Prologue

A lone observer gazed down upon a sparkling jewel, floating through the cosmic void.

The small blue and green gem of a world spun its way around an unremarkable and fairly young, yellow star. The star, and the world, as well as the other worlds in the same system, were all fairly ordinary. The blue-green world housed life, marking it as a bit special, but nothing really incredible in the grand, cosmic scheme of things.

Ordinary does not mean worthless, however. Life, and sapient life especially, was what the observer was tasked to defend, to protect from any of a variety of outside influences. Its creators had seeded life throughout many universes, and enough galaxies that even the observer needed a few picoseconds to calculate the number.

The threat approaching this beautiful, blue-green gem of a world, though, was something the species native to the world was not prepared to handle. It had no defenses against it, no antibodies, no Herd resistances.

If the observer did nothing, the odds were terribly against the survival of the blue-green world’s sapient life forms. To be fair, they were terribly against the survival of any of the native life in the star system, and to the observer, ALL of the life was important – the sapient life form’s survival was merely a slightly higher priority.

Luckily, the native sapient life form was adaptive, clever, competitive, and capable of extreme violence when properly motivated. The observer would simply need to take advantage of the native species’ penchant for creativity AND violence.

They also had an unusual, but certainly not unique, ability that caused their species’ collective unconscious, which is sometimes referred to as an Akashic Record, to form metaphysically adjacent pocket Realms based off of concepts that presented themselves strongly enough in their Akashic Record.

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The part that was much rarer, almost, but not QUITE unique, was the amount of travel seen between these pocket Realms and the world the species was native to. Such pocket Realms were generally shifting, fluid, changing things... but when enough members of this particular, native species resided there and integrated themselves into the pocket Realm, it had the intriguing effect of stabilizing those pocket Realms! Of making them, essentially, faux-True Realms!

A True Realm being, of course, a place that could exist independently of its dependence on the collective unconsciousness of the native sapient species.

The observer searched for a plan that would work well with a species with traits like the one it was dealing with by accessing the memories of its brethren in different galaxies and even other universes. It then took a truly annoyingly long amount of time, perhaps even nearly a full nanosecond, to observe and then absorb the sum of all of the cultures and knowledge of the beautiful blue-green marble, effortlessly accessing the primitive electromagnetic communication systems of the world, as well as the various species’ Akashic Records to do so.

It only took a few more picoseconds before it found an odd cultural phenomenon, curiously reminiscent of some of the Realities present in other universes its brethren watched over, and it seemed particularly appropriate considering the catastrophe headed towards the little blue-green world.

The natives referred to these phenomena as science fiction and fantasy role-playing games.

To the observer though, they represented the second half of a plan borrowed from one of its siblings; something that it felt precisely matched what was needed here!

They were also terribly appropriate, considering the nature of the threat.

So, it began planning. It began reaching backwards in time, just slightly, a mere few decades, really, and inspiring the natives, insofar as the Precursors allowed it to. The more the idea the observer planned to enact penetrated the planetary Akashic Record, the easier it would be to execute!

The observer inspired writers, screenplay makers, and game makers. It also manipulated the primitive communication systems, what the native sapients referred to as the Internet.

It formulated, and then embarked upon its plan following its newly titled Grand Method. It would take a couple of decades to properly put into place, but initial projections increased the odds of survival for the various species on the world in question by several geometrical progressions.

Pleased that it had raised those odds to the point that they were well in excess of 6%, the observer began enacting its plan, its Grand Method.