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Traversing the Multiverse

“Esmeralda fell into her liberator’s stalwart embrace; unshackled from the mainmast; as free as the Planes that gazed, indifferently, upon the bloody deck.” Emily Mirabel, Currents and Conduits, Ch1 opening.

There are three documented and commonly known ways to traverse the Multiverse:

1. by passing through a conduit (often colloquially referred to as a gate); conduits can be either naturally occurring or manufactured.
2. by traveling in or upon a vessel capable of riding the natural currents of the Between (aka Sailing the "'Tween").
3. by using artifice or in the case of powerful entities extreme willpower to "fold" or "bend" dimensions to travel from one dimension to another directly without the need for a conduit or a conveyance.

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Conduits

Below is a transcript from a Chamber Philosophick symposium on conduits, held in response to the release of the centenary edition of Currents and Conduits and for the benefit of the layman:

Throughout its history, the Chamber Philosophick has studied a significant number of conduits but is yet to find any noteworthy indications as to the mechanicks of such phenomenon. Yet, despite the overwhelming lack of irrefutable evidence, the general consensus amongst our Fellows is that conduits are, in fact, a natural phenomenon occurring throughout the Multiverse.

However, evidence definitely exists to suggest that certain, extinct cultures possessed the capability of harnessing the conduits, bending them to ancient will - the Chamber Philosophick refers to such conduits as ‘artificial’. We are unsure whether these ancient cultures merely tapped pre-existing, natural routes between Planes, creating convenient doorways through space, or whether such prodigious civilisations understood the very workings of Nature’s portals, creating routes between Planes as a matter of whimsy. Why, to harness such power would be a great and terrible thing indeed, and there are those amongst the Chamber who fear further progress in this area, less the very fabric of the Multiverse be usurped and bent to violent desire.

Our best – and, dear listener, I use the term loosely - evidence suggests that conduits may connect Planes both near and far apart, and that transportation through conduits is near-instantaneous. The latter is matter of pure mathematical conjecture and the evidence used to derive the equations, along with the constants used, is questionable at best due to the difficulty of measuring absolute time between Planes.

To return to the topic of natural and artificial conduits, the Chamber Philosophick uses Prevant’s System for the Classification of Conduits to further define conduits in terms of Freedom and Temporality.

The Freedom of conduits is further classified by the terms: stable, anchored and free. Stable conduits link two and only two locations and naturally occurring stable conduits are extremely rare. Readers should note that Freedom is a geographick, not temporal, measure and stable conduits are geographickally stable whilst not necessarily being stable in the temporal sense (see Temporality below). Conversely, amongst artificial conduits, those of a stable nature are most common. Anchored conduits are analogous to the vegetation that one commonly finds in rivers: whilst their roots are anchored to the river bed, their tips are free to drift in the rivers currents. Anchored conduits always have a stable link to a single Plane, but may provide passage to more than one destination. The Chamber Philosophick is yet to understand the deeper, underlying pattern of anchored conduits. Finally, to continue the river analogy, free conduits are like the river snakes that ply the waters: neither the head nor tail of such conduits form a stable relationship with a Plane, but rather they swim through the currents of the multiverse as the river snake negotiates the river.

Temporality is a measure of the conduits behaviour over time and is further classified by the terms: eternal, periodic and erratic. Eternal conduits are those that are continuous in the temporal sense. For example, an eternal stable conduit permanently links two locations all of the time. There is some debate whether known eternal conduits are really eternal or if their periodicity is such as to appear eternal - a few hours are a lifetime to the mayfly but an eye blink to the gods. And so we segue to the next class of Temporality: that of the periodic conduit. Periodic conduits are simply those with a link between locations that is accessible with regularity. The accessibility of Periodic conduits may be time, or event, based. Finally, the erratic conduit is one where it is not possible to predict when the link between locations will be accessible. -

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Tween-Sailing

“Don’t you listen to them Soggies: a ship sails the Tween, a boat don’t.” - Captain Jym Arkady, Legendary Captain of the Spinning Coin

For the sake of convenience the author shall refer to all vessels capable of sailing the Between as Ships. The Author is fully aware of the frustration that our naval friends feel in the use fo this term, but the author intends no offence.

It is rare for any two Tween Ships to look the same, with even those that are built to certain specifications exhibiting unique detailing and character. In fact, the artistic beauty and craftsmanship of ships is a matter of pride and intense rivalry amongst ship captains – woe betide any crew member who’s sluggish or lacksidasical in ensuring the ship is spick and span before entering port.

Unlike the oceans, the Tween does not impose many restrictions on ships and thus, whilst all boats look more-or-less similar, ships do not. In fact, there is a staggering amount of variety between the ships that sail the Tween. The only commonality between ships is the need for a helm and sails. By using the term ‘sail’, the author may have inadvertently mislead those readers familiar with boats into imposing a certain boatliness upon ships. The reader should note that, whilst many ships have sails similar to boats, many do not. In Tweener terms, a sail is simply any mechanism, powered by the helm, capable of interacting with the Tween’s currents in a manner that allows the ship to sail the Tween.

Ships range in appearance from the elegant and functional Spinning Coin (where beauty lies in its simplicity and an ethos of form-follows-function) to the bizarre crystal chaos of the Chance Folly, which can only be likened to a “big, fat, purple sea anemone” (Captain Jayne Levante’s words, not the author’s). Generally, working ships are more likely to be functional in nature whilst pleasure craft are more likely to follow flights of whimsy and fancy as their rich owners attempt to out do each other. Whilst the author would not be so arrogant as to assume his opinion warrants much attention, he did once crew upon the Spinning Coin and would recommend an elegant but functional ship over a more elaborate one any day. To quote my dear former captain: “A ship is a ship, it aint a bloody statue!” And if anyone should know, he should - the Spinning Coin is by far the swiftest, most lively ship in Known Space.

All Ships wishing to sail the Tween should be equipped, or crewed, with the following:

• A helm, which protects the ship and its crew from the Tween (by creating Plane-like conditions within a safe 'bubble' around the ship) and enables the ship to ‘catch’ the Tween currents in its sails.
• At least one crew member adept in the arcane arts (to act as a living source of arcane energy for the helm). See Powering Helms.
• At least one crew member skilled in Planar Navigation.
• A competent crew.
• Specialist crew members such as ships surgeons, quartermasters and cooks.
• Several means of defending oneself in the wilds of the Tween.

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Dimensional Folding

The purview of powerful magics and / or technology, this is the means used by most "gods" and equivalent entities, archmages, and other highly powerful or esoteric individuals, or via devices crafted by such. And of course, as the exception that proves the rule, some rare races have evolved or been altered to have such an ability as a native talent.

The ultimate trump card, and a sufficiently rare ability as to be remarkable even in Esoterica, the fact that it is possible is implicit and rarely mentioned in scholarly discourse or academia.

Some player characters and significant NPC's might have such an ability either innately or via artifice. A GM needs to pay attention to Teleport and EDM based abilities, and decide upfront if they wish to allow, tightly control, or disallow characters having such abilities as it has a significant chance to create problems or destabilize a campaign. However, it should be noted that due to the effectively infinite nature of the 'Tween and the general idea that neither the 'Tween itself or dimensional travel are fully understood, a clever GM can manage to still challenge characters with such abilities and engineer scenarios that negate their benefit via plot or fiat.

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