I am writing this journal to document and condense all information available to me regarding The Rift. There will be others with different information and some who have more, so this journal will not be the only resource worth studying. If you are reading this, then you are either my successor and have taken up the mantle of the Explorer, or you have found my body in some god-forsaken corner of the Rift. Whatever the circumstances may be, I sincerely hope that this journal is helpful to my successor, or at least more helpful than the journal of my predecessor was for me.
My name is Seviki Dilich, and I have traveled the Rift for over 1 million quadralents. For others who do not use the system of time from my world of origin, you may refer to this amount of time as 250 thousand years, or 687 hecatorons. If you use a different system of time measurement, then I can assure you, reader, that my time spent traveling the rift is quite large. Both myself and my predecessor, who’s name and species remains a mystery to me, have come to believe that the space in the Rift is either effectively or literally infinite. There have been no records of any sentient species ever finding a wall, floor, or roof of the Rift. For this reason, it is believed to be infinite. Spread across this vast expanse is a type of energy that has been given many names by other sentient races. They are called, to name a few, ‘Spirit Essence’, ‘Life Essence’, ‘Ether Essence’, many other words followed by ‘Essence’, simply ‘Ether’, ‘Mana’, ‘Arcane Energy’,‘The Blue’, and many other pretentious works of etymology. For the record, ‘The Blue’ was courtesy of my predecessor, and did not come from my species, the Divalti. There are many rules regarding the function of Ether, as my people call it, but such topics must be left for in depth dives into the subject.
While an infinite space of magical power may seem significant all on its own, it is the fragmented lands of various worlds that is the source of all intrigue in the Rift. Through countless years of study of past Explorers’ notes, I have compiled the relationship between the Rift, and the planetary realms. The beginning is when a dimension is forged, and it begins its life as a collection of basic particles. Skipping past the unimportant parts of the dimension’s life, the important breaking point is when a sentient species is born into the dimension. Once sentient life begins, an ‘invisible timer’ is started that could last anywhere from a few thousand quadralents to an infinite number of quadralents. Once this ‘invisible timer’ is depleted, a series of tears are formed in the fabric of space in both the Rift and the subject dimension. Once this happens, a small opening is made between the two, allowing Ether to effuse between the Rift and the subject dimension. Common signs for the tears in reality are strange weather patterns in local areas and failure of other systems of energy such as electricity. It still remains a question unanswered why the birth of sentient life prompts the beginning of the ‘invisible timer,’ as my predecessor called it, however there are theories that both myself and previous Explorers have compiled.
The oldest surviving theory is that sentient life is born from the rift, and is therefore a beacon for the rift to force its way into a dimension. While this explains why sentient life is the prompt for the tears in reality, it fails to properly explain the reason for the variable timer. Although the long forgotten crafter of this theory had a valid theory, one in which I see the most plausibility, they were unfortunately missing a crucial aspect of sentient life: sentient energy. My predecessor called it ‘The Red’, as creatures of sentience always have some feature that has a red color on their body one they achieve sentience. I, however, see the name as needlessly uninformative, so I named it ‘Sentient Energy,’ not to be confused with energy based beings that happen to be sentient. Sentient energy is even more complicated than Ether in its application to the species that possess it, so I will delve into the subject at a later date. The important part is that it has been observed that sentient life seeps its energy into the matter in which they inhabit. This is usually on a planetary scale, and any planet inhabited by sentient species becomes ‘stained’ by sentient energy. It also happens to space stations if they exist.
To continue with the patterns of planetary realms, the next step in the process of a realms life is the ‘withering phase’. The phase, despite its implications, does not cause the affected world to lose plant life and such, but is a way of describing the slow deterioration of a dimension’s borders between itself and the Rift. The border eventually becomes too thin to hold back the flood of Ether, which has an incredibly high density compared to the Ether density of the subject dimension. This flood utterly shatters the barrier and rips apart the matter upon which sentient life lives. Those pieces are then pulled into the rift in blinding flashes of blue light. These pieces of land or what have you are then thrown into the Rift, suspended in midair, a pattern I call Islands for simplicity’s sake. The Islands have a unique property to them in that they are unable to fall unless half of the island is separated from the bigger whole. As well as that, Islands that have oceans or lakes on them have a property that makes the water unable to spill off of the side of the island, keepin the oceans intact, but also, hilariously, allowing fish to fall from their islands into islands below
There are many aspects and many facts I missed during my summary of the lifespan of a dimension, one of which is the ‘bubble,’ a name once again given by my predecessor. I will call it the ‘barrier’ to retain the academic tone. It has been a long known fact by my line of Explorers that it is impossible to traverse the universe of a dimension once a tear in reality has been made apart from the home system of the sentient life. It is unknown why this happens, but even after over a million quadralents, I have yet to travel to a world that had records of interstellar travel, which is unusual. I can only hypothesize that it is impossible to travel such vast distances without the help of Ether, or that some other factor is at play.
Another fact that I neglected to mention during my summary are the ‘life clocks.’ They appear in the form of a tall obelisk of a red color and exist wherever a rift between a dimension and the Rift are located within the Rift. They are vital to an Explorer, as they are the gateways that we use to cross into affected dimensions. Apart from this, there are no ways known to myself nor my predecessors to cross into the planetary realms, as we have not been successful in tearing the fabric of reality to the point of crossing dimensions. There is a unique phenomenon that occurs when a life clock appears, however. When a life clock appears, two things happen: any and all souls that leave their bodies during the ‘awakening’ of the planet are propelled into the Rift, and can be swallowed up by other life clocks, reincarnating them into other worlds. The propulsion effect upon affected souls is, I believe, caused by the clashing of Ether in the tears in reality. I will delve into the topic of souls at another point in time. The other effect of the awakening is the transportation of matter into the Rift. The specific matter is always some of what was at the locations of the tears. This can also affect sentient creatures and wildlife, which is the reason the Explorers exist in the first place.
One final fact that must be mentioned that has no relation to other subjects is the ‘Swarming Hunt.’ I do not have a clue as to who named it, but there have been references in older texts that say that it was named by a friend of the first Explorer. Either way, the Swarming Hunt is the reason why so few sentient creatures live in the Rift.
The Hunt is not a single group, but a countless number of hordes of monsters. These monsters find primal pleasure in consuming the flesh of sentient creatures. They come in every shape and size imaginable, as there are an effective infinite number of them, and they travel in packs. Every one of them is able to fly and they use their flight to travel the Rift looking for sentient creatures to consume. Despite their beastial nature, however, they have an innate sense as to when a world is about to be transported into the Rift, and they can use this sense across what I can only assume is an infinite distance. Looking at their overall behavior, they are violent and vicious in every way, and they are always flying in the direction of the nearest place a new island will be made. They are supremely powerful and, due to a property of the Ether in the Rift that will be explained later, the greatest militaries of the Planetary Realms are never able to compete, and are always wiped out, along with any other sentient life.
*Personal Journal:
This reminds me of the first time I read my predecessor’s journal when I was still scrambling to survive with nothing but a rusty axe. Her notes were very uninsightful, but I remember that they sparked an intense desire to explore the Rift. At the time, I knew that my world was a complete mess, and I should have probably gone there to help, but I did not. I guess it was apathy. Maybe I am some cold-blooded psychopath that has no feelings for other sentient life. Or maybe I was that way. I guess I could go back to the Life Clock to go back to my world, but will it be the same? I don’t know. But I guess if I do, I can write this along the way to help the next poor sap who gets thrown into the Rift. But, either way, if I die right about now, the poor sap who finds this will never know what I am. I’m almost as bad as my predecessor if that’s the case. I’ll just go over it in the section on sentient species and sentience in general.
