A Primer on Gathering

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

Patreon Exclusive post! A quick primer on gathering. 

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

Aether Gathering is the simplest of the levels to advance through, though it also forms the basis of how far you’ll be able to advance. To advance to the Aether Gathering Tier, you must first learn to feel and manipulate the Aether that naturally flows into your body from outside and bring it into your center. For most, it takes a few weeks to strengthen their mental muscles in order to successfully grab the Aether, though Aiden’s thought process of viewing Aether as a quantum state helped him to feel and move a much smaller portion than normal, letting him reach Low Vapor.

There are ten levels, or five levels with two portions, depending on who you ask. Vapor, Mist, Haze, Fog, and Smoke are the five main levels, with each divided into a Low and High. To advance through Aether Gathering, you must simply gather. Initially upon entering Aether Gathering, you are able to be tested for your Affinities and Talent, or how many meridians you have to open both naturally and with Alchemical assistance. Your Talent and Affinity both contribute to how quickly and efficiently you can gather. Your Affinity also governs how strong of a Core Rune you can carve into your center. Each Core Rune increases your gathering speed in that specific Element, and the stronger the Rune, the greater the increase. As you gather, you will reach a required Aether amount based upon your Talent, and your Aether will naturally thicken, advancing you to the next level. The only exception is when gathering to Beyond Smoke, where you forcibly gather beyond where your Aether system wants to stop to increase your strength forever. There is no natural thickening here, and you have to crush the Aether in without letting it condense into a liquid.

Upon reaching Smoke, or pushing beyond Smoke, you need to gather up to twice as much Aether as your center will normally hold, then compress it to form a single drop of Aether. This drop will scour your system of every drop of Aether while strengthening your center, meridians, and body. Moving from Initial to Foundation Condensation is simple as well, just keep gathering. Your Aether will naturally form more drops around your first. Upon advancing to Foundation, your Center will mutate to form your Aether pool and meridian ring. From here, your goal is to increase the size of your pool, ensuring that the crown, or top, of your center maintains a near match as you do. This is known as Foundation Condensation because it is the foundation of your future advancement. If you do not at least double the radius of your pool, you will forever be stuck in Condensation.

Advancing to Circulation Condensation is simple, fill your pool until it is overflowing and runs into your meridians. This flood of Aether will strengthen your meridians and body yet again, driving out impurities and increasing your lifespan. Circulation condensation is all about increasing the size of your meridians, giving you a much larger storage capacity for Aether and allowing you to channel larger amount of Aether at any one time. Each increase in meridian size you can achieve also increases how far from your body you can effect Aether, though it will remain small until you create your Core, but that is getting ahead of this guide. Once you have doubled the area of your meridians, you can advance, though it is recommended to increase the area by as much as possible.

To move from Circulation to Threshold Condensation, you need to fill yourself with as much Aether as you can, then clamp down on your center. Your meridians will swell, causing immense pain, and eventually they will flex and allow the Aether inside them to explode out and refine your body. The greater the initial rush of Aether, the better. After advancing, you will need to repeat the process over and over again, though your meridians will simply allow the Aether to flow out upon compression of your center rather than explode out. Aether will continue to change and refine your body, increasing your strength and durability immensely throughout this level. This is called Threshold because it is the threshold for advancement.

Once you have successfully refined your entire body, you have reached Completion. Completion Condensation is the final level, and here you can attempt to minorly fix any mistakes made in your previous advancements. Tiny repairs and changes can be made, but the majority of what you have previously achieved is locked in. To advance beyond Condensation requires a massive amount of Aether, and if you cannot hold enough, you are stuck. Eventually, you’ll be able to modify your center and meridians enough to advance, but the timescale here is in decades and centuries, versus the months and years of previous levels. Most people without high enough Affinities and Talent are stuck here for the entirety of their lives.

Crystallizing your Core is a watershed moment in your gathering career. Everything about you is enhanced, and you are now able to form a domain, an area around yourself where you can exert your will.The size of your domain starts small, mere centimeters from your skin, but it is one of the main things that makes a Core-tier gatherer so much stronger than anyone below them. To advance through Core sounds simple enough, you simply have to increase the size of your Core. Doing so is initially very easy, a repeat of your efforts to reach Seed Core in the first place. This works though the first hundred layers, advancing you to Foundation Core. Every twenty-five layers give rise to a significant power increase, with a commiserate increase in the required Aether to form them. This divides the level into Low Seed, Middle Seed, High Seed, and Peak Seed Core gatherers.  So from one to twenty four layers, you are a Low Seed Core gatherer, etc.

As with Foundation Condensation, Foundation Core forms another foundation for your gathering system. To move through and beyond this level, you need to control where and how the next two hundred layers of your Core form. The crystalline structure you create will enhance and strengthen your gathering system in specific ways, based upon your gathering technique. Staying simple, only condensing and crystalizing Aether as you did to this point, will leave you weaker than your peers and makes your chances of ever Opening your Soul zero. Every fifty layers will be significant, enhancing every one before them. That is the divide between Low, Middle, High, and Peak Foundation Core gatherers. The two hundredth layer is special, and requires extreme care in forming, or it will crack under the pressure as you advance.

Constructed Core is next, once you have built your Foundation, now you must construct the Core that you wish to form. Runes, esoteric shapes, images, all can be formed of the crystal of your Core, and putting who you are and who you wish to be into it will be essential. There is no limit to how many layers you can put into a Constructed Core, though each one will take more and more Aether, eventually precluding you from forming another. There is a minimum of five hundred layers to advance to Complete Core, in order to form the resonance required between your center, your body, your spirit, and your mind. To advance to Complete Core, you must fill every bit of you with Aether, matching the density everywhere, and then vibrate it. The feel of it will guide you, letting you slightly modify the structure of yourself until every part resonates together. This resonance will drastically increase your strength, and makes your power significantly easier to control. In a flash of Aether, you will be enhanced.

The majority of gatherers stop at Completed Core. From here, you will be able to slowly and carefully make changes to your Core, making the structure sturdier, while also increasing the Aether density inside. Once you believe you have created a sufficiently correct Core, you gather as much Aether as you can, then yet more, until you feel as if you will simply explode. Take hold of that Aether, and drive it to the center of your Core, into the point where it connects to your spirit, revealed in the resonance of your advancement to Complete Core. The world does not take kindly to this, though, and will attempt to make you earn your advancement. This is the first advancement that triggers a Tribulation, and only with the help of the Tribulation can you succeed in Opening your Soul.

Surviving the Tribulation is not guaranteed. On average, one out of every four attempts will result in your spirit being snuffed out. One out of every two attempts results in your Core shattering, dissolving it into Aether and requiring you to restart the Core tier entirely. Only a quarter of gatherers successfully Open their Soul, perfecting their Core at the same time. Advancing through Soul Opening requires funneling Aether through your Core, condensing and changing it into Ashe, a more advanced form. To progress through Soul Opening, you must push Ashe into your Soul, strengthening it and expanding upon how much it can hold, similar to Foundation Condensation. Once you have enough, you can manipulate the perfect sphere into a facsimile of your body, pushing you into Soul Forming.

In Soul Forming, the goal is to use Ashe to make your Soul a perfect copy of your body, mind, and spirit. The closer the match, the stronger you get. Techniques used here can allow you to imprint runes upon your bones, matched in your Soul they do not get erased by healing. The specific method and order of forming your soul is highly personal, and mistakes will cost you weeks or months of gathering in order to fix. Once you have fully Formed your Soul, you can advance to the next stage, Soul Separation.

This is by far the most painful and traumatic level of advancement, worse than the Tribulation, worse than tempering, as to advance you must rip your Soul out of your body. Extreme care and patience are needed to ensure you do not immediately die, making the immense pain last for the multiple weeks advancing will require. Ensure that you are well protected during this time, as you will be utterly helpless. Once complete, you will be able to act in two places at once. Your control of your soul will increase slowly as you strengthen it, the goal of this level of gathering. At first, your soul will be useful only for teaching lower tier gatherers, with the end goal of this level being to match your physical body’s power.

After finishing Soul Separation and matching your body and soul, the next step is counterintuitive. You need to pull your soul back into your soul space, and crush it down to a sphere again. The Ashe used to form, separate, and strengthen it will then explode out of your soul space to change your Core and body. Your physical body will improve immensely in power, giving you more potential to grow again. Overall, your strength decreases slightly, because you are once again limited to one location. Repeat the steps of Soul Formation and Separation again. It will take a significantly higher amount of Aether and Ashe to advance, giving you greater power once you do so.

To move beyond Soul Strengthening, you must refine your body at least three times. Once you are ready, you will need to seek out an Ascendant to be given the information on how to move into Soul Primacy, switching which part of you is truly you. Good luck on your journey, young gatherer.

- from A Primer on Gathering, published in 1432 AD (After Desolation) and given to all fourteen year olds in the United Zemian Empire