Infinity Protocol's Cyphers

Aetherite is a means of us communicating that is exceptionally difficult for Calypso's cronies to keep track of. So, in particular, if we wish to translate a message to you, the reader, we may describe sounds that the characters "sense" as our phonology instead of writing it down directly.

So for example, should Eclipse receive a message saying "Sa-to-ra-mi" it may be separated that way for a good reason. Ideally, (since this is my weakest point of my writing and this is challenging for me to learn about) this would only have to be done to exchange messages between characters within the story.

However, should the need arise to send a message in a coded way to keep themes of the story discreet, or to reveal hidden details, there may be someday, a website connected to the feelings the characters get when they receive the message. Sa-to-ra-mi would be interpreted with each separated chunk being a sound expressed to the reader. Where Sa could be expressed an infinite number of ways, thus it being a part of the Infinity Protocol to begin with.

Since the Infinity Protocols are a language even the characters do not fully understand yet, it may mean that in time, later on in the story, different sounds will take on different meanings that can actually reveal distinct memories for the various characters and make sure they do not lose sight of who they truly are. Perhaps the memories implanted in the aetherite are encoded to not be seen by Calypso but release a TON of information about previous timelines when reviewed by the character in question.

This would be ideally expressed by using a tonal tool that sticks with Chronias regardless of how much he time travels, being the main character in a game, who can carry this with him always to interpret the meanings of different lingering aetherite bricks, each with maybe pieces or entire individual messages meant to refill Chronias' memories so he does not have to worry about repeating the same mistakes he's made in this timeline that Calypso is expecting him to repeat again.

Thus, one layer of protection from Calypso's lackeys and one way of staying ahead of the curve when time resets upon itself again. A game would allow the player to constantly reverse the situation with Chronias' powers in order to know what the correct decision is before they make it. Retaining all their memories of previous jumps in a way that can help create hints and clues about what to do next. Calypso might be coming close to capturing the individual player, and then upon activating the warp, it's a way of keeping out of the clutches of him or his enforcers within Infinitum City. As every time leap would leave the pursuers confused as to what happened before they are brought back into existence and begin to chase again. The aetherite could actually, when certain pieces of encoded information are revealed, bring back into existence the pursuing hordes of enemies. Thus, if you learn what the different tones mean, you can choose to basically ignore the existence of certain objects or people temporarily or potentially, even permanently to help secure more progress in your overall missions or goals!

Different encoded sounds laced within aetherite bricks, left behind after traveling through time could be used as representations of suffixes and prefixes. This means there may be many aetherite bricks left behind, or that aetherite may contain a large number of small chunks that would trigger certain thoughts and memories to return. So perhaps the sound "Sa" in this timeline ends up being referred to as "Un" while "To" would translate to "Win", "Ra" becomes "Able" and the last tone might actually be the punctuation. In this case let's say that "Mi" equates to an Exclamation point. So, in THIS TIMELINE ONLY the aetherite would spell out "Unwinable!"

However, since that's a very easy to crack system for Calypso, the next timeline, as in the next time you create a timeline by reversing time, which gets into the fabric of how time travel actually works.

Think of a video game. You can reverse time and go backwards any number of times with new information as the player. The aetherite bricks are in a way my idea of actually translating that and deconstructing it in a way that it would work in a novel! However, if we meet ourselves, we'd disappear. So instead, the timeline you were in before becomes unreachable and the aetherite both serves as warnings, but also, sadly, memories that are not encoded, which tends to torture the characters and create more trauma each time they need to reverse time. Especially Chronias, who by the start of the first novel, is planned to have done this countless times.

When the characters, especially Chronias as his educational background makes him especially good at interpreting codes, travels back in time, one of two things will happen. They will either do so at the will of Eclipse and by closing their eyes or being in the middle of Eclipse's dark form means they will be unaffected, or the worse one, they will ask Calypso to take them back in time and that will make us follow that character as they return with only chunks of their memory back to an earlier part of their "game" against Calypso. The characters will call upon Calypso and fail. Often. Once that happens, their section of Lagharia will disappear and they must be found again. Chronias might also have to be the one to figure out what happened to the characters and why they called upon Calypso. In a video game especially, having those characters you choose not to interact with basically abandon the cause and being forced to either disappear fully if treated really poorly, or lose all memory of the character might be something cool to experiment with in a game.

However, here's the trick that even Calypso cannot follow. Every single time there's a different timeline created, the aetherite cannot be interpreted by Calypso, because the tones automatically change due to temporal differences in said new timeline! In a sense, Chronias is the only character "allowed" to be ahead of Calypso in their thought process. Even though Calypso is omnipotent, the idea is he cannot know what is unknown. He can only know that Chronias has basically removed a tone from his voice so that he cannot even say said word until it returns to him in an aetherite brick. Thus, the idea of hiding thoughts and memories in aetherite brick to begin with. The characters might even decide it's worth it to extract thoughts and memories onto aetherite to help their mental state, to cure them, or even weave reality in another way as they're forming these coded aetherite bricks in the realm of Lagharia.

So, let's hope in the next timeline, "Sa-To-Ra-Mi" equates to, "Eclipse is Un-Beatable" and more importantly, that it actually turns out to be true! Or... heck maybe not. Afterall, it's like Calypso says. There's no tension in a game that can't be lost.

The difficulty with the syntax of aetherite bricks is that they are scrambled and sent out randomly out to different locations in the timeline, at least they would if I were to create a novel instead of a game (planning on doing a novel first, but a playable version of even that might include the bricks having to be rediscovered in different random spots in the world each time, and then having to play a word game to try and organize the terms in the correct order.)

For example, maybe the sample message "Sa-To-Ra-Mi" might be scrambled by the order you pick up the bricks containing those tones. So, one might find the bricks in the order of "Ra-To-Mi-Sa" which would then scramble the message if put together in the incorrect way. As aetherite CAN in fact be picked up by anyone. However, if a non-chronicler picks up one, that will just send the message to the intended recipient and leave the one who picks up the brick grasping at shadows. In novel form, this means it will just create thoughts of small chunks of data. The system the Chroniclers use is often just words, but an aetherite brick could also contain an image, such as a storm cloud or the Ouroboros shell making it harder as a language to interpret. The device Chronias created was to detect dark matter, and thus it will be one of the few things that can detect the aetherite bricks as they manifest into reality. Might be that even retaining that device to detect them may end up being something retained only in an aetherite brick unless someone brings up the idea of "well couldn't you just detect these aetherite things?" Thus encouraging Chronias to remember how to make the device as the memory instantly floods back in. Just because you remember something stored in aetherite though does not make it easy to sort out all the "random thoughts" and make them flow into something that makes sense.

This is why aetherite is being used as a language to begin with. It's the language of thought for the characters, and the theme of the story surrounding aetherite is meant to be related to the real-world practice of mindfulness or meditation. The more streamlined your thoughts are, and the more coherent they are, the more likely you are to have all the aetherite bricks you need found or subsequently ran into, even accidentally.

Thus, it would be up to most likely Chronias, every single time, to translate "Ra-To-Mi-Sa" back into "Sa-To-Ra-Mi" as it was intended due to his well-educated nature in every timeline. It's considered as a universal constant because after all, Calypso doesn't want to cheat the Chroniclers out of a fun game, does he?

Some of the most important pieces of vocabulary to invoke into the aetherite bricks is memories of danger, memories of how a certain choice went, and expressing them with very simple terminology. "Dangerous!" "Careful!" "Ouroboros!" "Shell!" "Vice!" "Calypso!" "Ambush!" "Past!" "Present!" "Future!" "Prediction!" "Guarantee!" "Universal!" and quite a few other one-word messages that might be both direct and important but also represent concepts. Calypso's name cannot be spelled in aetherite directly, so symbols may have to represent him, such as a sheet of light within the brick to indicate godliness. Removing these memories or thoughts might actually cause great harm to the person removing the memory. Both from the removal and the potential immediateness of the memory and concept being returned to their mind. That being the important part. Reality dictates these things do not actually vanish. However, your awareness of a certain character's actions may be obscured if you do not find the aetherite brick that reminds you that they exist! The same may happen if you take a piece of core vocabulary out of a person's mind and put them into an aetherite brick. The more words put to brick, the more likely your mind completely forgets literally how to use the term itself or formulate the mouth movements needed to say the term out loud until the aetherite is found either outside in reality or in the next timeline. Entire characters may cease to exist until the correct correspondent finds the appropriate aetherite brick to remind them those characters existed. For example, Chronias can painfully make himself forget the existence of Eclipse by coding an aetherite brick with sound tones that spell out "Eclipse" but if the aetherite brick just says the direct phrase "Eclipse!" there is a risk of forgetting they exist entirely, or even of making them vanish forever should the user time travel when that memory is contained within aetherite. It is both the best form of communication for the Chroniclers, but also their most risky.

The sounds that escape the aetherite when the brick structure is released might either be words to formulate into a code, or it could be a concept. So, the sound of breaking into the aetherite brick is likely going to be represented via what is seen in the dark swirling center of it visually. However, since The Chroniclers are in some ways, a group of spies, even those sounds might have multiple meanings to the person receiving the message. Once the brick is released, whether it was seen or not, a thought about the sound will enter into the person's memory, or a fragment of a memory would be replaced to the mind as another "random thought." This shit is really REALLY dense, I know, so let me provide an example.

Chronias finds an aetherite brick. It contains a symbol inside the brick, which is a pocket watch. That brick might break as he approaches because it collides with a wall. Eclipse is somewhere else and suddenly remembers a timeline where he had what's called An Infinity Pocketwatch simply by hearing the ticking of a clock. The sound thus triggered the memory of the Infinity Pocketwatch, but didn't necessarily pop it immediately back into existence in his pocket.

To actually actualize it you might need to find a separate aetherite brick or at least break it by thinking about it (which might be triggered in this case by the "random thought" of an Infinity Pocket Watch if Eclipse just so happens to have his eyes closed, which must be the case for an object to appear, think of a constant Schrodinger's cat situation within the pocket of someone who's supposed to be in possession of certain items, who at least had those items in their direct possession in the previous timeline. In this case, if he closes his eyes and thinks of the Infinity Pocket Watch at the same time in the real world, the Infinity Pocket Watch may appear, though if there is not memory of its abilities, then it may just manifest as a normal pocket watch with no magical properties.)

In this way, you could use your memory of a sound to send an encoded message and safely remove your memory of that sound instead of something more important, such as a word or phrase. That way all you'll forget if you must travel back in time, is that there was a noise you heard. This may be considered as the most powerful way to use the "Language of Lagharia" through the aetherite. As it also is very easy for the Chroniclers themselves to understand what a thought means, and the thought itself might manifest the item immediately even faster than the person has the ability to remember what it does! However, one thought often causes more on the same subject as you get on the "train of thought" of, well, what would an "Infinity Pocket Watch" actually do? Then you could even remake exactly what the point of the pocket watch was and, in a way, IMMEDIATELY rewrite its purpose so long as there was no aetherite dictating its purpose lingering from another timeline.

This is the way that the characters can make the trinkets manifested from themselves becoming Chroniclers in the first place, truly hold the idea of Infinity within their limits. More on the items that manifest when each character becomes a Chronicler in other places and in the main novel itself. Which item ties to which character might also be a mystery the characters must solve as with aetherite in play, it could literally be any item. However, for the bond to stick and be completely unbreakable, even by the removal of memories by aetherite, the item's true owner must be discovered, and the true "pillar" of infinity which caused its existence must be located.

For example, the ticking of clocks is actually the Phonetic signature of Chronias, thus his item to fully and forever solidify his existence in Lagharia is actually The Infinity Pocket Watch. Once the characters understand this, Chronias could not ever be attacked or harmed by any of Calypso's tricks and could even invoke Calypso's name with no harm done to him at all. Each character has a Phonetic signature. Discover their signatures, and you will forever be safe from harm done to you through them as well. Though if it is the will of the character, they can over-ride that protection with their intent to hurt you. However, for wherever in the afterlife they are placed, all the Chroniclers ARE intended to be good people dealing with near impossible odds against them. So, the idea of a character intending to hurt another Chronicler has to be the result of something truly serious or heinous going on behind the scenes of the story or within their mind, as all the characters are also intended to be deeply traumatized characters.

Using the Phonetic signatures of each character and associating it with symbols or different words might actually be a fun challenge for me as the author! I'll see what else I can come up with, but for now, there's not going to be any ARG elements or the like to try and usher in a hopeful eventual publishing of the Infinity Protocol Novels. I want to take this project step by step, especially since I'm still quite the novice at getting my massive, complicated ideas down to paper! Or article in this case of course!

Cyphered ways of dictating tense from a distance should the aetherite be able to be seen could be color. Normally, especially since it's dark matter, you would expect either no color or complete lack of any color, thus black. However, due to how ever shifting aetherite is, the colors could dictate whether it's past, present, or future, as well as other various things such as different shades of the same color being used as a warning.

If I have to decide to create a regular color-coding system, such as with a game, then I would code it based on the character's primary colors. Eclipse is a character who looks towards the future, so perhaps the standard black would actually be a sign pointing towards a future event, adhering true to the "void creating everything" nature of aetherite and its creator.

Next would probably be red for Chronias obviously. His color code would often indicate warnings, as he is the most "on edge" of all the characters. He does not take the burden of being responsible for holding the most memories of all the characters very well. Red might also indicate the future tense, however with a frantic and immediateness to it that Eclipse's messages would not have.

Scratch's color is one I haven't fully decided on yet. This is mostly because I'm not 100% on what species she should be of dragon. Eclipse and Chronias are easy, but before a publishable Infinity Protocol can be made, I must decide on what species hybrid she is. Perhaps I'll feed a few ideas into AI for that one and write it down in a separate character sheet for Scratch when I have a good idea for it. (After WorldEmber 24, I might put the AI exchanges into documents so that I can in a way "show my work" in terms of using AI as kind of a platform to throw ideas into to help me materialize them, rather than using it to just outright write my story. You'll have to just trust on some level that I'm the actual writer of all this and the ideas all didn't just come from AI too.)

Western's color is next. He is also meant to be a scaled dragon/lizard hybrid, meanwhile Chronias is meant to be more fuzzy and ironically warm when compared to what others see from Western. A cold, calculating demeanor. Eclipse and Sonngrad are the only two characters who see through this facade as what it is, and get to see Western's true humility, kindness, cleverness, and creativity. (At least when he first becomes a Chronicler!) So, his messages are also coded with red, but a kinder maroon as opposed to bright red from Chronias' more frantic thought patterns. Maroon in the story will probably represent something that's important for the character to notice in the present, though if the brick shows up in front of Chronias, due to his jealousy and the fact that he butts heads with Western a lot, he might unintentionally sabotage group efforts by avoiding Western's left behind aetherite bricks.

Sonngrad's color is yellow, and she is a spiral or eastern dragon, who "spirals" in the same way Eclipse does when he is losing sight of himself and shutting out all the other characters. Or believing that he is not good enough to know them or be with them. Eclipse doesn't always feel comfortable having Sonngrad as part of the team, so he'd rather leave her in the past. Her brick messages are encoded in yellow to promote caution in the past tense as a result. They also tend to more often be symbols rather than words, as she's mute even when she takes the time to overshadow Eclipse once the team discovers they can actually do that. Like with Chronias and Western, Eclipse might be tempted to avoid any yellow bricks which may cause him to remember something particularly scarring at inconvenient moments.

Finally, Bahamut is likely going to be a more feral hybrid, with a built-in dichotomy between his feral un-natural strength, and his attitude which is actually quite passive and gentlemanly. His actual scales which dictate him as a dragon hybrid will be colored Platinum, which is a not-so-subtle nod to Bahamut's characterization in D&D as a platinum dragon of justice. He will provide a gentler approach to compare to Calypso's more chaotic and direct justice. He's maybe one of the characters I am most excited to write about! It's also a reference to Platinum games as Eclipse's story is heavily inspired by that of Bayonetta among other things. Platinum Aetherite might be the most relieving for a character to find and actually be a brick that EVERYONE picks up to try and relieve themselves. He often will act as a voice of reason for an often chaotic organization and is a HUGE part of Chronias' mental state actually recovering and him finding a respect for characters he'd otherwise heavily hate such as Western, and sometimes even Eclipse himself. The tense of any Bahamut Brick is always present. He's the "war veteran" of the group and thus is the most likely to be willing to sacrifice huge chunks of his psyche once he realizes what's going on, but ultimately it shows Eclipse the extreme of his mindset of helping others at the expense of himself being a problem.

With aetherite, it is exceptionally difficult to decode specifically because the "sentences" they try to formulate in the mind is often extremely chaotic and even requires the characters to both have all of the information they need to decode the message AND also being willing to find the brick to begin with. If for example, the aetherite is returned to the person from another source instead of being picked up in the intended order, the sentence "I only wish I could save him, please forgive me" could come out as "I please him, only wish could forgive me save I." An even greater danger is that individually encoded words could end up returning as a "random thought" and be completely disregarded by the character. This is probably how it will be used in the novels. Countless misunderstandings that must be hashed out by talking to the character or Eclipse himself in person.

So, if "I only wish I could save him, please forgive me" was intended to be a message delivered to Chronias by Eclipse, Eclipse himself might need to try and get Chronias to realize directly, depending on the timeline shift, that he IS genuinely sorry for all the pain that he puts the poor dragon through. That however, he does believe that playing this "game" with Calypso is truly the only way he will ever be happy. Which could then be misinterpreted again if another message from aetherite to Chronias was not sent properly as well. Maybe "Forgive him, he's telling the truth" from Bahamut instead gets corrupted because Chronias refused to listen to his brother's messages and refused to accept that loving, caring tone that often comes with Bahamut's messages. So, in a moment of anger, he swipes away at one of his bricks, it hits a wall, and instead it becomes corrupted by Calypso's influence and will. Saying instead "You know he's lying. He does this ALL the time! What a self-entitled prick!" This is why you might see Chronias and Eclipse's dynamic shift EXTREMELY chaotically! They do care about each other deep down, but one became an angel and the other a demon. That really does breed a lot of distrust inherently that maybe only the "Language of Lagharia" can properly get them both to understand properly. That's what Calypso hopes for at least. That this game will actually make them better creatures to each other in the end.

When it comes to actual encoding of a memory, often the bricks do not contain whole thoughts in of themselves and only fragments. Due to the danger of adding entire strings of thought into an aetherite brick intended to be a message, if it's one that "steals" a lot of adjectives away from the character, then it must be generally speaking, the opposite of the type of language they'd use.

So, if Eclipse were to encode a message, he must be careful to literally look through a modern dictionary and pick adjectives he'd literally never use. This serves multiple purposes. First off, it makes it so that "losing" usage of that adjective won't hurt them. Secondly though, in the decoding process, adjectives are exceptionally powerful if Chronias is the intended recipient especially. Since he's usually the intended recipient in story, along with Western also being one later as he learns more about "writing realities" and learning more about how to do that from Chronias further on in the story/timeline.

If the adjectives are flowery and complicated, then Chronias will likely be able to properly translate them or make sense of what those flowery adjectives mean, and when it actually transfers into his mind as a "random thought," he'll probably be the one who instantly knows who it was from. However, if Western writes a message to Chronias it's exceptionally likely to get corrupted due to being ignored. So those tend to be adjectives that can be put in any order and use any type. Eclipse can write into a book later that will rewrite even the rules of aetherite itself! The only reliable thing with aetherite is that they are unreliable! The thoughts you get from those bricks breaking are unreliable on their own. Choosing the right recipient is the important part. This is because even if adjectives appear in the wrong order, the right recipient, once the memory floods back in, will know the order to sort them in if the sender correctly predicts that the character would likely care what they had to say. Who people care about is one of the universal constants of The Infinity Protocol's allowed Cyphers. Characters who love each other will always love each other. Characters who ended the last timeline caring nothing about each other will still care little to nothing about each other in the next timeline created. Traumas continue infinitely, as does love, as do a lot of things depending on what is defined by the aetherite's stored memories and what is written in Lagharia's "Book of Infinity" (literally considered as the novel I'd be writing rather than anything listed here on the World Anvil, thus even having a "magical" element in that the characters are literally writing their stories from within their stories, even if they do not have full meta-textual awareness.)

So, for an example, let's say we have a sentence intended for Chronias. Bahamut is the one who decides the self-sacrifice of a lot of adjectives is something he trusts his brother to recollect for him. He formulates the sentence, "There will be a dire, destructive curveball coming up! Active awareness is key." then as he's formulating that sentence, he will forget the words he's putting into aetherite. The singular brick is formed, Bahamut goes silent internally and externally. The Chroniclers initiate time travel. Bahamut physically returns to their original location, and due to these two characters caring deeply for each other, Chronias immediately detects the aetherite containing this message. Due to it being all in one brick, the adjective order is retained, and the message comes out crystal clear! However, it is also immediately detected by Calypso so that he can create an illusion to confuse Chronias very quickly. Not a well encoded message and kind of goes towards the theme that sacrificing yourself for no reason is both ineffective AND dangerous to your sense of self. Bahamut is a good example because he's very stubborn about NOT using any flowery or obscure language and just going off of the faith he has in his brother to immediately collect memories encoded for him without thinking about the consequences his brother might face if the message gets immediately understood by Calypso, who is reading the active thoughts of the characters to predict their moves.

Now let's give a secondary example of Western sending a message to Sonngrad. Western knows that flowery is something Sonngrad likes when she's formulating messages of her own and that she has the advantage of not speaking in the first place. So, they decide to have her memory of a flowery series of adjectives that seem unrelated to each other being used to form a combined aetherite brick message. Some from Western's Mind, others from Sonngrad's mind. The intended order is "Apocalyptic, Tenebrous, Gorgonizing, Sepulchral" Or, in translated terms, "Terrifying, Cloudy, Horrifying, Silent" which can then be connected to the point in time they all decide they need to go back to through a chronometer of Chronias' design inside Lagharia. Their messages are closer to the characters, Western and Sonngrad, when they're done, due to each character having a super strong bond that Calypso has yet to break in that timeline. The bricks it fragments into when time travel occurs are out of order and says, "Tenebrous, Sepulchral, Apocalyptic, Gorgonizing" which causes the characters to have to think through it as they're moving. While they're moving and sorting their memories, they might lower Calypso's suspicion of them and Calypso's own consciousness would notice the traveling through time, take notice of those two characters, realize they don't remember, and then move on to observing the other characters. Then the unobserved Western and Sonngrad recognize what they were supposed to do when the "heat" is off of them since it took a bit longer for them to figure out what those thoughts meant. This is why the best way to send messages through this "Language of Lagharia" is between lovers. Though those who have strong friendships such as Chronias and Scratch will definitely do in a pinch.

With a chaotic form of language such as aetherite storing memories and the inherently chaotic minds of many of the characters, some structure must be established. Obviously, one was already discussed when discussing tenses. The colors and the specific shade of color would instantly create the memory of the person who left the message regardless of the character having been met yet at that "period of time" in the timeline. So, as a prime example pure black or transparent will, as a color, immediately make people think of Eclipse due to that being encoded by the "Book of Infinity" as aetherite's current standardized rule. That way, unless Lagharia is completely wiped off the map again (potential plot, though this has happened in various ways already at the beginning of the story), aetherite will always behave in the exact same way through every travel through time. Here is what the Book of Infinity might say about the structure of aetherite.

"Bricks of various colors appear! They contain memories fragmented into small individual pieces! These memories are actually messages from previously visited and abandoned timelines! The war against Calypso requires a way of encoding our very thoughts Chroniclers! So, make sure you pick up these bricks before they collide with something random out in the world! As our relationships and bonds improve, the more chaotic scattering of aetherite throughout the world will be much more focused in the physical plane! Grab them quickly! There's a good chance that if you do not pick them up, that Calypso's influence will detect these bricks and corrupt them! If ANYTNING OR ANYONE ELSE BREAKS OPEN THESE BRICKS, YOU MAY BE SUBJECT TO MIND CONTROL OR ILLUSIONS PLAYED BY CALYPSO! You have been warned.

Use your individual skills to translate the 'random thoughts' of the aetherite bricks into a message and thought pattern that makes sense! When we time travel, it is IMMEDIATELY detected by Calypso and messages intended for other Chroniclers can be intercepted! The more personalized to your friends these messages are, the easier it will be to derail Calypso's spies and confuse them! Focus on messages that will seem benign or will confuse the recipient at first if you are choosing to create a message using this memory absorbing brick!

BE WARNED! REMOVING MEMORIES IS RISKY BUSINESS. YOU WILL LOSE THE ABILTY TO THINK OR SPEAK OF A CERTAIN CONCEPT, WORD, SOUND, ECT, USED IN THE AETHERITE BRICK! Once this brick is broken, your memory will either return in chunks that you as a Chronicler MUST translate to receive a warning about something that could potentially harm you in the new, similar timeline, or risk the thought/memory being corrupted by Calypso and thus causing harm to the inner sanctity of Lagharia! You have your orders members of 'The Eclipsed Order!' Over and out!"