re: The age of the Known World

I’d like to collate all of our information about this in one place, considering that it’s been a major research interest of mine for some time and it seems increasingly directly relevant to understanding everything that’s happening.

Per Salme’s data from her home plane, there have been 216 cycles. Positing as a hypothesis that time flows at the same rate across all planes - a hypothesis which is unproven, but seems likely to me at this time - and that the year zero event of the Samudran calendar, coincident with the age-determination of the Septentrione core sample, is indicative of the most recent end-of-cycle event, means that an “unusually long” cycle is approximately 1300 years, that gives an upper boundary condition of 280,800 years; my own work with the noöplankton establishes a lower boundary condition of, very approximately, 250,000 years.

In perusing the Library I’ve read references to a hypothetical ‘millions of years’ since a particular event occurred; what event are we speculating about, here? Our documentary horizon does not yet extend beyond the existence of the noöplankton and the cycles, it’s entirely possible there are extant relics much older than the first cycle. Do we have any physical evidence of such relics? I’d love to get them into my laboratory, if so.

Also, I apologise if this was the wrong venue for a question like this. For someone who’s spent their entire life here it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to reason about what is, and is not, a question that is safe to consider without a Bubble.

Which is mildly funny, considering that was mostly set up for you so like, face whichever direct your heart tells you and believe before hitting “cast”, i guess.

(probably mostly just angel and meta shit needs to be there tho, hm…)

Eventually, I will ask you to rigorously define your terms. That might, perhaps, be a reasonable use case of the NSFS forum.

yeah i probably need to do, like, a whole presentation for the rest of ‘em once we’re back in the void anyway

esp with Primula popping in to not even say hello earlier, lol

lol you’re going to blow their fucking minds, babe. i wish i could be there to lurk that

Respectfully, if you’re not going to tell us who you are, I’d prefer if you kept your unasked-for intercessions to less serious venues.

Any reference to “millions” would have been myself misspeaking. The point between 250,000 and 280,000 is the oldest known point available to us. This seems to be the point in which the unsundered world was split into at least five planes—The Beast, Almachadta, Samudra, Mu, and Valaïs. There is a sixth “plane” that we have encountered, which is the void we traverse between worlds, and then there is the Architect’s “Sanctuary,” which was something else entirely, though I am not certain how much either of those belonged to the unsundered world—my companions may have more valuable input here.

Were you able to get the approximate age of the Mask, Caion? I remember I asked about you and Archie doing that, but I know a great many things have happened since.

Oh, that makes sense. My apologies for the misunderstanding.

Stop by at some point and bring the Mask with you, if you could? My experiments with the noöplankton make me confident I can get at least roughly as-accurate a reading without taking a physical sample, which I presume would be both impossible and inadvisable besides.

I don’t think you need to apologize for misunderstanding when I was literally the one causing the misunderstanding? Sorry I cannot present an artefact that’s millions of years old; I imagine that would be illuminating.

I’ll stop by once I escape the sauce lab. You did not warn me properly, Caion. There are so many sauces.

Should have stolen one of the lights from the sanctuary before we left.

Huh? Why? Oh … the ability to test things would have been very valuable.

Yeah.

What do you think the chances are for us to sneak back there and steal something?

I ought to discourage you from engaging in theft on my behalf but if the opportunity ever arose to study an artifact therefrom I can’t say I wouldn’t relish it.

I mean I think such a theft would serve many purposes. It isn’t just on your behalf.

It’d also be really funny.

i can give it a shot

Do you think you can do the same trick you did with the desserts?

i don’t see why not!

Oh that’d be awesome. Maybe make sure you aren’t alone if/when you try that in case you get reverse-nabbed, but if you can manage that it would be amazing.

You… don’t… see why slipping in and out of Sanctuary might be a lil bit more difficult and ill advised than a plane we have a direct train connection to…?

have you tried

No, because I’m not an idiot.