Log 0: I'm starting a new log as an addendum to the FDR project log. Long story short, the project was successful, more so than I thought possible. If it's ever necessary again, I might try to improve on the lag time from activation to completion. Several eons was longer than even my worst predictions. But considering the random factors, I'm impressed.
That being said, there were some…unexpected side effects. Not everything reset, which was the point, but more changed than I initially expected. Again, random element interference is the likely cause. The necessity of fundamental chaos was certain to cause things like this.
The main unintended change of note was a shift in my fundamental abilities. Most of my previous powers are gone. Luckily, I maintained the essentials, but some extraneous powers have been transmuted into new ones. This log will be a notation of my experiments and any information I gather about these new powers.
Log 1: Initial experimentation has gone swimmingly. Consulting Argentia has given me some basic information to start with. These new powers are a type of their own, unique in existence. Considering I'm the one who discovered them, I'll be naming them as well. I've decided to go with shrouds as a reference to how they seem to envelop and coat a portion of my soul like a piece of cloth. It's not the most creative name, I know. But I never claimed to be good at naming things.
Shrouds are a versatile ability on an individual level. Their applications seem to be split into two categories, internal and external. This reflects several other known ability types; see martial arts qi/chi. Mana. Etc. This familiarity has given me some grounds to make further inquiries into shroud structure.
The external variant is an immensely powerful information-gathering and deciphering tool. It can analyze and parse practically every element of existence. Though the methodology reminds me of a computer search engine. It can only answer the questions I ask, and the information provided only extends to what exists. The shroud cannot or will not provide predictive models or suppositions about the future.
The shroud itself exists primarily on the soul plane, which suggests some pseudo-intellect on the shroud's part. Considering this information processing power, I find it likely that each shroud is capable of a limited form of understanding, though I have noted nothing that rises to the level of sentience, let alone sapience. Again the format very much reminds me of a computer. The structural elements are rigid and react to external phenomena in a precise and methodical manner.
Further study is necessary to determine the intellect index for shrouds.
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Log 75: A breakthrough! I have managed to create a mechanism for producing blank shrouds. They lack longevity and domains, but this is a step in the right direction. Currently working on a process to increase the survival time on the blanks.
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Log 79: Okay, a big step forward with the last set of experiments. Latent, infantile souls can bind with the shroud blanks I created. Obviously, the intent of the last experiment had nothing to do with souls, so I'm going to record the sequence of events for posterity and future reference.
During the last experiment, I placed the blank generator within the soul plane, close to the planar border with Hell. The intent being to discover if limited exposure to demonic or infernal energy would increase the longevity of the blanks. That ended up a complete failure, and the proto-shrouds showed no reaction to either the species or dimensional energy. I wasn't surprised, considering the failures with angelic and divine energy.
But! While the process was ongoing, a lost soul on its way to the afterlife drifted too close to the generator. Considering its state, it was likely an aborted child, as the soul was not fully formed. It was my mistake; I placed the generator too close to the lanes of soul travel. Side note, we need to discuss options with the Hell leadership. They need to stop taking all the embryonic souls. It's ridiculous.
Either way, the unintentional effects were impressive. The soul and shroud blank were drawn together as if magnetized, attracted by their intrinsic natures. It was an enlightening process to watch, though I require more data to make any sweeping statements.
The real victory here is that the soul and shroud intermingled, forming a type of symbiotic relationship. The embryonic soul was reinforced, and the shroud gained characteristics similar to a fundamental concept. This in itself was interesting, as my blankets had developed in a completely different way. Possibly due to their different origins.
I'm going to take this opportunity to study this newly formed shroud. I'll be resurrecting the infantile soul and placing them in a suitable, stable reality. If the child shows no ill effects, I'm thinking of taking the opportunity to expand my sample size. Cultivating a larger group of sentients and especially sapients that can use shrouds would be a boon to my research into the topic.
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Log 82: The initial subject is now dead. It took nearly a hundred thousand years, but he has passed on. I deeply regret transplanting his soul, considering the damage he did to the universe I placed him in. I had no idea how deeply his psyche and mentality would be affected by the shroud's merger with his soul.
That being said, there were no direct negative effects of the shroud on him. His spiral into depravity and violence was more an end result of the longevity and power the shroud provided, not an actual effect. A thorough study of his soul proved that hypothesis, so I have less qualms about repeating this particular experiment. It seems the first subject was simply a case of a bad person with too much power, hardly a rarity or unique instance.
While I might be willing to reproduce the initial experiment results, I would like to do it in a more controlled environment instead of introducing shrouds to an already established universe. To that end, I've searched out a dead universe that never resulted in life of any kind. I decided to go with terraforming instead of creating a purpose-made reality to further encourage a more natural environment. I acknowledge that a terra-formed universe isn't strictly 'natural' but is significantly closer to the ideal than something I whipped up from scratch.
Honestly, it's an ideal location. The physics are a little odd compared to the universal standard, and the cosmology has developed with that disparity into something relatively different, though not unique. I have enough ancillary data to discount most environmental factors. My next log should cover how the process went.
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Log 84: Ok, that little bump handled; the terraforming and life-seeding are complete. The Pillar system is holding correctly, and the engineers I brought on board have included a satisfactory amount of redundancy so that further problems don't occur.
The first events have been set in motion to get real life kickstarted. I made contact with the fundamental entities occupying the universe I picked and convinced them not to randomly murder my test population, which was annoying. I had to make examples of a few, and it set the control project back by almost a week. But they ultimately fell in line, so that's good.
Now I just need to wait for things to progress.
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Log 734: It's been a while since I returned to this project. Other events distracted me, and the accumulated data points took some time to parse. Several hundred civilizations have risen and fallen across multiple points of interest.
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Items of note, Ki. As recorded in previous logs, non-human souls seem to be almost fundamentally incompatible with shrouds, possibly because of something I messed up when formatting the blanks. Since I used my base soul as reference material, it might have set up some sort of bias.
So, I assumed that I would only be getting any interesting data from humans, which has proven false. Activated shrouds produce Ki as a byproduct of their existence, and the continually rising number of shrouded across the test universe has rapidly spiked the ambient Ki. This has caused multiple changes in the shrouds and the environment.
Shrouds have adapted to draw ambient Ki to increase energy reserves for pneumonia manipulation. This supplements their Ki creation by a massive degree. Considering the amount of power shrouds hold without this adaptation, this change is, in a word, terrifying. A shroud in a Ki-rich environment is a force on a cosmic level. I know several universes with gods weaker than a shrouded. It's a good thing I've quarantined this universe because shrouded getting out into the greater cosmos would probably doom a dozen universes to annihilation.
As for the environment, several notable features have arisen over the last several billion years. First of all, non-human life has adapted to use the ambient Ki to enhance their physiology. Tens of billions of 'magical creatures' have evolved with ambient Ki as a base. Some of those life forms are even sapient.
Obviously, they can't compete with the human shrouded population, but they have come into conflict multiple times. Funnily enough, a variant dragon race has appeared with some interesting features. I showed the data to Bahamut, and he seemed pretty interested, so I might give him a pass to visit the test universe. Besides acting as a great source of shroud combat data, the added biodiversity has created some interesting situations outside my actual shroud research.
The other notable change involves more geology than biology. Some elements, alloys, and other raw materials have absorbed the ambient Ki, gaining properties of their own beyond the limits of physics. But that's more of an interesting tidbit compared to the entirely new substance that has been forming all over the place.
It was like a switch was flipped once the ambient Ki reached a certain saturation level. Suddenly, crystalline formations started appearing everywhere with little rhyme or reason. They contain fundamental energy in the form of a particular substratum of Ki. The possibilities for this new type of material are practically unlimited. I'm planning on inviting back some of the engineers who helped me get this universe started to run some tests with the stuff. Plus, I'm a little worried that the ambient Ki might have unpredictable effects on the maintenance system, so I'm hoping this new material might let us 'Ki-proof' the tech. I'll log how that turns out.
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Log 755: Alright, time for a retrospective on ether. The engineers have finished collecting their notes, and I reviewed them, so now's the time to do it. First of all, my initial assessment of the material's potential was basically spot on. Containing even a small amount of fundamental energy, being able to manipulate and change the very basis of existence grants ether an absurd amount of potential. Unfortunately, it is a byproduct of Ki and can only maintain its material cohesion in a Ki-rich environment. Taking samples outside the test universe causes them to rapidly degrade until they simply vanish, discorporating them into nothing.
The scary part is that I was also right to be concerned about the maintenance system. According to the engineers, the ambient Ki and ether formation would have eventually broken several core components, and life would have lost its ability to survive in the universe. They had to go back and redo literally everything to have it run on ether, which got some grumbles from a few of them. But I saw all the toys they made with the stuff in their spare time, so I know they're full of shit. One of them got really obsessed with building airships. He built an entire hangar of them.
So with the system Ki-proofed, we started exploring some of the other possibilities outside of stopping universal collapse. I gotta say, I'm honestly pretty bummed that ether is limited to the test universe. The possible applications are endless. Just using it to supplement existing technology has yielded amazing results. More efficient fuels and better building materials with higher structural integrity and weight capacity. More powerful weapon systems. I'm deeply interested to see what the locals will do with it without a basis in the technology of other universes.
Specifically, the ether's ability to integrate into existing materials and change their properties is fascinating. It's not very energy efficient compared to other magical substances, absorbing copious amounts of ambient Ki to maintain its effects. But considering the amount of the stuff floating around in the test universe, that's hardly an issue. With more shrouded being born daily, the ambient Ki just keeps going up. Our experiments, and even the Pillar system redesign, haven't even put a dent in the output.
I've been keeping a close eye on the dimensional and planar walls of the test universe. This much raw power is likely to start poking holes in the fabric of existence. Such phenomena are common in other high-energy universes, so it shouldn't have any negative effects, but it might cause things from other realities to leak through, which would be interesting in and of itself. I'll make a log if that happens.
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Log 1541: We've reached another milestone, just as I hypothesized. This time, the ambient Ki density created a massive shift, and it nearly ruined the entire project. Billions, quintillions are dead. It's a disaster. I don't… It's a lot to take in. I'm continuing non-interference, but this change might have just returned this universe to a lifeless state. I'm more and more reluctant to ever let shrouds outside this universe. It could have catastrophic implications.
What happened, right. Let's talk about that. As previously discussed, the physics of this universe has caused all mass to manifest on a flat plane of massive dimensions. When I triggered the Pillar system, that plane nearly collapsed, and the universe would have shattered at a dimensional level. We salvaged it, and water began to form in pockets around the Pillar system. It caused a landmass shift and triggered the interesting phenomena of the ever-increasing, highly stratified landmasses around the impact sights.
From there, each landmass developed its own independent ecology and biosphere along with weather and atmosphere. But there was plenty of overlap. Animals and especially people traveled from continent to continent, island to island, all the time!
I properly investigated the current set of changes to properly catalog what went wrong. The ambient Ki began to infuse the ocean water once the density reached the first milestone, where ether started to appear. In fact, rich ether deposits began to form in the depths as well. Soon, most of the ocean floor was coated in ether, and much of the water had taken on magical properties.
As the density increased, so did the magical power of the water and the submerged ether deposits. Now, ambient Ki isn't affected by gravity, but both the water and the ether are. The level of compression due to gravity on the ocean floor triggered a change once the ambient Ki reached the second milestone.
Now we're getting into theory territory, as I haven't been able to confirm this yet. But my tests so far agree with me. Basically, the magical water and ether compressed and mingled on a massive scale and underwent fundamental inversion from the energy overload. All the Ki was inverted and repulsed before a substratum of a new material formed. It had anti-Ki properties, absorbing and nullifying the energy. In minutes, the entire ocean transformed into a conduit for this material on the ocean floor.
The ocean is now impassible, as the seismic aspect of the transformation caused massive waves, which turned into a feedback loop that hasn't stopped yet. The Pillar system has partially stabilized the issue, but only close to the impact sights. The water consumes the Ki of any shrouded that enter, and the process has killed several. Worse, the sudden separation of highly interconnected and codependent societies has caused starvation and famine along with societal collapse.
I'll make note of any changes in the situation. I can only hope it improves.
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Log 3271: The next milestone has happened. It's even worse than the last one. Monsters. The ambient Ki is now dense enough to manifest directly, forming unnatural energy-construct creatures. They crave the emission of life Ki that happens when sentient life dies and attack every living thing that isn't a non-magical plant.
This disaster is comparable to the Galaxy Waters event from the last milestone. In less than a month, most part-kin are dead. They have especially robust life Ki, so the monsters target them explicitly. Once again, the Pillar system is trying to stabilize the changes so the manifestations are less intense near the ocean centers. Just like the Galaxy Waters event, all sapients, especially the humans, have fled back to the islands for safety. Only some dragons and the part-kin have remained on the continents.
The humans explicitly shunned the part-kin, throwing away millennia of harmonious living. They have noted that part-kin draw more monsters than humans, and they have devolved into superstitions about curses and evil gods. I fear the part-kin may disappear from the test universe entirely. Based on the Galaxy Waters catastrophe, it'll probably be millennia, possibly a million years or more, before humans recover.
I'll log their progress.
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Log 3722: I met a fascinating young man today. Or rather, I found him. His soul shows obvious signs of direct engineering, not the least of which because he holds a banned domain. Something that shouldn't be possible with the Pillar system still operating normally. He's weak and young. But I gave him something to keep track of his progress and ensure he doesn't pop the test universe like a soap bubble.
I'll log his progress.