Basic Introduction

The Pitch

Numbers is my 14-year-old headworld spanning multiple timelines, universes, storylines, and many characters. Its themes revolve around self-forgiveness, hope, romance, and second chances, in a caustic, oft-violent world. Most of the stories revolve around characters growing and interacting with one another, and a central theme is how the bonds they forge enable them to right wrongs. Many characters live in terrible situations, but hold out determination and hope in the face of those impossible odds.

It is hopelessly, cheesily idealistic at its core. Simply talking it out is the solution to many problems. But that's why it's so special to me.

Okay But What Is It Actually.

I guess you could call it a "multimedia project". It's a collection of stories and worlds set in the same framework, a huge bundle of characters and writings and art, and made 99.99% solely by me. It's not meant to be super professional, or sold, or make money, or anything like that. It's just a passion project that's existed with me for more of my life than it hasn't at this point, and I enjoy sharing it with other people, hence the site.

Dijamant and Kolo, two Magnitude Fragments, the highest level of god in the world. They'll have some commentary to share.

Fundamentals

Everything in Numbers is powered by the powerful element Magninium. With the ability to transform itself into any other material, it allows for magical feats to be performed.

In high enough quantities, Magninium gains sentience, which gives rise to animals and the civilized races. But magic in any quantity is needed for life in Numbers to operate, so even plants, rocks, etc. contain some.

The primary magical organs of the sentient races are the heart and brain, which are 100% magic and pump it throughout their bodies via blood. They are often depicted as contrasting but complementary in culture, with the brain symbolized as rationality and an upside-down heart, while the heart symbolizes emotions and empathy.

To use Magninium to alter reality, as the sentient races do, one requires a fairly vast quantity of it. It is capable of literally anything - yes, literally - but the limiting factor is availability. The amount of magic required to conjure up a working car, for example, is beyond the means of mortals. Magninium is intelligent and works on an "intention" system. AKA if a mortal could magic up a car, they don't need to know perfectly how a car works. It will appear fully functional, operational, and as expected.

Mortals can collect more Magninium through use of gemstones, which collect vast amounts of magic in the atmosphere and can be recharged.

However, the metals gold, silver, and copper resist Magninium's effects - instead consuming Magninium to generate more of itself. These metals are considered repulsive poison, and are either destroyed on sight or fashioned into secret weapons. Wrapping them in talc chokes their corrosive properties.

Magic also has "conceptual wavelengths". In essence, every thing exists in Numbers because magic "resonates" on the wavelength of an idea. I.E. Fire exists because some part of magic resonates with "fire". Bundles of concepts form more elaborate structures, like the foundations of people's identity.

Geometric shapes are the fundamental language of magic. A shape is a shorthand for a bundle of concepts, and will interact with other shapes to carry out some sort of instruction based on how those concepts interact. This forms the basis of practical magic like magic circles and runes, and ties in with the Magnitude Fragments mentioned later.

Most magic in-universe is mundane, used for things like powering engines, creating fridges, taking photographs, teleporting people/goods to workplaces, and enchanting clothes to never tear or repel bugs.

Read the page on it if you want more.

In the Beginning...

Once, long ago, all Magninium in the world was contained in a single entity, the only existing thing. Though known by many names, Singularity is the most common. Crippled by loneliness, Singularity ripped itself apart into two beings: Genesis & Bereave.

Genesis stole most of the creation magic from Singularity, and set off to construct the Timelines, though their work was messy, dangerous, and volatile. Bereave, frustrated at his theft, dismantled and disturbed many of the Timelines created. These are known as the Original 24.

This feud ended with the birth of the immaculate creation, so perfect it stabilized much of the Originals and birthed infinite, minutely-different copies of itself (Connected Timelines). This Timeline, the most cherished, is called the Main Timeline (MT) and its creation was so incredible it shattered Genesis*. In heartbreak for eons, Bereave eventually tore himself apart as well*.

Most stories take place in the Main Timeline, and Timeline residents aren't aware that there are many versions of themselves. Timelines are infinite and any/all deviation from the MT is acceptable.

If a Timeline isn't specified, assume it's the MT. But dealing with Timeline stuff is only really relevant for Fragments, anyways.

*This is a simplification.

The Nature of Reality

Worlds in Numbers work much like nesting dolls. There are layers of reality within layers of reality, and breaking through those barriers is extremely difficult. The lower a "layer" one is in, the less they know of the layers above, if at all. For example, most characters within Universes have no idea that Universe Core and Gladar exist. One generally knows about the layers beneath them, though.

In order of outermost/largest to innermost, these layers are:

Most stories take place within Universes, which follow the same overall framework of Numbers but generally have some sort of unique "homebrew" on top (for example, the Universe Flameverse has the addition of Flames within it). You can check them out on the Worlds page, which links to each Universe's index of lore.

If it helps, here is a comparison idea:

Voidspace is beyond human understanding, the human known universe is a Timeline, the local supercluster is akin to Universe Core, and Earth is a Universe. This analogy isn't perfect - our world doesn't work like Numbers - but I hope it illustrates the scale.

The God Spectrum

The God Spectrum is a way to identify and classify the quantities of Magninium contained within individuals. It is possible to ascend up the spectrum, but never down, as you cannot permanently lose magical capacity. However, it is exceedingly difficult to ascend on your own, and usually requires the participation of a higher being. This is especially true of the jump from H/C to Gladar, and the jump from Gladar to Frag, as ascending to that point involves a fundamental change in what you are. (Gladar are primarily magical beings, not flesh; Frags are conceptual.)

It has its own page with more detail, but here is a quick 'n dirty reference:

Death

Death in Numbers is a transparent layer of existence overtop the existing Universe. Here, Magninium is weaker, the only thing tethering it to an identity being the living's thoughts.

In simpler terms: if a living person remembers a dead person - whether by their deeds, name, relationship, history, skills, anything - that dead person can exist in the Dead Zone indefinitely.

The more people remember that dead person, the stronger their 'ghost' becomes. Some ghosts become strong enough to physically appear to the living once more and interact with them, though weakly.

If all living people collectively forget a dead person exists, they fade from the Dead Zone in a few weeks, releasing what little magic of theirs remains to be reused in the Magninium cycle.

This doesn't only apply to people - important animals, locales, and plants can be superimposed on the Dead Zone as well, so long as they're remembered. The Dead Zone's unique locations and buildings are visible only to residents of the Zone and can exist superimposed on 'living' structures, making some areas highly hazardous or difficult to transverse.

Many cultures put heavy weight on being remembered and making a name for oneself, and there are festivals for celebrating and remembering the dead. Unsavoury individuals often have their names deliberately removed or censored in order to reduce their infamy.

Necromancy

Necromancy involves pulling a ghost from the Dead Zone and tethering it back to its original body. The necromancer then channels their own Magninium through the corpse, empowering the ghost to feed on it and exist in the Life Zone again.

The amount of magic that necromancy requires means it is inaccessible long-term to many mortals. Which is all the better, as it's easily misused - the magic in the body answers primarily to the necromancer, so their commands are irrefutable to their victims - otherwise known as zombies. Abusing this power imbalance is banned in almost every society, but selfish necromancy may still be practiced at the fringes of cultures.

Commands, however, have to be specific. "Don't run away" still allows the zombie to walk, fly, dance, pace, strut, saunter, jog, crawl, slide, drive, or bike away.

Licensed necromancers manage funeral homes/rites for the recently-dead, allowing them to say final goodbyes, handle last affairs, testify in court against their muderers, among other things. Because of the capacity for abuse in necromancy, however, most governments are very strict about keeping track of licensed necromancers and will imprison or execute any whose license lapses or people found practicing without.

Sex & Sexuality

There are four primary sexes in Numbers: binary male (one gamete), binary female (one gamete), anbinary (two gametes), and sexless (no gametes). An anbinary individual can sire or birth children, while binary functions identically to humans. Due to the existence of the anbinary, mother/father are ungendered and simply refer to the carrier of a child and the sire of a child.

Sexes are defined by race; most pony races have a binary (male/female) while others may reproduce primarily asexually (Beauts) or other means (Chilopoda).

The symbols for the four sexes are as follows:

It is customary to introduce oneself with pronouns in Numbers, as no clothing or physical appearance is gendered. Exclusive attraction is also rare - most characters would be considered bisexual, or lack a preference in general.

It's not often spoken of and is an afterthought in most cultures; people in Numbers lack terminology for sexualities or genders. The most they have are, again, preferred pronouns (usually he/she/they).

Navigating the Site

The site should hopefully be fairly straightforwards to use and browse. If you ever get fully lost, the Sitemap contains a list of all current pages and how they're nested. Typically, you will navigate to an index page listing out various associated articles, like Tidbits, Fun, and the Worlds index pages. From there, you can select and read in-depth articles.

At the top of each page are breadcrumbs, which also indicate page nesting (i.e. which indexes they fall under). You can use them to return to earlier pages and better your mental map of the site.

When you navigate into a specific sub-world's lore pages, character pages, and index, the colors of the site will shift and the banner will change to help indicate the change. Remember that sub-worlds are independent of each other, so lore in one sub-world may not be accurate in another. Lore on pages unaffiliated with a world (with the typical color scheme and banners) apply universally.

In addition, please keep in mind that many articles are not written with Word of God. There is deliberate ambiguity, uncertainty, and occasionally misunderstandings present in articles. They're meant to give you an idea of how the world works from the understanding of the most well-researched characters, but that means they can be fallible too. Overall, they are trustworthy, but always take them with a smidge of salt. The "lore" of actual stories will always supersede a lore article.

Character Profiles

Profiles (found on the character subdomain) are an even more extreme version of unreliable text. They are deliberately written primarily from the character's perspective and personal opinions, though minorly filtered through an omniscient lens. In order, the character's Biography is lightly tinted and written to endear the reader to them and understand where they're coming from; Relationships are written in the character's voice and thoughts in third person; but Trivia is out-of-character and could be considered the most truthful.

In essence, don't be surprised if character profiles contradict each other or paint each other in a highly negative light; they're being influenced by the characters themselves. To Cyprium, of course Aurum is a monster, but there is much more nuance to both of these people to explore.

Conclusion

And - such are the very basics of Numbers, a rough outline of world details and explanations of some concepts. It should make reading profiles or stories easier (hopefully).

Any questions can be fielded to me, of course - I love talking about my convoluted world! And I can help parse and break down some of the denser information here. And if you made it this far, I love you!! Thank you for reading about my niche and complicated pet project :)