The Riving

The Riving is the term commonly used by human scholars for the destructive shattering of the Primordial Cosmos, typically assumed by most scholars across diverse fields to be the event that led to the emergence of the Multiverse as it is commonly understood. The term was popularized by Gaius Devarro in his unfinished work, On Planar Origins, which preserves several important fragments of early Drankorian and late Hkaran scholarship.

In the Standard Multiversal Model, the Riving is typically regarded as a cataclysmic event that marks the border of what is knowable and unknowable. Popular rumors at the University of Tollen claim that even the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Philosophers will not answer questions about whatever existed before the Riving, for any price. Metaphysicists at the University of Chardon generally regard attempts to reconstruct the event, or to determine what preceded it, or especially why it happened, as questions for mythology and philosophy, rather than a proper subject of experimental theology or extraplanar metaphysics that can be resolved through observation.

Though human academic and scholarly traditions focus on the shattering metaphor and the destructive imagery of the Riving, this is not universal. Firstborn traditions, which describe the beginning of the world as an awakening, building, or first cycle concurrent with the creation of their peoples. For example, the elves speak of Cuivië, the First Awakening, when they opened their eyes and the world awoke with them. The lizardfolk speak of Bira Lehen, the First Cycle, when water first flowed in the rivers; their stories tell how the Tharzen Anzinakoa walked in the days outside time and shaped the rivers with their footsteps. The dwarves speak of the Makhal, the First Building, when the mountains rose and the Count of Years began. Some human scholars, including some prominent theological cosmologists like Heloise of Tollen, identify these traditions and the diverse metaphors they embrace with the Riving; indeed Heloise of Tollen prefers the elven term, the Awakening, in her own scholarship.

Despite a widespread assumption that the Riving can only be approached and comprehended via metaphorical and philosophical language, some scholars have persisted in attempting to draw conclusions from the Riving’s apparent aftermath. Gaius Devarro argued that the persistent resonances among the planes were best understood as remnants of their violent separation, though his exhaustive treatment of this hypothesis was lost during the Fall of Drankor and survives only via want can be reconstructed from contemporary commentaries. Nonetheless, this idea has permeated into Chardonian academic traditions: most scholars on the Faculty of Metaphysics will confidently state that the relationships among the planes, the resonances that became the Echo Realms, and the scars or remnants visible in Ley Lines and other planar connections are all observable consequences of the beginning of time.