Welcome back to the Neogentrics Multiverse podcast.
Welcome to season two. Yes. Welcome back, everyone.
I mean, I just have to say it right at the top.
What a massive milestone for us. We actually
completed season one. We made it. We really did.
We made it through the entire deep dive of the
Whistling Swordsman book one, which, you know,
looking back was just this colossal timeline
altering journey. Oh, absolutely. The sheer scale
of the temporal wars in that first book was staggering.
it really was but uh we are not gonna sit here
and re -summarize all of that today because honestly
the energy right now is just too high to look
backward we are moving completely forward we
have to The roadmap for Season 2 requires a total
shift in focus. We are officially moving into
a brand new corner of the Crazy Story universe.
Right, which means we are leaving the continent
of Pekadesh behind for now. Exactly. We are diving
headfirst into the Voidmaster series. And for
you listening, just to give you the full layout
of the season, we are going to be moving chronologically
through the two published books in this specific
series. Right, so that's the Elementalist first,
and then its immediate follow -up, the Elementalist
Resonance and Destruction. Yeah, but because
this new series introduces a world that is so
radically different from anything we've covered,
we're actually putting our usual debate format
on hold. Which I think is a very smart move for
this one. Yeah, I mean, usually we love to take
opposing sides, you know, argue character motivations
or the ethics of whatever temporal crisis is
happening. But you can't really debate the ethics
of a world when you don't even understand its
basic gravity yet, right? Exactly. So today we
are doing a purely collaborative deep dive. Just
a total team effort to map this out. Right. Consider
today's session basically a spoiler -free introductory
primer. The mission today is just to get you,
the listener, oriented. We're going to introduce
the new protagonist, lay down the overarching
rules of his home world, and just set the stage
before we actually dive into the real plot next
time. So let's just jump right into it. Let's
talk about the boy on the hill. Oh man, what
an introduction to a character. Right. So our
new protagonist is named Zerl. And the way Neogentrix
describes him in the universe guides is it's
almost contradictory. It's a total biological
paradox. Yeah, because, OK, we're looking at
a young man, early 20s, right? 22, I think. Yeah,
early 20s. But he does not look like a typical
20 -something. He has this incredibly... rugged,
overly developed physique, like a veteran forester
who's been chopping wood for 40 years. And he
sports this legendary goatee. The goatee, yes.
I mean, the texts literally say it makes him
look like a man in his late 40s. Which is such
a brilliant piece of environmental storytelling
when you think about it. How so? Well, a 22 -year
-old doesn't just naturally develop the muscle
density of a lifelong lumberjack or, you know,
the... facial weathering of a middle -aged man
without some extreme prolonged stressor oh for
sure it's the physical result of sheer trauma
and survival exactly he hasn't just aged his
body has aggressively adapted to a deeply hostile
environment Because he lives entirely alone,
he is completely isolated on this geographical
vantage point known as Barrel Hill. Which is
part of the massive Terrell Mountain Range. Right.
And, you know, if you are living by yourself
on a solitary mountain hill, completely cut off
from society, your daily life is just raw caloric
burn. Hunting, surviving the elements, chopping
wood. That explains the physique. It does. But
the facial aging. The sheer exhaustion etched
into his features. That speaks to the psychological
burden of where this hill actually is. Because
Barrel Hill isn't just some random spot in the
woods. No, it provides this direct, unobstructed,
frankly haunting vantage point overlooking a
massive city down below. A heavily fortified
city. Right, the city of Trotesca. Imagine waking
up every single morning, stepping out your front
door, and the very first thing that dominates
your horizon is a towering monument to your worst
trauma. You can't look away. You literally can't.
Every plume of smoke, every glint of steel down
there is a trigger. I was trying to think of
an analogy for this, and it's kind of like. Like
living next to a factory. Yeah, but worse. It's
like living right next door to a sprawling, oppressive
mega corporation, but it's run by a literal supervillain
who personally destroyed your life. And you just
sit on your porch staring at it all day. Exactly.
Yeah. Because the city is ruled. by a ruthless
tyrant. King Pochia Q. Varnese. Yes, and let
me just pause here because for you guys listening
and following the lore, we need to lock in the
exact pronunciation from the author's phonetic
guides. It's a very specific cadence. Right,
so it is pronounced Pochie. Cuvarnese. The Q
is said just like the long letter name, and the
var is like in varsity. Pochi Cuvarnese. Exactly.
And the dynamic between Zerl and this tyrant
is just a masterclass in latent tension. Because
Zerl isn't actively besieging the city, he's
just watching. He's a lone brooding sentinel,
and he harbors this deep, burning, all -consuming
hatred for the king. And keeping strictly to
our spoiler -free rule today, we are not going
to get into the specifics of why. No, we won't
reveal what happened in the past. But we have
to make it clear that this proximity to the tyrant's
domain, it's a powder keg. It's completely unstable.
You cannot live your entire life as a coiled
spring like that. The atmospheric pressure on
that hill is just dense with unexpressed violence.
It really is. It feels like it's just waiting
for a single spark to blow everything wide open.
Yeah. Wait a minute. Hang on. What was it? I
just realized something. Looking at the notes
for his name and his location in the broader
universe Bible. Zeril. Is this the same Zeryl
from season one? Yes. I was wondering when you
were going to catch that. Oh my gosh. From the
Temporal Wars and the Whistling Swordsman. The
exact same entity. The Grand Archive canon confirms
it enthusiastically. But wait, wait, wait. The
Zeryl from book one, he was the guy who intervened
when Zeonix Novus was stuck in the middle of
that historic war in the past. He was the one
who pulled him out of the crossfire. Right. But
the text from season one explicitly described
that Zerl as a, quote, master of space manipulation
from a connected timeline. He was literally crossing
dimensions. So how I mean, how does a rugged
guy in his early 20s living alone on a hill,
chopping wood and obsessing over a local tyrant
become a dimension hopping master of cosmic spatial
physics? That is the ultimate question, isn't
it? It's a staggering logical gap. It is, but
you have to remember how meticulously managed
the Neogentrix multiverse is. This isn't just
a universe where characters casually cameo for
fan service. Right, there has to be a defined
evolutionary trajectory. Exactly. So this timeline
puzzle we're looking at, Zerol's appearance in
Zeonix's timeline, has to happen at some point
relative to the story we are about to read. Wow.
So his fixation on King Percha Q. Varnis might
just be the embryonic stage of his development.
It has to be. And for you listening, we want
to be incredibly clear. This is a fun, open mystery
that we are all going to be looking out for as
we read. Yeah, we don't actually have the definitive
answer to how he bridges that massive gap yet.
Which honestly makes the analysis so much more
rewarding. We get to watch this localized conflict
unfold while carrying the dramatic irony that
this lone guy on a hill is destined for a multiverse
spanning legacy. Okay, my mind is completely
blown by that connection. But if we want to figure
out how he eventually manipulates space itself,
we have to look at his incubator, right? We have
to look at the physical reality of his native
planet. Because you don't just learn spatial
physics out of nowhere. The environment he interacts
with every day must be incredibly advanced. It
is deeply alien to anything we've seen so far.
So let's shift our focus from the topography
of Beryl Hill to the macrogeography of the planet
itself. The planet is called Elibria. Pronounced
Elibria. Elibria, exactly. And the cosmic geography
here is just wild. To visualize it properly,
you have to look at it from space. Elibria is
situated in another dimension. specifically in
the Andros galaxy. And it's classified as a mystic
-type planet, right. Boasting an age of over
700 million years. 700 million years of uninterrupted
evolution. And the visual signature of the planet
completely reflects that alien age. It does not
look like Earth. Not at all. It presents as this
striking, vibrant, greenish -violet color from
space. which implies some terrifying things about
its surface if you apply basic botany and astrophysics.
The violet suggests a really dense atmosphere,
maybe rich in heavy gases, filtering light differently.
And the overwhelming green is due to its vast,
sprawling vegetation. Yeah, vegetation interwoven
with incredibly dense, mountainous terrain. The
biosphere is just teeming with this primal, hyper
-competitive energy. But the real hook, the core
mechanics of how this planet actually functions,
is how that Right. The fundamental law of Alibria
is that the planet's surface is cleanly divided
into nine distinct regions. Nine specific biomes,
basically. And each of these nine regions is
governed by one of nine specific elemental attributes.
Let's listen out for the listeners so they have
the full scope. Okay, so we have light, dark,
fire, water, ice, earth, stone, wind, and void.
Now, I want to be incredibly precise here before
we go any further. Oh, I know what you're going
to say. Because when you hear a list like fire,
water, light, dark, it's so easy to just assume...
This is like a standard magic cest. Yeah. I'm
going to stop you right there. We have to actively
avoid and reject that terminology completely.
Right. Right. There is no mysticism or spellcasting
here. We are not talking about incantations.
It is an intricate system of elemental arts.
Elemental arts. These are the physical forces
that literally make up the geologic and atmospheric
realities of the planet. It's essentially the
localized physics of a Libria. Exactly. If someone
manipulates fire in that region, they are initiating
a thermodynamic reaction based on the inherent
physical laws of that specific area. It's a unified
field theory. Not a supernatural trick. Which
is such a brilliant way to structure a world.
And the granularity is fascinating too, like
separating earth and stone into two different
physical laws. Right, because earth would be
the organic, nutrient -rich soil, while stone
is the rigid, crystalline mineral lattices. Entirely
different molecular bonds. Same with water and
ice. There are distinct elemental forces here,
not just different temperature states of the
same thing. But the most crucial element for
our multiverse theory. especially regarding Zerl's
future. The void region. The void region. If
the void, the literal absence of matter, is a
tangible, manipulatable, physical law on this
planet, suddenly Zerl becoming a master of space
manipulation makes perfect sense. He's basically
growing up in a planetary laboratory for spatial
physics. It's incredible. But a planet operating
on nine distinct, highly volatile physical laws.
is inherently unstable. Highly unstable. If you
have a region governed purely by fire right next
to a region governed by water, the borders should
theoretically be zones of apocalyptic cataclysm.
Which brings us to the ultimate hook of the entire
series, the nine relic weapons. Yes, the artifacts
that actually keep the planet from tearing itself
apart. These aren't just cool swords or shields
that, you know, give a warrior a stat boost.
No, they are structural. They are literally scattered
across these nine regions, and their entire purpose
is to keep the actual elements of the planet
in check. They are the regulators of a Libra's
natural energy. I was trying to come up with
an analogy for this. And the best way I can describe
it is that they are basically planetary load
bearing pillars. Like pressure release valves
on a massive steam engine. Exactly. The 700 million
year old elemental energy is the steam constantly
building up pressure. And these relics anchor
that power so it doesn't breach the surface.
So they enforce the physical laws. Right. But
that leads to a terrifying foundational question.
If these weapons keep the elements in check,
what happens to the planet if someone unearths
one or worse, destroys it? Oh, the lore is completely
unambiguous on this. If a relic weapon were destroyed,
its corresponding element would run completely
amok and just ravage the planet's surface. So
if a load -bearing pillar is kicked out, the
ceiling caves in. Exactly. If the water relic
is compromised, you lose the foundational laws
of fluid dynamics. Oceans rise without gravity.
Tidal waves drown entire continents. If the fire
relic breaks, the planetary mantle essentially
boils over into an endless chain of volcanic
eruptions. It would be an unrestrained, localized
apocalypse. the planet would consume itself.
They are literal doomsday devices, but their
natural state is preservation. Which forces us
to look right back at our tyrant, King Pocha
Q. Varnese, down in Truskesca. Yes, because,
and we are strictly keeping this as a spoiler
-safe teaser, we won't name any specific weapons
or tribes or locations. No specifics today. But
the baseline conflict of this series is that
the king is actively hunting these relics. Which
is just an... unfathomable level of geopolitical
hubris. Right. A normal tyrant wants land and
taxes. This guy wants to consolidate the pressure
valves of the entire planet into his personal
armory. It's a planetary race to control the
nine elemental forces. And if he gets them, he
holds the entire biosphere hostage. The threat
isn't just that his empire expands. The threat
is the fundamental unraveling of the planet's
physical laws. It is such a brilliantly layered
setup. You have this macro -level threat of total
environmental collapse driven by a tyrant's expansion.
And nested right inside that on the micro -level,
you have Zerl. sitting alone on Barrel Hill,
traumatized, rugged, harboring this burning hatred,
just staring down at the very empire that is
trying to trigger this apocalypse. He's basically
waiting for the match to be struck. And every
single action in The Elementalist is going to
be driven by that insane dual tension. You know,
laying all of this out really leaves me with
a pretty provocative final thought to mull over
before we wrap up today. Oh, yeah. What's that?
Well, if... Zerl's destiny eventually leads him
to cross dimensions and manipulate space itself
in the Grand Archive like we saw in season one.
Yeah. How much of Elibria's elemental crisis
is just a small ripple in a much larger multiverse
spanning war? Oh, wow. I mean, is this planetary
race for the nine relics the main event of his
life? Or is it literally just the training ground?
Is King Pochi Hugh Varnese the ultimate evil?
Or is he just a tiny pawn on a cosmic chessboard
that Zerl is destined to outgrow? That completely
recontextualizes the stakes of everything we're
about to read. If an elemental apocalypse is
just the pressure cooker needed to forge a space
-manipulating entity, the scale of this deep
dive is just infinitely higher than it appears.
That's the exact lens I want everyone to see.
want to bring into our next session. We're going
to leave you to explore that thought on your
own. Absolutely. Join us next time for our first
real deep dive into the elementalist covering
the prelude through Aznium, the volcanic province.