I never put much stock in myths about the apocalypse, after all, history repeats itself, and the world hasn't ended yet. — Jasper Cameron, Leader of The Bronze Ravens
We have been studying various end time prophecies throughout the term, but we will now turn to one of my favorite, at least in terms of how it relates to other philosophies about the world. While we don't know the exact attribution, I'm sure in your studies here you have, at some point, heard that the world can be viewed as a grain of sand on a beach. Neighboring planes are adjacent grains of sand and the sky above is the astral sea. A bit overly simplified, I know, but then again we aren't here to talk about that. It is a model and if it helps you conceptualize certain ideas in your studies of aether and the planes then that is good.
For today, though, we will be taking this model a step further. For certain schools of belief in the underwater races, the world is not a grain of sand...yet, but that is where it shall eventually end up. For what is sand? Many of you here will say that is is ground up rocks and minerals, victims of the ongoing erosion caused by freeze-thaw cycles and the abrasion of the wind, and for deserts such as the Myrdhor you are not
entirely incorrect. The pristine white sand of beaches, however, is something else entirely. Most of you, I expect, have not studied the rich and diverse bundle of life that is a coral reef, mostly due to the distance this temple is from the ocean, and partly because water breathing spells fall outside the purview of most divine spellcasters.
For the purposes of this discussion, our world is not a grain of sand, but a coral polyp. When the stars start to go out in the sky it means that the great parrot fish is coming for us. We know not whether his beak will tear out world in two, cleaving through us as it has done to so many others, or if we shall be consumed whole, to be slowly ground down in its digestive tract until all that remains is a fine white sand.
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