Transcended

The Transcended and Outer Gods are classes of Void entities existing outside of material reality. These beings usually reside in the expanse of The Void, the absence between universes. The Transcended and Outer Gods are as diverse as the entities and species that they ascended from, with myriads of different thought processes, emotions and personalities between individuals. Transcends are among the most numerous beings in the civilisations of the Weave Remnant, formerly making up most of the population of the Weave and around a third of the Weave Remnant 
== Transcension ==
Transcension is the process that aspirants go through to attain their status as Transcended. The process itself is dangerous and fraught with risk, but most aspirants who wish to attain full Transcension succeed in all stages of the process. The process itself is divided into three stages with most aspirants preparing beforehand with a prolonged course of extensive mental augmentation and enhancement, paired with self reflection and meditation to ensure that their minds survive the process intact. Each stage is permanent and cannot be reverted. Despite the process of Transcension being extremely accessible in theory, in practice most realities existing within Pools of Possibility or with highly stable physical and metaphysical laws of their own are largely cut off from the Void and thus require much greater effort to access it.
The first stage of the process renders the aspirant immortal in the most absolute sense of word and grants localised reality warping abilities. Over a prolonged period of time, usually several centuries to millennia, the aspirant is exposed to some small amounts of Void protoplasm from either the Void itself or another Transcend, and has the protoplasm saturate their consciousness. This process is known as Patterning, whereupon their minds are exposed to Void protoplasm to convert it into a basic but indestructible pattern within the Void. This pattern, known as a Void Core, then comprises the role of the mind and soul, and passively maintains itself in an active and functioning state. While the pattern can be changed in some ways, any attempts to deactivate the pattern reset it to a state of full function, and any attempts at destroying the pattern, be it mundane or esoteric will fail (by way of rejection of death and its related concepts, a property inherited from raw Void). This allows the mind/soul to survive the destruction of their bodies and reconstruct new ones, and prevents the aspirant's mind/soul from being destroyed by mundane or esoteric sources such as the Silence or Void Erasure. This also turns the aspirant into an acausal being, preventing time and timeline manipulation, temporal paradoxes, loops and retroactive erasures from affecting them entirely. Acausal beings exist only in their own present frame of reference, and thus have no past nor future. Another consequence of becoming an acausal being is that alternate selves can no longer be generated. Transcends, however, can still suffer death of personality/ego death from means such as the Opal Light, some psychic powers and certain Void based effects. 
Void Cores project a Void field, through which various reality warping abilities can be used within its radius. For a first stage Transcend this range and magnitude is along the lines of a few hundred km. A first stage Transcend can use freeform temporal and spatial manipulation, such as in speeding up/slowing down/stopping time, bend or break space and create pocket dimensions. Matter and energy creation and manipulation is also possible from this stage, such as ex-nihilo mass generation and transmutation and conversion of matter and energy. The senses of a First Stage Transcend are also magnified, granting them an area of awareness that encompasses all matter and energy (as well as temporal and spatial changes) in a radius of several dozen AU. If they were not able to previously, a First Stage Transcend becomes capable of thinking and acting on sub-microsecond scales and moving at relativistic to single digit c speeds. Unbound from material substrates, a Void Core can also store an unlimited amount of information and memories. A new first stage Transcend becomes capable of using rudimentary conceptual abilities such as Void Erasure and simple forms of Void manipulation like Voidfire.
To reach the Second Stage of Transcension entails the First Stage Transcend drawing raw protoplasm from the Void and filtering it through the field that their Void Core projects (often over the course of several centuries if not millennia). Once enough filtered protoplasm has been gathered, the aspirant uses it to enact a sudden change to their Pattern that amplifies it and propels them into the Second Stage.
The second stage develops the aspirant's ability to use Transcendant powers and to perceive the universe as the Transcended do. Depending on the cosmology of the reality they are present in, an aspirant begins seeing time and space not as a linear construct, but as a stream with infinite branches that flow in every direction. Events and entities become landmarks within the streams that they can, with effort and training, move up and down on, as well as hopping into other time streams. Aspirants are also able to perceive space-time in a universe as a cube, where all time and events taking place are simultaneous. At first these senses and the area of awareness are limited to a solar system, developing into interstellar and then to universal ranges. Prediction using this form of perception, however, does not work on acausal beings, of which Transcends of all stages of the process are counted among. Their Void fields increase in radius to encompass several dozen AU. A second Stage Transcend becomes capable of travelling to adjacent universes, but often requires technological assistance to see what universe they may end up in. Were they not able to previously, a Second Stage Transcend will observe themselves to have faster cognition and action speeds than First Stage Transcends at sub-picosecond timescales and several hundred thousand c. Conceptual abilities are also more developed, yet still not freeform.
The third stage is a full Transcension, whereupon the aspirant becomes a fully fledged Transcended and acausal being. This stage is reached once a second stage aspirant generates the necessary amount of their own Void protoplasm to complete the process. As part of becoming a fully fledged acausal being, any limits on cognition speed and processing power are removed, the same going for action and reaction speed with full Transcends being able to run an arbitrary number of mental partitions at speeds varying from fast enough to count units of Planck time individually to slow enough to perceive the life and death of universes in the blink of an eye. The Void Core of a mature Transcend can run extremely detailed simulations of entire realities, with this being a common way for Transcends to pass their time. A fully fledged Transcend can freely perform unrestricted time travel, perceive adjacent and nearby universes with their senses, and well as use their powers on a magnitude of several dozen light years. Travel to adjacent universes also become far easier, taking less effort on the part of the Transcend. The Void field of a fully developed Transcend reaches several dozen light years in radius. Conceptual abilities mature at this stage, whereupon the Transcended can perform freeform alteration and manipulation of concepts and the meta/physics of existence. As an example, a full Transcend can impose the concept of Stasis in the region of their Void field to render everything within unmoving, or do so selectively to render the effect on smaller areas and/or entities. As a further example, they can also permanently instate this Stasis into the local laws of meta/physics and modify, remove or reimpose the concept as they wish. Void Arcana also becomes available at this stage, and acts as a more potent and focused form of conceptual manipulation. 
== Abilities ==
The origin of the reality warping powers that both Transcended and Outer Gods wield are rooted deeply in their Void Cores. The Void Core exerts and maintains a passive field of Void protoplasm under the Transcended being's control. Through this, the Transcended in question can utilise a number of reality warping effects, most commonly in the form of manipulating time-space, matter and energy, along with various forms of probability manipulation and conceptual abilities, the most famous of which is the Void Erasure and Void Arcana. The range of this field of energy depends on the whether a being is fully Transcended or at varying stages of the process. The first stage grants a range of a few hundred km, the second several AU (or roughly the size of a solar system in range and potency), and a full Transcension grants a spatial radius of several dozen light years worth of range with no temporal range restriction. It is noted, however, that these abilities can be diminished, or even perhaps nearly fully suppressed under the effects of extremely strong reality anchors and reality terraforming fields, such as the ones possessed by the Old Brethren. While under such suppression a Transcend does not have diminished physical capabilities, and reality warping within the body of a Transcend is still possible. There have been cases where suppressed Transcends were able to apply Void Erasure through physical contact, or travel the breadth and depth of a universe within a single unit of Planck time, fighting through the whole length of their journey.
== Exaltation ==
When one reaches the first stage of Transcension, they may receive a power known as an Exaltation. Exaltations are created at Transcension by an aspirant shaping a power from their emergent Void Cores through their strongest desires and wishes. An Exaltation is by no means a truly guaranteed acquisition, as it depends on a user holding an extremely strong desire or wish at the time of Transcension. Exaltations are vanishingly rare, outside of the few Exaltations that can be spread to others. An Exaltation is a conceptual power that is unique to a Transcend. This conceptual power is directly shaped from the greatest desire one had when they enter the first stage, and its peculiarities are often unique to each Exalted Transcend. As an example, Evine, a second stage Transcend and one of the Emperor nodes of the Solar Imperium, possessed the desire to defeat death itself, and ensure that all sapient life had the opportunity to live eternally, resulting in their earning of the ‘Mantle of Death’s Defeat’. Their Exaltation allowed them to heal and revive others (even objects and entities that had been unmade by Void Erasure or the Silence), make other beings, objects and even metaphysical forces and concepts completely immortal and spread their Exaltations to others. Exaltations cannot be suppressed by Reality Anchors nor be undone by Tor, and are among the few conceptual powers that first and second stage Transcends can freely use. The core conceptual effects of Exaltations are similar to Old Brethren Laws in being absolute, and thus are governed by the same absolute non-interaction principle; opposing absolute effects do not interact with each other nor objects under each other's power. Exaltations have a limited range, that being the same as the Void field a Transcend projects. 
An Exaltation is referred to as either a Mantle or a Shroud depending on the desires and wishes that spawned them. For desires and wishes affecting not only the person possessing them but also others and their surroundings, the resulting Exaltation is referred to as a Mantle. For a more self-centred wish and/or desire, the resulting Exaltation is referred to as a Shroud. This classification exists more as a spectrum than a true binary, and thus Exaltations are classified where they lean more twoards one way or another.
== Chimaeras ==
Being a both a Transcend and Old Brethren is by no means a mutually exclusive state of being, but becoming one makes attainment of the other much more difficult. Due to the natural resistance given by the central orb of a Brethren, Patterning is both long and difficult for Old Brethren. Likewise for Transcends, Brethren Orb implantation is difficult due to the natural resistance of the orbs. As such, orb implantation in a Transcend is both slower and something that needs to be consciously maintained for a prolonged period of time as their Void Core integrates the orb.
== Outer Gods ==
While the term is used for any entity of sufficient power, the term most often applies to a Transcended that has undergone a second Transcension. These beings hold power far beyond that of ordinary Transcended. This second process is unknown, and it is said that such a journey is unique to every Outer God. The Outer Gods are shapers of universes and multiverses, creating, manipulating and destroying them on a whim. With the arrival of the Scourge, however, the ability of Weave affiliated Outer Gods to act has been limited; forcing them to now rely on proxies and followers rather than directly shaping their region of the greater multiverse to their will. The earliest of the Weave affiliated Outer Gods ascended to their position just after the violence of the Ascension Wars, driving out the natives of Point 01 in the process.
Category:Bestiary