The Road to Eternity - Mysticism

 Hello. C J here. With the first four of the Compass books up for download it’s time to pick what I do next. I’m going to focus on Eternity for now and push it through to completion while also working on the design phases of the other books I want for the Compass line. There will also be additional books later based on these core manuals that further explain the story and systems they use. I’m looking to real life spirituality and magic for all of these as inspiration.

Eternity is known to have several varieties of magic practised there. The first is willworking, which works the same for the entire setting and really can’t be innovated in ever. Willworkers, also called mages in the setting, have a talent for magic that others lack in a way that is similar to being a talented musician or artist. Mages in Eternity can also learn summoning, the ability to call entire armies, monsters and fleets of vehicles out of the dreams that pervade the land there.

The main variety of magic used in Eternity is the arcane arts especially the art mysticism. The arcane arts are trade skills in the sense that they take training but anyone with the right attitude and patience can learn one, normally only one, and they are often required to do certain jobs. They are all practised there but mysticism is the one most common and the core theme of the book line. For inspiration here I’m looking to Buddhism mostly.

Buddhism is a subject I started this long journey of spiritual research looking by into. It teaches that all life is suffering but only to someone who is unenlightened. To the enlightened individual suffering simply is thrown at them and misses, like a gift that is returned to the store for being the wrong size. Enlightenment is simply knowing that suffering, often called samsara by the faith, is optional and is always happening inside of a person and not actually as a result of outside actions or forces.

To attain liberation from samsara you must follow a rigid lifestyle of non-violence. Live in a way that harms no one and speak, think and act in ways that are noble. They do have an afterlife but most branches of the faith teach that once you die you come back in a different life than you had. More virtue in a life here and you get to be a prince next time. Harmful wrongdoing here and you’re born a criminal next time. Screw up badly enough and you don’t get to come back, instead going to their version of Hell or more commonly to Mu, absolute nothingness and nonexistence.

I want to capture some of this poetry, emotion and wisdom in the setting, specifically in its mechanics and in the supplementary books I’m writing about it. This is my brainstorming goal for the time being. To end this post I have a joke. Jokes are very appropriate ways of teaching concepts about enlightenment.

    You see before you a monk in a white robe. He says to you.
    “There are, and have only ever been, three states of being.”
    “What are they?” You ask him.
    “Having ice cream, not having ice cream, and not having ice cream but wanting ice cream. This is ice cream koan.”
    “Much wisdom, teacher.”

C J Mcpherson