Fork III: Ignis Solis
Fork III is a crucial event in the history of Fume's Belt, marking the beginning of this Realm's history in the Log. It led to the creation of the Diesel Realm and is associated with a disruption in the fabric of reality caused by a pioneering quantum field event. Fork III is also known as the ~Ignis Solis,~ as it initiated the birth of a new Sun in the sky of the Log.
Fork Context
As the industrial output of Fume's Belt expanded, universities and cultural centers thrived, turning the region into a hub of intellectual development. In this dynamic environment, avant-garde art movements, including the Synchronists, emerged, enriching the realm's cultural fabric.
The Tenebris Lux originated within the universities of the Diesel Realm, evolving from clandestine collegiate societies that embraced heretical beliefs, practiced black magic, and promoted a personality cult centered around its enigmatic leaders. These institutions undertook studies in occultism, UFOs, and relativity, significantly contributing to academic pursuits. The group was deeply tied with the richest and most powerful industrial families1, and their influence was felt in the highest echelons of the Fume's Belt government.
The Church, a cult always siding with the most powerful, had minor influence among the upper classes from Fume's Belt. The industrialists faced with the combustion energy became the new objects of worship. Even in the lower classes, the Church was less influential, with the new cults gaining more followers, and cinema and radio becoming the new temples of the masses. The Cinephiles prophet's death touched the masses like no event before.
The Synchronists recognized this world as rapidly changing and sought to capture the essence of this transformation in their art. However, their art was far from becoming as popular as the cult of the Cinephiles, and the Synchronists were seen as a group of eccentrics, their art viewed as pretentious by the masses.
Fork Event
The Tenebris Lux, deeply tied with the industrialists and the upper classes, had their agenda for Fume's Belt. The decades in which they were tied with all the status quo of the Fume's Belt, did not come without a price. A serpent's egg was incubated in the Fume's Belt, and the power that Tenebris Lux gained was unprecedented.
As the pioneering quantum experiments led by the notorious the Fire took place at the University of Pistonburg, the Tenebris Lux developed a different understanding of the mass-energy equivalence principle. They hypothesized that the tremendous energy stored within the particle accelerator if manipulated correctly, could manifest as a substantial mass. They speculated that this mass could be the physical incarnation of the revered ancient entity known as the ~Morning Star,~ an ancient entity revered in various obscure cults as the ~Ignis Solis.~ This belief motivated all their efforts in the building of the particle accelerator, hoping to bring the star into perceptible existence and validate the age-old prophecies predicting its arrival.
Close to the Fork event, no other group could stop the Tenebris Lux's machinations. The Church was too weak, the upper classes were blinded by their vanity and expensive entertainment, and the lower classes were distracted by cheap entertainment. The intellectuals, led by the Synchronists, were blinded by the promise of power and avant-garde thinking, and were enthralled by the intriguing new world being created.
The Tenebris Lux's calculated manipulation of the accelerator's operation, designed to cause a massive quantum fluctuation and essentially convert energy into mass, didn't result in an expected explosion. Instead, it induced a dramatic alteration in the very fabric of the Diesel Realm's reality. The resulting ripple in the quantum field deeply affected the physical and temporal dimensions of the realm, effectively bifurcating the timeline and marking the inception of a new, post-Fork era and the birth of a new Sun, known as Ignis Solis or the Mass, in the sky of the Log.
Alternative Fork Theories
While the mainstream narrative attributes the advent of Fork III to the machinations of the Tenebris Lux, a group of wanderers holds a different belief. They propose that the true trigger of the Fork event was not the manipulation of the particle accelerator, but an avant-garde experiment being conducted simultaneously by the Synchronists in an art gallery in a different part of the city.
This experiment, known as the Schrodinger's Critter, was a daring attempt to embody the quantum principle of superposition. In this experiment, a critter, sealed within a lightless room, was left in a state of uncertainty about its life or death in relation to the outside world. These wanderers propose that this experiment may have been the actual catalyst for the Fork event. They suggest that the Fork transpired during the indeterminate period when the critter was confined within the room, and that the critterkind outside, simultaneously occupying states of life and death, somehow instigated the quantum fluctuation marking the beginning of Fork III.
- Reports from the time indicate that the upper classes of the Fume's Belt were deeply involved in necromancy, levitation, divination, hypnosis, mind reading, spoon bending, and other occult practices.↩