Developing the Cosmic Compass System

That's because it's not a natural setup. It's a deliberate one. The Cosmic Poles and Cosmic Pulse were put in place by the gods who created the Transitory Planes. Every plane in the Multiverse was created by the gods, (most of them intentionally.) The Transitory Planes were specifically to enable people to travel between different planets on the Celestial Plane (which is structured like our universe but has magic.) To facilitate navigation on the Transitory Planes, they put the Cosmic Poles in place and linked each pole to a particular material. This was actually done as a backup since, in the first ages of history, people had the innate ability to sense the direction of each of the Cosmic Poles as well as the Cosmic Pulse without the aid of devices or spells. However, over time, that ability was gradually bred out of them, as the gods anticipated might happen, so reliance on spells and magical compasses to navigate the Transitory Planes became the norm.

The way it works is that all eight Transitory Planes technically occupy the same space, but, being different planes, they don't actually interact with each other, except through portals. I'm leaning more and more to the idea that the Core of each Transitory Plane is actually the same object that actually exists outside all eight planes but is at the very center of the space they occupy. Likewise, the Cosmic Poles are similar objects that are in fixed locations just outside the bubbles of the overlapping Transitory Planes. This is why the Cosmic Compass is the same on all eight planes and also why the Cosmic Pulse functions the same way on each of them. I suppose you could think of the Core and Cosmic Poles as "anchors" that hold the Transitory Planes in place.

Anyway, as to why the poles attract different materials, I'm still figuring that out. I'm currently thinking that a given material is linked to a given Cosmic Pole because the Cosmic Pole in question is actually made of the same material, but with an opposite magical charge. So, if the Cosmic Pole has a positive charge, the other samples of the material have a negative charge. If you shape the sample of that material into a needle or put a piece of it onto a device that can move, the sample will tug in the direction of the Cosmic Pole. So, just as the Core is emitting the Cosmic Pulse, each Cosmic Pole is emitting a field of its own. All these overlapping fields are the Cosmic Compass.

Finally, since I'm thinking that there's only one Core, and since the Cosmic Poles might actually be objects, I'm considering that the Cosmic Poles are each the same size and shape as the Core - spheres with a 2 km diameter that tug the needles on compasses toward their very centers. The idea is that they're like a network of GPS satellites set up just outside these eight universes, but they're fixed in their locations, not in any kind of orbit. Like I said, the Cosmic Poles might actually double as anchors that keep the Transitory Planes from drifting out of alignment with each other.

 

I admit, I'm a bit confused about why gods setting something up for themselves is not too convenient but setting it up for mortals to use for navigation is too convenient. And Vaporo's point about it raising the question about why they didn't make other things more convenient, like the distances that have to be covered, is also a bit confusing. Compared to the millions of light years between galaxies, having to travel 100,000 km is pretty convenient, but it's also not so convenient that an enemy army from another galaxy can invade your world without you having plenty of time to prepare. It also means there's lots of space for other things to exist on these planes - like entire ecosystems and civilizations. You have a solar system's worth of space at your disposal. That's plenty of room for nine (or more) races of people (who may eventually number in the trillions as their societies advance) to travel from Point A to Point B without traffic congestion becoming so bad it results in economic gridlock.

(I should also point you to my post about the different regions of these planes, since it's relevant to this discussion, but also a topic in its own right.)

A small point of clarification is that the gods in my story setting are going to be characters who show up from time to time. Indeed, the core premise of this story setting is that the gods once got into this big war with each other where they fought each other directly. When one god punches another god, entire galaxies can vanish... or an entire species of flowers will suddenly change colors but otherwise be unaffected. There's no way to predict what the fallout will be. As a result, the top god finally stepped in and made it impossible for the other gods to directly fight each other. Now, they can only do so through very limited avatars or by choosing mortal champions to act as their proxies. So, the way things are right now, the gods are divided into two main groups who are engaged in a sort of divine cold war with each other.

With that in mind, do you still think it is "too convenient" for the Transitory Planes to have these poles?

That issue aside, I like your suggestion about the poles repelling and disposing each other on a sphere. I think it lines up with the idea I was considering that these objects double as anchors that keep these eight planes from moving out of alignment with each other. I'm trying to think of some other purposes these objects could serve in addition to navigation and keeping these planes oriented. If you have any suggestions, feel free to share them.

Your point about the ability to sense the Cosmic Poles going away because of a period when people weren't using the Transitory Planes is actually a perfect fit for my story setting because there was such a period. As I said, there was an era when the gods were waging war with each other. The Divine War had a lot of effects on things, but one of those was that portals to the Transitory Planes would randomly close (or randomly open.) This made travel through the Transitory Planes very difficult, so very few people used them for most of the duration of the Divine War. That would easily result in the trait being bred out of existence. (The fallout from the Divine War could also have been a factor, since it also changed the which people could use magic and how they could use it, and sensing these poles was a magic ability more than a natural one.)

 

I'm glad to know that you actually like some aspects of my ideas. I think if you had led with that, you wouldn't have come across as so harsh. Mostly, I'm just confused (and a bit frustrated) that you seem to object so strongly to the arrangement of the other poles. From where I stand, it's basically like having three different magnetic fields that are all at ninety degree angles to each other, which, in a magical setting, doesn't strain my ability to suspend my disbelief. When I said I wanted a system that could be explained beyond "it works because magic," what I meant was that I wasn't content to just hand-wave the details, not that I didn't want an explanation that involved some kind of magical effect.

I'm very big on hard magic systems. The better the rules for how magic works, the more I enjoy the system and the story that includes it (provided the story is actually good, of course.) So, for me, magic that bends but doesn't entirely break the laws of physics is a lot of fun. I also don't mind a setting that was built by gods and goddesses in a particular fashion. For my story setting, one of the biggest aspects is that the gods went to war with each other and made a mess of a lot of stuff. That's why the majority of the Transitory Planes are infested with Abominations, in fact. They were not originally supposed to be there. The Transitory Planes were intended to enabled travel to all parts of the Celestial Plane eventually, not immediately. The gods anticipated that mortals would develop vehicles that would speed up travel through the Transitory Planes, so making them as large as they did wasn't an issue in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, I have to get to work, but rest assured, I'm not mad at you. A bit annoyed, perhaps, but that'll pass when I start to get annoyed with my boss (the big jerk.) Hopefully, we can further refine my idea in a more productive manner going forward. Thanks for your understanding.

 

Okay, how about this?

Originally, there was only one Transitory Plane. It had features of all eight of the current Transitory Planes, but didn't have either the Cosmic Pulse or the Cosmic Poles. People navigated it by the many visible landmarks which made it easy to tell where you were on this Transitory Plane. Then the Divine War happens and, due to the clashing divine energies, the one Transitory Plane becomes unstable and begins to separate into eight different planes. Now, the thing about the distortions that happened during the Divine War is that the only way to reverse the effects was if all the gods responsible for creating the distortion worked together. However, the evil gods were usually not the kind of people to clean up after themselves.

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Thus, there was no way to completely save the Transitory Plane from dividing into eight. The good gods looked at the situation and responded like so:

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They promptly set to work trying to salvage the situation, which certainly wasn't easy. Each of the new Transitory Planes had taken on certain elements of the original while also taking on new attributes of their own. Four of them became what are now the Elemental Transitory Planes, each of these predominantly reflecting matter in one of its four states (solid, liquid, gas, plasma,) though not exclusively. In other words, not all of the Plane of Fire is made of plasma, nor is it all on fire. In fact, the hottest areas are around the portals connecting it to other planes. If you can get past those, the rest of the Plane of Fire is much more tolerable, even having some areas that are downright freezing. But, because the dominant traits are flames and plasma, this plane has been dubbed the Plane of Fire. The four other planes that emerged from the original were not reflective of matter in any specific state. These are the Non-Elemental Transitory Planes. I have two ideas for these, but the final two are still undefined. All eight of the new Transitory Planes have portals connecting not only to the Celestial Plane but two each other. While the gods trying to salvage the situation were unable to merge the eight planes back together into one, they were able to preserve one 2 km diameter piece of the original Transitory Plane. That piece is the Core.

Here's where the Cosmic Poles and the Cosmic Pulse come into play. The Core, being the last remnant of the original Transitory Plane, both does and does not exist on any of the new planes. I'm thinking that it's like there's a sort of "echo" of the Core on these planes, but the echo works differently on each of the eight... while not actually being on any of them. Technically, the Core only has one field which has properties similar but not quite identical to a magnetic field. However, that field exists on a different axis on seven of the eight planes. Those axes are the Up-Down axis, the North-South axis, the East-West axis that we've already established, but there are four more. They are Upper-Northeast-to-Lower-Southwest, Upper-Northwest-to-Lower-Southeast, Upper-Southeast-to-Lower-Northwest, and Upper-Southwest-to-Lower-Northeast. So where's the eighth axis? Well, there isn't one, because the eighth echo of the Core is what is releasing the Cosmic Pulse.

Here's where it starts to get more interesting. Instead of different materials reacting to the different Cosmic Poles and the Cosmic Pulse, it's the same material in each case, however, the way the material reacts to the Cosmic Poles or the Cosmic Pulse is determined by which of the eight planes on which it is acquired. That is, if you acquire the material on Plane A, which has the Up-Down axis for the magical field, the material will only react to the Up-Down poles, regardless of which of the eight planes you occupy. If you get the material on Plane B, which has the North-South axis for the magical field, it will only react to the North-South poles, again, regardless of the planes you occupy. This is true for Plane C through G. However, if you acquire the material on Plane H, the eighth and last of the new Transitory Planes, it doesn't respond with any of the Cosmic Poles, it only responds to the Cosmic Pulse.

As to why the poles are all oriented this way, it's because that's how the gods set them up in their efforts to salvage the situation. See, these eight new Transitory Planes were drifting out of alignment with the Core, so, to prevent this from continuing, the oriented seven of the echos of the magical field as I've described and altered the last echo into the Cosmic Pulse. Then, at the points where the fourteen echos of the magical jets emitted by the Core crossed the edges of the Transitory Planes, they set up fourteen "anchors." These were physical objects that were similar to the Core. As the Arcane jets interacted with these anchors, they created a sort of lattice of magical currents that crisscrosses over the outside of the eight planes, keeping them all in place. The Cosmic Pulse, meanwhile, is what keeps the anchors from drifting inward toward the Core. I suppose you could kind of compare this to the heliopause. It took a lot of work on the part of the gods salvaging to situation to get this done, and some of them were none-too-pleased with the who mess. Others tried to look on the bright side.

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After this was done, the gods set to work trying to further stabilize the eight new Transitory Planes, modifying the laws of physics governing each in order to make them more habitable while also orienting them so they were all facing the same direction. Unfortunately, this was around the time the Abominations started appearing, and some of them took of residence in the outer fringes of the Transitory Planes, which, of course, meant they would gradually spread their corruption through each of the planes.

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Anyway, that's all I've got for now. What do you guys think?

 

I don't think they're actually visible from any of the current Transitory Planes unless you're using the right spell to view them. The jets are made of Aethyr, the energy that powers all Arcane Magic. Aethyr usually takes the form of rainbow colored particles, with the changes in color indicating various things about what harmonic state the Aethyr is in. So, I suppose that the particular harmonics of a Transitory Plane affect the color of the Arcane Jets. I haven't quite worked out what the color system is for Aethyr, though, so I can't say which plane would have which color. Regardless of that, the jets would probably be shaped like a very narrow bicone, so something like this:

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Basically, as the jets leave the Core, they gradually widen, reaching a maximum diameter of 2 km at the halfway point (5 billion km.) However, as they get closer to the... let's call them the Cosmic Anchors. As they approach the Cosmic Anchors, the jets begin to fall under their influence and begin to narrow again. Upon entering the Cosmic Anchor, the energy is separated in different directions, running across the exterior boundary of the Transitory Planes to form the lattice that holds them together. So, basically, the Core draws Aethyr from the Source (the plane from which all Aethyr originates, expels the energy to the Cosmic Anchors, which then use the Aethyr to form the lattice which keeps everything from flying apart.

And all this because some of the gods are jerks who refuse to clean up after themselves and allowed their Abomination pets to become invasive species of the Transitory Planes.

 

The thing about gods is that they never have just one reason for doing anything. Good or evil, they always have plans within plans within plans. That said, the original Transitory Plane was intended primarily to enable mortals to travel between planets on the Celestial Plane so they could help each other out and enrich each other's lives in various ways. In addition to this, there were (and still are) animals (and even some types of magical plants) that migrate from one planet to another using the original Transitory Plane and the eight new planes that were spawned from it. Some migrate by air, others by land, others by water, and some through fire. So, the gods were not just setting the Transitory Plane and its successors up for people to use. (Incidentally, this is also why, when it comes to diseases, my setting doesn't have as many virgin soil epidemics. Every world has a lot of the same types of diseases because they can be carried from one planet to another by both people and animals. Thus, while people can still get sick from diseases, their immune systems are usually experienced at fighting a pretty wide variety of them.)

But, as I said, there were other reason for the original Transitory Plane. When the good gods building the plane saw some of their peers turning evil, they realized they would inevitably try to corrupt the hearts of mortals, so the size of the Transitory Plane was expanded to make it harder for one race to invade the world of another race. In addition to this, some of the good gods foresaw the emergence of Abominations, so they tied to set up fail-safes on the Transitory Plane that would help to contain the threat they posed. However, when the original Transitory Plane got broken, the effectiveness of those fail-safes was greatly reduced. Fortunately, though, the emerging Abominations ended up gravitating toward the outer fringes of the Transitory Planes as they took shape and something about the nature of Abominations causes portals on the Transitory Planes to shut down if they dwell in an area for a certain period of time, or at least that's the case with the largest and most powerful Abominations.

Finally, one of the reasons the gods made the original Transitory Plane and did what they could to salvage the planes that broke off from it was... simply because they could. Like people, the gods (at least the good ones) sometimes just enjoy creation for creation's sake. The reason the Celestial Plane has at least a trillion galaxies on it is because some of the gods really liked making them. It was fun for them and, in a certain regard, a way for them to express themselves. You could say they got a bit carried away with all their creating, but can you really blame them? I mean, if you had the power to create entire galaxies, would you stop at one?

I'm thinking it's a combination of factors. The Cosmic Pulse would probably have some effect on the color the Arcane Jets appear to be, but so would the harmonics of the plane you occupy at the time, and the influence the Cosmic Anchors have over the jets. The spell that you're using would also have some effect on how they appear, I would imagine. Not all Mages cast the same spell exactly the same way, after all.

 

So you’re saying I’m lazy?

 

Let me put it like this: You say my setup is not for “logical world building reasons,” but would you apply that standard to a story setting like this one?

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I’m getting a bit tired of this. I have stated that the gods are recurring characters in my story setting. I have stated that they once fought a direct war with each other that messed things up. I have stated that they are now in a Cold War with each other and choose mortals to be their proxies. Do you really think that the Cosmic Compass is out of place in a story setting of this nature? You are going on and on about how ninety degree angles are not natural, but seem to be missing the point that they are not intended to be natural.

When I said I didn’t want to say the magic compasses worked “because magic,” I thought it was obvious that I meant I wasn’t content to say, “It’s magic, therefore I don’t have to explain it.” I wanted to a setup that fit the internal logic of the story setting and would potentially work in the real world, such as with a spherical coordinate system. Other people have confirmed that such a setup would logically work, regardless of how natural it may or may not be. That’s what I needed to have confirmed. I’m satisfied with this setup. Now kindly refrain from insinuating that I am just trying to avoid complex calculations and not using logical world building.