Skip to content

Idea Bank

A holding place for concepts, terms, and frameworks that have been considered and set aside — some rejected, some simply deferred, some waiting for the right story beat. Material here is not canon. Dip in when you need a new name or an alternative framing; promote ideas into the active wiki when they earn their place.

Terms Set Aside

Alternative names for the Archai

All proposed, one chosen (Archē). The rest remain available if a later distinction becomes useful.

  • Dynamis (δύναμις) — "power, potentiality." Used in Aristotle for potentiality and in Greek theology as a rank of celestial beings. Feels rawer/potential than Archē.
  • Henades (ἑνάδες) — Proclus's term for simple unities that mediate between the One and the manifold. More technical.
  • Numina (Latin, pl. of numen) — "divine wills, numinous presences." Roman-pagan register; would shift the divine vocabulary away from Greek.
  • Principia (Latin) — "first principles." Clear, academic. Direct Latin cognate of Archē.
  • Hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) — "underlying substance / concrete person." Could be useful for a sub-concept (e.g., the Katochos as the Archē's hypostasis in the base plane).

Alternative names for the Katochos

All proposed, one chosen (Katochos). Others may fit different roles.

  • Theophoros (θεοφόρος) — "god-bearer." Dignified; historically used (Ignatius of Antioch).
  • Skeuos (σκεῦος) — "vessel." Pauline resonance; good for instrumental framing where the holder is more conduit than god.
  • Diadochos (διάδοχος) — "successor / heir." Emphasizes chain-of-transmission. Used historically for Alexander's generals.
  • Theoumenos — "one being deified." Present participle of theoō; captures the process of becoming divine.

Set Aside from Earlier Drafts

  • Thymos (θυμός) — the spirited, striving part of the soul (Plato). Considered for the Sophronoi race name. Could be useful as an in-world term for ambition, drive, or the will to power — possibly a named Archē (Courage?) or a property distinct from Praxis.
  • Kenosis (κένωσις) — self-emptying, voluntarily setting aside one's own power. Theological (Philippians 2). Kenos is now adopted for the Husk-state; kenosis could still be useful as a specific ritual (voluntary partial self-emptying, e.g. to make a soulshard without the risk of Husking) or as a narrative theme.

Alternative Metaphysical Frameworks

The current setting draws primarily from Platonism (Realm of Forms, tripartite soul), process theology (Praxis-powered divinity), and a touch of Lurianic Kabbalah (Skorpismos / Synagōgē imagery). The following were considered as alternative or supplementary framings and could still inform individual cultures, orders, or story threads.

Lurianic Kabbalah (fuller treatment)

Structure: Skyne's echo as divine light that was meant to fill vessels (the Archai), with the Shevirat ha-Kelim (Shattering of the Vessels) imagery underwriting the Skorpismos mechanic. The whole cosmos could be reframed as a Tikkun (repair) project — sparks of divinity scattered, awaiting reassembly. Currently present only in the Skorpismos mechanic; could be pushed further if a specific order or faction adopted Kabbalistic framing.

Gnostic Aeon-syzygies + demiurgic error

Structure: the Archai as Aeons emanated in paired Virtue-Vice syzygies from Skyne's intention; the Vice woven in as demiurgic error because Skyne himself was incomplete. This framing is already half-present in the canon (Skyne-as-demiurge, Vices as unintended). Pushing it further would darken the setting considerably — creation itself would carry original sin.

Proclan henadic emanation

Structure: each Archē as a Neoplatonic henad — a simple unity mediating divine principle to its people, structured in a descending hierarchy from the One (Skyne) through to matter. Very architectonic. Would give the cosmology more vertical rigor but less relational dynamism than the current process-theology frame.

Shinto (kami / yorishiro / shintai / musubi)

Structure: Archai as conceptual kami; objects as yorishiro (temporary hosts) and shintai (permanent seats); commitment as offering; musubi as the binding-generative force. Currently refracted into the setting as Thronos (Greek translation of shintai) and Hypodochē (close functional cousin of yorishiro). Going full Shinto would bring the Eastern flavor up to top-level, which was considered and not adopted — would imply Eastern vocabulary for a wider series of concepts than the setting currently wants. Kept here in case a specific Eastern-coded culture wants it.

Hermetic "As above, so below"

Structure: every person contains every Archē in miniature. The external Archai and the internal virtue-patterns are the same pattern at different scales. Commitment isn't feeding a distant god; it's tuning the part of yourself that is Humility (or Pride). Powerful for personal-transformation story beats; weakens the distinction between people and gods, which the setting currently works to preserve. Worth borrowing for specific mystics or initiatory orders.

Hindu Shakti / avatar doctrine

Structure: divine power as feminine active energy (Shakti) distinct from the god as passive bearer; descent (avatara) as mechanism. The Phantasma / Pneumatophoros mechanic is a loose descendant. Could be pushed further if an order specifically reveres the active-power principle over the passive-seat one.

Stoic Logos Spermatikoi

Structure: each thing in the universe has its own logos spermatikos, a generative principle. Collective: the rational order of the cosmos. Would suggest that the Archai are the large-scale Logoi, and smaller logoi spermatikoi live in every plant, stone, and animal. Potentially useful for explaining why ambient Exousia varies by location and life-form.

Deferred Ideas

Concepts the setting wants to leave room for, but isn't ready to nail down yet.

Artificial Praxis

The possibility of manufactured Will — a Device or apparatus that can direct Exousia without a living soul behind it. Currently: Devices have no Praxis of their own, which is why they can safely channel Toxic Exousia. But what if a Device could be given Praxis synthetically? Plot-rich: a Collective project to build a soul; an Augmented's Device-integration crossing the line; an AI question in miniature. Kept deferred until a specific story beat needs it.

Will Extraction

Whether Praxis itself (as opposed to a crystallized soulshard) can be extracted from a person against their will. The current framing holds Praxis as inalienable — it is the person's own Will, and cannot be taken without cooperation. But the setting wants to leave open the possibility that someone, somewhere, with a sufficiently perverse method or ancient apparatus, could do it. The implications (a non-consenting soul emptied of Will, the extractor holding bottled conviction) are horrifying enough to warrant a proper slow-reveal.

Other-Form Metaphysics

The Praxis / Hypodochē treatment applies cleanly to Investment, and Primal now has its core treatment (the Forgotten / the Connected / "communion with the scattered" — though its Hypodochē-equivalent, if any, is still open: can elemental Exousia be bound into objects the way Will is?). Shaping and Blooming still need analogous work — what does "object-investment" or "permanent-commitment cost" look like for each, if anything? Deferred until the story pressures them.

Secular Futures

If (when) a society arises in which the Doxa-Praxis distinction is known widely, the Archai become politically negotiable. What would that look like? The Collective would regard it as an existential threat, and it would be — to them and to every Katochos. Not relevant at the current stage of history, but the setting wants room for it later.

The Stilling — terminal failure of the over-Connected (design-bible)

The end-state of a fully-drifted Connected soul (one who never stayed split): total resonance with the Forgotten's Shadow — a petrification of the will. The soul becomes unbending, repeating fixed patterns, "set in stone" (literally apt for a geomancer). It is the third spiritual failure pole beside Husking (emptied of Praxis) and the Consumption (flooded with Exousia): frozen. Design-bible only: the Shadow is Rigidity (the Forgotten's secret Vice); in-world this must never be named as such — use folk/clinical labels like the Stilling or the Setting. Parked until the Connection drift earns a story beat (Phaidros's dark mirror); promote when it does.

From the Eternal Spiral framework (legacy)

The deprecated Eternal Spiral / Synthesis Pantheon framework (preserved at CoreDesignDoc-MetaphysicalFrameworkSummary) was largely superseded by the Skyne / Archai / Five-Realms canon. Its load-bearing plumbing (Exousia, soul-waveforms, Toxic Exousia, the four Forms) survives in canon; the Eternal Spiral cycle (Emergence/Manifestation/Transformation) and panpsychism were salvaged into Cosmology.md. The following pieces were not taken into canon but are kept here in case they earn a place later.

Force / Form / Flow — the Three Pillars (best of the leftovers)

A tripartite classification of how Exousia expresses, orthogonal to the four Forms (which classify what it's made of):

  • Force (Yang): offensive expression — damage, breach, assault.
  • Form (Yin): defensive/support expression — healing, barriers, wards.
  • Flow (Tao): integrative expression — synergy, status, repositioning, tempo.

This echoes the Kabbalistic Three Pillars already nodded to in canon's design notes, and maps cleanly onto a Strike / Shield / Weave action grammar — making it as useful for combat design as for magic theory. The cleanest candidate to promote if the magic system ever wants a second axis. (The matching legacy casting grammar — Sympathetic Links as per-Aspect foci + Ritual Gestures Strike/Shield/Weave — is a combat-design artifact, not metaphysics; revisit only if the spell-casting UX wants ritual-object framing.)

The All-Soul

The legacy cosmos was a single conscious All-Soul evolving through the Spiral. Deliberately not canonized: Skyne made the world, so the world is not itself a self-existent world-soul. The panpsychic texture was kept (no dead matter, only quiet matter); the All-Soul as a named divine entity was dropped. Reopen only if a mystic tradition wants to believe the world is one soul (true or not).

The Synthesis Pantheon (27 Aspects)

A 27-member pantheon, each Aspect tagged across three Realms (Upper/Middle/Lower), three Pillars (Force/Form/Flow), and three Phases (Emergence/Manifestation/Transformation), with eight "Principalities" anchoring racial/land alignment. Superseded by the ~9 Virtue-Vice Archai bound to peoples. The per-Aspect Phase tagging is dead; the Phase cycle lives on as the Eternal Spiral. Kept for the naming bank only — several legacy Aspect names (Wellspring, Liberator, Sustainer, Harmonizer, Gardener, Potency, Returner) and role names already migrated into the current role/Eidolon vocabulary; the rest are spare parts.

Awakening (spell-spawned spirits)

In the legacy system, casting carried a 5–15% chance of spawning an Aspect-spirit (ally or hostile) onto the grid. A combat mechanic, not metaphysics — but if revived, it could be re-grounded in the new canon as Exousia spontaneously coalescing in saturated zones (a soft cousin of Skorpismos at trivial scale, or a way the Forest breeds its monsters).

Worldbuilding Scraps

Rough notes inherited from earlier drafts. Keep, develop, or discard as direction firms up.

  • Atoms or Exousia? ~~What is the world fundamentally made of?~~ Resolved → canon. Matter is low-intensity Exousia; the world is panpsychic to its foundation. See Cosmology — Matter and the Panpsychic Substrate.
  • Elemental Manipulator vs. Innovators — ~~a friction note from an earlier draft~~ largely resolved: elemental magic is Primal (the scattered Forgotten, reached by the Connected), while the Innovators/Glyphein wield Investment (Imbuing). They are distinct Forms; any remaining friction (a Connected elementalist vs. a Runic Builder) is now character/faction flavor, not a metaphysics gap.
  • The River has overflowed — the river that fed Kyanos has branched into several that reconjoin downstream. Possibly a Disruption symptom.
  • Cyrus doesn't recognize Kyanos — because he's familiar with the outer regions (now overgrown Forest), not the central core (Kuklos). Fits the new Kuklos-as-heart framing.