SCP English Branch Cosmology

=Introduction=
The SCP Foundation mythos is a large and confusing subject to navigate through.
Before we begin proper, it is important to understand a few terms that will be used throughout this blog.
Canon - Wherever capitalized, Canon stands for a continuity within the SCP mythos. Authors on the SCP wiki will sometimes create articles and tales that follow a specific storyline. These storylines will have their own "Hub", where readers can follow the story in-order smoothly. Such could be compared similarly to a "run" in comic book terminology. Canons in SCP are not universal, and are not always mutually canon to each other. For example, Project Paragon, a Canon created by the author djkaktus, was created to have no other Canons related to it. The author himself wanted his Canon to be wholly unique and follow his vision alone. As such, versions of characters and concepts within Project Paragon are unique only this rendition of the Canon.
However, the reverse is also true. Author Placeholder McD created a Canon known as Admonition. Within said Canon, the character of SCP-3812 is mentioned in SCP-6747; the former a creation of djkaktus, and the latter a creation of Placeholder McD. This means that djkaktus' Canon, or at least a part of it, is canon to Placeholder McD's Canon. Take note of these two names, they will appear often later.
Narrative - Wherever capitalized, a Narrative stands for a structure and concept within the SCP mythos that denotes a "story". The SCP Foundation and the world it exists in is fictional; not just to us, but to the beings within the mythos as well. What this means is that a hierarchy exists with layers of beings that view the one below it as fiction. The primary model of Narratives used for the purposes of cosmological consistency is the Placeholder-Ike model. It is an all-encompassing model that accounts for the erratic nature of storytelling the SCP mythos lends itself to.
The above is a quote from Placeholder McD explaining how Narrative dimensions work. Essentially, a hierarchy exists between higher and lower Narrative dimensions, wherein conceptions in higher Narratives govern the reality of lower Narratives. For example, the conception of 5 spatial-temporal dimensions within a story about The Foundation will make the reality of that Foundation a 5th dimensional construct. Keep this in mind for later when we discuss the different Canons and how they co-exist.
=The Multiverse=
The Multiverse is the most basic cosmological structure within the SCP mythos. However, unlike a conventional multiverse, the multiverse in the SCP mythos functions under the constraints of a construct known as the Universal Narrative.
==Djoricverse==
Also known as Verse of an Endless Song, it is one of the oldest Canons on the SCP wiki. Created by the author Djoric, it is a sort of proto-Canon, weaving together a disjointed story using popular and recognizable characters of the time to create a narrative that could vaguely be considered a "run". 
=== Acidverse===
The Acidverse is a Canon created by Randomini that is nominally interoperable with the Djoricverse. Within its Canon Hub, we find this lovely quote:
As stated by the quote, the reality of Acidverse contains "uncountably infinite expanses in uncountably infinite dimensions". To further back this up, David proceeds to explain the nature of aleph numbers, further defining the inaccessibility of these "uncountably infinite dimensions". This leads Djoricverse to having a Low 1-A cosmology. However, as you will see below with regards to the Noosphere, this is not the full extent of the cosmology.
===The Tree===
The Djoricverse is primarily focused on the construct of "The Tree", which was created by The Brothers Death and contains the entire setting of the Canon.
In the beginning there was nothing but darkness, as is usually the case with all creation myths. Then a light appeared and separated the darkness into The Darkness Above and The Darkness Below. The All-Death, eldest of The Brothers Death, emerged from this darkness and was the first thinking being in all of creation. The rest of the Tale goes on to describe his creation of his brothers and the creation of The Tree.
The above tells us about the beginning of the Djoricverse, and introduces one of the strongest group of characters in the Canon. It also makes mention of Elder Gods, which we will talk more about later. Do take note of the Abyss as well. That will come into play later.
Now don't be confused by the dialogue, the quotes are taken by the recounts of two people, Jeremiah the Flayed and Eyal Shamaym. Jeremiah's words are the close to incomprehensible lines and Eyal's words end off his ramblings with a loose explanation of what he is saying. And based on what can be gathered from their combined recount, there exist seven "foundation-gods" that make up "Yesod-With-Faces", from which the rest of creation stems from. This is an important bit of lore as we will dive into Yesod later on.
We get our first mention of the High Elder Gods. These are the Gods that exist above Yesod and dwarf them in power and importance. As we will see later on, one's position on The Tree can directly correlate to their physical might and power.
Now we get our first mention of The Brothers Death since Verse 1: Chapter 1. As we can see, their might is nothing to scoff at, and they have full reign over everything beneath The Tree's shadow. This is consistent with them creating it and puts them above everything within it.
==Kaktusverse==
A Canon primarily made up of works by the author djkaktus. Sub-Canons that primarily belong in this Canon include Ouroboros and Project Paragon.
In SCP 3930's discussion page, we have an quote where Djkaktus brief mentioned the hierarchy of SCP 3812/Reality is technically resting in the void encompassing everything which is one of the aspect of IS and IS NOT, this is one indication that the Reality in SCP 3812 a part of IS and IS NOT's Dream (who are sitting at the topmost of Djkaktusverse):
SCP 3812's Hierarchy is something important that we have to highline that the difference between each layer is something called Metafictional, just like the way how an entity in the 4th spatial dimension might perceive our universe and its contents as a comic book, the higher dimensional reality is completely unable to perceive and inaccessible by lower dimensional reality, and lower layer of existence could manipulate those contents from a realm of higher energy, so could an entity with access to a higher metaphysical dimension manipulate the very architecture of our reality, all at once, from a similar realm of higher energy:
In same article we have this lovely quote:
Technically there is an infinite amount of realities stacking on top of each other in every direction (downward and upward) so called Narrative Echelon hierarchy. Hence this hierarchy contains at least one infinite Metaphysical Dimensions (Infininte Spatial Dimensions). There are 2 distinct Narrative Echelons, one below Narrative X (which SCP-3812 Transcends) and one that extends beyond Narrative X (in this case , from the 5th Narrative Dimension).
In The Tenth (one of the stories in SCP 001 Djkaktus IV) stated that Serpent is the embodiment of the information (The idea that ideas can exist at all, or that all things have inherent truths about them) in entire cosmology:
In SCP 4840 again stated that Serpent is actually representation of IS's Truth:
In Historia Europa, it explicitly proclamined Serpent is the Paragon of Knowledge who built one Wanderer Librably which precedes the very foundation of the World hence the reality is taken shaped:
Precisely, Information is a concept that precedes SCP-3812 as a whole. Therefore, the Noosphere (the set of information inside human heads) transcending SCP-3812's hierarchy is consistent to the lore of Djkaktusverse.
The two counterpart IS NOT and IS, are the two ultimate beings of the Kaktusverse. They represent two universal truths, all that IS and all that IS NOT. There originally only were the two siblings, before IS woke up from its slumber and transformed its dream into reality. The Dream of IS became THAT WHICH IS, the sum of creation. But as it was formless and aimless, IS created several Paragons from itself to shape its dream into something sensible. The nameless Paragon of Names gave its existence away to give names to the sum of creation, allowing each aspect of it to be differentiated. Edos the Paragon of time started his march of time, slowly bringing creation towards IS NOT. Usarus the Paragon of Form gave the dream its shape and form, giving things their boundaries. Zutris the Paragon of Power gave entities the ability to move and act, giving movement to creation. Aella the Paragon of Life gifted creation with life, taking the first seed of life from the Heart of IS. Osyn the Paragon of Soul gave those living beings a soul and the ability to think for themselves. And finally Runheia the Paragon of Knowledge gave living beings the ability to collect knowledge, and built the Library on the boundary between IS and IS NOT. IS NOT created only two Paragons. Va the Paragon of Decay caused decay in all things, weakening and eroding them. Bramimond the Paragon of Death, in turn, would take entities destroyed by Va and take them from the reality of IS to the dream of IS NOT. Both of them took on the job of destroying everything Edos, the Paragon of Time, passed by and giving it back to IS NOT, until one day everything is reunited in the dream of IS NOT.
==Metafoundation==
Also known as From 120's Archives Canon or the Placeverse, it is a Canon written by a group of authors spearheaded by the vision of Placeholder McD. From the words of its Canon Hub:
Now an important takeaway from this is that the goal of the Canon is to create a sort of "mega-Canon" that incorporates other Canons into itself; be it in part or whole:
==Project Palisade==
A Canon created to tie into the SCP Foundation Wiki's Doomsday Contest. This Canon assumes a massive entity known as THE WORM is destroying universes in the multiverse. As a response, The Foundation created a machine that could generate infinite variations of their universe to not only sacrifice to THE WORM, but also to generate a catastrophe dire enough to evoke a response from the deities that created THE WORM, in the hopes that they will get rid of it. Beside of that we have one mention of SCP 3812 and in Doomday Contest we have 2-3 article of Kaktusverse , so the cosmology of the Project Palisade would be relevant to Kaktusverse if not a part of it, its current ratings would be 2A via infinite number of timelines. Multiple Sub-Canons exist within this Canon and many of them have definite conclusions, allowing the subsequent research and tiering efforts to be straightforward and simplified.
=== Apotheosis===
===End of Death===
===Insect Hell===
===Last Light===
===Skies Made Strange===
===Team Bird===
===Apocalypse ===
A Sub-Canon that intersects with the War On All Fronts Canon. It is a universe (timeline, in the case of War On All Fronts) wherein The Foundation accidentally find the origin of the Large Scale Agressor known as the Crocosquid. Upon this discovery, many of the Crocosquid's kind invade Earth and destroy most of civilisation.
=The Nöosphere and SCP 5800=
The Noosphere is an easy enough concept to define, and something that might already be in your vocabulary even outside of SCP. In short terms, the "Noosphere" is a posited philosophical concept that describes an emergent phenomenon originated by the arising and subsequent development of human cognition, consisting of the field of societal relationships that humans have established over time, and encompassing all intellectual pursuits: It is the collective of all human thought, forming a layer over the planet in the same vein as the biosphere, the atmosphere, the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and so on.
In SCP, this basic definition is followed closely enough: The Noosphere, as defined in several articles, is the non-physical space that comprehends all information that can be conceptualized by humans, existing as an ideatic, abstract world that contrasts the material, concrete one:
And a fairly fundamental part of dealing with the Noosphere revolves memes. That is to say, units of cultural information, which convey certain modes of thought and behavior and are shared across generations and between individuals located in similar spheres of interest: They are ideas that are shared in order to transmit a certain kind of thinking, pretty much, and memetics is the area in which those ideas are analyzed as if they were subject to the same evolutionary processes as biological attributes. As explained in Understanding Memetics:
Hence, this has an obvious relationship with the Noosphere, which can itself be defined as being the sphere in which all memetic activity takes place. That is: As units of information mainly relating to human culture (And which often are comprehensible to humans), memes exist as constructs within the Noosphere:
In fact, the Noosphere is often compared to a vast ocean, with the various memetic entities residing in it being thus likened to sea-creatures:
Oftentimes, these entities will be described as having more than three dimensions. For instance, one account has the Ara Orun fighting against a memetic complex that is explicitly described as being a 5-dimensional structure:
SCP-3125 is also, in different occasions, described as being either 5-dimensional or Θ′-dimensional (Where Θ′ is an integer number that stands between 5 and 6):
Likewise, SCP-5800, an abstract realm inhabited by hostile anti-ideas of a kind with 3125, is described as being "the Fifth Dimension."
This might seem like a strange characteristic to apply to these entities, since, after all, they are from a world of pure concept and information, and it is hard to picture something as intangible as an idea having spatial or temporal dimensions. Thankfully, author qntm clarified much on that front in the comment section of Your First Last Day (Second page):
Which is to say, these realms have a kind of dimensionality, yes, but the dimensions in question exist exclusively in conceptual space and do not correspond to physical notions of measurement like length, width or height at all. Instead, they are abstract qualities describing the features of an ideatic complex, like "complexity," "abstractness," "corruptibility" and so on. Indeed, the Noosphere seems to wholly encompass conventional dimensionality instead, as shown by SCP-7650, whose description reads:
So the idea of an object existing within the Noosphere includes all possible variations of it, regardless of dimensionality. In the same article, we are also informed of this:
The context of the statement doesn't matter for our current purposes: What matters is that, simply put, cardinal numbers in SCP have been demonstrated as including the inaccessible cardinal. Since the dimensionality of a space is simply the cardinality of its basis, (The set of vectors that are linearly independent, meaning that they cannot be written as a sum of other vectors and as such each add a dimension to the space) mathematically, for any cardinal number κ, there exists also a space with κ-many dimensions. What does that mean? Noosphere wholly encompasses all conventional dimensionality and the idea in SCP 5800 technically engulf entire ideas from Noosphere with the size of all possible alephs hence Infosphere/SCP 5800 is inaccessible cardinal space as a whole, funnily enough it corresponds to Grothendieck Universe.
More valuable information to be extracted from this article is this excerpt:
The idea of the Noosphere as a world populated by archetypal concepts lends to a characterization of it that has been introduced relatively recently in the writings of author Placeholder Mcd. To quote the man himself:
So, the Noosphere is not only humanity's collective unconsciousness, but also Plato's World of Forms, containing the perfect templates of which everything in the concrete world is a simple shadow. As the scope of the Noosphere transcends linear time, the ideatic structures within it are constructed by the perception of all humans from both past and future: The Form of "table," for instance, is created by the perception of all tables that any human has seen, is seeing, and will ever see. That this is the case is basically the main premise of SCP-6820 as well. Take a look at this excerpt from it:
The Noosphere's current 1-A rating is very closely related to the last bits of information presented in this section. To recapitulate: It is the World of Platonic Forms that completely transcends the concrete universe, which is its shadow populated by imperfect copies of the abstract ideas existing within itself.
These ideas contain and transcend all variations of their particulars, with the concept of a circle for instance including all circle-sphere objects, whether they be a two-dimensional circle, a three-dimensional sphere, a fourth-dimensional hypersphere and any and all hyper-dimensional sphere-like objects. As the last bit states, this inclusion is completely independent of dimensionality.
==Possibility Space==
The "possibility space" refers to the abstract realm of everything that could possibly exist, happen, or be imagined. It intersects with Noosphere which is the abstract realm of all possible human thought which contains some possibilities and a small number of impossibilities.
==Anti-Nöosphere==
Contrast to the Noosphere which is the set of all human thoughts, all ideas that humans can understand, the Anti-Noosphere is the set of all ideas that humans are incapable of conceiving.
=The Metafoundation Infosphere=
The Noosphere is often contrasted against the "Infosphere," a plane of reality that comprehends the set of all ideas, and all information, whether it be comprehensible to the human mind or not. The Noosphere itself exists as a tiny subset of it, and as SCP-6820 demonstrates, concepts that are perfectly capable of being conceptualized by the human mind can and often do exist as cross-sections of much larger infospheric superstructures, which are themselves incapable of being known or entertained abstractly:
The role of the Infosphere within the overarching structure of reality is elaborated upon in more detail by Placeholder, who explains that, in his works, all of SCP is nothing more than a simulation running inside of an hyperdimensional supercomputer with the goal of generating entertainment fiction for readers in higher Narratives. In the context of this explanation, the Infosphere is then to be defined as the collective of all data in the aforementioned computer, the ocean of information whose resources all sentient beings unconsciously tap into in order to shape the physical universe into existence by means of their subjective perceptions and experiences:
And it is in this interview, also, that he explicitly outlines the concept of the 13 Constants: Multiverse-spanning algorithms that define narrative elements for all Canons, hard-coded into the simulation and so unimaginably complex that their behaviors are no different from those of intelligent, sentient entities. The essential conflict between these Constants and the multiversal protagonist, Life, forms the archetypal basis and blueprint for all stories in the multiverse, which boil down to a simple dynamic: An interplay between the unknown, and the anomalous, and a force attempting to subdue and understand it.
In this sense, then, the Infosphere can be strictly defined as being the highest, broadest layer of reality in the SCPverse, acting as the basic framework for the simulation itself that includes all of its parts. However, one must be careful around this term, since, by definition, any space that is beyond the Noosphere can be, and oftentimes is, described as "the Infosphere," without necessarily being the entirety of the set of all ideas
A prime example of this is the aforementioned SCP-5800, whose article is hyperlinked at the end of SCP-5712, when a character is ruminating on the discovery of the Infosphere. It, however, cannot be the entirety of the Infosphere in the sense Placeholder speaks of, as it is a space governed by SCP-3125 (It being described as being "God," while the hyper-concepts swimming around in 5800 are called "angels" relative to it), which is itself simply a manifestation of the Constant of Chaos, very much limited to singular Universes / Canons, as shown in SCP-6820.
Therefore, while the Infosphere technically is every layer of reality in the simulation, the part of it where the Constants reside, above and beyond all the Canons, can be helpfully thought of as the topmost region of it, and what will henceforth be the exclusive referee of the term "Infosphere," for simplicity's sake. Aside from that, the space of all information is divided in a number of layers of existence, each of which is a necessary mechanism for the SCPverse Simulation to keep running. We've already covered one of those layers (The Noosphere, the lowest one), and it is imperative that we do the same for the others as well.
= The Patasphere=
This is the level of reality that immediately follows from the Infosphere, and as its name suggests is the environment which pataphysics, in SCP defined as the study of narratives and of the nature of reality-as-story, revolves around. It is, in essence, the Universal Narrative that governs a given Canon and dictates all its parameters, having ultimate sway on how all stories that take place in it will unfold.
How the Universal Narrative functions can be illustrated by the concept of the Hero's Journey: What it is, in essence, is nothing but a very basic pattern that outlines how a specific kind of narrative will play out, laying out basic elements and tendencies that reoccur in many individual stories, which under this line of thinking may be thought of as borrowing from the basic blueprint that the Hero's Journey provides. It is a mould for a story, basically, and when applied to the world itself, the Universal Narrative then comes to be defined as "The infinitely complicated story that our whole reality imitates."
Due to all stories being latent within the Patasphere, it can also be accurately defined as being "the set of all possible stories" that can be conceived for a single Canon. Whenever an entity with 2 or more narrative dimensions envisions a non-real scenario, that imagination becomes encrypted as narrative data, the most basic particle of which is a unit known as an "Imaginon," a set of which in turn forms a story. The Patasphere, then, is a reality's total Imaginon structure:
Another elaboration of the Patasphere comes from I.H Pickman's Proposal of SCP-001, which defines the existence of an universal constant dictating narrative causality for a given universe, one that is sentient and very possibly sapient as well:
So, in summary, the Patasphere is the fictional dimension of a given Canon and the infinitely complicated story that dictates all causal relationships within it, which are inevitably all lesser variations of the same prototype storyline. It is basically the canvas on which Author Entities impose their imagination, and can as such be defined as being the Narrative itself. This structure is set up cleverly enough as to allow the existence of even Canons with internal cosmologies that stand in contradiction to the overarching model. As Placeholder explains:
An example of such contradictory models that would be reduced to smaller-scale, localized cosmologies would be the stack of narratives as defined by Djkaktus in SCP-3812. This cosmology posits a set of narrative layers that extends infinitely in both downwards and upwards direction, which stands in harsh contradiction with the Placeholder-Ike Model, where the Narrative stack has a well-defined starting point (A universe with 0 narrative dimensions) and continues from there. Therefore, the cosmology presented by SCP-3812's article would be constrained to a single Canon, and be effectively a lesser stack of narratives than Placeholder's.
That this is the case is likewise supported by a recent entry in SCP-682's Extermination Log, where a version of SCP-682 written about in a lower Narrative ascends to kill 95% of all SCPs and then match a version of SCP-3812 in combat, therefore indicating that 3812's entire story (Including his ascension through the stack of narratives) can be contained with a single layer of the Placeholder-Ike Model's Narrative stack.
This is how certain Canons with conflicting cosmologies are able to co-exist within the Metafoundation mega-Canon. For example, The Trashfire Canon explicitly has no Noosphere. This conflicts with every canon that has a Noosphere. However, The Trashfire exists within a Universal Narrative that exists adjacent to the other Universal Narratives that contain other Canons/multiverses.
=The Semiosphere=
If you remember the aforementioned, the Noosphere is the Space of human Thoughts, this makes it coherent to believe that the (Real) Narratives work based on Noospheres, being a Hierarchy of these, but for this we have to add the Simiosphere factor, which is the method by which Editors Alter the Reality (Real Narrative) of the SCP Universe.
Semiosphere is the set of all human senses which also dictates the logical framework of the timeline and Surrealistic anomorlies.
SCP-INTEGER, a living Semiohazard, is heavily implied to be capable of manipulating the logic behind mathematics themselves, changing the result of mathematical equations on a physical level. SCP-6276 used Semiokinetic powers to manipulate the underlying logic behind its own information. In short, the Semiosphere includes the very logic behind mathematics and the information of the Noosphere. It easily manipulates the system of logic behind the Noosphere. And so according to those things, this allows it to essentially jump the hierarchy of the Noosphere.
=The Proxyverse=
=Universe Prime=
Alright it have not been existed offically in SCP yet but as far as we know that The highest structure in Metafoundation cosmology currently is Universe Prime, an infinite and formless conciousness, it is the realest possible universe, the place where generates all of fictionally dimensional scale. It is dimensionless, is unreachable by any pataphysical narrative model, is encompassing the Everything which takes place in its Mind. Universe Prime, a theoretical universe that is the source of infinite H-energy, a substance that fuels all other universes. This energy dissipates evenly across universes, suggesting that it comes from an infinite source, as a finite source would have run out. Universe Prime, containing infinite H-energy, cannot be influenced by or interact with other universes due to its infinite canon inertia, meaning its events are fixed and unchangeable. Any attempts to interact with Universe Prime result in the creation of a duplicate or pseudo-universe that mimics it but remains finite. Additionally, Universe Prime’s nature makes it impossible to observe or influence directly, and vice versa, due to the lack of shared ‘pataphysical connections between it and any other universe.
=Summary=
Noosphere: 1-A
SCP 5800: 1-A+
Semiosphere: 1-A+
Patasphere: 1-A+
Infosphere: 1-A+
Universe Prime: High 1-A
==References==
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Category:Cosmology