'Tis a strange city this... a place perpetually locked in an endless progression of elements and forces.
I've never been there myself, but my good friend Auck knows the place well, or rather, he knows what it was like when he was last there. Likely it has changed since then...
From what he's told me of his last visit there, The Cycle is a place of nature and purification. But it isn't just about the elements. He tells me that beyond what you can see and hear there, in the city, is what you can feel -- love and hate... and all that.
I would normally dismiss such considerations. I am after all a planar, and we know that everything is based on belief. But Auck speaks with certainty, and he speaks with conviction. The Cycle is a place and it is happening there all the time. He's convinced, and, to a degree, so am I. But how can a city in progression be something that one can experience satisfyingly? You've likely asked yourself that. How can something in flux create such certainty? Again, you've probably thought about that yourself. I know I did. To answer that, Auck says that you have to just go and see The Cycle for yourself.
But where is The Cycle? I don't know the answer, and neither does Auck. He just nods his head and says... "It is wherever it needs to be".
So what is The Cycle. Simply put, and from my limited knowledge, The Cycle is about the foundation of all things. The basis for all reality. It is the heart of what are the elements and where the forces of love and hate are born and die. The Cycle is said to be composed of the four true and primal elements. These are earth, air, fire, and of course, water. But, there is something beyond that in the city, two active and diametrically opposed forces which weave and cycle like the gears of Mechanus. They are love and hate and they form the potential for how all things derived from the elements in The Cycle, come to be.
I argued against this when I first heard it. How can love and hate create everything we see, hear, and feel? I've never found a satisfying answer. What cannot be denied is that affinity and antipathy have their place in our lives... and in The Cycle... they are life. You see, love and hate, the two most powerful forces in the multiverse, act upon the primal elements in surprisingly unexpected ways. They work into the very essence of each element, combining and separating them, and giving rise to infinitely varied forms. In The Cycle, reality is cyclical. Everything follows a cycle here, life, death, happiness, birth, hatred, hunger, trimming one's nails... It all has its basis in The Cycle. At the beginning of each and every cycle in The Cycle, the four primal elements are brought together and bound. But what holds together these elements? The principle force of love. Combination brings new forms and gives rise to new peoples and places in The Cycle. Who you meet one day, may be completely different the next. Where you journey to in the morning for work, may be another place entirely when you leave for the evening.
Following this "cycle"... when the force of hate penetrates the cyclical combination of primal elements, separation becomes the order of things. Hate leads to further differentiation and new and opposite people and places. Hate brings change and promotes paths of generation which the force of love cannot create.
In The Cycle, love can work to reunite everything and everyone; but then hate brings the beginning of the process around once again and what was, will no longer be.
Elementals of all types and select element-base creatures make their homes in The Cycle. In fact, they can all literally become part of The Cycle itself, and usually do. But the main elemental presence in The Cycle are the elemental weirds. It has been suggested by some, that the weirds were actually born in The Cycle, and that their extraordinary powers of divination are the unique result of the cyclical birth patterns. Every weird here has spent some portion of its previous existence as a weird of every element. These experiences have left these weirds with greater divinatory powers than their counterparts on the Material Plane. In The Cycle, weirds are not bound to their pools and can usually travel freely around the cityscape offering knowledge and guidance to those who wish it. It is when a weird leaves The Cycle, that they are bound to a pool of their birth element upon reaching the Material Plane.
During Auck's exploration of The Cycle, he learned that the bond that the weirds are said to share was the result of a unique development of The Cycle itself. And that, when a weird is once again brought into the cyclical process, the knowledge and experiences that it possessed become part of The Cycle itself -- where such aspects will remain, to be eventually deposited into the form of a new weird. Each and every weird shares the bond, whether they reside on the Material Plane, or here in the city itself. The bond of knowledge is what binds the weirds together. Although, some fear what will happen to the bond when hate is finally allowed to work its way into the connection.
The heart of The Cycle, and the one place that mortals frequent most, is a region that is halfway between the primary sphere of elements, and the forces of love and hate. It exists just before the stage of total separation of the elements and just before the application of love and hate. It is here that The Cycle is held in a state perpetual potential.
One thing Auck did tell me specifically about The Cycle is nothing that comes from the creation of the elements and love and hate involves the generation of new matter. Conservation is the order of things in The Cycle. What is used to make one building or a group of people through the force of love, can, through the application of hate, be used to form the streets and waterways that allow travel through the city on the very next day. Only the combination and separation of elements and forces remains the same. Nothing new can ever arise from this and so the city remains locked in its cyclical progression. Whether these cycles and the people and places that arise are at some point in time repeated... who can truly know.
I want to visit The Cycle when I have the opportunity, but I don't think I'd want to live there...