his first fight, and then becomes a vampire before the second fight. After that fight his entire country rapidly decays into an undead house of horrors.  The crazy part though is the way I want to make the story, with a combination of short stories, audio fight commentaries, and quasi-"news releases" about what was happening in the different countries.


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## Yora (May 5, 2019)

People think that the Spectral Realm is some strange empty place between the worlds that you can pass through as a shortcut to visit other realms when you don't have a more direct connection. But in truth, the Spectral Realm is the actual nature of reality.
It seems like the Spectral Realm looks like a hazy reflection of the various worlds it connects, but in reality it's all the other worlds that are manifestations of the Spectral Realm.

The landscape of the Spectral Realm looks like someone had taken the maps of all the other worlds, cut them into pieces of hugely different sizes, and glued them all back together at random into a single giant map. To travel to other worlds, or even other places in your own world, you only need to go into the Spectral Realm, go to the place you want to be, and then leave the Spectral Realm again. Moving in the Spectral Realm is very fast, but finding your destination is the difficult part.

Spirits and demons don't actually travel through the Spectral Realm. In truth, they are always on the Spectral Realm. When they appear in any other world, they  really just creating a new manifestation, but their true form always exists simultaneously in the Spectral Realm at the same location. Any magic that appears to trap a spirit actually creates a barrier in the Spectral Realm. They can abandontheir manifested form in the physical realms, but they still can't move, which also means they can't move to a place in the Spectral Realm from which they could manifest into a different world.


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## ThinkerX (May 6, 2019)

Hmm...

Thinking about it, until I wrote 'Strange Exit,' my weirdest bit of world building was probably 'Gawana,' a continent sized living labyrinth, which was the setting for much of 'Labyrinth: Journal.'  I had to spend a fair bit of effort designing the living maze and the rational for its existence.


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## Gruden (May 6, 2019)

My Craziest worldbuilding is probably are the World, animals and the trees.


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## Crescent (Feb 23, 2021)

Imagine a reality that operates by entirely different rules than our own. There is an infinite ocean that spans eternally without light in all directions. Long ago the goddesses blessed the world with light in the form of starlike balls of their essence, each of the seven gods giving up a piece of their power to allow life to exist in this universe except for the unnamed one, goddess of the dark waters beyond the world altered by the goddesses.
Each of these balls of divine essence constantly exerts massive amounts of force in all directions, creating a sphere of divine light filled with magic in which water is pushed out. These spheres were filled with air and the border of air and water given life and solid continents by the goddesses, each of the six named ones forming a world like our own, but inverted so that the horizon rises as it fades. 
Each of the spheres borders two others in portal like holes in the water, and the goddesses locked each sphere to be stationary with magic regardless of the motion of the essence cores. The bordering six spheres make a ring, and each essence core has a daily arc that goes through the water to allow a day-night cycle, though the length of day varies by the speed and size of the core's arc.

The six realms, worlds, or spheres were once isolated from each other, when the life inside was made by each names god, and now, centuries later, the race made by each god is still most common in the realm they originally hail from and the bordering realms.
In clockwise order looking "down" on the spheres, there is Midra with blue skies, home of humans and green plants, named for its creator, the goddess of society and intelligence, then Elva with dull blue-violet skies, home of the elves and dull blue-green plants, named for the goddess of mist and light, then Drella with purplish gray skies, home of the drow and bluish gray plants, named for the goddess of dusk and magic, then Darga with fully gray skies, home of dwarves and fully gray plants, named for the goddess of earth and crafting, then Irica with greenish gray skies, home of giants and yellowish gray plants, named for the goddess of war and wisdom, and then finally Orica with dull blue-green skies, home to orcs and dull yellow-green plants, named for the goddess of beasts and anger.

All magic in this world comes from the power of the gods, and mortals can use a portion of this power by devoting themselves to a god with similar moral beliefs and gain magic that relates both to traits of the caster and the divine domains of the goddess. For example, a particularly violent follower of Elva may have trouble establishing a connection to the goddess due to her relatively nonviolent views, but might develop a signature fire style of magic due to the combination of their core violence and her light magic.
There also exist followers of the unnamed goddess, cultists who believe she is unnecessarily shunned as she never did anything to prevent life, merely not creating any herself, who learn magics related to water and shadow in secret, some even capable of thinning the magic at the border of the realm to let sea monsters into shallow water, which has resulted in unforgettable tragedies throughout the history of all the realms.
Of course, not all of these cultists are evil, and a decent majority are nonviolent or even heroic, having to work from the shadows to help society and hope no goddess ever learns of them. 

To be clear, the goddesses are not all-knowing, though they know everything that their followers know and have limited clairvoyance in their own realm, nor are they all powerful, but the main restriction on a goddess's power is the will of the others, as any overstep of their power will be met with decisive punishment from the rest of the group. They also aren't quite immortal, with the possibility of death if enough of the other goddesses act together to kill one. This didn't work on the nameless goddess due to the fact that though each of the six others tried to kill her, she was the only one who didn't lower her own power by removing her essence, and survived, wounded, to recover in the dark of the endless abyss.


I hope I was clear in my word choice and thank you for reading a summary of how the world works. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them, as I did leave out most of the worldbuilding to keep the summary from becoming unbearably long.


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## Saigonnus (Feb 24, 2021)

I had a character that wore mummy-wrappings for clothes... rode a midget cow and never bathed. It was always a competition between the others to see who could knock him into a puddle... or get him to swim.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Feb 25, 2021)

Definitely my magic system power allocation being based on real property. 

That or setting an urban fantasy in Utah with a regular Joe Schmoe lawyer suing some demons in the utah court system.


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## D. Gray Warrior (Mar 6, 2021)

I've toyed with a space opera that focuses more on magic and fantasy rather than science and technology.

Instead of planets, the characters travel between "world-trees" similar to Yggdrasil from Norse mythology.


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## Snowpoint (Mar 7, 2021)

I think the strangest bit of geography was a Prismatic Desert. Like, there are bits of glass or something that reflects colored light. makes the place look psychedelic.


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## MrNybble (Mar 7, 2021)

I built a world. A custom planet that was once two now squashed together. Two super continents opposite of each other with a vast and deep ocean separating them. A giant cleft under the ocean runs around from north to south that can be a hundred kilometers deep in some areas. Makes for some interesting sea life. The planet's double core makes for a strong magnetic field that prevents any electrical technology from being developed.  It's also about twice the size of earth so travel times can be length.

There are two moons with one being something like earth's moons. The other referred to as the hidden moon is always in the planet's shadow and only noticed when it blocks light from the stars. Only went with one sun though.


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## Malik (Mar 7, 2021)

A conlang with six noun cases and a trochaic-phonologic meter from Greek verse.


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## WooHooMan (Mar 8, 2021)

I got a world without matter.  I tried writing a piece set there and the prose didn’t use nouns.  That was pretty trippy.

There was also a place in this universe were space and time were kind of screwy so traveling in one direction would send you forward in time while moving backwards would cause you to move backwards in time.  Then moving to one side caused time to slow down until it stopped and moving the opposite direction caused time to become nonlinear.

So I got stuff like that.


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## Hir i-Chorvath (Mar 8, 2021)

My craziest world is still a work in progress. 
It's pretty much always dark and there is no day/night cycle. There is a sun but it's far enough away that it mostly just appears as a pale circle in the sky and isn't that helpful in terms of heating and lighting and there isn't a moon. But I'm not getting super scientific with it. 
Instead of going by day/night people tell time by the Howls. There is a howl every hour by the Hounds, (the servants of Death and they looks like wolves) and on the twelfth Howl, they collect the dead or those that Death has decided that it's their time to die. 
The magic system there is completely based off of communicating to the spirits of things. Everything has a spirit in that world but there are only a few people that are capable of communicating with them. The magic-users are called Whisperer's and whether or not what they are trying to get the spirit to do succeeds depends on how realistic it is.
The world basically has two layers. The Surface which is mostly a barren wasteland of rock with nothing growing on it and has several stagnant pools of water from geysers. And the Underground, which mostly started out as enormous underground caverns which people live in. Though as time passed, people made them larger and more suited for living in. The world is mostly heated by it's core and there are large rifts that vent heat where most of the cities grow around. 
Water is a precious commodity as most of the world is a hunk of rock. There are large underground lakes and the water cycle is basically geysers that blast the water up the the Surface where it ends up in stagnant pools. Though people have created tunnels so that the water comes back down to the lakes. The Whisperers can purify the water though they have to collect the bacteria since they are basically just separating the two. The bacteria often gets weaponized or people experiment on it to see if they can come up with a way to get rid of it without needing Whisperer's. 
There are also light stones that people usually use as a light source. There are a lot of mushrooms and fungi, stuff that you would find in underground caves as far as plants and all that goes. Animals are pretty similar and everything is adapted for either the cold or the heat. 
As far as needing fire goes there are elementals on the world and fire elementals are typically captured from the rifts and enslaved for use in the cities.


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## Saigonnus (Mar 9, 2021)

Devor said:


> My next craziest has got to be time travel. When I was watching Fringe I had this theory that the two dimensions were created because of timetravel, which is why there were only two dimensions, and why there was so much risk of one of them collapsing: One of them wasn't meant to exist. Well, that's not what Fringe did. But I took that idea and ran with it, and ended up with an outline of several different futures that were falling apart because of how many futures existed, and so they were trying to evacuate, or invade, into the present day to survive. The timetravel mechanics I used made it work out better than you'd expect.



I actually started on a near future apocalypse story that involves time travel. Basically the idea is a scientist from the future sends her consciousness back in time to "infiltrate" the mind of a mechanic through his dreams so she can influence him to kill the people who are at the center of the future geologic disaster that will ruin all life on earth. He was not chosen at random, but selected specifically because he is ex-military and lives in the same "colony" as the targets; who will become the founder and CEO (and the "board") of a company that causes the geologic disaster.


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## Miles Lacey (Mar 10, 2021)

I'm not sure if it would be considered crazy but I created a world in which bisexuality was the sexual orientation of most people.  I completely changed the very notions of what family, marriage and relationships were.  In this world many marriages consist of two men and two women because Scripture states that a person cannot be happy without an opposite sex and same sex partner.  Thus, children will often have two biological and two non-biological parents and their siblings might be related biologically through both biological parents or one biological parent and one non-biological parent having a child or "related by relationship" because the parents of their siblings are their non-biological parents.

And the world was created by super-intelligent aliens who are confused for gods by the inhabitants of that world.

Does that sound like crazy world building?


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## S.T. Ockenner (Mar 24, 2021)

Hir i-Chorvath said:


> My craziest world is still a work in progress.
> It's pretty much always dark and there is no day/night cycle. There is a sun but it's far enough away that it mostly just appears as a pale circle in the sky and isn't that helpful in terms of heating and lighting and there isn't a moon. But I'm not getting super scientific with it.
> Instead of going by day/night people tell time by the Howls. There is a howl every hour by the Hounds, (the servants of Death and they looks like wolves) and on the twelfth Howl, they collect the dead or those that Death has decided that it's their time to die.
> The magic system there is completely based off of communicating to the spirits of things. Everything has a spirit in that world but there are only a few people that are capable of communicating with them. The magic-users are called Whisperer's and whether or not what they are trying to get the spirit to do succeeds depends on how realistic it is.
> ...


They also don't have cats, apparently.


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## Hir i-Chorvath (Mar 25, 2021)

S.T. Ockenner said:


> They also don't have cats, apparently.


Well...no, it wouldn't make any sense to have cats. Most of the natural habitat and prey for cats don't really exist in this world. Mammals aren't overly common, I'm trying to go with animals that are closer to cave/underground animals for this world since that's technically what it is.
Also, just a side note, the Hounds aren't actual hounds, that's just the form that Death has them take.


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## Malise (Mar 28, 2021)

The most experimental concept I had is the idea of a physical collective unconscious that can be accessed by everyone (they're all minor-gods in terms of power level) in my world. The deeper someone is in a subconscious state the further they delve into the collective unconscious and the more they can see of nearby people's own thoughts. However, the "noise" from other people's thoughts often causes people's brains to not process what's happening to it, causing a jolt that catapults them back into consciousness if they're not in a state of a deep dream. The faster someone wakes from consciousness the unconsciousness, the more that they forget about their time in the collective unconscious. 

For example, the first level of the collective unconscious is the Preciving, or the "subjective worlds" that exist in the eye of its beholders. A skillful mediator can stay in this level of the collective unconscious to use people at the same level of subconsciousness as them as CCTV, for as long as they're able to not get stirred by their "noise". There are about 9 more levels to the collective unconscious after the preceding that are subsequently harder to get into, of which "Enlightenment" is the deepest level. Enlightenment is wherin a person is able to be in tune with the thoughts of everyone within the world, causing the person to escape "Existance" and reach "Divinity", promoting the minor-god level person into a full god without a physical body, that can only exist in some form in the collective unconcious.


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