Chapter One: That Which Is

An introduction to the world, through a fictional piece of text called The Tracer's Handbook.

     In a time and place which was neither, did there exist a world known by its inhabitants as Somnium. It was a world diverse and varied in aspects that transcend imagination. All manner of being did reside upon, within, and around it.  Creatures that manifest themselves only amongst the most fantastic of dreams were mundane. Landscapes foretold in legend were interwoven with one another.

     Somnium was a being that grew and expanded. Never had it sat stagnating! Supernatural forces would erect their domains at speeds unimaginable to most mortals. Some creations could take millennia, while others were forged in mere seconds. The creatures that did so were varied in every way, shape and form. Gods and ants did both breathe new life unto the world.

     Somnium was a being that died and shriveled. Never had it been left in peace! For as long as there was a world, there was destruction. Things of beauty and horror alike were obliterated by means unfathomable, for purposes as obscure and varied as the entities that destroyed.

     In short, Somnium was a being of change.

     All things change. Nothing is eternal. But there were patterns that can be traced by those who observed. Think first of the cycle of life and death.

     A world is born from the dust of stars long dead. Upon that world and from that stardust does a plant arise. It struggles to be more of itself. It grows through the elements inherent in the ground. It grows further through the seeds it formed. Distant replicas of itself spread, and more of the same is created.

     Then, a rumbling beast treads forth and consumes a plant. The whole of that plant is diminished, yet its race, its quintessence, remains alive. Now instead the elements that did compose the plant compose the beast, and further the beast’s quest to be more of itself. The plant is not gone. In fact, it is more itself than it was before. Not only is the plant still living as a race of plant, it is also a race of beast. There are merely more varied personages of the plant.

     From this vantage point it could be seen that all the beings are but plant, but are they truly? For the plant fed from the ground, which was born of the stardust and which will one day return to stardust.

     Thus Somnium was stardust, albeit many erratic forms of stardust.

     The stardust took many forms and did many things. Some stardust could affect other stardust in unique ways; eating, decomposing, eroding, attacking… Gradually the stardust learned more and more evolved ways to interact; scientific creations, magical workings, speaking, oppression, empowerment.

     It was amongst this chaos that patterns could be seen, though they were easier to spot when observed at a smaller scale. Perhaps each of this type of creature has cells that contain these organelles which perform these tasks. Perhaps these cells are built in a structured order by specific chemical commands, which are composed of a certain ratio of elements in varying quantities.

     Tracing these patterns became known as science, philosophy, and magic. They were Somnium also.

     Stardust traced the patterns of stardust. Many peculiar things were observed. The very fact that stardust could learn about itself was peculiar.

     The stardust was confused.

     The pieces of stardust that were determined to trace these patterns were called many things; scientist, scholar, philosopher, wizard, monk, shaman, and more. They were perhaps the strangest anomaly ever to be.

     They were Somnium.

-Introduction to the Tracer’s Guild Handbook