Cosmology of the Rime — The Structure of Reality
The Rime is the Frostian name for the whole created order — the “frozen world” crystallized by The Hoarfather in the Six Winters. Frostian cosmology pictures reality as a series of layers of cold, from the perfect Stillness above to the festering Thaw below, with the mortal world (the Middle Rime) suspended between.
The Layers of the Rime (from highest to lowest)
- The Stillness — the abode of The Eternal Chill; beyond all layers, “the cold that is not a place.” Unreachable except by the fully kept.
- The White Horizon — see The White Horizon: the endless paradise-snowfield, the Everwinter Halls, where the kept dwell with the Reforged Connor Frost and the Frostwalkers.
- The Vault of Ice — the crystal firmament made in the First Winter; the “ceiling” of the mortal sky, through which the Cold Lights (The Pale Sun, the White Moon, the Ice-shard stars) are seen.
- The Middle Rime — the mortal world of the Rimefolk and all living things: the Hoarpeaks, white plains, frozen seas, and the warm, fevered lands of the south. Here cold and Thaw contend.
- The Slush — see The Slush: the cold-and-warm margin beneath the world, the “meltwater country” where the partly-thawed dead are slowly re-frozen.
- The Mire — see The Mire: the lowest layer, the Sodden Deep, a hot, dripping, never-freezing bog of rot, the dwelling of Melt the Dripping One and the eternally-melting wicked.
The Two Forces
All of cosmology is governed by the contest of two forces (see The Nature of Reality (Preservation and Decay)):
- The Cold — preservation, stillness, clarity, eternity, truth, life-that-keeps. Descends from the Stillness.
- The Thaw — decay, motion, fever, time, appetite, death-that-melts. Wells up from the Mire.
The Middle Rime is the frontier between them. History is the story of the Thaw’s encroachment (begun at The Kindling) and the Cold’s promised reconquest (the Rewhitening).
The Cold Lights
- The Pale Sun — set “far off” in the Fourth Winter to give light without heat. Its present warmth is the Drawing-Near, a symptom of the Thaw. Frostians do not worship the sun (the error of the Solarites); they regard its growing heat as the slow fever of a sick world.
- The White Moon — beloved as the “lamp of the kept,” cold and faithful, governing the tides of the frozen seas and the liturgical month.
- The Ice-shard Stars — splinters struck from the Vault of Ice; the Frostwalkers are said to tend them. Frostian sages read the stars not for fate but for the seasons of prayer (the The Hours of Frost).
Time
In Frostian thought, time itself is a wound — a product of the Thaw, born at The Kindling. Before the Fall there were no seasons, no aging, no death, only the eternal First-Snow of Hibernfold. The end of all things is therefore not the end of time but the healing of time — the freezing of the world back into the timeless stillness it was meant to keep.