#the timeless.

[ruled-by-cool]

A GOD CANNOT BE KILLED. NEVER KILLED. HE HAS BEEN, SHALL WE SAY, SEVERELY REDUCED.

DEATH, "Hogfather."

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The Timeless have a widely-recognized family tree. At least, widely recognized amongst themselves. How much non-Timeless people recognize it or even know about it varies. It's basically a matter of who created whom, and who combined pieces of themselves to create whom. The Five didn't start out as siblings. Six of the Timeless chose each other as allies and kin. They went into the Shade, and used it to meld with a sextet of close siblings. With this, they forged themselves into brothers and sisters. Now, they only acknowledge five.

[ruled-by-cool]

Zane: I know of a few. I used to say that I was the worst person imaginable, until I met one of the divines of Norak Val. Sora: Oh. Zane: ...I really don't want to belong to Norak Val. There's this... thing, out there. A list of Scientology questions. I've got a .pdf. I have no idea what place they have in Scientology, I just like grabbing them for evil. Have you ever enslaved a population? Have you ever sacked a city? Have you ever sunk, or otherwise destroyed, a non-combatant vessel? Have you ever abused hostages, or prisoners? Have you ever ordered, or yourself committed, genocide? Have you ever annihilated a population? Have you ever poisoned food or drinking supplies? Have you ever strangled anyone? Have you ever deliberately spread disease? Have you ever degraded a religion? All a resounding yes from Zane. Isn't he evil! Muahaha! But then: Have you ever raped a child of either sex? No. Just... no. But that made me imagine Zane up against some other villain, competing to see who's the most horrible. And Zane surrendering the title, because fuck no. Norak Val comes from Molag Bal. A Daedric Prince (evil god) in the Elder Scrolls (Skyrim) universe. One of his titles is the King of Rape. Zane really doesn't want to belong to him.

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I have fought gods before. The key is to establish victory on the symbolic level. So- a magical duel between us. The duel will take the form of a game. The game will take the form of a conversation. Your move.

Victor Von Doom, "Loki: Agent of Asgard."

[ruled-by-cool]

Sakai: While I was out there, I saw something. What was it?

G'Kar: (pointing) What is this?

Sakai: An ant.

G'kar: "Ant."

Sakai: So much gets shipped up from Earth on commercial transports that it's hard to keep them out.

G'kar: I've just picked it up on the tip of my glove. If I put it down again and it asks another ant, "what was that?" ...how would it explain?

[ruled-by-cool]

The Realm exists in several dimensions/realities/etc. It may be more accurate to say that it's limited to several dimensions/etc. There are reasons why things happen in some dimensions and not others. Take, for example, Squirrel Howell. In our Squirrel's dimension, she met the spacetime wanderer named Gael, and the resulting pregnancy changed her life. Squirrel presumably exists in our main dimension. Ben has commented on how our main dimension's Squirrel might not get pregnant with him, and therefore might never meet and marry Charlotte. So, even skipping forward in time to the years Our Ben would be alive in, This Reality probably won't have a Ben Howell. That's how dimensions work. The Eye only created the Realm in one dimension. It then spread the Realm into several other dimensions, but the Realm's presence is different in each one. There aren't countless Shevarns in countless dimensions. Other dimensions might have a similarly-sized planet orbiting a star in the same location, but the Shevarn that would be familiar to Zia, Sora, and Zane only exists in one dimension. Shevarn as the Adnixes and Landstriders know it is the direct of the Eye's efforts, and a result of the Realm. In other dimensions, that planet circling that star has a different name, a different society, and different people. Why? For one, it fits nicely into my idea of what the Eye wants. Why it created the Realm, and why it's expanding the Realm and why it's controlling its space and people so harshly. Another thing that fits nicely is the thought that it could only begin the Realm in a limited way. That it had to intrude on one dimension for its plans. Not that its variations (which are different for the Timeless than for normal people) are doing the same thing in all (or most) dimensions. But for the Doylist reasons... When Zane and Sora found Arthur and followed that lead into another dimension, it occurred to me that there could be alternate Zanes. With alternate plans for defection, and alternate levels of success. Zane became established as being able to cross dimensions. If he had alternates, they could be a range of people Zane had to be paranoid about, people could be allies with, and people he could greatly benefit from. Because he could go through dimensions and fight off the Zanes who stayed loyal to the Eye, get support from the Zanes who were defecting, and get advice from the Zanes who had successfully defected. With Cal, it's easy to keep him from that kind of thing, because it's easy to make it part of his characterization. Emotional things. Mage's principles. That dimension a group of his alternates made, home to an organization of people dedicated to making sure Cal alternates don't fuck up the multiverse. Zane? I cannot think of a reason that he wouldn't use the shit out of any resource he could get to... unless there's a definite reason he can't. Something like Cal's thing? Been there, done that, done with that. So, here's the reason: Zane only exists because the Eye put things into motion that resulted in his ancestors. This wasn't something that happened accross dimensions, it happened in one dimension. When he hops from his Core-home dimension to Ziz and Zia's Earth-home dimension, he doesn't go into a dimension with an same-but-alternate Realm (and an alternate him Sora Ziz Zia Cephra Nurem Phaedra Volund Ianthe). He goes into a dimension with an extension of the Realm. With no one. Just more subjects in more Realmspace. There aren't alternate Zanes that could be a problem or an ally. There aren't alternate Eyes.