Beginner’s Guide to Suggsverse
If you are just jumping into the Heir to the Stars series, then you might need to know a few things before really exploring the Limits of Power.
Welcome to Suggsverse
Suggsverse is large.
There is no particularly useful way to pretend otherwise.
If this is your first encounter with Heir to the Stars, Pharos of the End, Solecism, or any of the surrounding stories, characters, concepts, and articles collected throughout this website, you may very quickly discover that you have entered something considerably larger than a conventional fictional setting.
That is intentional.
You are not expected to understand everything immediately.
You are not expected to memorize every character, terminology, hierarchy, principle, particle, location, philosophy, title, or concept before you begin reading.
You are not expected to study Suggsverse before you are allowed to experience Suggsverse.
Begin somewhere.
Then explore.
There Is No Single Correct Entrance
Suggsverse has accumulated stories, characters, concepts, histories, philosophical systems, cosmological structures, mysteries, conflicts, and terminology across many years of writing.
Because of this, there is no single introduction capable of showing you everything without also destroying much of the experience of discovering it.
Some readers may begin with Christopher Sincere Pride.
Some may begin with Lamont Heartfelt Vanity.
Some may encounter ♠The Ace of Spades♠.
Some may begin with the Cosmic Hierarchy.
Some may stumble upon Suggslogic.
Others may arrive through the Descending Ladder of Nothingness, the Limits of Power, Deus, the First Floor, the particle systems, or one seemingly random character page that sends them somewhere completely unexpected.
That is fine.
Suggsverse was not designed so that every reader must walk through the same doorway.
Follow what interests you.
The connections will begin appearing.
Do Not Worry About Understanding Everything
One of the easiest ways to make Suggsverse unnecessarily difficult is to believe that every unfamiliar term must be completely understood the first moment it appears.
It does not.
Sometimes a concept exists before its full explanation.
Sometimes the explanation exists somewhere else.
Sometimes another story provides additional context.
Sometimes something you understood one way will appear differently after you have encountered more of the setting.
That does not necessarily mean the earlier material became wrong.
It may mean you know more now.
Allow that to happen.
You may encounter something, accept that you do not completely understand it, continue reading, and recognize its significance much later.
That process is part of the experience.
Familiar Words May Not Mean Familiar Things
Suggsverse uses words that you already know.
Power.
Nothingness.
Possibility.
Space.
Atom.
Soul.
Existence.
Death.
End.
Infinity.
Transcendence.
Logic.
Creation.
Reality.
Some of these words may initially appear recognizable.
Do not automatically assume that their familiar meanings exhaust how they operate here.
Suggsverse frequently begins with something understandable and continues investigating it long after another story might have stopped.
Sometimes the important question is not simply what something is.
The important question is what else might be hidden inside the assumption that you already understand it.
That discovery is better experienced than spoiled.
Suggslogic
You will encounter the term Suggslogic throughout this website.
It is one of the foundational concepts associated with Suggsverse, and understanding it will eventually help illuminate a great deal of what occurs throughout the stories and surrounding architecture.
You do not need to master Suggslogic before continuing.
Read about it.
Keep it somewhere in the back of your mind.
Then continue exploring.
You may discover that its implications become clearer through the stories themselves.
The World Matters
Characters are important in Suggsverse.
So is the world they inhabit.
Do not assume that everything surrounding a character is merely background scenery waiting for someone important to arrive.
Locations matter.
Objects matter.
The structures underlying matter matter.
The conditions surrounding an interaction matter.
The architecture of a place may matter long before the story explicitly tells you why.
Sometimes the most unusual thing occurring in a scene is not necessarily the character standing at the center of it.
Keep looking.
Characters Matter Too
Suggsverse contains an enormous cast.
Some characters possess extensive histories.
Some appear briefly.
Some return years later.
Some seem straightforward until another story changes how you understand them.
Some characters will tell you exactly what they are.
Others will show you.
Pay attention to what characters actually accomplish, what they survive, what they fail against, what affects them, what does not affect them, and who they are capable of meaningfully interacting with.
You do not always need an explanation immediately.
Sometimes the event is the clue.
Power Matters
Suggsverse is partially an exploration of power.
That has never been something the project needs to hide.
Characters possess extraordinary capabilities. Conflicts matter. Comparisons matter. What one character can do to another may matter enormously.
But Suggsverse also asks what happens when conventional discussions of power stop being sufficient.
That question develops gradually.
There is no reason for a beginner to have the answer before beginning.
If the subject interests you, explore Power and The Limits of Power.
Then continue.
You may eventually discover why the language surrounding power changes.
Pay Attention to Interactions
A useful habit while reading Suggsverse is simply to pay attention.
Not because every sentence hides a secret code, but because interactions can acquire significance later.
Someone affects someone.
Someone survives something.
Someone enters somewhere.
Someone recognizes something.
Someone returns.
Someone fails.
Someone succeeds.
Someone says something that initially sounds unimportant.
You may understand the event perfectly well when it occurs.
Later, you may learn something that changes the question.
That is one of the pleasures of exploring the larger project.
Do not rush to have every implication explained beforehand.
Older Material Is Still Part of the Journey
Suggsverse has been written across many years.
The language has evolved.
The concepts have evolved.
The explanations have evolved.
The stories have evolved.
That does not mean every older description should automatically be discarded whenever newer terminology appears.
Sometimes an older story captures something before the vocabulary surrounding it became more precise.
Sometimes later material reveals additional implications.
Sometimes an idea introduced many years earlier becomes considerably more important after another part of the setting is explored.
Read with that possibility in mind.
The past may still have something to say about the present.
Do Not Treat the Website Like Homework
This website contains a large amount of material.
You do not need to read every page in order.
You do not need to memorize the Cosmic Hierarchy.
You do not need to understand every branch of the Descending Ladder of Nothingness.
You do not need to know every particle before reading about a character.
You do not need to understand every Deus.
You do not need to complete an imaginary examination before moving to another section.
This is fiction.
Explore it.
If something interests you, follow it.
If a hyperlink leads somewhere strange, open it.
If you encounter something you do not understand, you can return later.
If one character catches your attention, follow that character.
If one concept fascinates you, follow the concept.
There is no prize for reading Suggsverse in the most efficient possible order.
If You Want to Start With the Stories
Begin with the stories.
That may sound obvious, but it is worth saying.
The articles on this website provide additional information, terminology, philosophical exploration, character material, and architecture, but Suggsverse is still fundamentally a body of fiction.
You can encounter concepts through narrative before studying their technical explanations.
In some cases, that may be the better experience.
Allow the characters and events to introduce questions before searching for every answer.
If You Want to Start With the Concepts
You can do that too.
If your interest is primarily conceptual, several pages provide useful entrances into different areas of Suggsverse.
Suggslogic offers one route.
L-Particles, W-Particles, and Suggsparticles offer another.
Power and The Limits of Power provide another direction.
The Resistance Factor opens a different set of questions.
The Road to the End concerns another.
The Descending Ladder of Nothingness leads somewhere else entirely.
The First Floor provides an entrance into the larger architecture.
You do not have to explore all of them.
Choose a door.
If You Want to Start With a Character
Pick one.
That is genuinely enough.
Read the character's material.
Follow the names connected to them.
Follow their stories.
Follow their enemies.
Follow their allies.
Follow their titles.
Follow the concepts associated with them.
Eventually, one character can lead you into a surprisingly large portion of Suggsverse.
Christopher Sincere Pride alone can lead into questions concerning identity, power, relationships, inheritance, narrative structure, authorship, ontology, conflict, and much more.
Lamont Heartfelt Vanity can take you somewhere different.
Another character may expose an entirely different region of the project.
There is no requirement that the Cosmic Hierarchy be your first encounter with Suggsverse.
Sometimes a person is the better doorway.
If Something Seems Excessive
It probably is.
Suggsverse is interested in excess.
Excessive scale.
Excessive abstraction.
Excessive complexity.
Excessive possibility.
Excessive negation.
Excessive escalation.
Excessive questions.
That excess is not necessarily asking you to memorize more information.
Often it is asking you to reconsider the assumptions you brought with you.
If something appears to have reached the endpoint of a particular idea, Suggsverse may continue.
That continuation is part of its identity.
There May Be More Than the Page Is Telling You
A character page describes a character.
It does not necessarily describe everything that character implies.
A cosmology page describes a structure.
It does not necessarily explain every event occurring within that structure.
An article explains a concept.
It does not necessarily exhaust every application of that concept.
A battle shows an encounter.
It does not necessarily tell you everything the encounter reveals.
The information is distributed.
Stories speak to articles.
Articles speak to other articles.
Characters illuminate other characters.
Later stories can illuminate earlier stories.
Sometimes you will discover the connection immediately.
Sometimes you will not notice it for years.
Both experiences are valid.
Let Yourself Discover Things
This may be the most important advice in this guide.
Do not turn Suggsverse into an encyclopedia that must be solved before it can be enjoyed.
There are mysteries.
There are unanswered questions.
There are deliberately unexplained implications.
There are things whose complete context may exist somewhere you have not reached.
There are also things that have not been completely revealed.
That uncertainty is not necessarily a problem waiting to be corrected.
Sometimes it is part of the architecture.
If you discover something and suddenly remember an older scene differently, go back and read it.
If one page makes another page stranger, follow the connection.
If you realize that something you dismissed earlier may have been considerably more important than you thought, investigate it.
Those moments belong to you.
A beginner's guide should not take them away.
A Suggested Starting Path
If you still want a little direction, begin with Suggslogic and then choose whichever subject interests you most.
If you want to understand the foundations underlying apparently ordinary things, explore the pages concerning Atoms, L-Particles, W-Particles, and Suggsparticles.
If power interests you, explore Power and The Limits of Power.
If the larger architecture interests you, begin exploring The First Floor.
If negation and absence interest you, enter the Descending Ladder of Nothingness.
If characters interest you more than conceptual articles, ignore all of those suggestions and choose a character.
Seriously.
There is no mandatory route.
One Last Thing
Suggsverse is not asking you to understand everything before you begin.
It is asking you to enter something larger than your initial understanding of it.
There is a difference.
You will encounter characters whose significance is not immediately obvious.
You will encounter ordinary scenes occurring inside extraordinary conditions.
You will encounter familiar terminology used in unfamiliar ways.
You will encounter explanations that create additional questions.
You will encounter old material that looks different after reading something new.
You will probably encounter something that makes you say:
“Wait. If this is true, then what the hell was happening back there?”
Good.
Go back.
Look again.
Welcome to Suggsverse.