Dice, dead gods, and the meaning of life, the universe and everything
So we had a bit of a cosmic hope moment in our dnd session last week and I'm still thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about it. It was so powerful, so good, I have to share this little moment, at least from my/my character's perspective.
So. Imagine this. You are living in a world with magic and gods and planes of existence, where existence as a whole is torn between the warring forces of order and chaos. You know the gods exist primarily through the measurable ways they influence the world. During the latest upheaval, some of them vanished. Others rose to power. Order stole the natural world (or at least tried to) and their incompetence and shortsightedness resulted in it crashing back down less than a century later, in your lifetime. You know the gods exist. Some of them may be Good but they are not good. You've never seen one.
Through a series of mishaps that turn from funny to terrifying the longer they go on, you end up in a different world, a pale copy of your own, a realm that's always dark, no sun, no stars. It would be nice (quiet, peaceful, beautiful even in the emptiness) if it wasn't trying its best to give you magically induced depression and full of things that want you dead. You travel across a desert, seeing a structure in the distance.
It's a god. Or at least what remains of one. A massive monument covered in arcane glyphs, the totality of fundamental knowledge about the nature of the world distilled into its purest form --- in theory. You find an enclave of half-mad scholars huddling despondently near a completely blank slate.
A curse lies on this land, given opportunity to infest the moment the god died, the moment its great wisdom was no longer stabilising the fabric of reality around it. It's poisoning the land, harming the people, affecting more than just this tiny piece of the world. It cannot stay like this, but you are just... people. This is bigger than you, bigger than all of you, bigger than you can ever imagine.
Still, you can't do nothing. As a short term solution, you pool your resources together and (begrudgingly) beseech a god, hoping they'll deign to help, and they do, the curse lifted, at least for now.
Your friend suggests bringing the wisdom back and attempts to write common wisdom on the monolith. Everything has its end. He is violently abjured. You come to the realisation that the knowledge needs to be specifically fundamental knowledge. The inner workings of the world, described in absolute precision and accuracy. And you may be significantly more learned than a majority of the population, but... that's a tall ask. That's a very tall ask.
Still, no bone in your body thinks of giving up at this point. You and the other scholar in the group immediately start thinking about it, figuring out a topic both of you know enough about to potentially be able to derive an answer and bouncing ideas off each other with increasing fervour as you get closer and closer to a solution.
(Out of character, the DM tells us this is a Legendary Arcana check - dice roll target to hit: 30. We're level 4. We stack every bonus we can get, a high arcana skill bonus, advantage, Bardic inspiration, Guidance, and a one-time-use bonus for another d4.)
(The dice are rolled. 18 on the d20, final result....)
You spend the entire day brainstorming with the other scholar, using about half your stash of paper to work through increasingly complicated ideas, when suddenly it clicks. A single sigil, representing in its totality the concept of drawing mana to do magic. Everything about it, the mathematics, the theoretical arcana, the very fundament of what it is, how it works, why it works. It's so elegant, so perfect, now that you have it you can't imagine writing it down in any other way.
You have an answer, and your friend traces it out on the stone. Before either of you can take hold of the chisel, the symbol sinks into the stone. The blank slate no longer blank.
You're so happy you could cry.
And then you look up, and you realise you've just covered a square foot of a structure (creature? you're still unsure) so tall it reaches into the sky and so wide it takes more than half an hour to walk its circumference. The work required to refill it is.... immense. Unimaginable.
But you've proven it can be done. It will take hundreds, maybe thousands of people. It will take a very, very, very long time. But it can be done. The two of you explain everything you can to the scholars at the monolith and leave them a copy of your research, as complete as you can make it. They look at you with hope and wonder in their eyes, perhaps for the first time in centuries, and it takes very little effort to encourage them to follow in your footsteps, to continue this work. When your group leaves, still talking about it, contributing ideas about who else would be willing and able to contribute knowledge to the monolith --- the scholars of the University back home would kill to be part of this --- the scholars behind you are already working on the next piece of the puzzle.
It's stuck with me, because I feel like it hits at the essence of cosmic hope. You are insignificant in the face of the vastness of the universe, but what you do still matters. The world is uncaring, the earth will keep spinning, but love and hope and kindness and dedication are as real as they were yesterday. Your life has no inherent meaning but every action you take gives it one.
The meaning of existence is love.
