prime fundamental concepts
The universe – it's where we exist! Take our world, with all its existing rules and history, and shoot it some few thousand years in the future. That's where GoH begins.
Mechanics of the Universe
But we'll pause for a moment. We have secrets of the universe to consider first.
The universe is formed by the interaction of two complimentary forces: Pleroma, the force of fullness and conception, and Kenoma, the force of nothingness and individuation.
Pleroma is a non-sentient wellspring of fullness and conception. It exists on a spiritual plane and is mirrored in the physical world. Everything in existence is an expression of some fragment of Pleroma. Envision it as a big sun.
Pleroma is comprised entirely of concepts and ideas. That is, because the concept of bravery exists in Pleroma, bravery can exist in the world. Because the concept of strawberries exists in Pleroma, strawberries can exist in the world. And so on, for everything that exists (and doesn't).
Everything in Pleroma is unified into one. It is impossible to separate one idea from another when looking at only Pleroma. Kenoma is required to define the ideas in Pleroma.
Kenoma is a non-sentient force of nothingness and separation. It defines the concepts in Pleroma, individuating them from one another. Kenoma is also expressed in the physical world: it's the space between objects that separates one thing from another.
Kenoma's relationship with Pleroma is like this: you have 10 stars in the sky. You could look at all 10 and say they form the constellation of a duck, or look at 3 and 7 separately and say they form two constellations of a cat and a dog. Pleroma is the stars, the backdrop, and Kenoma dictates whether those stars are expressed as a duck or as a cat+dog. So there are multitudes of ideas that exist in Pleroma that are not expressed in the physical world, because Kenoma has interpreted them as something else.
The afterlife is simply Pleroma; death is just one process by which Kenoma stops individuating a soul, or mind, or body, or whatever else into physical existence. Though the underlying concepts continue to exist, and experience the warmth and fullness of Pleroma, there is no definite form, individuality, sentience, consciousness, or ego. Everything is all very meldy.
Pleroma exists in homoeostasis, never fluctuating in conceptual 'mass'. Since the physical world and Pleroma mirror each other, the world is also in homoeostasis, even if it doesn't appear to be. Whenever the world changes significantly enough to disrupt Pleroma's homoeostasis, the universe reconstructs itself to equalize Pleroma – these changes, termed Pleromic State Shifts, are common, but typically minor enough that nobody notices them.
State of the Universe
Back to reality.
Over some hundred thousand years, while us humans daddled around on our rock, several alien species of varying biologies and technological capacities found each other and enjoyed mad mutual diplomacy. Agreements turned into treaties turned into charters turned into universal law, until the order (and tedium) of legal bureaucracy transformed the free and wild cosmos into a bona-fide intergalactic society, with common precepts and principles. Like, “Don't nuke civilized planets,” or, “If you wage war on us, our friends will beat you up.” Balancing the needs of so many different species and civilizations is naturally difficult, and who gets priority in the end isn't always fair, but with everyone entitled to their own native representatives, there's not much to do but cleverly play along.
These aliens all share the faculty of cognizance. This is the ability to perceive expressions of Pleroma that differ from Kenoma's interpretation. Or put simply, it's the manifestation of ESP – an ability to perceive spiritual and metaphysical things, such as thoughts or emotions. It includes mind-reading, clairvoyance, and natural gifts of psychic empathy and psychometry.
Degrees of cognizance, ie, how good your perception is, differs by species and individual. Higher acuity is generally associated with having a larger, or more potent soul, that expresses greater amounts of, or more complex concepts in Pleroma.
Cognizance is considered as basic a sense as smell or sight – its absence in a species signifies them as underdeveloped. Further, all cognizant species are sentient, but not all sentient species are cognizant. The distinction matters, as cognizance, not sentience, is the criterion upon which any individual or species is considered a 'person', entitled to legal representation and other personal rights under intergalactic law.
Earthlings in the Galactic Sphere
Unfortunately for us, humans are not quite cognizant. Truly, very slightly, just a hair away, not quite cognizant. Though we had produced cognizant wizards and sages and mystics before, it wasn't our norm.
When we were finally discovered by a team of Quee'lee'lo explorers, we were bordering on extinction in the wake of a planetary apocalypse. Being a kind and somewhat whimsical people, the Quee determined to save us, and decided their advanced biotechnology was the way to do it.
They subjected the human genome to accelerated evolution and instated the resultant organisms with strict behavioural directives, hoping to engineer a cognizant custodian caste to legally represent humanity. Then, entitled to foreign aid, these custodians could keep the planet and species alive until cognizance became naturally widespread among humans, and the galactic community would gain another race of friends and allies.
The plan worked, better than expected. Far, better than expected.
In addition to cognizance, as was anticipated, the custodians uniformly manifested an extraordinarily strong, extraordinarily unprecedented capacity for reality warping. They repaired their dying planet in under a day using their power, without any technological aid from the Quee.
It was frightening. The potential of these soon-dubbed High Terrans as conquerors, warmongers, or tyrants was inestimable. They could kill with a thought, if they wanted. They could erase star systems with a snap of their fingers. They could inflict impossible pains on their enemies, tortures that, until now, physics had restricted only to disgusting fantasy.
But, bound by the incontrovertible perfection of their directives, they did none of these things. They simply didn't care to. The only, single, solitary thing they cared about at all, was securing idyllic lives for their less-evolved cousins on an Edenic planet Earth. With threats of disease, famine, natural disaster, pollution, invasion, and war removed with the ease it took to wave a hand, they achieved 'idyllic' and 'Edenic' quickly. But, disinclined to just stop, the High Terrans continued micromanaging the lives of humans from birth to death, diligently subverting any impermissible sufferings, and quietly encouraging safe opportunities for fun, excitement, and adventure.
The aggressive coddling shunted the rest of humanity down a slightly different evolutionary path, never to manifest their own cognizance or reality warping. Though insular, reclusive, and not all that liked or understood, the predictability of High Terrans, combined with their rarity and adherence to law, has tempered most panic towards them into wary acceptance.
Less with open arms, and more with a professional handshake, intergalactic society took the mystical, pompous, and condescending Terrans into its fold, another civilization of many.
Caph Camellia vs. The World
Skip ahead a few thousand years. To the birth of a very special High Terran, Caph Camellia.
He's a genius. He's a prodigy. He's loving. He's kind. He's strict. He's ruthless. He's creative. He's ambitious. He's authoritative. He's perfect.
He's omnipotent.
He really, really, doesn't like outsiders.
Feeling that outsiders have consistently disrespected, exploited, maligned, distrusted, and betrayed Terrans, Camellia proposes to personally eradicate all cognizant nonhuman life from the universe. With strong arguments and unbelievable charisma, most of his fellows support him. The one who doesn't is Zubenelgenubi Vertel.
Vertel, a high-ranking politician and representative of Terrans in intergalactic affairs, abuses a legal technicality to employ Camellia on a planet of his called BQ-0758 Kinesis, on indefinite house arrest. Adopting Camellia as a personal subordinate discourages him from acting freely despite his strictly higher rank to Vertel, which defangs him as long as he stays on Kinesis.
Unfortunately, Terran psychology isn't made to handle this kind of authority conflict, and Camellia is too stubborn to give up his genocidal ideals. A century passes with both Vertel and Camellia growing more unstable, and in Vertel's case, desperate.
Cue an unexpected visit to Vertel by Lisbet. She is a human, one of the charges High Terrans are compelled to protect, and she has an ambition with which they can help her. She wants the end of all suffering.
Vertel, seeing this as a much better use of Camellia's powers than genocide, allows her to plead her case to Camellia. After a century of human deprivation, he falls over himself to agree. Second opinions? Pros and cons? Planning? Oh there's none of that here. Riding a wave of manic inspiration, he immediately creates Miquir.
Miquir is a masterpiece. An omnipresent, omnitemporal, higher-plane spiritual entity that completely embodies and controls the principles of time and motion. Coded to be completely loyal to Camellia, and to always move the universe onto a path that suits Camellia, it's indeed the end of all suffering. It's also the end of free will.
Or would've been.
There's a problem with Miquir. In creating him, Camellia intuitively draws on concepts that don't exist in Pleroma. With no existing conduit for his ideas, Camellia does the obvious thing and just makes one.
He just makes one.
He “just makes” the second true thing in existence. He “just makes” an object completely disparate to Pleroma. And when he naturally makes Miquir manifest in physical reality, he “just makes” Pleroma try to swallow the logic that 1 = 2.
It's like a shadow existing with nothing to cast it. It just doesn't make sense.
Pleroma rejects Camellia's logic. To restore its homoeostasis, and make 1 = 1 again, the universe reinterprets Miquir as something that simultaneously does and doesn't exist, which conveniently describes Kenoma. Miquir is immediately converted into Arsene and instated as an avatar of Kenoma, which all converges onto him.
Without Kenoma acting on it, all matter in the universe apocalyptically merges into one. Everyone is dead, everything is dead, and the universe is departing from Arsene. In the microseconds before he's sequestered from all existence, Arsene severs Camellia from Pleroma and drags him into the void.
Overall things are a little screwed up.