Cosmology (Berserk Supplement)
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| A general overview of Berserk's cosmology, Source |
Physical World[edit]
The most often observed realm of the world of Berserk is that of the physical world, a realm much like our own world. The men and women of Midland, Tudor, Kushan, and numerous other lands live, fight, and die by the harsh realities of life. Disease, war, and need plague the physical realm.
Interstice[edit]
In the interstice, the astral and physical worlds overlap. In these "roads of the elves", beings only thought to be legends and stories are abound, and the landscape, while still able to be understood and traversed by a human, bears many of the signs of the astral world; vibrant colors, untarnishable vegetation, and a sky as if light had just broken through the clouds. Beyond creatures unique to various realms' interstices, they typically contain accursed spirits, souls of the dead trapped by regret.
Astral World[edit]
Detached from the physical world, the astral world is a true land of myth, and the largest of the inhabited realms. Within the astral realm are numerous layers:
- Baoighre
An endless sea, Baoighre's interstice is most often found in uncharted reaches of the ocean, beyond which come legends of merrow and leviathans. Ve, Lord of the West, ensures that the sea maintains its form, lets the realm be cast into the deeper layers of the astral world. Tides and currents shift at their own whims, manifesting as flowing Tide Rulers. Across its surface and coiling into the depths lie incredible sea serpents, who while typically uncaring of those around it are prone to fits of violence when one or more sea gods attach their parasitic bodies in weak spots of their scales. The merrow, being among those most affected by these rampages, have gone to war against the sea gods numerous times, often sealing them in islands within interstices. Across its scattered islands and the shores of the interstice, kelpies absent-mindedly await humans, merrow, or other similar-sized creatures to cross its path, taking no pleasure in its success or disappointment at its failure. In the bright depths, groups of hydras, giant octopi, bloodbloaters and individual kundalini, aboleths, and dragon turtles fight at the edge of their territories, but otherwise happily feast on the plentitude of vegetation and fish. In the coldest reaches of Baoighre lies the icecaps of Jötunheimr, where the jötnar hunt the humans and wildlife that wanders in from the numerous interstices in the physical world's tundras.
- Myrkviðr
Impossibly massive, impossibly varied, and impossibly lit, the forests of Myrkviðr are covered in both dawn and dusk, with the higher treetops being illuminated by almost purple moonlight, while its clearings appear as if the noon sun above is only obscured by swirling flower pedals. The source of this light is Ate, Lord of the East, who's cloak protects his realm from the deeper reaches of the astral realm. The further from a clearing the lush forest extends, the higher their peaks reach, with many thickets rivaling mountains. Through and above these trees fly harpies, cockatrices, cliff wyverns, and Hræsvelgr, doing battle on sight, often to disastrous effects. In the underbrush, centaurs, fauns, and unicorns graze on the plentiful fruits of the ground, and occasionally gullinkambi and their prey, the ratatoskr. Myrkviðr's most common interstices are the great spirit trees, individual trees that, rather than growing tall, cover a wide area in their branches. It is underneath these spirit trees that slyphs, undines, salamanders, and barytes coalesce into various elves, and where great witches hone their arts, and often live the rest of their lives. Chief among both elf and witch in their true origin of Elfhelm sits the Flower Storm Monarch.
- Manala
The realm of Manala is blanketed in eternal night. Through the cracks of its dark, rocky surface brightly glows an endless supply of magma while living embers flit across the sky, causing the would-be darkness to be brightened, and the sky to be washed grey in an arora of red. Permanent, unmoving firestorms rage where the brilliance of Gedula, Lord of the South, who gives his realm the heat of life and burns away any realm that would encroach on Manala, breaks the surface. Across its volcanic peaks race dragons and cliff wyverns, searching for minor storms and threats to end, while below, wheels of fire and phoenixes fuel the magma beneath.
- Qliphoth
The deepest of the astral realms considered traversable by astral projection, those who reside in Qliphoth come from one of two sources, the will of Markt, Lord of the North, through whom the barytes are given form, or from these same barytes being wrested from his control by the might of human evil and impurity emanating from below in the Vortex. It is by Markt's will that the realms do not collapse into one another or tumble into the void. Markt's rotting root lords and earth elementals defend their realm using the creations of the dwarves, who in turn are assisted by the brownies who maintain cleanliness in their workshops, hold off the waves of trolls, ogres, goblins, stick men, fungal crawlers, hand pods, incubi, and stick snatchers to protect the other realms. An interstice into Qliphoth can either forward a community's technological understanding decades, or reduce it to nothing but rubble and gore.
The Abyss[edit]
In the deepest layer of the astral world lies the abyss. In its upper reaches lie architecture of impossible construction; stairways to nowhere that loop into each other while constantly rising, doorways that offer glimpses of one's back, walkways that loop vertically with each side being "down". Beneath these structures lies an ever-swirling vortex of human souls; the victims and servants of the God Hand. Escape from the vortex is impossible, and the only fate left for one such person is to lose any indication of thought, individuality, being, and become one with the vortex. Below the vortex lies the final level of the astral plane, and the source of the God Hand's power: the Idea of Evil. An ever-beating heart formed from the human desire that the world around them could be explained, that there is purpose, pumps the vortex through its ventricles.
| “ | Reasons for pain. Reasons for sadness. Reasons for life. Reasons for death. Reasons why their lives were filled with suffering. Reasons why their deaths were absurd. They wanted reasons for the destiny that kept transcending their knowledge. And I produce those, as it is what I have been brought into existence for. | ” |
| —The Idea of Evil | ||
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