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extrinsic:order

Order

The Extrinsic known as Order is one of the oldest and most powerful beings in existence; it, along with its sibling Chaos, came into being at the moment of the shattering of the Whole.

Order is the embodiment of organization, patterns, and hierarchies, and is also one of the progenitors of all other Extrinsics.

Involvement

The influence of Order upon the realms of the Froth is so utterly pervasive that it can be hard to point to any specific example. Order exists wherever the small is bound together into the great; it lies within the structure of molecules and the smallest agglomerations of cells, all the way up to galaxy filaments millions of lightyears across.

It vies strongly for influence with its sibling Chaos, which is similarly pervasive, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to find any place where they are not both present; but Order's influence is strongest where patterns are multilayered, complex, internally categorized, and have some spatial, mathemetical, or metaphorical regularity.

Personality

Order is often perceived by mortals to be humorless, obsessed with procedure, strict to the point of being authoritarian, and fairly unconcerned with individual needs in the face of grander designs. It appreciates mortals entirely for their utility, and unless an individual has turned out to be important on their own, is concerned with their actions mainly in the aggregate. She is not as easily offended as her child Exchange; failure to adhere to her standards will annoy her, but she feels that to take it personally is beneath her, even when intentional. Especially when intentional.

It is also unlike Exchange in that it is not often bound by notions of fairness, except toward fellow Extrinsics. Mortals exist to be used or left aside as necessity requires. Giving aid to one is a rare event, usually only if it advances some goal.

Realm of Order

If your mind doesn't provide a comfortable interpretation for you, a less filtered version might look something like this. Order's domain is meticulously and precisely arranged, and is suffused with the subtle and complicated patterns of its thought and presence. Aside from Order itself, it is inhabited by life of a sort, though of a very different kind than that in the mortal realms. It thinks, in a fashion, but has no free will. It acts, in its way, but it is in the way preordained for it. It breeds at precisely determined intervals, and reacts in set ways - 'if X happens, then do Y'. The mind of Order guides them all, and one would not be far off to describe them as subroutines of its will, executing the tasks appointed to them.

In the eyes of mortals, it is often parsed as a great palace full of unusually consistent servants, or a courtroom, or a machine full of living cogs. Those who spend too long in this realm tend to be crushed, like foreign matter between powerful gears; or, if sympathetic enough to its nature, assimilated, brought into compliance, and becoming new inhabitants of the realm, identical to the rest.

Mythological equivalents

Order rarely deigns to reach out to mortals in person, and few mortals that have entered its realm have returned to tell the tale. Nonetheless, the accounts of its sibling Chaos, coupled with observations about the nature of the universe, have sometimes given mortals some distorted notion of Order's existence.

Where it appears, Order generally manifests as a deity of measurement, judgment, government, or organization.

extrinsic/order.txt · Last modified: by shyriath