Moebius Barrier

A Moebius Barrier is a type of highly advanced illusionary and spatial Iserialogy that was conceived by the Draykin sage Moebius Thazyan during the Genocide War.

Visually, a Moebius Barrier appears as heavy mist covering an area, and people entering it will find themselves wandering in circles, and eventually return to their point of origin or somewhere near it, without ever making it to the other side of the barrier.

## Manner of Functioning

A Moebius barrier is a complex compound of several Iserial principles, including illusion, spatial relocation, and abrasion of the World Wall. The simplified basic idea is that a person's field of perception is limited to a small area outside of which the world seemingly repeats. This utilizes the effective limitation of a person's event horizon and combines it with occasional spatial transfer that goes unnoticed and causes them to run into the same or similar areas all over again, until after a duration that may stretch from hours over days to weeks they are led back to their original point of entry.

Beyond this basic layer, which is relatively cheap to maintain, a Moebius Barrier also has a number of fallback mechanisms that take effect if one or more explorers manage to make their way deeper into the barrier using advanced exploration tactics. The first additional layer includes illusions that are already extremely difficult to overcome, given that any party must effectively continuously dispel illusions over the entire length of their penetration into the Moebius Barrier.

Finally, there is a third, highly expensive layer of defence incorporating Tertiary Iserialogy in order to slightly abrade the World Wall and cause "impossible" phenomena, such as for example a perfectly straight and extremely long bar of iron being pushed into the Moebius Barrier looping back in on itself, or people running into their own selves without any illusions involved. This layer should much later also serve as the basis for Dream Gate technology.

A Moebius Barrier either has to be continuously upheld by an Iserialogist or one or more Focus Crystals. As such, the Iserialogist or the Focus Crystal are the weak point of any Moebius Barrier. Furthermore, every Moebius Barrier always has at least one technique that can be used to traverse it, and is commonly referred to as its "Secret". While this Secret can be arbitrarily complex and can even be changed with some effort, it can in theory be unravelled. However, since the possibilities for a secret are not n-complete, doing so without the aid of quantum computing is nearly impossible, and the only recorded instance of the Secret of a Moebius Barrier ever being "cracked" was when Bokay Zerin managed to find the Crystal Shard serving as the focus for the Moebius Barrier put up by Flair Arayto in the Agine Rainforest. Several explanations exist for this:

* The Crystal Shards carried by Bokay and the one serving as focus for the Moebius Barrier might have attracted one another, thus creating a "path of least resistance" that coincided with the Secret of the barrier
* Bokay might have subconsciously been relying on Minayero, which is sufficiently powerful that it's not unreasonable to assume that Minayero would be able to crack a Moebius Barrier's Secret
* Flair might have kept the Secret intentionally deliberately simple, which would coincide with the Cetarans' plot of allowing the Chosen to gather all the Crystal Shards

## The Great Moebius Barrier

The Great Moebius Barrier was the first large-scale application of a Moebius Barrier, and served to effectively seal off the entire continent of Ventana from the outside world for over a millennia. It is also simultaneously the largest most famous instance of a Moebius Barrier that was ever erected on Ceal.

The Great Moebius Barrier functioned primarily through a network of twelve Focus Crystals strategically placed around the perimeter of Ventana, placed roughly 2,000 km apart. Originally, only relatively small crystals were used, but after the initial barrier was put up, they were gradually increased with bigger and more powerful crystals, that were able to uphold the Moebius Barrier even during the Iserial Calm of 1,256 BN, which caused the Loss of Iserialogy among the Wel.

During this time, many Wel tried traversing the great Moebius Barrier, and while most were unsuccessful, a small number actually made it through. Some of those had obtained the current Secret of the great Moebius Barrier from Gryphs, Dragons, or even the occasional Draykin undercover agent secretly making his way to the outside world. However, none of the Wel who managed to make their way all the way into the hidden Draykin lands was ever allowed to leave again and tell the tale.Some were killed, some spent the remainder of their lives in prison, but the vast majority eventually joined the society of the Draykin and lived out their lives on Ventana. Over time, this gave rise to a small Wel population peacefully living together with the Draykin.

The Great Moebius Barrier was eventually destroyed during the Iserial War, when the Divine State of Mel-Erik used their orbital Judgement Grid to simultaneously destroy all twelve Focus Crystals, thus dispelling the great Moebius Barrier by force and revealing Ventana - and with it the Draykin - to all of Ceal once again.