Unreality

> "The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated."
> — Sidney Coleman and Frank De Luccia
>
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Unreality is an unknown realm that is home to the beings known as Elder Gods. It is not like other realms in that it can coexist in parallel. This place, which has never been visited or even seen by man, exists in another state of being and replaces all known reality. This "other reality", according to theories posited by the Spatial Circle, first exists as a single point in space that collapses for unknown reasons, which then expands in all directions as a bubble at the speed of light. As this bubble expands, all matter and energy that gets taken into it collapses as well. The first point comes to be when it experiences "false vacuum decay", or in other words, the sudden and inexplicable decay of the fundamental rules of the universe into "something else".

It is not clear where these bubbles exist, or why they come to be. It's known that they *can*, however, and believed that they already do. They've not only been theorized in varying forms, including those from the Spatial Circle, they've also been supported by ancient texts uncovered in the Tangled Depths (also known as the Old Underworld). These texts claim the existence of similar such pockets of space while putting them in relation to the Elder Gods.

## Nature

The universe is said to be within a "false vacuum state". This is meaning that one or more of the forces that drive the universe are not truly in a state of stability, nor that they're stable when their energy as at its lowest. They are "metastable". When stable, the universe would be in a so-called "vacuum state". But as it is not, at any time and without warning, any point in space could decay and become what is simply dubbed "Unreality".

It is an unknowable place. No person, no technology, and no magic can reach within without also decaying and becoming "stable". What lies within is, by all accounts, beyond understanding. Whether life as we know it becomes impossible or not, what it looks like within, and what mana becomes are questions that can only be grasped by the mad. To gaze upon it from the outside would reveal only an all-consuming void, as light is consumed and made into some other, more stable form like everything else. Though you wouldn't see even that much, as it expands at the speed of light. You would already be dead by the time you could witness the darkness.

The meaning of stable is not in the conventional sense, nor would it suggest perfection or order. Unreality is beyond such definitions. All that it means is that whatever lies beyond is the way things "truly" are, or should be, had there not been a small error.

## Creatures

There are several forms of life that are products of Unreality, including but not limited to the Elder Gods. While it is factually unclear what life is like within Unreality, if any life at all, the echoes of these beings exist in a compatible form with our reality.

Only the Elder Gods are known to have come directly from Unreality. Other beings, such as the Vasemin, have come from the Elder Gods one way or another.