Biblio Tuphlos/Panoptes: Book of the Blind/All-Seeing.
Author: Asya, Daughter of Goodmon.
This manuscript, along with a copy of the first half, is written on vellum tanned from wyvern hide. A copy is sent to the library at Belenoth and another distributed to the Tarkuulian Remnant.
Part 5: It's all coming down. All of it.
'The greatest end of all things is one that's certain, at least we know when to start a party with a definitive end of the night.'
Musing on my retirement.
This is the ninth iteration of the continuation of this book. Previous copies have gone up in flame, been stolen, been lost, fallen in the Huzuz harbor or been demanded by highway bandits who needed something to wipe with. I cannot confirm or deny this is the work of gods or if it is simply cruel happenstance. Previous chapters have been about my suspicions as to what the world is, how it started and where it is going or why. Previous iterations have been about how to break reality.
As previously written it seems plausible. I do not claim it is definite, that magic and acts of the Art are quite precious. World bending and depleting all at once. It makes me feel like an utter doomsayer to have written it the way I did, all with such alarm. The advantage of what I know now and how I have spent the intervening years is simply context and a broader idea of how things work. Time is happening, and it is the underpinning of the world that it begins and ends. One should never consider whether forward momentum is something caused by the initial push of your birth or an external pull towards the very last day you will live.
Ultimately both are simply momentum and you must continue. I know I have.
And the advantage of knowing that the world is coming to an end is simple: Only this place is ending. Toril perhaps is a horrible place if seen from the outside, imagine yourself watching from the outside and you might be able to see it so. And the fact that it began with Selune and will likely end with Shar means that your hope is simply... To leave.
Earlier chapters have covered that there is places outside. All underpinning logic of this world was defined by Oghma, an interloper from another place. A deity, but beings whom are not from this world aren't truly uncommon. Oghma came from elsewhere but records can also prove that the gods of Unther and Mulhorand were brought to this world by an ancient deity known as Ptah, brought to this world to wage a war of gods and mortals in antiquity. The ancient precursor races were many but were never the Elves, or the Dwarves. Elven records of the Days of Thunder speak of the Iquar'Tel'Quessir. The Creator Races. Ancient beings we barely know but whom do not count the Elves themselves among them, indicating the Seldarine as other interlopers. Perhaps the entire Elven race may be so?
These people are not uncommon. Interlopers. Individuals who came from some place else to arrive here on Toril. The names of several famous wizards in my own spellbook, if looked in to, tell names of several said to hail from other worlds: Tenser, Bigby, Mordenkainen, all came from somewhere else.
The thing here is that time, that same energetic push whether it be a forward shove or a fall to the end, is static and unceasing only for this place. The world we know. Even the planar realities within our own known Realms have variances in time. The Ethereal plan is ten times faster but does not move at all, while all time seems to happen all at once upon the Astral plane. It's an unfortunate fact that as a younger woman my world was shattered to have seen the armies of Kohlingen march to occupy a slip of land in Cordor, or to see the Amnish Armada blockade a single port. I can only see these things as petty now.
Such a tiny wound bleeding into an ocean and I thought it had all gone wrong. Earlier I posed a question that if reality is infinite then there is an infinite chance of it all going wrong. We've seen that it's not enough to rely on our own gods, it was we ourselves who had to solve every problem we fought in the Sea of Swords, whether it be the infection of Quintessence or the Interloper Collin Reyes. Or any of the other myriad threats no doubt that have happened since then.
Now at least is a time to plan.
Book of the Blind/All Seeing: Cont. [Loc. Within]
Re: Book of the Blind/All Seeing: Cont. [Loc. Within]
Part 6: Dominance, Submission and the Weave pt. 1
'Take a man as your Slave and he will resent the freedom you have taken from him. Give your slave a slave of his own and you will have endless loyalty from half the slaves you command.'
-Dubious Mulhorandi 'Wisdom'
One of the true wonders of primordial magic wielded during the Arcanum war was that it could be wielded inside zones of dead magic and antimagic fields. The Arcanum was unmade. Of those who learned those secrets beyond the Arcanum's members; two have died, two have vanished and one exists in perpetual suffering. Those arts have been erased. A second ban of Mystra has taken place to prevent 'Alien' magics from taking place within the world of Toril.
The question here, aside from the obvious intricacies of lost arts, is what is the horrible implication of 'Alien' magics. Things from beyond our world, from beyond the Weave. If one travels from Faerun to other parts of our world alone we will see variations in how the cosmos works. The Spirit Realms of Kara-Tur and Rasheman are entire realities which are bounded by geography and are not truly part of the planar makeup of the Sword Coast and its adjoining seas. The gods each come with their own realms and home planes, and we know for a fact that gods can simply... Arrive one day.
When the gods of Mulhorand and Unther appeared it was as avatars who marched to free the people who worshipped them. Spawning whole unto the world with terrific power they freed their followers from their Imaskari Shackles and forged a world unto themselves. A war where gods took to the fields is a terrifying possibility and the fact that these gods simply appeared one day, drawn here from elsewhere should be enough to draw fear from anyone else. Entire Pantheons born, Set was brought to this world, along with new aspects of Tiamat. For a long part of my life I was faithful to the Untheric gods that yet survive, and though I have lapsed I cannot help but wonder what it would have been like to simply see a god manifest in this world and tear through reality as I knew it.
Would there have been any functional difference between that and what I have lived through?
And worse, could it perhaps happen again? In a universe with infinite possibilities there is almost certainty that any given thing could happen. There is undoubtedly some defense against this kind of thing which somehow exists - I wouldn't know, or haven't divined the nature of such defenses to date - but when might it fail? What terrible gods could come towards us, whether it be from the known realms or the unknown.
And when that happens, what will we do? What could anyone do? Are the barriers of Oghma's logic sufficient to prevent the impossible from happening?
Power in the realm is defined with strict rules. The Weave exists to define what magic is allowed and which is too dangerous to exist. A weave may be a rug, or a tunic, in this case it operates as a straightjacket for some - tailored specifically for the likes of the Netherese and even more specifically Karsus. Possibilities once existed for a simple mortal to do something as dangerous as to usurp the goddess of magic herself, even if it only happened for a moment. In that moment the weave ceased to operate and Netheril fell from its place in the Sky, leaving only its degenerate leavings in Halruaa and Tarkuul and Thultanthar.
All our possibilities and greatest acts of power exist and are gifted to us by the gods, whether it be the power of the faithful granted The Power or those gifted enough to Wield the art by tome or blood.
What might happen if something comes for Mystra? From within or without. Her own enemies we know of are substantial, and beings from outside our known world are powerful and often horrific in nature. The Weave is a straightjacket which grants us power but ties us to the gods, a mighty carrot. The stick struck against on our back is the Wall of the Faithless of which I will speak next.
'Take a man as your Slave and he will resent the freedom you have taken from him. Give your slave a slave of his own and you will have endless loyalty from half the slaves you command.'
-Dubious Mulhorandi 'Wisdom'
One of the true wonders of primordial magic wielded during the Arcanum war was that it could be wielded inside zones of dead magic and antimagic fields. The Arcanum was unmade. Of those who learned those secrets beyond the Arcanum's members; two have died, two have vanished and one exists in perpetual suffering. Those arts have been erased. A second ban of Mystra has taken place to prevent 'Alien' magics from taking place within the world of Toril.
The question here, aside from the obvious intricacies of lost arts, is what is the horrible implication of 'Alien' magics. Things from beyond our world, from beyond the Weave. If one travels from Faerun to other parts of our world alone we will see variations in how the cosmos works. The Spirit Realms of Kara-Tur and Rasheman are entire realities which are bounded by geography and are not truly part of the planar makeup of the Sword Coast and its adjoining seas. The gods each come with their own realms and home planes, and we know for a fact that gods can simply... Arrive one day.
When the gods of Mulhorand and Unther appeared it was as avatars who marched to free the people who worshipped them. Spawning whole unto the world with terrific power they freed their followers from their Imaskari Shackles and forged a world unto themselves. A war where gods took to the fields is a terrifying possibility and the fact that these gods simply appeared one day, drawn here from elsewhere should be enough to draw fear from anyone else. Entire Pantheons born, Set was brought to this world, along with new aspects of Tiamat. For a long part of my life I was faithful to the Untheric gods that yet survive, and though I have lapsed I cannot help but wonder what it would have been like to simply see a god manifest in this world and tear through reality as I knew it.
Would there have been any functional difference between that and what I have lived through?
And worse, could it perhaps happen again? In a universe with infinite possibilities there is almost certainty that any given thing could happen. There is undoubtedly some defense against this kind of thing which somehow exists - I wouldn't know, or haven't divined the nature of such defenses to date - but when might it fail? What terrible gods could come towards us, whether it be from the known realms or the unknown.
And when that happens, what will we do? What could anyone do? Are the barriers of Oghma's logic sufficient to prevent the impossible from happening?
Power in the realm is defined with strict rules. The Weave exists to define what magic is allowed and which is too dangerous to exist. A weave may be a rug, or a tunic, in this case it operates as a straightjacket for some - tailored specifically for the likes of the Netherese and even more specifically Karsus. Possibilities once existed for a simple mortal to do something as dangerous as to usurp the goddess of magic herself, even if it only happened for a moment. In that moment the weave ceased to operate and Netheril fell from its place in the Sky, leaving only its degenerate leavings in Halruaa and Tarkuul and Thultanthar.
All our possibilities and greatest acts of power exist and are gifted to us by the gods, whether it be the power of the faithful granted The Power or those gifted enough to Wield the art by tome or blood.
What might happen if something comes for Mystra? From within or without. Her own enemies we know of are substantial, and beings from outside our known world are powerful and often horrific in nature. The Weave is a straightjacket which grants us power but ties us to the gods, a mighty carrot. The stick struck against on our back is the Wall of the Faithless of which I will speak next.
Last edited by Murkoph on Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Book of the Blind/All Seeing: Cont. [Loc. Within]
Dominance, Submission and The Weave pt. 2
'We created the gladiator pits and roared for blood, the gods created society and roared for prayer.'
-A cultist of things best unknown.
I will not claim to be a fan of the gods these days. But the nature of faith in this world is that we must have one. The nature of existence and the afterlife is that once we die and move on to our rightful place justly deserved as determined by the great Kelemvor we will continue to exist, and if we do not give homage then we will be mortared unto the wall of the Faithless and be slowly devoured by it if we do not strike a deal with the devils to fight in the Blood War.
The logic of this is that we must choose a god to worship. Some gods will simply demand tribute in exchange for an alleviation of pain, others offers reward or simply call upon you to do what is 'right'. All of the gods, good or evil, benefit from the wall. An altruistic god by right should rail against it but so far it remains; for good or ill.
For better or worse, since my exit from Amia I spent two years consumed with thoughts of the wall and its nature. What happened to me during the war has left me in a state lessened. I doubt I can survive the passage through the Fugue plane and pass into the afterlife. My spirit, rendered unwhole, would not be able to become a complete being or outsider and in passage to the afterlife I would in all estimation simply be subsumed into any god's realm as a fragment of power to perpetuate their domain. There may be no afterlife that is practically different to me than the wall. As such I have thought of reality as a prison ever since.
'The Weave is a straightjacket' I had said. A wondrous thing with great possibility and power but in a place where it does not exist our own interactions with it and the level of power that comes with it is meaningless. To go beyond it is to lose its power thus if we treasure it and what it brings us we must stay and protect our world. I am a wizard, I am writing a wizardly tome which you are reading and I am saying that if the Weave exists as a bounding factor of our reality then outside it I would be powerless. Any afterlife I pass on to will consume me as such I was left with several choices to avoid it. I have spent time in Tarkuul, and though I was never a member I was praised by the Magisterium Mortis. Necromancers will claim that anyone who passes on is simply one without the courage to continue life through any means, but I have also met the undead.
What other options do I have to avoid an afterlife? Now, understand me: This is not an explanation for a choice of Lichdom - such would be foolish - this is a tome of me advocating the notion that we should have the right to choose. To choose which afterlife, which world we live in. To choose without having to bow and literally worship another being to beg their mercy. I am a person with great power at my fingertips. I can conjure flames and slip through the walls of petty reality but the gods have bound me since birth. It is only after I have tasted the greatest measure of power I have yet tasted in life that I realise that there should be another option.
If I, who have dwelled among archmages and hierophants and heroes, am only realising the extent of my dilemma now: How might the common man understand it? How might they be given the choice? The greatest clerics of our deities may have the power to leave but outside the weave they are powerless, and even if they weren't the gods take their souls after life - whether as a kindness or as a payment. The mightiest arcanist might leave the world we know, but they too are powerless if we leave the weave. The only might we have outside of those sources of power comes from within... And though I have known warriors of great power no feat of strength might crack reality.
Through accepting the world as it is we may have great enough power to conquer each other; but the gods will always be above us and bind us here through offerings of power in exchange for our essence. If it is your wish and your pleasure, by all means worship these gods. It is not my place to demand otherwise but I believe that you should have the right to avoid these things if you should choose such. To be able to leave.
So how do we do that?
'We created the gladiator pits and roared for blood, the gods created society and roared for prayer.'
-A cultist of things best unknown.
I will not claim to be a fan of the gods these days. But the nature of faith in this world is that we must have one. The nature of existence and the afterlife is that once we die and move on to our rightful place justly deserved as determined by the great Kelemvor we will continue to exist, and if we do not give homage then we will be mortared unto the wall of the Faithless and be slowly devoured by it if we do not strike a deal with the devils to fight in the Blood War.
The logic of this is that we must choose a god to worship. Some gods will simply demand tribute in exchange for an alleviation of pain, others offers reward or simply call upon you to do what is 'right'. All of the gods, good or evil, benefit from the wall. An altruistic god by right should rail against it but so far it remains; for good or ill.
For better or worse, since my exit from Amia I spent two years consumed with thoughts of the wall and its nature. What happened to me during the war has left me in a state lessened. I doubt I can survive the passage through the Fugue plane and pass into the afterlife. My spirit, rendered unwhole, would not be able to become a complete being or outsider and in passage to the afterlife I would in all estimation simply be subsumed into any god's realm as a fragment of power to perpetuate their domain. There may be no afterlife that is practically different to me than the wall. As such I have thought of reality as a prison ever since.
'The Weave is a straightjacket' I had said. A wondrous thing with great possibility and power but in a place where it does not exist our own interactions with it and the level of power that comes with it is meaningless. To go beyond it is to lose its power thus if we treasure it and what it brings us we must stay and protect our world. I am a wizard, I am writing a wizardly tome which you are reading and I am saying that if the Weave exists as a bounding factor of our reality then outside it I would be powerless. Any afterlife I pass on to will consume me as such I was left with several choices to avoid it. I have spent time in Tarkuul, and though I was never a member I was praised by the Magisterium Mortis. Necromancers will claim that anyone who passes on is simply one without the courage to continue life through any means, but I have also met the undead.
What other options do I have to avoid an afterlife? Now, understand me: This is not an explanation for a choice of Lichdom - such would be foolish - this is a tome of me advocating the notion that we should have the right to choose. To choose which afterlife, which world we live in. To choose without having to bow and literally worship another being to beg their mercy. I am a person with great power at my fingertips. I can conjure flames and slip through the walls of petty reality but the gods have bound me since birth. It is only after I have tasted the greatest measure of power I have yet tasted in life that I realise that there should be another option.
If I, who have dwelled among archmages and hierophants and heroes, am only realising the extent of my dilemma now: How might the common man understand it? How might they be given the choice? The greatest clerics of our deities may have the power to leave but outside the weave they are powerless, and even if they weren't the gods take their souls after life - whether as a kindness or as a payment. The mightiest arcanist might leave the world we know, but they too are powerless if we leave the weave. The only might we have outside of those sources of power comes from within... And though I have known warriors of great power no feat of strength might crack reality.
Through accepting the world as it is we may have great enough power to conquer each other; but the gods will always be above us and bind us here through offerings of power in exchange for our essence. If it is your wish and your pleasure, by all means worship these gods. It is not my place to demand otherwise but I believe that you should have the right to avoid these things if you should choose such. To be able to leave.
So how do we do that?
Re: Book of the Blind/All Seeing: Cont. [Loc. Within]
Part 7: Gods among us, us among gods.
'There are two basic functions of magic...'
-The start of the first lesson I gave a man I loved, a statement I now know to be false.
Understand that I am advocating for the ability to leave. Part of it is my own quest to free myself from the cycle of life, death, and fate but the practicalities are that we never know whether the powers that sustain us might fail. We never know if another god may one day slay Mystra and throw the weave into disarray. Or whether another god might arrive bringing strange new powers from beyond our own realms. Or if our realm might one day be cracked asunder. What confronts me is that we have invested too heavily into the magic we know. The literal downfall (Falling down) of Netheril was reliance upon magic which failed one day. Cities fell from the sky and crashed to earth a civilisation gone in a day, though its death throes will last longer.
Infinite possibilities; infinite danger; infinite risk. If there is a way that something can cause disaster then someone will manage to accomplish it. No state of grace or power lasts forever.
If we wish to leave reality or survive the next godling or understand an invasion from the far realms - all of which I have already seen happen - we must seek to think beyond what we know. If one of the thousand tiny and fragile things we rely upon to achieve might and glory fails what are we? A wizard or sorcerer who loses the weave is little better than the average peasant in terms of might. Even the strongest warriors I've seen in the world rely upon the powers of the weave in order to bolster their already potent skills and abilities. Its for this same reason that I reject the notion of seeking undeath to be a particularly good idea as if this reality's cause and effect cracks again there is a chance that beings sustained by magic will simply cease to function.
I advocate for the right to leave but it's also a practical matter as one day we may be forced to leave the world in order to mount an offensive against beings attacking us from the outside. That if the world breaks we must have the ability to save ourselves. The gods can transition between worlds, as seen by the Seldarine, the gods of Mulhorand and Unther; even Oghma can travel from one world to another but in most places of the world a horse to travel to the next town over is still a luxury. To sustain ourselves in the future, to be able to have true freedom as a community of species, and to be able to protect ourselves from threats from the outside and within we need to be able to do more than we can now. We cannot rest on laurels or assume that we know enough by mastering a single system or method of power.
When asked to write a knightly code I once wrote that one should strive to always be more than you were the previous day. Today I believe such must happen at a societal level, as well as the individual. How might we do that? We must understand our own power, the extent of power possible, we must diversify and not rest upon the mercy of other beings no matter how generous or mighty they may be...
'There are two basic functions of magic...'
-The start of the first lesson I gave a man I loved, a statement I now know to be false.
Understand that I am advocating for the ability to leave. Part of it is my own quest to free myself from the cycle of life, death, and fate but the practicalities are that we never know whether the powers that sustain us might fail. We never know if another god may one day slay Mystra and throw the weave into disarray. Or whether another god might arrive bringing strange new powers from beyond our own realms. Or if our realm might one day be cracked asunder. What confronts me is that we have invested too heavily into the magic we know. The literal downfall (Falling down) of Netheril was reliance upon magic which failed one day. Cities fell from the sky and crashed to earth a civilisation gone in a day, though its death throes will last longer.
Infinite possibilities; infinite danger; infinite risk. If there is a way that something can cause disaster then someone will manage to accomplish it. No state of grace or power lasts forever.
If we wish to leave reality or survive the next godling or understand an invasion from the far realms - all of which I have already seen happen - we must seek to think beyond what we know. If one of the thousand tiny and fragile things we rely upon to achieve might and glory fails what are we? A wizard or sorcerer who loses the weave is little better than the average peasant in terms of might. Even the strongest warriors I've seen in the world rely upon the powers of the weave in order to bolster their already potent skills and abilities. Its for this same reason that I reject the notion of seeking undeath to be a particularly good idea as if this reality's cause and effect cracks again there is a chance that beings sustained by magic will simply cease to function.
I advocate for the right to leave but it's also a practical matter as one day we may be forced to leave the world in order to mount an offensive against beings attacking us from the outside. That if the world breaks we must have the ability to save ourselves. The gods can transition between worlds, as seen by the Seldarine, the gods of Mulhorand and Unther; even Oghma can travel from one world to another but in most places of the world a horse to travel to the next town over is still a luxury. To sustain ourselves in the future, to be able to have true freedom as a community of species, and to be able to protect ourselves from threats from the outside and within we need to be able to do more than we can now. We cannot rest on laurels or assume that we know enough by mastering a single system or method of power.
When asked to write a knightly code I once wrote that one should strive to always be more than you were the previous day. Today I believe such must happen at a societal level, as well as the individual. How might we do that? We must understand our own power, the extent of power possible, we must diversify and not rest upon the mercy of other beings no matter how generous or mighty they may be...
Re: Book of the Blind/All Seeing: Cont. [Loc. Within]
Part 8: Ask of your Generals
'Tell me how would you fight a war when you knew the man commanding the enemy is god.'
-Musings on an impossible war.
After leaving Amia I have travelled. Going beyond the Sword coast and the western oceans I travelled far after taking time to recover. One should always seek to broaden their horizons and to understand more now than they ever did; and when I walked further and further from home I learned how strangely barbaric the world I had come from was. Explain the gods of Faerun to a man in Zakhara or Kara-Tur and they will look at you befuddled. The elaborate competing pantheons who can never agree, the bloody battles and feuds. Even the concept of good gods and evil gods are alien in other parts of the world.
In Zakhara the gods reject the concepts of good and evil entirely and operate under a philosophy of enlightenment and worth, leaving the selfish violent deities among them to flounder as the pettiest and weakest of deities. The gods of Kara-tur operate in elaborate celestial bureaucracy with no sign of brutal warfare of the passing on of domains on to mortal tyrants and monsters. In Faerun it seems that there's the most prominent examples of deities who actively need to be slain or defeated. A war posed between good and evil will rage eternal as long as the gods who command and orchestrate it still sit upon deific thrones.
Godly power is intimately tied in every part of the world, whether it be the clergy of the Triad throughout any culture with a system of knighthood and nobility, the cultists of Mask in any criminal underworld, or understanding the Weave as a function of Mystra (thus is also divine) you may also see Many-Starred Cloak in Neverwinter and the Cowled Wizards in Amn as functions of this power. The only powers that mortals have is the power at arms of war, or the implicit power of the political and revolutionary.
The only rules we have any sway over are those within arms reach and within our own society. The rules the gods have over the world are the ones we swim in; basing our own understanding and thus subsequent rules around them. And though their rule may be based upon higher truths or deeper portions of reality: We have no sway over them at all. The greatest powers we have as individuals are bestowed upon us and thus all power is prosthetic, to be donned and adopted as it suits us but it is still something that an be ripped from us.
The question thus is: How are you going to cope when either a new set of rules is introduced to reality, or when the rules you know suddenly change? Do you have a plan to do so? And would it be useful to have these skills if you wish to leave?
Lastly, can the world's problems be solved when the cruelties and absurdities are baked into these rules? If the only way to defeat the cruelties and absurdity of our lives is to kill a cruel and absurd god are you armed with the abilities to take the fight to a world where they write the rules? Do you have the skills to live in a world where they are gone or where you have left them behind?
Has anyone planned for this?
'Tell me how would you fight a war when you knew the man commanding the enemy is god.'
-Musings on an impossible war.
After leaving Amia I have travelled. Going beyond the Sword coast and the western oceans I travelled far after taking time to recover. One should always seek to broaden their horizons and to understand more now than they ever did; and when I walked further and further from home I learned how strangely barbaric the world I had come from was. Explain the gods of Faerun to a man in Zakhara or Kara-Tur and they will look at you befuddled. The elaborate competing pantheons who can never agree, the bloody battles and feuds. Even the concept of good gods and evil gods are alien in other parts of the world.
In Zakhara the gods reject the concepts of good and evil entirely and operate under a philosophy of enlightenment and worth, leaving the selfish violent deities among them to flounder as the pettiest and weakest of deities. The gods of Kara-tur operate in elaborate celestial bureaucracy with no sign of brutal warfare of the passing on of domains on to mortal tyrants and monsters. In Faerun it seems that there's the most prominent examples of deities who actively need to be slain or defeated. A war posed between good and evil will rage eternal as long as the gods who command and orchestrate it still sit upon deific thrones.
Godly power is intimately tied in every part of the world, whether it be the clergy of the Triad throughout any culture with a system of knighthood and nobility, the cultists of Mask in any criminal underworld, or understanding the Weave as a function of Mystra (thus is also divine) you may also see Many-Starred Cloak in Neverwinter and the Cowled Wizards in Amn as functions of this power. The only powers that mortals have is the power at arms of war, or the implicit power of the political and revolutionary.
The only rules we have any sway over are those within arms reach and within our own society. The rules the gods have over the world are the ones we swim in; basing our own understanding and thus subsequent rules around them. And though their rule may be based upon higher truths or deeper portions of reality: We have no sway over them at all. The greatest powers we have as individuals are bestowed upon us and thus all power is prosthetic, to be donned and adopted as it suits us but it is still something that an be ripped from us.
The question thus is: How are you going to cope when either a new set of rules is introduced to reality, or when the rules you know suddenly change? Do you have a plan to do so? And would it be useful to have these skills if you wish to leave?
Lastly, can the world's problems be solved when the cruelties and absurdities are baked into these rules? If the only way to defeat the cruelties and absurdity of our lives is to kill a cruel and absurd god are you armed with the abilities to take the fight to a world where they write the rules? Do you have the skills to live in a world where they are gone or where you have left them behind?
Has anyone planned for this?