Now that we’ve been armed with a better understanding of Xaos-storms, Vigil, and the metaphysics of the world, I’ve got a few questions about what would be possible or not.
Can the telos of aether itself be disrupted in such a way that changes its properties? For example, so that instead of returning to its “natural place in the cosmos”, “in the outermost spheres, beyond even the Empyrean of Fire”, that it seeks a different natural place, such as the earth? Like, deep, deep, deep down into the Earth?
Can the “original nature” of an object be Changed permanently? It seems that Theurges can suspend the meta-telos of returning to original nature, but does the “deeper reshaping of telos, pressing Changes into permanence” constitute a change to the original nature, or does that still persist? The meta-telos disruption caused by Xaos-Storm does not seem to do so, since something in Veorn’s hand “remembers what it was to have bones, to be divided into digits”, but what about a Plektos?
There is a meta-telos built into the fabric of time and form
Can the concept of form itself be Changed in an object? Such as actively changing/removing the “original nature” that a meta-telos returns to, and then disrupting that meta-telos? If so, would it be hypothetically possible to do that to a living person - rendering them without form?
I like how these revelations build on a high-INT character’s conversation with Horion in Uprising: “Any law that runs counter to nature will fail eventually. That’s what ‘nature’ means.” or “Your philosopher meant that law can change, nature can’t. But everything changes. Even what we call nature.”
I wonder if the once-people of Vigil may have taken the second path to one of its conclusions.