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[Il Palazzo]

So, eh, I don't get it. What is that seventh dimension explaining exactly?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Magic, the Universe, belief systems, everything. The seventh dimension is a hub of the universe, a place where nothing and everything exists at once. The best visual analogy is an endless sphere with a tiny smoke-filled room in its center. How the room actually works is beyond anyone trying to explain it.

The reason this works is that for most intents and purposes, a single 4-dimensional universe is all that concerns us. By knowing that it's just a part in something larger, and being watched over by entirely non-mystical entities, people could realise that qualms over religion and genesis are fruitless. The beginning of the Universe has been established, the people that posed as Gods have shown themselves, and life can be focused on something more interesting, like science. Oh, and yes, there's no afterlife. During the rapid scientific growth following the reveal, it was discovered that spirits and souls are part of an information clowd surrounding any inhabited planet. The Psi, or spiritual strength, of any self-consious being gets released into the cloud upon death, and remains there, imprinted with all the information it has gathered during its life. This information clowd continuously erodes and degrades as it interacts with space radiation, making the layers closer to earth (and thus protected by the magnetic field) "heaven", and the further layers "hell" where the spirits suffer damage and are destroyed. There isn't any clear distinction of whose soul goes where, but it was pretty clearly established that souls are inactive when they're not being interacted with. A human medium linking up with a soul acts as a console for a cartridge, and if the soul is degraded it begins to feel the damage it sustained.

Alright, let's step away from this before someone confuses my fictional 'verse for our real one.

[andrea]

It is a nice universe. does believing in it makes it real?

[Sean Mirrsen]

It may as well be real, but unless we get technology (or magic) that enables us to travel to other universes, we'll never get to it. By their count, we're in an insignificant branch of the main universe, or maybe even in an entirely different universe (since ours has no notion of Psi or equivalent yet).

[Il Palazzo]

So what happens if there is/are god(s) in the 8th dimension?
And where did all those dimensions came from?(in the sense of cosmology)

[Sean Mirrsen]

If there are more than 7 dimensions, nobody knows, and nobody cares, even the Commanders themselves. The Highest Command seems to be the one and only master of the Multiverse, and they're too busy acting as gods to undeveloped universes to form any religion of their own. Whether they are many or just parts of one entity, nobody knows. They share little information beyond simple facts. Whether they existed as they are from the beginning or formed as a consciousness combined from all the universes around them, nobody knows. One thing is known, that the Dimensions have existed for as long as the Highest Command has. If there are dimensions beyond the 7th, the general consensus among the 'verse's scientists is that it might not be dissimilar to the structure from the 3rd dimension up. Meaning that 8th is the "time" for 7th, and so on. If it's like that, there maybe be superiors even to the Commanders. A minority, however, regards the Multiverse as a loop. The entirety of the Multiverse is too big to encompass by anyone or anything, so it's entirely possible that somewhere, there is a tiny universe branch that loops back to the little smoke-filled room. Just like the experiments with time travel have allowed scientists to observe stable time loops in universe branches, the Multiverse may be a stable space loop, with no discernible end.

And speaking of space loops. It was found through experiment that every 3-dimensional universe is, technically, a closed infinite space loop. This allows the universe to recollect itself after the violent outburst that gave it life. When it happens, the universe suddenly reaches a state when it's exactly identical to its point of origin. Studies performed by the Alpha base have determined that when a universe timeline branch becomes sufficiently identical to another, they merge together and become one timeline again. For example, you're at a fork in the road. Two universes form when you decide to take either way, and if you weren't mauled by a bear on one of the paths, the two may rejoin again when you reach your destination. What will happen to the entire 'verse when it becomes identical to itself is a point of debate among scientists. Some speculate that the 'verse will loop back on itself, starting anew with essentially identical events. Others perceive this as a way new universes form, so that when one ceases to exist, another is immediately created in its place. There are supporters of the first theory, speculating that this was the reason for the Commanders' interference with our universe, and all others. If the Multiverse is such a closed loop, then it should become frustratingly boring for them, so they act as gods and influence people - playing games, essentially. That ours was the only universe given the knowledge to traverse the Multiverse is also explained thus, since there would be no way to know if we could actually breach into their dimension and mess things up somehow. Though frequently subjects of ridicule, the supporters firmly stand by their opinion.

(by this point you should realise that the Multiverse simply reflects my views on the world's structure, with an epic-like plot thrown in to keep it interesting)

[Il Palazzo]

Though frequently subjects of ridicule, the supporters firmly stand by their opinion.

Ok, that's you all right. I get it.

[Neruz]

You're actually stopping short by 3 dimensions; it's the 10th dimension where all possibilities are a single point. At least that's what logic would dictate.

[eerr]

a point. 0-d
a line,
a plane.
a box
a box that moves through time.
a box and the possible futures it holds.
a box and the possible places it could be.
a box and it's possible sources
wait, what were 8, and 9 then?
something about rulesets...

[Neruz]

Start with a point - 0

Two points, together they form a line from one point to another - 1

Three points, a line branches off from the first line, indicating where the first line could have gone - 2

A fold, if you take the branch and fold it through the third dimension, a 2D creature on the branch can 'jump' from one point to another, seemingly without moving through the intervening space. - 3

A line between two three dimensional objects, Time - 4

A branch from the timeline, what could have happened, but did not. In the fifth dimension, all the possibilities from a given starting point can be found - 5

The third dimension of time, the dimension that you fold through in order to move from one branch to another in the fifth dimension. This allows you to look at different starting points, and all their futures. - 6

Infinity, all possible outcomes of our universe, from it's origins to all of it's possible endings, this is treated as a point - 6.5

Two Infinities, two different universes from two different origins, and the line between them - 7

Three Infinities, a third universe and the branch from the line - 8

A fold through the 9th dimension, to move from one universe to another universe - 9

Everything. All possible branches of all possible timelines of all possible universes as a single point - 10

[qwertyuiopas]

So, if magic defies the ability to fully understand it, then magic is *unknowable* and thus unusable except by accident. And due to it's chaotic nature, the particularily unlucky person to stumble upon it is likely to be harmed or killed but it...

Or you can go for the option of technology is created and then used, from general understandings of physics, while magic is called into existance at will rather than from physical components without requireing prior construction. THST is a good way to split one from another. But doesn't that put magical items and alchemy under technology? (Well, if the alchemy creates a potion that, though posessing no effects of it's own, calls them into existance when used, and the magical objects work through, well, magic...)


Maybe then technology is when physical objects interact according to the laws of the universe, and magic is when physical effects are created without a physical source(Ignoring the user). Even then, magic could be reduced to a science, but the diffrence is that it can still be described as magic.

[Neruz]

Now you're just applying arbitrary definitions to the word "Magic"

[RAM]

Which is exactly what arbitrary definitions are for!

I want a magic that is not technology. It seems to me that causality is a fundamental component of technology, so for magic to be separate from technology all it needs is the ability to occur spontaneously.

Towards this end, what about a magic system in which magic just spontaneously erupts into existence. Whatever is at the point of an eruption becomes magical, by in large these are too mundane to be all that interesting, but people in this world have learned not to idly kick stones... The effects of an eruption are largely random, but for narrative purposes they are generally benign, so while occasionally people do just randomly explode into clouds of unknown elements, by in large something useful happens.
 In this world I would see two types of magical people, those who were subject to a magical eruption, and those who use things that were subject to a magical eruption. Being magical one'self would be more like a superhero, with a generally unique set of abilities, which could, I suppose, include some ability to manipulate magic, but, narratively speaking, I would be careful of this. Using magical items would be like technology, but items would generally be different from each other, and even if they were similar you would not be able to assume it, so each magical item would be its own unique technology ...

Spoiler: this should be moved to the Atheism thread (click to show/hide)

I would prefer the "it just happened" path, but it seem a bit too empty.

I think of it more as "1 version of existence had to be true, and this is it" Even if it is part of a multiverse there is still only one multiverse, or one infinite array of multiverses, or collection of infinite arrays of multiverses, infinite expanses of chaos, Unicorns living on the back of a theoretical dragon, and a hermit living in a corrugated iron shack which all, technically, don't exist afterall. There could have been no dimensions, no platform by which anything could exist, but we got this instead. As for "How did it start?", infinity handles that pretty neatly with an "It didn't"...

[Neruz]

If you're going to apply an arbitrary definition to magic, you might as well do the same to technology and render th entire argument moot.

[deadlycairn]

Technology is quite a vague descriptor really. Is a lever technology? A chisel? What about a pulley? An autonomous vacuum cleaner? At what point does it become a system that opposes (or doesn't oppose) magic?