Barolith

Concept art of a Barolith

> We call it a Barolith. Some massive creature made of entirely ideas. It turns out, things can live out here - sentient things. This thing is so large that the entire Weave fits inside it. It looks like it's maintaining it, but no sign of active consciousness appears to be present, just like us, when we bifurcate from our Somas.
>
> Logos, Io of Sentrigaal, Arganus data hive

Baroliths are massive conceptual lifeforms that naturally form within paradox space.

## Biology

Baroliths are immense lifeforms that harbour complete realities within themselves. Baroliths are the result of several greatminds forming in the same creation incident - spawning from a single seed. As a result, they take on an alien appearance, featuring a number of brainlike lobes surrounding a hollow centre that are connected by stems.

Baroliths form either naturally or synthetically. Natural baroliths form through creation as one interconnected organism, whereas artificial instances are the result of several isolated greatminds forming bonds. The greatminds involved in this feature a sort of "telepathic" communication, with the ability to share thoughts. This results in them acting to preserve one another, thinking as a single organism, though also having the capacity for individual thought. As a result, there is some debate as to whether or not a barolith counts as a unique entity, or several separate ones. They can form from as few as two minds, though this number can be as high as six before instabilities start to occur. Should a double-lobed barolith form, it will likely have a much shorter lifespan than other ones, on account of the limited mental processing power, and for septuple and above, the individual greatminds may not be able to sustain themselves on account of too many interfering minds, meaning their marachol may be smothered.

Within the cup formed by the greatminds, an ora web is grown, running as an autonomous machine, presided over by the surrounding entities. This machine produces junk concepts which are unrelated to the processes within it which are harvested by the barolith to replace those lost to paradox space. This process allows the barolith to regenerate, sustaining all of the clustered organisms around it, who in turn maintain the web. This logical network is known as a "marachol web", and essentially acts as a medium within conceptual space for an enormous calculation to occur. If one were to be a part of this process, they would experience it as its own fully fledged reality. Marachol webs often feature "subrealities" known as "aldæm" existing beneath them, which are inaccessible from the main marachol, though function as powerful anchors to maintain the web, providing it a base program to draw from, and a resource on which to draw when the weave is damaged and there are no microconstructs to draw from. The sum total of these aldæm is known as the axial barrier.

To maintain their internal realities, baroliths have the ability to transfer their many consciousnesses into their marachol webs through projections of themselves, in which they act either as individual omnipotent entities, or as one mind split between three bodies. For the most part, they remain within their own bodies in paradox space, as the web only serves as a "farm" for sustenance and healing, though should errors arise, they do have the power to correct them by manipulating the web's construction. As they are primarily in paradox space, the baroliths have the ability to observe incoming organisms, such as invading greatminds seeking to feed on them, or surrounding microconstructs (basic conceptual clusters that make up abstract ones, yet to be specialised. Similar to stem cells) to be integrated into their web to repair it in case of damage from the storm.

When the barolith senses the presence of a conceptual microconstruct, it has the ability to generate a wide hole in the centre of the web, leading directly to the point where the stems fuse, exposing it to the single point where the three brains merge, creating a particularly powerful point of conceptual manipulation. This is used to pull in microconstructs, or expel virulent ideas that are useless or harmful to the entity.

This visualisation of a barolith is not wholly accurate, as it is a creature composed of concepts existing in paradox space, which isn't in itself a "real" location - or even a "location" at all, simply the natural state that concepts exist in when not experienced by someone within a reality. It is, however, the closest that one may be to understanding what they are, and is how they are perceived by the Io - the only entities known to have left their respective marachol web to view it from the perspective of a creature "entering" paradox space.

## Lore

Baroliths feature heavily in the Divine Origins project - with the entire storyline taking part inside of and around the marachol web of a triple lobed barolith. The three greatminds comprising the barolith are known as "Arvahl", "Awkatt", and "Rhotsu". Initially, these greatminds made a web that held the conceptual process of an enormous machine, which they referred to as "Expanse". This machine contained three analogues for ora within itself, with each being commutable into a different form. Each mind separately engineered each respective form, in order to maximise efficiency. The result was a collection of three "primordial matters", named autria, constallite, and xavei, which would be used to construct the process. As the marachol web grew, however, a greatmind named Arkateth drifted towards the barolith, with the intent to replace one of the lobes.

Prior to integration, Arkateth would be seen as a threat to the barolith, and would be met with retaliation. However, should Arkateth have replaced one of the other greatminds, it would begin sharing a consciousness, and thus would be seen as a component instead, requiring a restructuring of the marachol web to accommodate it. Arkateth failed in it's attempts to be integrated, and was repelled by the barolith through violent disassembly of its form, though at a great cost to the three surviving greatminds, who were forced to re-engineer the marachol into one that would be able to repel coming threats, and entered into a state of hibernation within it to recuperate. This was the series of events that led to the creation of Leethuria and the Glimpse.

The restructured web evolved over time within its process in order to accommodate and contain the virulent counterconcepts produced by Arkateth, and eventually formed the reality we know today. As the greatminds were unable to consciously maintain their web, small organisms known as "Formidaph Deusphaira" (parasites that were often repelled by the barolith) began to latch on, integrating themselves into reality, and becoming the race known as the Io.

After several failed expeditions into paradox space, an Io originating from the Voidborne planet Sentrigaal known as Logos constructed a neural network capable of cancelling out the influence of thoughts on the unreality around them. This meant that there was a single unified reference frame that all explorers could perceive, instead of the chaotic blend of rapidly interfering unstable realities often experienced, such as those seen in Dr Robert Peterson's recordings. Eventually this would lead to the creation of the Celestial Ark, and with them the discovery of the barolith by the scientists of the fourth celestial, Arganus. The Io would also then proceed to discover Leethuria, existing as what appeared to them to be a much larger aldæm, adding comparable weakness to the stability of the marachol. It was determined that the size and prevalence of this reality would imply it to be the main process of the weave, with the multiverse somehow existing in conjunction with it. This did, however, mean that the axial barrier of the weave was essentially "hollow", and thus increased conceptual pressure on the outside would lead to the rapid manifestation of enormous rifts within both realities. The Io elected only to observe Leethuria, and to never make direct contact, on account of the prevalence of void hunters within the multiverse, and the possibility of their existence, or creation, in the second reality as well.

## Trivia

* The name "barolith" comes from the real life "beroidae", which is a specific family of comb-jellies, similar in appearance to that of a barolith.
	+ Following the theme of real life analogues, the word "marachol" is a fusion of three separate words, each reflecting one element of the web's function.
		- "mar" comes from "marrow", referencing how the web produces essential concepts for the barolith, unrelated to the web itself, but that may be transformed into essential components of the greatminds. This process is similar to that which occurs within bone marrow, as this produces stem cells which then can specialise into red blood cells.
		- "arach" is derived from "arachnid", as the appearance of the construct is similar to that of a large spider's web, similar to a tangle web, though looking more like a funnel web during the "feeding" phase of drawing in microconstructs
		- "Chol" comes from "collagen" - a real life protien found throughout the body, existing to provide structure and support. This is in reference to how the marachol appears as a connective tissue, binding all of the greatminds together and providing stability to the barolith.
	+ In addition, "aldæm" is drawn from the arabic word for "support"

## Related links

* Paradox space
* Io
* Greatmind
* Weave of Logos
* The Expanse