Who put this world in my planet?

[Magicyop]

I haven't seen many topics about this, but I'm sure it's been discussed, so sorry if I'm being a necromancy practitioner.

Why, of course, is there a world in the world? It seems unlikely to me that The Snarl doesn't exist/never existed. It was discovered and subsequently passed down in mythos by at least two different factions:
1) Soon and the Sapphire Guard, discovered by Mijung and subsequently by the OotScribble, then passed down to Shojo and his buds, and
SoD Spoilers
2) By the goblin cleric, who was killed by the Snarl, which revealed the rift to The Dark One, who passed it down through his high priests.
Since it was discovered and believed by two different factions, it seems pretty clear that in some manner, there IS a Snarl(or was).

But now the real question. Why is there a world where there should be a world eating abomination? It seems to me that it has something to do with the original world that the Snarl supposedly destroyed. What does everyone think?

Discuss!

Again, sorry, if this is discussed a bunch, I couldn't find a whole lot of topics about it.

[Teleporker]

I haven't seen many topics about this, but I'm sure it's been discussed, so sorry if I'm being a necromancy practitioner.

Why, of course, is there a world in the world? It seems unlikely to me that The Snarl doesn't exist/never existed. It was discovered and subsequently passed down in mythos by at least two different factions:
1) Soon and the Sapphire Guard, discovered by Mijung and subsequently by the OotScribble, then passed down to Shojo and his buds, and
SoD Spoilers
2) By the goblin cleric, who was killed by the Snarl, which revealed the rift to The Dark One, who passed it down through his high priests.
Since it was discovered and believed by two different factions, it seems pretty clear that in some manner, there IS a Snarl(or was).

But now the real question. Why is there a world where there should be a world eating abomination? It seems to me that it has something to do with the original world that the Snarl supposedly destroyed. What does everyone think?

Discuss!

Again, sorry, if this is discussed a bunch, I couldn't find a whole lot of topics about it.

I'd like to venture a guess.

The snarl was born from an attempt to make a world happen, then it went horribly wrong. Then the remaining gods sealed the snarl inside a world that had holes where it could still reach and destroy. Then those holes were sealed, at least for some time.

What would a snarl of pure chaos threads do with itself if it couldn't reach anywhere? Does it destroy itself because it is the only thing left to destroy? If it actually tries to do that, does it hurt?

My guess is, chaos, in the absence of an order it can destroy, and unable or unwilling to destroy itself, forces some order within itself. It was intended to be a world before it was a snarl, so it becomes one.

:elan: Or maybe it is the world where everything moves on to 4th edition.

[Magicyop]

I'm not sure I understand the 'world with holes in it' thing, but I really like the idea that the snarl forced itself into a shambling semblance of order.

I'm not sure whether or not it's for the reasons you said, but it just feels right that somehow the world really IS the Snarl in some fashion.

[Bibliomancer]

The two parallel mythologies haven't proved that the Snarl exist, both simply document that the gateway between these two worlds can be opened and is very dangerous when opened. The origin of the Snarl could easily be divine propaganda.

I personally favor the theory that the other World is shielded by the Snarl, or has protected itself from the meddling gods, somehow.

[Magicyop]

Okay, technically, that's true, but even if The Snarl is divine propaganda(Telling The Dark One and however the Order of the Scribble found out) the fact that the two myths match up in that respect does show that there's something dangerous within the rift, which has not revealed itself in any way in the Azure City rift. Even if there is no Snarl and only a dangerous rift, why is the only rift we've seen not dangerous?

That's interesting, that the Snarl is somehow protecting the world within. I've never heard that before, could you elaborate?

[Draconi Redfir]

I like to think that the world ISN’T some massive god-killing creature, but is in fact more like the modern-day man.


The "snarl" killed the eastern gods by refusing to believe in them, by essentially becoming atheists, the people who make up the "snarl" drained the gods of there power, and they simple ceased to exist. How the other gods survived? Either they retreated to other planes before they were affected, or they still had some worshipers among the population that made up the snarl.


Once the gods had abandoned them, the "snarl" (ima just call em mod-humans) began to spread and take over the world they had been built upon. The mod-humans spread like a virus, killing trees, animals, other sentient creatures, and essentially "unmaking" and "killing" the planet.

Later on, the gods were able to weave the current world over the old one. The mod-humans had no idea that the gods had returned, and as such continued to spread and destroy the world that they had been born on. Many many years later when blackwing looked into the rift, he saw the world that held the mod-humans, it was green. This could possibly mean that the mod-humans ran out of things to consume and destroy, and simply went extinct. The world falling to the tiny bits of nature that had managed to survive by hiding away.

[Arzoo]

Seeing as how someone mentioned the snarl is possibly Chaos Manifest...

Chaos, given infinity, becomes order. Sooner or later Chaos leads to a pattern through random chance, and eventually one of the patterns is self-preserving. Since the only thing that remains is the self-preserving pattern, Chaos ultimately becomes order.

Kind of counter-intuitive, considering most of the time you expect chaos to be the "base state" of existence, but that's how I see it. Don't know how related this is to the topic at hand, but thought it was a good place to mention it.

[blunk]

It's Earth, and we're eventually headed for a Dark Tower-style metastory finale.

[Watcher]

Maybe it's one of the coterminous dimensions (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0275.html) that keeps the Snarl locked up. Could be like multiple layers until you really reach there, but it's probably a stretch. Just wondering if anyone had posted it yet.

[Nimrod's Son]

It's Earth
That's actually the one thing we can say is definitely not true about the mystery planet. It was ruled out by Rich in DStP.

[factotum]

We have two separate factions who know about the Snarl, that much is true, but where are both factions getting their information from? The Gods! Not to mention that the Dark One's information is actually second-hand, provided to him by his allies among the pre-existing gods. It's entirely possible the Snarl never existed, and was only ever invented as a cover for something else by the gods.

[Draconi Redfir]

We have two separate factions who know about the Snarl, that much is true, but where are both factions getting their information from? The Gods! Not to mention that the Dark One's information is actually second-hand, provided to him by his allies among the pre-existing gods. It's entirely possible the Snarl never existed, and was only ever invented as a cover for something else by the gods.

like possibly my earlyer theory? ;)

[Magicyop]

We have two separate factions who know about the Snarl, that much is true, but where are both factions getting their information from? The Gods! Not to mention that the Dark One's information is actually second-hand, provided to him by his allies among the pre-existing gods. It's entirely possible the Snarl never existed, and was only ever invented as a cover for something else by the gods.

No, no, I'm afraid you're completely wrong that both of them got their information from the gods. Here's what we know.

Redcloak Continuity(SoD Spoilers)
This one, you're right, the whole story about The Snarl did come from the gods to The Dark One. However, we can pretty much assume that the Dark One and the normal gods are in no ways allies, and so the story about the goblin cleric who found the rift and was killed is actually true in some fashion- so the rift can kill people.

Soon Continuity
Soon ACTUALLY SAW a tangled foot reach out and spear Mijung like a day old sausage. He told everything that he knew to Shojo and the SG, so no, that part is not divine propaganda, there IS something dangerous in the rift. Shojo's crayon story very much skips over how the Order of the Scribble figured out more about the rifts, so it very well could be that they talked with the gods who spun a Snarl story. But they also could have performed a magical divination or something on it. We're not sure how they 'found out more'. But Soon, a human, saw Mijung killed, and this was passed down to the current SG and the OotS, so I conclude that there is(or was!) definitely something dangerous in the world.

And dangerous means able to kill people on the outer world, so I don't think it's humans, unless they can fly.

[factotum]

Soon ACTUALLY SAW a tangled foot reach out and spear Mijung like a day old sausage. He told everything that he knew to Shojo and the SG, so no, that part is not divine propaganda, there IS something dangerous in the rift.

Then where has it gone, this dangerous thing in the rift? I personally find it beggars belief that the Snarl has somehow transformed itself into a planet over the course of 66 years--far easier to believe that it never existed in the first place. Something reached through the rift and killed Mijung, that much is probably true, but again we only have the God's word that it's some sort of chaotic snarl of deific rage.

[TriForce]

Maybe it's one of the coterminous dimensions (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0275.html) that keeps the Snarl locked up. Could be like multiple layers until you really reach there, but it's probably a stretch. Just wondering if anyone had posted it yet.

actually, i did a long time ago :) and i cant see why its a stretch, they said it was a multi dimensional prison, but all the gates are on the main plane so far. so there has to be something in different worlds that also lead to the snarl

[ZerglingOne]

Well, my take on it is that the Snarl, while being something made of pure chaos, still seems to have some semblance of a brain. If it is sentient, it's probably capable of getting BORED. What do you do with a large chunk of time all to yourself? If you were once made of strands capable of building a world, why not become a world and try your hand at godhood? Either that or sealing it in the gates had a pokéball effect that essentially domesticated it.

[Magicyop]

Then where has it gone, this dangerous thing in the rift? I personally find it beggars belief that the Snarl has somehow transformed itself into a planet over the course of 66 years--far easier to believe that it never existed in the first place. Something reached through the rift and killed Mijung, that much is probably true, but again we only have the God's word that it's some sort of chaotic snarl of deific rage.

That is an excellent point, but the fact is, even if it is not a snarl of deific strife, it is something dangerous that was able to kill Mijung and the Goblin Cleric. And when Blackwing looked into the rift, that sure as heck didn't look dangerous. I'm willing to accept that maybe The Snarl never existed, but I feel we have enough evidence to say that there is or was at one point something dangerous and deadly in the rift.


Well, my take on it is that the Snarl, while being something made of pure chaos, still seems to have some semblance of a brain. If it is sentient, it's probably capable of getting BORED. What do you do with a large chunk of time all to yourself? If you were once made of strands capable of building a world, why not become a world and try your hand at godhood? Either that or sealing it in the gates had a pokéball effect that essentially domesticated it.

I love that. The pokeball effect. Good name.

It's interesting that you think that the Snarl would eventually try its hand at godhood. If the Snarl is really sentient and not just a robotic entity made to kill, it does seem that trapped alone with itself and the threads of creation that make it up, it might try to create a world of its own. Wouldn't this lessen The Snarl's power though? It's an interesting theory.

[Beowulf DW]

Maybe the Snarl doesn't actually kill or "unmake" people. Maybe it is a sentient being that realizes how inconsistent and incomplete it is, so it draws people and other beings into itself for the purpose of creating a new world.

Here's my idea:

The Snarl tried absorbing, but not necessarily destroying, all the gods in the hopes of making them into a single entity that which could create a new world without all of the continuity snarls. The snarl was made from the ideas of all the gods, so it must have absorbed their intentions. And what was their intention at the time of the Snarl's creation? That's right: to make a world. The Snarl realizes that in order for the world to be created properly, the gods must be made to agree, and what better way to accomplish this than by fusing all the gods into a single omnipotent entity? The snarl absorbed the Eastern gods, but then the other gods united against the Snarl and trapped it. In a way, the Snarl had accomplished its objective: the unification of the gods.

The Snarl still felt the urge to create a world, though. I think that the Snarl, having absorbed the Eastern pantheon, was powerful enough to create a world, but maybe it wasn't quite powerful enough or maybe it simply hadn't figured out how to create life. So the Snarl reached through the rifts, snatching up creatures, killing them in one world to give them new life in another. Once the rifts were closed, the Snarl could no longer steal the creations of the gods, so perhaps it decided that it had enough material to work with, and created this new world.

If the gods didn't know the Snarl's intentions, then they would of thought of the Snarl exactly the way in which it has been presented. However, if they did know, then they probably don't want anyone to know that there's an intelligent being capable of absorbing and surpassing them.

[Magicyop]

Okay, that's a very reasonable theory, I like it a lot.

Only one problem. Why has it stopped reaching out to absorb living things? Surely its world hadn't run out of life?

[Beowulf DW]

Okay, that's a very reasonable theory, I like it a lot.

Only one problem. Why has it stopped reaching out to absorb living things? Surely its world hadn't run out of life?

It stopped reaching out because it could no longer reach out, and decided to try making things based on what it had taken from the gods. It won't reach out now because it's too busy with creation.

[Draconi Redfir]

I like to think that the world ISN’T some massive god-killing creature, but is in fact more like the modern-day man.


The "snarl" killed the eastern gods by refusing to believe in them, by essentially becoming atheists, the people who make up the "snarl" drained the gods of there power, and they simple ceased to exist. How the other gods survived? Either they retreated to other planes before they were affected, or they still had some worshipers among the population that made up the snarl.


Once the gods had abandoned them, the "snarl" (ima just call em mod-humans) began to spread and take over the world they had been built upon. The mod-humans spread like a virus, killing trees, animals, other sentient creatures, and essentially "unmaking" and "killing" the planet.

Later on, the gods were able to weave the current world over the old one. The mod-humans had no idea that the gods had returned, and as such continued to spread and destroy the world that they had been born on. Many many years later when blackwing looked into the rift, he saw the world that held the mod-humans, it was green. This could possibly mean that the mod-humans ran out of things to consume and destroy, and simply went extinct. The world falling to the tiny bits of nature that had managed to survive by hiding away.


Just adding a little something of this to explain the death of the goblin cleric, the dwarven barbarian, and Soon’s wife, possibly those bears that the elf chick mentioned disappeared.


Perhaps there was some kind of civil war between the mod-humans, and in attempts to attack one another, stray bullets/rockets/whatever somehow found there way to the rifts, and accidentally killed people/things, making them fall into the rift itself. Its a stretch, but possible.


Another thought is that maybe the rift in Gobbotopia observes the planet from space, but other rifts such as the one in the Elvin lands are actually on the surface of the other planet itself. This could allow creatures, or even Mod-humans to reach out and grab things they see though the rifts. Its possible that what soon actually saw was some kind of monster (a bear anyone?) reaching through the rift and grabbing his wife, pulling her in. then as time went by, the details of his memory faded, and he thought he saw a giant scribble monster impale her. The same things could be possible for the Dwarven barbarian, and the goblin cleric.

[Magicyop]

I don't quite agree with the mod-humans thing, but there's an interesting idea. The rift over azure city is in the sky high above azure city. It also appears that inside the rift, it is high above the riftworld.

So what if, as you said, there is something dangerous but confined to the ground, on that planet? What if The Snarl does exist, but the exact nature of it is not what we've been led to believe. Maybe it's not much larger than a human. Maybe The Snarl lives on the riftworld. It can't reach out of the azure city rift because it is too high above.

Well, maybe I'm wrong, I'm more brainstorming than anything else.

[Yeoman]

I'd like to venture a guess.

The snarl was born from an attempt to make a world happen, then it went horribly wrong. Then the remaining gods sealed the snarl inside a world that had holes where it could still reach and destroy. Then those holes were sealed, at least for some time.

What would a snarl of pure chaos threads do with itself if it couldn't reach anywhere? Does it destroy itself because it is the only thing left to destroy? If it actually tries to do that, does it hurt?

My guess is, chaos, in the absence of an order it can destroy, and unable or unwilling to destroy itself, forces some order within itself. It was intended to be a world before it was a snarl, so it becomes one.

:elan: Or maybe it is the world where everything moves on to 4th edition.

Well, under some definitions chaos would simply be the sum total of all posibilities, which includes ordered ones.

IIRC, the Anime/Novel/manga series Slayers actually uses that as its cosmology, with their entire multi-verse arising as a random result in a purely chaotic being.

[Arti3]

Yo dawg, I heard you like worlds, so I put a world in your world so you can exist while you exist, dawg.

[Asta Kask]

Well, under some definitions chaos would simply be the sum total of all posibilities, which includes ordered ones.

IIRC, the Anime/Novel/manga series Slayers actually uses that as its cosmology, with their entire multi-verse arising as a random result in a purely chaotic being.

Warhammer has that as well.

[Mawhrin Skel]

My immediate thought at the time is that the eastern gods were imprisoned by the other three pantheons (possibly after feuding over the world creation), and the snarl was thought up as a cover story. Blackwing saw the new Eastern world.

The cover story could only be intended to fool new gods (like the Great One) and mortals.

The prison would have to be out of reach of plane shift and the like.

We know of three deaths from something within the snarl, and we can probably safely assume that their souls aren't still in the same universe. Maybe an angry Eastern god lashed out, maybe something else killed them, maybe their souls were taken into the prison rather than destroyed.

[Dire Moose]

Yo dawg, I heard you like worlds, so I put a world in your world so you can exist while you exist, dawg.

Why was this the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this thread?

[Draconi Redfir]

I don't quite agree with the mod-humans thing, but there's an interesting idea. The rift over azure city is in the sky high above azure city. It also appears that inside the rift, it is high above the riftworld.

So what if, as you said, there is something dangerous but confined to the ground, on that planet? What if The Snarl does exist, but the exact nature of it is not what we've been led to believe. Maybe it's not much larger than a human. Maybe The Snarl lives on the riftworld. It can't reach out of the azure city rift because it is too high above.

Well, maybe I'm wrong, I'm more brainstorming than anything else.


i dunno. this seems tottaly plausible to me.

[russdm]

Well, being new to the forums, but having read through the strips, I have these to suggest. I like Beowulf DW's Theory, but adding in my own spin.

We know the Snarl was made using creation strands and that it had deific frustration and rage. The Snarl was also made of chaos or chaos related.

Now, when the Snarl destroyed the world, it killed everything on it first and killed the eastern gods. In so doing, the Snarl might have acquired divine energy from the slain gods.

Now, the Snarl was put into prison for centuries or more. During that time, the Snarl might have taken to calling the prison home and thus becoming very defensive of it.

The Snarl, with its creation strands that made it up, plus perhaps the power of the dead eastern gods, plus perhaps the souls of the creatures it killed in the first world might have chosen to make a world in mockery of the gods or perhaps because it had those strands.

The Snarl, having come to call its prison home, choose to create a world since it was made when the gods made the first one. It duplicated the effect using its own strands/parts of self.

Only 66 years or so ago, the rifts started to appear. The Snarl, if having taken to viewing the prison as home, might have kept part of itself to defend incase the gods attempted to attack it to destroy it. The Snarl killing Mijung, the bears, kragoor, and the goblin cleric may have been done as a defensive measure against the gods, to prevent them from interfering with the Snarl's world.

In any case, we have not seen any attempt by the Snarl to escape from any of the rifts. So far, it appears to me that the Snarl may have infact become protective of its domain.

Now, I have a pet bird thats spends time in a cage, like a prison. Sometimes, my bird does not want to leave its cage when i open it to take it out. My bird treats his cage as being home in a way and so its protective of it a little bit. The Snarl may be acting the same way.

As for the stories being told, the Gods have not interacted with the Snarl ever since it was locked up. The Snarl thus could have changed during its imprisonment, something the gods would know nothing about since they dont seem to have been concerned with it other then making sure it does not escape.

The Snarl probably built the planet that blackwing saw in the rift. Atleast that is what my intuition tells me. That the Snarl would then try to defend it strongly would explain it attacking and killing people outside the rift.

So far, 3 of the 5 rifts have been destroyed/have had their locks removed. Redcloak destroyed Lirian's, Elan destroyed Durokon's, and Miko Destroyed Soon's. So far, we have also not seen any reaction to the rifts and that they could be used by the Snarl to escape by the Snarl. It might no longer wish to escape either.

I think that the Snarl made the planet and defends it against the Gods interference, based on its previous experiences with them.

So thats what I think...

[Nimrod's Son]

My guess is, chaos, in the absence of an order it can destroy, and unable or unwilling to destroy itself, forces some order within itself. It was intended to be a world before it was a snarl, so it becomes one.
This theory makes far more sense to me than any other I've seen so far.

http://cghm.org/wow/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ian_malcolm.jpg

"I'm simply saying that life, uh, finds a way..."

[Deca]

Well, if the Snarl was intelligent, it might try to make a world of it's own as people have already said.
But being a thing of pure Chaos, it might not be able to actually make a world. So it must have had help in imagining an ordered world to create. Someone or something is inside the rift with the Snarl telling it what to do.