The Band of Dissolution is the single cut between existence and non-existence, lying “right in the middle of Terra and Antiterra”. It does not formally belong to this multiverse, yet it affects it, and it is the spine that holds up Sigil.
| Type | Concept (cosmology) |
| Spanish entry | Franja de Disolución |
Description
It has three registers:
- Sky: light and “a whiteness”; from afar, “a line like the edge of the world”.
- Ethereal: in the ethereal plane, which flickers in and out, a band with a mirror on the other side, in contact with anyone who enters the ethereal.
- Matter: “like a river or like lava”, which “may be solidified”.
It is felt before it is seen: the dread that falling in would split a person in two “at the least”, or dissolve them. When active it pulls like a waterfall, sapping the strength of whoever comes close.
Nature
It is “total entropic leakage”, where the last dimension “is only nothing”, and also “the line that makes things divide”, where light and shadow can meet: “the possibility of reunion and synthesis, being and not being”. Its dual character refers back to “that first rift”.
Effects
- If it becomes solid, everything arriving is destroyed, “like a plane at the wrong angle”. Past it, “not even a miracle: absolute destruction”.
- Information crosses it.
- Unlike the True Name, it does not “erase the name from existence”.
- It shifts alignments: a paladin near it loses his faith and drifts toward the thoughts of a druid or monk.
Position
It affects Terra and Antiterra only; it is not in Arborea. Antiterra is heading toward it, and it is approaching Sigil and “the center of the planes”. From the meeting in Venice, ten days were counted until impact.
“The bigger the Band, the less real the spine” — and the less real Sigil. When Sigil’s gates are closed, what is there is the Band. According to “the most knowledgeable”, the vectors of the end of the worlds will converge on it.
Conflicting accounts
- One record: past the Band, “absolute destruction”. Others: the Band “finishes being built” after the sacrifice ritual, and two people stayed “on the other side”, in a new world, “saved from the band of destruction”.
- Solidity appears both as a normal state and as the catastrophic one.
Open questions
- What solidifies it, and whether that is reversible.
- What lies beyond the ethereal mirror; its size and speed.
- What “that first rift” is, and where the Band came from.
- Whether splitting or dissolving allows return; what information crosses, and to whom.
- Who “the most knowledgeable” are, and which world is the “world of the Band” that is destroyed.