Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Dreams aren’t just something that happens in your head. They are a glimpse into a different reality. Not physical, but conceptual in nature. A place where thoughts and will shape reality on an even deeper level than in the Waking World. Mages have a deep affinity for dreams. But even for them, the deeper levels of this world are hostile and dangerous.
Beyond the Gates of horn and ivory
Without time
Without space
Without boundary
Roiling birthplace of numberless souls
Squirming within titanic corpse-psyches
Of fallen and forgotten gods.
Where thought reigns upon protean unreality
And the primordial fundamentals hold no sway
That which the
Childer of Adam
Name
The Deep
~Unknown Author, “Lament of the Deep” 1:1-13
When moving around a space where direction is arbitrary and can be conjured into existence with a mere thought, it might be hard to accurately visualize what exactly does it mean to go “down” or “deeper.” The tool we use to get around this is Schröder-Hartmann model, describing what they call the ousia field permeating the dreaming world.
Ousia is a simple scale from 1 to 0. At the highest value, existence and experience are ontic, and it can be seen as the point of awakening into the conscious reality. Due to this, it should be impossible for anything to have a value higher than 1. However, some theories, including the Lévesque model, suggest values both above 1 and below 0 are possible. On the other end of the scale, as we approach 0 ousia, instrumentality collapses, and causality is no longer axiomatic. (No/every)thing has a reason to happen, and (no/every)thing has a reason to not occur at the same time. Colloquially this unit is called a measure of reality.
Interactions between concepts with different ousia produce something we can describe as “pressure” along with fields that push conceptual beings (such as the human soul) into different depths – locations with similar, hospitable levels of reality.
Based on the observations and models we have derived from them, the dreaming world can be divided roughly into five different strata.
At the highest level of ousia (0.99(9) to 0.9, approximately), we find ourselves in the Anthroposphere and Xenospheres. The consciousness grids of specific species living together. At this range, we are likely to encounter little more than qualia. Slightly below that (ousia from 0.9 to 0.8) exists the Noösphere – the Universal consciousness grid compromised still primarily of qualia but with a mixture of more abstract concepts. Both of these highest levels are not in line with the ousia of the human soul, and as such, are not hospitable for our existence in the dreaming. They exert a pressure that pushes down into the next level. This level of reality has many purposes, such as pseudo-telepathy and extrasensory perception, all accomplished by interacting with the qualia and concepts present here.
Generally considered to be the middle layer, Plasma exists in the range of 0.8 to 0.5 ousia. This is where dreams dwell and the natural habitat of the human soul. From observation, we know that the Norma occupy higher levels, while mages can sink as deep as the very verge of the next level. The Plasma region is surrounded by two previously thought to be anomalous spikes in pressure. The Schröder-Hartmann model accounts for these, and Professor Albrecht Hartmann later coined the term Dirac Membrane to describe them. Furthermore, Plasma is the deepest level of the dreaming that retains locality with the waking world.
Beneath Plasma, we enter the region of dreamspace known as the Deep Dream, though it is a poorly explored location we still occasionally venture into its depths.
The upper level of the Deep Dream is the Thalassosphere, while the lower level is the Abyssosphere. Both of these are located at an ousia between 0.5 and 0, and there is no objective distinction between the two. Symbolically the Thalassosphere is the region of Deep Dream that has been, in any way, breached and explored by mankind, while the Abyssosphere remains completely uncharted. By its nature, this puts the region lower and stretching down towards the lowest level of ousia. An area of the dreaming referred to as the Dead Zone by Professor Hartmann and the Atzmut Point Singularity by Doctor Lévesque.
The Thalassosphere (and undoubtedly the Abyssosphere) is home to Leviathans, creatures who display a very low (though varied) ousia level. They are fundamentally dangerous to human souls, but fortunately, they also show no direct interest in them. Leviathans can be lured into Plasma by spikes of low ousia and penetrate the Dirac Membrane through an unknown method. Professor Gottschalk Schröder theorizes they use no particular process and are capable of brute-forcing the pressure barrier. The Leviathans remain a mystery to mankind, with many theories concerning their level of intelligence, origin, and nature. Some of these theories paint them as animalistic; others present them as akin to malicious gods. Whatever the case may be, just as the Abyssosphere they dwell within, they are a frontier of discoveries for the future.
Esoteric Musings... 