Oh man, it's 2025! I guess I'd better get to blogging. I hope the new year has been kind to all of you!
I have some reasonably concrete goals for the year regarding stuff I want to publish. (And by
publish, of course I mean
put on the web so others can feed my vanity by downloading them.) I want to finally nail down my my own
fantasy heartbreaker (the
Monstrous Heartbreaker). I have a slash-and-dash fantasy racing game I'd like to solidify some rules for (playtest image below). There's even a D&D-rules-adjacent baseball game that I might be able to present to the world.
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| Fr. Josh apologetically making a move. |
And, of course, I want to continue
the Monstrous Matters campaign, finalize a number of the rules, and bulk up the lore. So that's what the rest of this post is...
I've previously written
a little about the detection of interplanar portals and the etherealite and fissure glow often associated with them. So...what are the some of the historical events that led to our current understanding? Here's a (very) quick primer...
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It all comes back to quantum physics…which is obviously a statement that’s much easier to write than it is to understand. The elucidation of quantum mechanics not only revolutionized the field of physics; it also gave rise to ideas outside of mainstream science that now allow the Monstrous Matters team to do their work.
In the 20th century, our understanding of interconnected planes, and the technologies associated with these connections, grew exponentially alongside research related to quantum theory. Originating with Einstein and Schrödinger’s description of spukhafte Fernwirkung (“spooky action at a distance”) in 1927, attempts to resolve the seemingly counterintuitive implications of quantum entanglement (summarized in the famed EPR Paradox, proposed in 1935) motivated many great thinkers throughout the rest of the century.
While attention was drawn away from quantum theory to focus on the practical needs of World War II, many scientists continued to explore these ideas on the fringe of the physics establishment. And just beyond that fringe, other physicists took on questions that they knew were unacceptable to the mainstream. Among these groups, a series of very clever efforts to maintain entanglement with annihilated particles allowed a small set of researchers to recognize physical planes existing alongside our own. For obvious reasons, these experiments have not been publicized.
While the history of recorded interplanar portals is quite extensive (and necessarily requires quite a few footnotes and qualifiers due to the disputed nature of many events), some of the most widely agreed upon breaches in the barrier between our world and others are noted here:
1904 - A series of atmospheric anomalies in and around Bloomsbury, in London’s West End, began to attract the attention of paranormal investigators. Many observers noted similarities to disturbances recorded around Oxford, England, in the 1860s. It wouldn’t be until 1991, however, that these were finally connected to etherealite and fissure glow (see below).
1930s - At the same time that quantum entanglement was gaining acceptance as a real phenomenon (although it wouldn’t be until the 1970s that the data supporting it would become unassailable through experiments on
Bell’s inequality), paranormal researchers recorded a variety of environmental data in a rural area of Kansas, United States, where anomalies similar to those in the UK accompanied an extreme weather event.
1940s - Similar phenomena were observed in the English countryside, not far from London. Attempts to connect these events to previous observations in the UK, and the more recent occurrence in Kansas, were hampered by a hasty but unfounded determination that they were indications of Nazi efforts in physics or the occult (depending upon who you asked).
1985 - Radiation later determined to likely be fissure glow was detected in Brooklyn, NYC. Officials were limited in their ability to investigate due to the distraction of a rash of plumbing emergencies that occurred around the radiation's appearance.
At about the same time, mysterious events in Battersea, London, involving strangely dressed travelers in search of “The Mace of St. Cuthbert” were correlated with glow detected in the region. This occurrence begins the time period many refer to as the Golden Age of Interplanar Exploration.
1991 - Further observations in London, nearly identically matching those from early in the century, prompted portal researchers to put recent discoveries regarding the nature of etherealite and fissure glow to the test. Many of those involved would claim this to be the first case of interplanar connection to be confirmed soon after its occurrence. The success of paraphysical theories developed over the previous decade would hook many fringe researchers who had held out skepticism up until this point.
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As always...hopefully more to come...!
