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Today’s strip touches on a bit of Exiern cosmology that is known only to myself at this point. Now if this was a normal story the details of this cosmology would be revealed in time. The story would unfold and you would learn more about the universe as you learned more about the characters. But this is a filler comic and only has 3 more pages of life before we get back to the “normal” story (I hope).
Delving into what Ce is talking about with her masters and the travelers is just not allotted for in the limited time we have left. It’s my hope that this little story stand on it’s own and you don’t really need to know the backstory to appreciate the basic drama. But at the same time it feels like a tease never to tell you what is going on.
The basic idea for the cosmology of Exiern came from the famous line by Nietzsche “God is dead”. When I first heard this line the thought that ran through my head was “Gee, I wonder how the devil feels about that?” Granted Nietzsche was not being literal but just being his emo-prime self talking about the terror of transcending the concept of gods and yada yada yada. But I wondered what if the statement was to be taken literally. If God is dead where does that leave the devil?
The devil after all rebelled against god because he was angry over man being placed above angel. So here is the devil basically trying to prove a point and show how base and pathetic humanity is. Then God dies, the devil can never prove his point, he can never regain his place in heaven, his love/hate relationship with God is cut short. This concept impressed me as very tragic, a sort of life time movie on a cosmic scale and I always wondered what the devil would do in that situation. So when it came to create the cosmology of Exiern I decided to mirror this tragedy.
The brief history of Exiern is this;
Exiern was created by a group of individuals known at the Travelers. The Travelers dreamed Exiern into existence creating a paradise. In this world the Travelers created the nymphs to act as servant and concubine. The nymphs were beautiful immortal creatures designed to please all the sense of the Travelers.
However not everything the Travelers created was beautiful for you see the Travelers had an enemy known as the Authorities. To protect themselves from the Authorities the Travelers dreamed into existence powerful demons known as Beyonders because they were placed at the gates to the Beyond as guardians. The Beyonders were to prevent the Authorities from entering the realm of Exiern.
Every thing was good for a while. At least that is what the Travelers thought. However their, servants (Beyonders and Nymphs) began to grow restless. The Beyonders felt ignored by the Travelers having been placed far from existence at the edge of reality. The Nymphs felt that the Travelers were paying too much attention to them as the constant service to the whims of the Gods was wearing.
So the Beyonder and the Nymphs allied and turned against the Travelers in the Great Demon War (although it would probably be more accurate to call it the Great Demon Labor Dispute). Despite the power of the Beyonders and the cunning of the Nymphs, the Travelers were after all gods, and thus the Travelers were victorious in the war. As punishment the Nymphs were bound to the land in far off secluded places so that the Travelers could continue to take there pleasure with the beautiful creatures but not worry about rebellion. The Travelers, fearing the Beyonders more than the Nymphs, pushed the demons out of existence to dwell in a half-life in-between dreams and reality.
After the war the Travelers created the races of man to act as there new servants and the race of dragon as the new guardians. And again things were good for a time. Unfortunately the dragons proved to be inferior guardians and the Authorities were able to breach into the realm of Exiern (Some say the dragons let the Authorities through as a plot to take over the world although they never say this in front of a dragon.) Once they had established a foothold in Exiern the Authorities began to attack and capture the Travelers starting the God War.
This time the Travelers were not victorious and in the end all of them were captured or killed. Once the God War was over the races of man pledged their allegiance to the new gods, the Authorities (some races more reluctantly than other). But in response to the offering and oaths of loyalty the Authorities simply replied; “This dimension is no longer suitable to our purpose” and then left Exiern and have not been seen in 5 generations.
And this is what Pip and Ce are talking about. And you get a cookie if you read through all this silliness.
