Transcended

The Transcended and Outer Gods are classes of Void entities existing outside of material reality. These beings usually reside in the expanse of The Void, the space between universes. The Transcended and Outer Gods are as diverse as the entities and species that they ascended from, with myriads of different thought processes, emotions and personalities between individuals.

Transcension
Transcension is the process that aspirants go through to attain their status as Transcended. The process itself is dangerous and fraught with risk, but most aspirants who wish to attain full Transcension succeed in all stages of the process. The process itself is divided into three stages with most aspirants preparing beforehand with a prolonged course of extensive mental augmentation and enhancement, paired with self reflection and meditation to ensure that their minds survive the process intact.

The first stage of the process renders the aspirant immortal in the most absolute sense of word and grants localised reality warping abilities. Over a prolonged period of time, usually several centuries to millennia, the aspirant is exposed to some small amounts of Void protoplasm, and has the protoplasm saturate their consciousness. This process is known as Patterning, whereupon the the minds are exposed to Void energy to create an indestructible pattern within the Void. This pattern, known as a Void Core, then comprises the role of the mind and soul, and works to constantly maintain itself in an active and functioning state. While the pattern can be changed in some ways, any attempts to deactivate the pattern reset it to a state of full function, and any attempts at destroying the pattern, be it mundane or esoteric will fail (by way of rejection of death and its related concepts. This allows the mind (and/or soul, depending on whether the being in question has one) to survive the destruction of their bodies and reconstruct new ones, and prevents the aspirant's soul and mind from being destroyed by mundane or more esoteric sources such as the Silence or Death Concept. This also turns the aspirant into an acausal being preventing time paradoxes, loops and retroactive erasures such as Grandfather Paradoxes from affecting them entirely.

A first stage Transcend can use freeform temporal and spatial manipulation, such as in speeding up/slowing down/stopping time, bend or break space and create pocket dimensions. The senses of a First Stage Transcend are also magnified, granting them an area of awareness that encompasses all matter and energy (as well as temporal and spatial changes) in a radius of several dozen AU. If they were not able to previously, a First Stage Transcend becomes capable of thinking and acting on sub-microsecond scales. The new first stage Transcend becomes capable of using rudimentary conceptual abilities such as the Death Concept.

To reach the Second Stage of Transcension entails the first First Stage Transcend drawing raw protoplasm from the Void and filtering it through the field that their Void Core projects (often over the course of several centuries if not millennia). Once enough filtered protoplasm has been gathered, the aspirant uses it to enact a sudden change to their Pattern that amplifies it and propels them into the Second Stage.

The second stage develops the aspirant's ability to use Transcendent abilities and to perceive the universe as the Transcended do. The aspirant begins seeing time and space not as a linear construct, but as a stream with infinite branches that flow in every direction. Events and entities become landmarks within the streams that they can, with effort and training, move up and down on, as well as hopping into other time streams. At first these senses and the area of awareness are limited to a solar system, developing into interstellar and then to universal ranges. Prediction using this pre and post cognition however does not work on acausal beings, of which Transcends of all stages of the process are counted among. A second Stage Transcend becomes capable of travelling to adjacent unvierses, but often requiring technological assistance to see what universe they may end up in. Were they not able to previously, a Second Stage Transcend will often observe themselves to have faster cognition speeds than First Stage Transcends at sub-picosecond timescales. Conceptual abilities are also more developed, yet still not freeform.

The third stage is a full Transcension, whereupon the aspirant becomes a fully fledged Transcended. This stage is reached once a second stage aspirant begins absorbing the necessary amount of Void energy to complete the process. Any limits on cognition speed and processing ability is removed, and full Transcends can run an arbitrary number of mental partitions at speeds varying from enough to count Planck moments individually to slow enough to perceive the life and death of universes in the blink of an eye. A fully fledged Transcend can freely perform unrestricted time travel, perceive adjacent and nearby universes with their senses, and well as use their powers on a magnitude of several light years. Travel to adjacent universes also become far easier, taking less effort on the part of the Transcend. Conceptual abilities mature at this stage, whereupon the Transcended can freeform alteration and manipulation of concepts and the logic of existence. As an example a full Transcend can remove the concept of Change in the region of your Void field to put everything within in stasis, or alter the concept of Fate to no longer apply to specific entities.

Abilities
The origin of the reality warping powers that both Transcended and Outer Gods wield are rooted deeply in their Void Cores. The Void Core exerts and maintains a passive field of Void protoplasm under the Transcended being's control. Through this, the Transcended in question can utilise a number of reality warping effects, most commonly in the form of manipulating time-space, matter and energy, along with various forms of probability manipulation and conceptual abilities, the most famous of which is the Death Concept. The range of this field of energy depends on the whether a being is fully Transcended or at varying stages of the process. The first stage grants a range of several kilometres up to a few hundred, the second several AU (or roughly the size of a solar system in range and potency), and a full Transcension grants a spatial radius of several light years worth of range with no temporal range restriction. It is noted, however, that these abilities can be diminished, or even perhaps nearly fully suppressed under the effects of extremely strong reality anchors and reality terraforming fields, such as the ones possessed by the Old Brethren. While under such suppression a Transcended does not have diminished physical capabilities, as reality warping within the body of a Transcended is possible. There have been cases where suppressed Transcended were able to apply the Death Concept through physical contact, or travel the breadth and depth of a universe within a single unit of Planck time, fighting through the whole length of their journey.

Exaltation
When one reaches the first stage of Transcension, they may receive a power known as an Exaltation. Exaltations are created at Transcension by an aspirant shaping a power from their emergent Void Cores through their strongest desires and wishes. An Exaltation is a conceptual power that is unique to a Transcend. This conceptual power is directly shaped from the greatest desire one had when they enter the first stage, and its peculiarities are often unique to each Exalted Transcend. As an example, Evine, a second stage Transcend and one of the Emperor nodes of the Solar Imperium, possessed the desire to defeat death itself, and ensure that all sapient life had the opportunity to live eternally, resulting in their earning of the ‘Mantle of Death’s Defeat’. Their Exaltation allowed them to heal and revive others (even objects and entities that had been touched by the Death Concept), make other beings and objects (and some speculate concepts)  be completely immortal and had those affected by the Exaltation be able to spread their immortality to others through prolonged contact. Exaltations cannot be suppressed by Reality Anchors, and are among the few conceptual powers that first and second stage Transcends can freely use. Exaltations have a limited range, that being the same as the Void field a Transcend projects. 

An Exaltation is referred to as either a Mantle or a Shroud depending on the desires and wishes that spawned them. For desires and wishes affecting not only the person possessing them but also others and their surroundings, the resulting Exaltation is referred to as a Mantle. For a more self-centred wish and/or desire, the resulting Exaltation is referred to as a Shroud.

An Exaltation is by no means a truly guaranteed acquisition, as it depends on a user holding a strong desire or wish at the time of Transcension.

Outer Gods
While the term is used for any entity of sufficient power, the term most often applies to a Transcended that has undergone a second Transcension. These beings hold power an order of magnitude above ordinary Transcended.. This second process is unknown, and it is said that such an action is unique to every Outer God. The Outer Gods are shapers of universes and self-contained multiverses, creating, manipulating and destroying them on a whim. With the arrival of the Scourge, however, the range of their abilities has now been greatly limited, forcing them to now rely on proxies and followers rather than directly shaping their region of the multiverse to their will. The earliest of the Weave affiliated Outer Gods ascended to their position just after the violence of the Ascension Wars, driving out the natives of Point 01 in the process.