The Theory of the Thaume

How from his humble beginnings, beyond the end of his mortal life, Zhul continued his career to at long last attain absolute divinity, and have his prophecy fulfilled

Prologue

“Fahra came upon a young Zhul, only recently made aware of his extraordinary talent for the channeling of magic. She wondered if her son Lyrian had interfered again with the mortal realm. The distraught Zhul sought desperately for a way to get rid of his magical potency, for it terrified him and made his very essence uniquely unstable. Fahra pitied the young human from Turil and visited him in a dream one night to explain to him his twofold destiny. He could either plea to the Gardener to erase him from existence or he could follow his path as a mystic theurge and fulfill any prophecy that would come to him. The next day Zhul woke up and immediately went to the temple of the Gardener that lay just outside the city. As he saw the ominous gray building, a morose feeling came over him and he reviewed his options. He could either disappear from existence or become something... he wouldn't dare take a guess at, at that point in his life.

He decided to go to a small school of wizards, which would later become the Royal Academy of Wizardry. He got assigned to a mentor that taught him the Potentially Omnipresent Way of Enigmatic Revelation. Here he learned about the ways of unlocking the mysteries of the world in a manner that could be used in a controlled setting, at any place and at any time. He became a full wizard and his first achievement in that position was creating the first ever mana node. It could channel, for the first time in history, a small quantity of magical energy through a rift in reality. It did this by supercharging lyrium crystals which whould tear a small hole in reality. The way he did this is actually not very important. What was important was that his theory about how this occurred could be extended almost into infinity, making a person with the right knowledge and the right mind able to attain transcendental powers. From that day he knew what Fahra had meant and he began foretelling a great magical upheaval in the world, only precedented by the divine Mehrun, the first mortal to attain godhood.

He went on to predict that he himself would search a place with enough lyrium available to fuel a device that would equal the power of the Gods themselves. With this he would create a mortal being that would become a symbol of magical perfection. In the end; he would always finish his now famous speech; he would himself ascend into the realm of the gods and be welcomed as an equal.”

“Welcome to TERRA, the Thaumic Enigma's Revelations Required to Ascend. Here we conduct top secret thaumatological research for the greater good of humanity. We work in an underground facility buried somewhere beneath Quatropolis. The name is a reference to Zhul's epic fundamental theory of the thaum, which unified the world's much older magical and theological theories.”

A lesson in fundamental thaumatology

The Thaume, Zhul deduced in his final days on the mortal plane, is the smallest quantity of magical and divine power. Though the two paths follow separate rules of practice, their origin seems to be the same. Only through careful and lengthy observation of a rift he had opened in his laboratory's sanctuary, which formed a direct link with the primal plane, he revealed that the smallest sustainable hole in reality could deliver a set amount of energy before it collapsed. Should the rift be sustained this minimal amount would have to be channeled through every second to avoid its collapse. He named this magical quantity the Thaume, the reason of which he failed to clarify in his works exactly, because scholars have found two distinct name's this could be an abbreviation from:

“Theoretical Holy Allotment (of) Universal Mortal Essence” from a priest's point of view. Or it is: “Theurgically (the) Highest Accumulation (of) Indivisible Magical Energy” from a mage's point of view. The latter taking into account that in Zhul's time the word Thaume would be pronounced Thaime. The divine name for the thaume comes from viewpoint that a god has to decide for the mortal plane how much of the universal essence can be channeled through the deity's native plane, during a set period of time, which off course puts some restrictions on its use. The second goes out from a certain set of ground rules that supersede divine sanction and claim that magical energy can be channeled directly through the astral plane, without the interference of any gods and that any smaller amounts of magic would not have the momentum to breach the patterns of reality and therefore cannot exist in the world we live in. This led to the famous thaume per second. Zhul calibrated his first mana node to exactly one thaume per second and found that a magically talented or divinely inspired person of average fitness could hold the rift open through the forces of will and imagination for a mere ten seconds, before collapsing from exhaustion. By letting people of varying magical prowess or divine inspiration try this he found that it was the body itself that was a limiting factor to channeling magical energy. The level of talent could only speed up the process, but not lengthen it beyond what could be channeled through the mind. A good health would increase the total amount of measured energy and a strong talent would shorten the time it took to breach the fabric of reality, in effect causing the thaumes to accelerate. However, Zhul also had liquid lyrium available to power the nodes, which was much more potent and could replace the practice of straining one's body to do this. He made a diagram containing all his test results and found that all the different dots formed a curved line. When he increased the size of his diagram significantly he could extrapolate where the asymptote would be, meaning there is a limit to what can be channeled through a hole in reality. This number of thaumes per second he concluded was the exact power of the gods themselves and this even meant that the gods had to be equal in power. At the bottom side of the diagram he found there was a negative type of energy, which he called the anti-thaume. This was simply a thaume that was channeled back to the primal plane. When a negative flow of energy reaches a critical point, first enchantments and miracles start to disappear, then the spiritual link starts to fade after which life ends and finally existence itself in an increasingly rapid decline.

Zhul formulated a clever formula: “HUMANISGO(O)D”, meaning; “the Highest Universal Mana Allotment Noticeably Identified in a Single Globally Omnipotent (or Omniscient) Deity (or Demon; for they also existed once, but were banished to separate planes after a great celestial war the gods had won)” This formula described that when observing a god's wonders or witnessing a miracle one should consider that there are limitations to what omnipotence can deliver. This is because the energy flow that causes omniscience is reversed through the actions of the gods, allowing them to become noticeable and identified as divine beings, or demonic forces in the case of demons, by mortals. The extra O in the formula indicates that the forces of good strive for a balance in acting and knowing with regard to the mortal plane.

Luckily for the world the force of the demons can barely reach the mortal realm on its own, unless mortals themselves start to channel them through though. Allthough this is a topic for a whole other lesson all together.

Finally Zhul deduced from his diagram that because of a certain universal tendency towards equilibrium between the different planes, all energy in the world is absolute and that therefor by measuring the world's thaumic energy level, meaning the exact amount of magic that needs to be channeled into the mortal realm per second for the world to remain in existence, is the maximum power a deity can expend per second, being omnipotent. The theory goes that knowing is half of the balance and by having knowing and doing in balance one could have a maximized mana flow, giving as much energy as you take, as Thanatos teaches us. The Gardener would for example be more on the omniscient side, causing an outward flow of thaums, while Omonos is more on the omnipotent side, causing thaumic energy to flow into the mortal realm more. This also means that one cannot use full omnipotence at the same time as complete omniscience, which is why Iawat chose to become the matter of the world itself, sacrificing all of his knowledge for an everlasting flow of energy from the primal into the mortal plane. If one could equal the divine flow of power for only one moment, one would have acquired omnipotence, which would be be achieved by reaching omniscience first, Zhul reasoned. For by ascertaining the worlds total sum of thaumic energy one would know how much energy there is in the universe by adding the number of planes that exist. This needs to be exactly equal to the energy that comes from the primal plane, which is the universe's power supply so to speak. If one calculates the difference between one's own magical or divine capacity and the total sum of any plane's thaumic components one gets one's own measure of godhood. You can calculate then how much energy it would take to push your essence through the fabric of realty into the primal realm, probably needing to go through another God's plane first, or the astral plane. This is done at a speed of your thaumic channeling capacity divided by your total thaumic essence. When this is done one you can quench your divine thirst on the primal flows of energy that would in the mortal realm destabilize your being, but being made out of only thaumes your soul, which is now freed from any mortal burdens, can start to created its own plane of existence out of of the primal clay that lays at its feet. Mehrun achieved this through lifetimes of meditation and contemplating himself and his relation to the universe. He used his powerful mind to eventually force his entire being, mind, body and soul, to go become essential fire, and went through the plane of elemental fire, into the primal plane.

How Zhul achieved his divine status, is told in the next lesson.

How Zhul managed to create a shortcut to godhood

Despite the promising header, exactly how the prophet managed to shortcut his way into omnipotence largely remains a mystery. We know he didn't do it by finding and calculating the flow of every thaum in the universe in order to achieve omniscience. However, it is thought by some that if all the legends about Zhul and all of his devices and tools studied and researched then finally the path thus revealed could lead other people towards ascension.

Zhul's apprentice had tried to channel the maximum amount of magical energy through the dream realm to create the first Draconic egg. When he did this Zhul got an exact reading on Fahra's Maximally Allowed New Assimilations of energy, also called: mana per second. Calibrating his permanency apparatus to continue this wave of energy he allowed for the egg to stay in existence. The way the Permanency Apparatus works is by drawing a veil over the senses of the Gardener's omniscient senses, by letting an equal force to the materialized imagination leave the mortal plane for the Dream Realm. This lets the gardener think the world is still in balance, so he will not intervene in the order of things. For when he is sensing everything he can do nothing, but if he looks at only a part of the world his powers will increase. So Zhul would have to take something away in order to create a blind spot in the Gardener's senses. The apparatus would direct the blind spot over the newly created egg and veil it's existence from the great pruner.

Zhul, being a brave man, allowed for his own magically divine soul to go to the dream realm by taking a lyrium infusion, which would be lethal, were it not mixed with a blueskin's blood. The lyrium mixed with the blood could sustain a rift large enough for a piece of his soul to go through, first sacrificing his magical powers, making him lose levels of magical talent in the mortal realm. His mana was assimilated by the dream realm and every night as he drank the elixir and went to sleep, he would fade a little more. Consequently the dragon grew in power, for it was after all a living being. As the dragon set out into the world Zhul had to keep on increasing the dosages of lyrium for the dragon's potential was immense and it's power grew every day. This weakened Zhul so much that in the end he was but an empty shell of a man, barely alive, for his magical soul existed completely within the dream realm now. His body was now unable to channel any more magical energy and so the dragon stopped growing. This angered the dragon so much that he incinerated Zhul's only mortal tie. So now his body would return to Iawat, but his soul was in the Dream Realm, instead of any regular afterlife. Zhul bided his time, but often visited his dragon in it's dreams. As the dragon attracted worshipers they learned about Zhul's life and started to create their own elixirs and used them in rituals of sending. They sent pieces of their soul to Zhul in order to have the permanency apparatus maintain its veil so their master was able to grow even more in power. Zhul finally had gained enough thaumic essence to tear a hole in the fabric of his existence and he fell into the primal plane.

Zhul's first days as a deity

When he came out he had become a full fledged deity with omnipotent powers over the mortal plane. However, even though the gods welcomed Zhul in their midst, they gave him the task of designing and building them each something to prove himself worthy as a god. After completing these great tasks, which will be covered in another chapter, he set his first steps on the mortal realm as a god to visit his well developed creation. As his first act on the mortal plane he created a second dragon, to be the first one's mate so the two could reproduce like a normal race. Zhul would compensate by creating a people of blueskins that remain partially in the dreamrealm in order to maintain the balance in the world. So as the dragon population increased the blueskins took some more naps, keeping the veil intact. Later in his existence, after the great plague, Zhul made an agreement with the Gardener and Lyrian to allow for more raw thaumic energy to be directed into the mortal realm, in order to give people a chance to rebuild after the thaumic bombs had destroyed so much mana and the plague so many lives. These became lyrium wells, huge underground reservoirs containing liquid lyrium, lined with the magic deterring palladium ores. The Zhulites found these wellls and started using their contained power for fueling apparati meant to create better apparati, which gave their descendants the chance to build even more magically advanced devices. In recent years the Zhulites saw that demand for high mana solutions stabilized and so thaumatological research decreased to less frightening speeds. Though new inventions arrive every year, the main universal principles of magic are now fully exploited by Zhulite Exar Thaumic Technicians, or ZETTs, letting the heaviest ships fly and the most sluggish boats race across the water.

“These are good times to live in, thanks to Zhul's legacy, for we must not forget who first harnassed the thaume and finally used it to bend the universe to his will!”

Harnessing the power of the Thaume, a masterclass in Thaumic Resonance Theory

The idea of thaumic resonance occurred to Zhul on the 58^th night of his contemplation of the universal laws of mystic theurgy. As he was meditating on top of the lyrium well that would be the trigger to his revelation, he compared the forces of the gods to the forces harnessed through the practice of magic. He asked himself why the power had been divided the way it was in this era of time. Could there have been an era when mages were equal in power to the gods, or was this just a fantasy he wondered. As he looked upon the sky he witnessed a large airship, closely followed by a thunderstorm, accelerating at a tremendous rate. This was a divinely powered craft, fueled by the storms created by weathercasters, who serve Lord Omonos. After it had passed he noticed a slight change in the mountain's magical field, which affected his hypersensitive magical soul. He went down the mountain to explore a natural cave he had found earlier and went down into the mountain. As he descended the feeling subsided and he could sense that the fabric of reality had stabilized again, except that the total energy of the mountain's field had slightly increased. He came upon a hole in the cavern floor, deep within which he could sense high quantities of thaumic energy. The prophet lowered a conjured rope with an open flask attached to it. When he hauled it up the flask had filled up with a light blue liquid that literally radiated raw mana.

That night Zhul formed his theory on thaumic resonance. The fundamental laws of this universal process are covered in the next section.

When a deity performs a miracle, waves of thaumes are channeled through the deity's native realm from the primal plane and are added to the mortal plane, subsequently deposited as lyrium near underground palladium veins, which serve as a universal neutralizer for the thaumic radition. This way the deity's actions become irreversible and can have a lasting effect on the world, for the added thaums serve as an anchor, or counterweight depending on how you look at it. This is the process Zhul called Thaumic Resonance. Some scholars claim that Zhul's agreement with Lyrian and the Gardener to increase the mortal realm's allotment of lyrium has to do with his wish to grant magic users more raw power to use in their magical devices. This way every time one of teh gods uses the power of omnipotence to generate a certain effect in the world, be it lasting or fleeting, the world's lyrium supplies will increase correspondingly.

The quality of the lyrium depends upon the thaumes per second used. When a deity channels a certain critical level of energy the lyrium can become liquid. The liquid Zhul had found radiated its thaums at an incredible rate, being a direct consequence of the interference of Omonos with reality. Not being contained by the palladium the thaumes flew into all directions, affecting the fabric of their environment as they went in and out of the astral plane at an incredibly high frequency. If he could harness this power, Zhul thought, he would be able to channel many thaumes per second through the astral plane, and even create anti-thaums that could form a hole through the astral plane, into the primal one. Anti-thaums had the potential to suck reality back to the primal plane, giving its compontent thaumes the highest potential velocity. Should the hole collapse and the balance restored by the equalizing forces of the Universe, symbolized by Lyrian and the Gardener, the power that would flow back into the world would equal that of a god.

By learning the exact energy of a thaume, which is the frequency at which a thaume switches back and forth into the astral plane, as well as it's exact position the thaume would collide with the persons own thaumic energy that allows this knowledge. Making it lose some of its velocity, which it would have given off to the slower moving thaume generated by the caster's thoughts, which could approach the thaume from any different direction, or dimension because of the universe's multidimensional nature. When such a thaumic collision causes energy to increase within the caster the result is called inspiration. Should the frequency of both colliding particles be exactly equal, but in opposite directions they would exist at the same moment in space/time, one in the astral plane (where knowing occurs), the other in the mortal realm (where existence occurs). This causes a rift in reality allowing for the particles to bounce back on each other. This rift allows for the knowing to become real and vice versa, being the true nature of magic. Should the opposite happen, two thaumes with the same frequency heading in the same direction at the same point in space and time this can reach a critical velocity, which could tear a hole through the astral and the mortal planes. Being unable to withstand such raw force, the surplus energy is then given off to the primal plane. This force will be forced back into reality afterwards at the divine level of energy transferrence. This will cause a miracle to occur. Channeled raw and unguided, through the Anti-Thaumic bomb for example, the force would merely be an incredibly destructive one. But with profound knowledge of the Primal plane, through careful studies of the energy flows of all the other planes, a theurge can guide the thaumes released into the primal plane back towards any other plane. This can be done with a maximum force equal to the number of dimensions times omnipotence. This formula also explains that omniscience cannot exist in the same dimension as omnipotence when it is derived from a single plane. This also explains why a deity needs its own plane of existence, a separate astral realm where they are omnipresent. These planes are grafted by their native deity from the raw energy of the primal plane, causing a diversion of the primal flow. So this predicts certain major consequences. Should all the mortal realm's thaumes be manipulated in such a way so that all its energy is symmetrical to a gods native plane, the excess energy could force the deity back into the primal plane, or when coming from the other direction, the mortal realm would be forced into the primal plane instead. The mortal realm however has a buffer for this, being the astral plane, which is a sort of reflection of reality. Which is, logically, why thinking about reality is often called reflecting upon something.

Another major consequence is that when the multiple dimensions form a type of symmetry with reality, be it the mortal one or a deity's native plane then then the surplus symmetry would create either a reflection or a duplicate of something depending on the direction of the energy. The nature of the reflection is affected by the planes, or deities involved. One should note that the fabric of reality could become severely imbalanced if multidimensional thaumic flux is caused while not having attained exact symmetry. The most important consequence of this theory however is that if at one day all the dimensions, meaning all planes of existence, would achieve this kind of symmetry with each other the flow of the primal plane will be cut off and the multiverse would cease to exist and the primal flow would stop. All of the thaumes would cease to move, their frequencies dropping to zero, for this is the only frequency at which all dimensions could achieve symmetry at the same time. Except for one outcome though, which is when the frequency of all dimensions reaches the universal maximum, which is when there will only be primal flow left as all thaums will be moving in all directions at maximum velocity at the exact same moment. This would cause a universal reset, after which new dimensions, with completely different laws, will come into existence and deities will start to form again and it will be a very long time before order is restored.

All different kinds of variations of these consequences are off course theoretically possible, but these are the most important ones to remember. In lay mans terms it means that when gods work together they can take down other gods, but need to sacrifice something for this, or find a way to duplicate themselves first. A god can never fully understand itself except by reflecting itself upon the other dimensions and observing the primal flow. A last thought to remember is that when the whole world works together we are able to take down a god, plunging its native plane into the primal one. This is achieved by becoming the opposite of what a god stands for, causing reality to push a deity towards the primal void, where its essence is reused by the other planes as it bounces back into existence in a completely transformed and possibly diffuse way. This can only ever be achieved by balanced thaumic resonance, meaning the mortal realm must be tuned to the astral plane exactly, meaning action and thought are in complete unison; or by attuning the mortal realm to another deities native plane, meaning action and belief are in unison. This explains on a smaller scale the different ways of controlling the primal flow and where all changes to reality come from, be they of a magical or of a divine nature.

I hope you enjoyed reviewing our theory on Thaumic Resonance, and that it answered most of your questions about how the universe works on a fundamental level. Thank you for studying the Lore of Zhul.