Parallel Universes or other planets? spoilers, obviously.

[TheMorbidAtheist]

Parallel Universes or other planets? spoilers, obviously.

For the longest time I have assumed that the witcher world is located in the parallel universe - just look at the identical Moon; although a Moon that close should havoc on climate of the mother planet.

The Conjunction of the Spheres, as I understand, is when the Universes briefly interact[ed]. The monster universe populated the "witcher" universe with its monsters and our universe populated it with humans (at some point in the last 100,000 years or so when homosapiens were around, but it appears that humans had some tools at their disposal when they appeared on the Continent, so it can't be more than a few thousand years ago) - so there are three-four Universes so far (however, the TW3 opening movie only shows two universes):

- ours (where you and I live);
- the one populated by Monsters;
- the one that has The Continent;
- the universe containing Aen Elle conquered by Eredin and Avallach - the world that was, somehow inhabited by humans prior to them being exterminated by the Aen Elle (perhaps they were jettisoned there after the last Conjunction of the Spheres while the rest ended up on the Continent?)

The Continent planet was not without life however. I can assume that the elves came to the Continent from another place on the same planet on their white ships as part of their colonization process. The Continent also had evolved sentient life of its own at the time: gnomes, dwards, pre-conjunction monsters. But this begs the question as to why the Aen Seidhe elves looks almost exactly the same as the Aen Elle elves. Aen Seidhe elves appear smaller in constitution than Aen Elle elves and live a few hundred years less, if I am not mistaken. It's unlikely that the same species appeared/evolved on two different worlds independent of each other. Did the Aen Elle elves travel to the Continent first and become the Aen Seidhe? Or was it the other way around?

Now, when Geralt gets to travel between different "worlds" with Avallach, it starts to get trickier.

1. First we have the desert area....The Ddiddiwedht Desert, it is obviously not the the Korath desert as Google images would have you believe and Avallach sort of confirms same with the cryptic "ever seen such canyons on your world?" response to Geralt's whereabouts question. We can also see other moons from this area and we can see (elven?) ruins - which adds more to my speculation that the Aen Elle elves manage[d] to populate different worlds without depending on the Conjunction of Spheres teleportation.

2. Then we have the toxic world area....I cannot imagine that area being on the same planet where the Continent is located - it has to be a different planet, either in the same witcher universe or a different planet in another universe. Again, there is a portal built by someone.

3. There is a water world. Again, there is an elven statute.

4. For once, Geralt is able to read the notes in the world that has been destroyed by the White Frost, Tedd Deireadh - that threw me off a bit. If this is another "world" (another planet in the same witcher universe or another planet in another universe), then Geralt should not be able to understand the language in the notes. And if this is the same world of the Continent, then I do not understand why the White Frost would only affect one part of the planet (unless White Frost is simply an ice age affecting various land masses in the witcher planet in various degrees). However, Avallach then says that this is where Geralt fought the Eredin projection -a throwback to the TW1 endboss fight, so did this particular portal take Geralt into the future except NOT as a vision this time? OR was the original "vision" by Jacques de Aldersberg was not a vision of the world that awaits the Continent but a vision of what happened on Tedd Deireadh?

Also, why would there be an option to tell Ciri later on that the White Frost was hogwash? I mean Geralt saw it with his own eyes twice! Or perhaps he knew about it and just didn't want to lose her. Or perhaps he thought that just because the White Frost had destroyed Tedd Deireadh, did not mean that his world would be destroyed.

Thus, all of these worlds have been populated by the Aen Elle elves at some time - and all were destroyed through some cataclysm sooner or later. Avallach confirms same when he says that that the other world he had traveled to was about to be destroyed by the dying sun - again, the portal on that world was pre-built so it was the end of the elven civilization there...

Ciri mentions her living in many "worlds" - one possibly describing our world in the future (i.e. people wearing metal in their head and waging war in the sky or something like that)

So it's not just planets/other universe/but also different time :hmm:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What exactly is White Frost? The first game implies that it is just an ice age (like any other, perhaps)? Ice ages can be caused by many things, namely changes in ocean currents (El Nino), volcanic eruptions, threshold carbon dioxide release, (perhaps pole reversal too?). There is an implication in the game though that White Frost moves from one world to another and that you can't escape it, so it can't be just a typical ice age.

Additionally, the book found in the lighthouse in the frozen world stats that the "frost comes from some opening between the worlds" - which is

Spoiler

what happens at the end of the game

Avallach inaccurately describes the White Frost as entropy. And there are mentions of the White Frost being a cosmic phenomenon, perhaps a Nebulae that travels through several solar systems and seeps through opening portals destroying worlds in the process? But then why would same cosmic cataclysm endanger Tir na Lia the same way it endangers the world of the Continent?

Because The Continent and the Tir na Lia planets are in the same universe, same galaxy, solar system - same plane of... something.

My entire post and speculation are probably all wrong if by "worlds" the books and the games mean just "places" - neither planets and universes and neither continents on the same planet but simply places....

I would love to hear any thoughts on this.

 

[Aqueous_Null]

Firstly, bare in mind with my post that I haven't fully completed the game yet. I'm at the very end but not fully over the line (am at the "Final Preparations" quest with Triss and Yen left).

On different worlds within TW Universe: Ultimately whether the different worlds are different universes or planets is largely down to interpretation. The level of science on the Continent isn't really advanced enough to necessarily conceive of the difference between worlds and universes etc. it's similar to how you say in your penultimate sentence: to the populus they're just different "places".

My personal interpretation is that they are indeed different planets but the "collision" between them (Conjunction of Spheres) is not a physical overlap - since that would obviously result in planetary devastation - but rather a magical/dimensional overlap similar to the portals you traverse through in that mission with Avallac'h but on a massive scale. If you did the mission about the tower that appeared in Skellige and originally came from Kovir, I think this is a fairly good analogy to use of how something of a large scale can change physical location within TW universe AND it not even be immediately apparent to the subjects (in this case, the Mage you free in the tower). Of course, that was initiated by practitioned magic and only moved from one part of the Continent to another whereas the Conjunction is between words and is likely a natural event but it is of a similar nature. It also could've been an event that happened over a period of time rather than "at once" as the opening cutscene's orrery suggests.

Anyway, the opening cinematic pictures only two worlds converging but again this could be due to the limitations of understanding of the populus within the world. Do not forget the Conjunction of Sphere is still just a theory of scholars - this should give some kind of indication as to the level of knowledge people on the Continent have. That said, it is possible perhaps even likely it was only two worlds that overlapped, although who ended up where is up for debate. To use some very anecdotal evidence - some would argue irrelevant - I'd consider the Gwent deck "Monsters". You've got The Wild Hunt in there mixed with monsters and obviously they have the Hounds. I suspect before the Conjunction, the Elves (as in, all of them - can't remember the name) lived in a world with these "monsters". When the Conjunction occurred, that's when you get the overlap. Whether the Continent or Tir na Lia is the original homeland of the Elves is up for debate although the state of the Aen Elle vs Aen Seidhe suggests Tir na Lia was the original Elf homeworld. The Aen Elle also look a bit different to the Aen Seidhe, their features are more "severe" with higher, more pronounced cheekbones. Their eyes are also significantly different, pretty much all of them have very light coloured eyes, almost glowing. I suspect the difference is Aen Seidhe are no longer pure Elves but varying degrees of half-elf due to interbreeding with humans. Same goes the other way as well, it's remarked in the lore that most humans have Elvish blood in them now. But I suspect it's for certain they all came from the same original race and world.

You also mention the other Elder races but it's possible it was the same with them. Perhaps some are native, perhaps some came from previous Conjunctions. Additionally, it does indeed seem that the Aen Elle began to master the ability to traverse worlds. Why this is we don't know, it may have been for shits and giggles and it may have been their attempts at searching for Lara Dorren's heir.

Last, but not least, and what I find the most interesting aspect of the lore: The White Frost. So, we know what it is strictly: it's the void between worlds. How we interpret that though is subjective and the term is used for two different things by people within TW universe:

1. The void between worlds.
2. The end of the world.

For (1), my personal interpretation is that it is Space, or more precisely Dark Space. Dark Space has a temperature of absolute zero, that's -273C - pretty damn cold. The "frost" we see is simply that terribly low temperature interacting with moisture in the air when introduced into the world, creating frost and freezing everything in close proximity. Of course, if you want to get technical, there would also be a vacuum there so people would get "sucked" into the portals but...magic!

(2) I think is basically just an outcome of (1) but could occur in different ways:

a) A world's star could die - or even just start to wane - and the temperature of space around the planet will become colder and colder. So, the planet's temperature would just continue to drop until it's chilled to death. This is also why it's inevitable, since every world's star will die eventually. This is a more "scientific" version of it.

b) It could also be something more magical in nature. We know for a fact that worlds are able to "overlap" magically through portals, we see this in the quest with Avallac'h, so why would this necessarily be limited to just other worlds? What happens if a magical portal opens up not to another world but into the void? What happens if a world essentially has a "Conjunction" but not with another world just with the White Frost between worlds? BAM. You dead!

And I believe Tedd Deireadh is where Alvin took us in TW1, indeed. Kind of makes you feel guilty about killing him eh? Not that I had a choice to control Geralt's decision, grmpf....

That said, an entirely different take on all of this could be that it's not about space but time. Every world we visit is actually just the Continent but at a different time. Perhaps Tir na Lia is the elves from long ago, and when they enter "our" world they're travelling forward in time.