Kol Cosmology: The Source, The Immaterium, Divine Stones, and Blanks
The Source
The Source is the radiant flow of energy that permeates all life, magic, and memory in the world of Kol. It is the spiritual bloodstream of the universe, it is literally everything and it is capable enabling spellcasting, divine miracles, reincarnation, and prophetic insight. Even something non-living is made of Source. Every soul and being, whether divine, mortal, or monstrous, typically becomes one with the Source upon death. This cycle of passage fuels the karmic engine of Kol, where souls are judged, reformed, or returned to the world in new form. The Source is perceived differently across cultures—called the Flow by the Black Church, the Pulse by gnomes, and the Breath by druids—but all agree on its centrality to reality.
While the Source is vast and powerful, it is still a derivative—an echo—of a deeper truth. Unlike the raw chaos of the Immaterium, the Source is ordered, purposeful, and reactive to emotional and moral resonance. Divine spells manipulate it, relics bind it, and ancient places channel it through ley lines. It is both a bridge to higher powers and a veil shielding mortals from the full force of creation. However, it can be twisted or corrupted. Places of concentrated despair or cosmic trauma may distort the Source, birthing warps, hauntings, or divine blight.
The Immaterium
Beyond the Source lies the Immaterium: a plane of unreality, infinite possibility, and pre-creation chaos. It is not a realm in the traditional sense, but a metaphysical void of thought, emotion, and raw potential. The Throne of the Immaterium can be found in the legendary city of Citragadda. In this realm, the laws of time, space, and physics dissolve into a sea of dreamstuff and god-thought. It is from this place that Outer Gods are born, gods are ascended, and prophecy takes form before being filtered through the Source into the world. Most mortals cannot access or understand it—those who do risk madness, erasure, or catastrophic mutation.
The Immaterium is sometimes called the Vein Beyond Form, the Womb of Silence, or the Starless Deep. Gods fear it even as they are shaped by it. A whisper from this place can become a miracle or an apocalypse, depending on the vessel. Though it is inaccessible by conventional means, breaches occur when divine catastrophes rupture reality—such as the First Fall at Kalé's Chasm or the Falling Heart at Taranvach. These events leave scars: regions where gravity falters, time folds, and souls shiver.
Divine Stones
Divine Stones are manifestations of cosmological fractures—miraculous anomalies left behind when the Source and Immaterium violently intersect. The most powerful of these are Godseyes, typically born from the rebirth or death of an incredibly powerful Blank. A Godseye is a knot of divine possibility: dense, indestructible, radiant, and dangerous. They are so potent that entire civilizations have risen and fallen around them. Each known god is said to possess at least one or two Godseyes, while the most powerful may have more. When a Godseye falls to Kol, it creates devastation: Taranvach and Kalé’s Chasm are two such sites.
From shattered Godseyes emerge Beherits and Ciphers. Beherits are sentient fragments of divine will, capable of binding to mortals and awakening buried power. Ciphers, by contrast, are divine codes or truths—names of gods written backward through time—that grant insight, transformation, or madness. While most Beherits and Ciphers are fragments of Godseyes, exceptions exist. Ceslida, goddess of light and wisdom, is said to have created new Godseyes through ritual means during the end of the Citrinitas Age. This act is credited with igniting the wave of mortal ascensions that marked the beginning of the Age of Ruby.
Blanks - Souls Outside the Weave of the Source
Blanks are metaphysical anomalies—souls that exist outside the karmic cycle of the Source. Unlike most mortals, who are born from and return to the Source upon death, Blanks have no divine signature, no spiritual lineage, and no place in prophecy. They are unseen by fate, unmarked by gods, and immune to many forms of magic that rely on spiritual resonance. A Blank does not participate in the normal cycles of Life and Death - instead going through a little known process of reincarnation. Even resurrection spells often fail or behave unpredictably when used on a Blank. This disconnection grants them a paradoxical purity: they are unpredictable, untethered, and capable of distorting the fundamental laws of Kol simply by existing.
The Source reacts to Blanks as violently as a storm front, in the same way low pressure collides with high pressure in a weather system. Their presence creates spiritual turbulence, pulling divine energy, latent emotion, and cosmic memory toward them in violent eddies. This metaphysical conflict often causes miracles, breakdowns, or ruptures in regions where Source flows thick—leyline nexuses, holy sites, or divine relics. For this reason, Blanks are not only immune to many magical laws—they can redirect, negate, or even amplify them. Their chaotic interaction with the Source also makes them the only known mortals capable of directly influencing the Immaterium without being consumed.
When a Blank of significant magnitude dies, reincarnates, or awakens, the resulting imbalance often produces a Godseye—a divine rupture where the Immaterium and Source temporarily merge. These stones become the seeds of future gods, the origin of legendary relics, or the cratered heart of apocalyptic events. Many of Kol’s greatest upheavals—the First Fall, the Burning of Taranvach, and the Dawn of the Ruby Age—can be traced back to the awakening of powerful Blanks or the creation of new powerful Blanks. Though not all Blanks ascend or collapse reality around them, those who do are mythic figures, destined to be feared or venerated long after death.
Some theologians of the Black Church argue that Blanks are the truest form of mortal freedom—a being wholly unbound by fate or divine manipulation. Others see them as cosmic contagions, ticking bombs of Source-reactive instability. It is whispered that Ceslida, goddess of light and fate, once discovered a method to create Blanks, mirroring secrets stolen from Auriel and later betrayed by Ahriman. Her creations ignited the ascensions that closed the Citrinitas Age and birthed the current age of gods. Now, as the Age of Ruby wanes, the resurgence of awakened Blanks suggests another turning. Lichdom is also an example of a non-blank born soul successfully becoming a blank. Whether they are weapons, catalysts, or heralds of something even older, their ability to stir the divine winds of Kol cannot be ignored.
Final Thoughts
Kol is not held together by physical laws, but by spiritual architecture—woven threads of Source, shadow, and silence. The Source feeds the gods, the Immaterium births the unknowable, Blanks challenge the weave, and Divine Stones mark where reality has cracked. To understand Kol is to understand these forces not as tools, but as characters: living myths whose choices will shape the Age of Black.
The party’s journey through places like Kalé’s Chasm, Taranvach, or the Great Oubliettes is more than a travelogue of ruins. It is a confrontation with the truths that gods deny, and mortals rarely survive.
