Elysium?

criswolf09

So guys... I've heard that an NPC from this plane is going to come to MC during the Nightmare Invasion. What can you tell me about this dimension?

canadascott

criswolf09 said:

So guys... I've heard that an NPC from this plane is going to come to MC during the Nightmare Invasion. What can you tell me about this dimension?

Put simply. it's the realm that contains every culture's idea of heaven.

bulgarex

Well, the main PnP source on Elysium is The Mystic World; and a substantial amount of that info was reprinted in Book Of The Empress. Nothing resembling Golden Seraph, the NPC contact in the Nightmare Invasion, is described in either book as coming from Elysium, although at the end of this post I'll suggest a way that could be rationalized. But I have no idea whether Cryptic plans to make any official changes to that lore, or is just connecting it to something they think looks cool, without worrying over whether it fits or not. (It wouldn't be the first time they did either of those things.)

Elysium is one of the four Parterres, aka the Imaginal Realms, spawned in the Astral Plane near Earth out of the collective imagination and belief of Humanity. Elysium grew out of the "ethical religions" which stressed morality and virtue, and whose gods and their domains represent a more elevated state of spiritual existence. Elysium embraces all the "heavens" of all those religions; not simply the God and angels of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism/Christianity/Islam), but of Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, etc., with all their attendant celestial entities.

However, these beings are not the "real" gods/devas/immortals, and so on, from any of these faiths (assuming such beings actually exist -- Champions lore takes no religious stand). They are merely creations of popular imagination, and so appear as most of their believers visualize them, e.g. Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah as a stern, bearded patriarch. Mystics on Champions Earth who follow any of these faiths consider the "gods" of Elysium to be masks the true gods use to relate to simple folk who can't grasp their actual natures.

The rise of ethical religions, which conceived of the proper abode of Divinity as higher states of being rather than islands or mountaintops on Earth, was responsible for the Ban pushing all gods out of the mundane world. Ironically, the gods and spirits of those faiths are just as Banned as the old mythic beings. But less powerful Elysians (not all angels are created equal) can still manifest on Earth, just as lesser demons and faerie-folk can. At least in the modern era, when ambient magic became strong enough to allow that.

Not all regions of Elysium are as described in orthodox religious sources. Because the Imaginal Realms reflect popular concepts, various "pop-culture heavens" have also materialized there, e.g. the Heaven of fluffy white clouds and harp-strumming winged people in robes; or the Rock Candy Mountain of the old folk song.

Golden Seraph might not herself have come from Elysium... but her power could have. Some official Champions heroes have claimed God to be the source of their powers, and in this setting that's literally possible. That would make her look easier to explain, as a thematic costume that a modern superhero would consider appropriate to wear.

For that matter, it's not impossible that Golden Seraph could be a hybrid of mortal human and Elysian spirit. The setting already has children of humans and demons or mythic gods. Granted, the natives of Elysium are generally depicted as above that sort of thing; but modern fiction has been fond of stories of angels who fall in love with mortals, so the idea isn't unprecedented. When you think about it, one of the world's biggest religions is built around a hybrid of Man and God.

iamrune

bulgarex said:

When you think about it, one of the world's biggest religions is built around a hybrid of Man and God.

I may have only quoted this part for brilliance, but I love the entire post. The. Entire. Post.