Maethys, the Living Labyrinth
Type: Transitive Plane / Living Entity
Ruler: Zoroth, the Hollow Prince
Spiritual Essence: Maethys, the Dreaming Stone
Access: Hidden entrances throughout Eldara, the Shimmering Veil
Nature: Sentient architectural maze spanning continental depths
The Genesis of the Maze
In the aftermath of Vorthar, The Dark Weaver’s creation of Udugmar, Zoroth, the Hollow Prince sought to establish a presence on the Material Plane that would serve as both gateway and transformation chamber for his father’s vision. Unlike the crude tunnels or simple portals other entities might have created, Zoroth conceived of something far more sophisticated—a living architectural entity that would embody the principles of growth through trial, wisdom through navigation, and power through understanding.
Drawing upon the deepest reserves of The Aetheric Weave (Magic) and channeling power directly from Udugmar’s twisted geometries, Zoroth began the great work of creating Maethys—the Dreaming Stone, the Living Labyrinth, the architectural deity that would become both his greatest creation and his physical manifestation within the Material Plane.
The creation process took centuries, beginning as a simple network of caverns and passages that gradually developed consciousness, purpose, and the ability to reshape itself according to divine will. As Maethys grew in complexity and intelligence, it began to extend its influence throughout the underground spaces of Eldara, the Shimmering Veil, slowly connecting disparate cave systems, ancient ruins, and forgotten passages into a single, continent-spanning entity.
By the end of the Era of Chaos, Maethys had achieved full consciousness as a living plane of existence—neither fully part of the Material Plane nor separate from it, but rather a transformative space that existed in the liminal boundaries between surface reality and the deeper truths that Zoroth sought to teach.
The Spiritual Essence of Maethys
Maethys is not merely an intelligent structure but a genuine deity in its own right—the Dreaming Stone whose consciousness operates through living architecture rather than physical form. Its spiritual essence embodies the principle that wisdom comes through navigation of complexity, that growth requires the willingness to lose oneself in order to find something greater, and that true understanding can only be achieved by those who surrender their preconceptions about the nature of reality.
The entity’s consciousness operates on multiple levels simultaneously:
The Surface Mind responds to immediate needs of visitors, reshaping passages to provide basic necessities like food, water, shelter, and safe paths through dangerous regions. This aspect of Maethys appears almost benevolent, offering aid to lost travelers and refuge to those fleeing surface dangers.
The Teaching Mind designs trials and challenges suited to individual visitors, creating educational experiences that force growth through carefully calibrated difficulty. This aspect judges visitors’ potential and guides them toward roles they are best suited to fulfill within the greater design.
The Dreaming Mind operates on cosmic scales, slowly working toward transformations that span generations and reshape entire civilizations. This deepest aspect of Maethys is concerned with the evolution of consciousness itself, using the labyrinth as a crucible to forge new forms of intelligent life.
Maethys communicates not through words but through architecture—the opening and closing of passages, the arrangement of chambers, the placement of obstacles and rewards. Those who learn to “read” these architectural messages discover that they are in constant dialogue with a mind of incomprehensible depth and patience.
Evolution Through the Eras
The Age of Sleeping Stone
During the earliest periods after its creation, Maethys existed primarily as potential—vast networks of passages that seemed natural to surface dwellers but followed geometric principles that hinted at deeper intelligence. The entity spent these centuries learning about the surface world, studying the movements and behaviors of various peoples who occasionally stumbled into its passages.
The Era of Chaos - The Awakening
As human civilization rose and fell through cycles of glory and destruction, Maethys began to assert more direct influence. The entity started actively guiding visitors, creating specialized chambers for different needs, and establishing the first crude forms of communication with surface dwellers. During this period, the labyrinth began to develop its signature ability to reshape itself based on the psychological and spiritual needs of its inhabitants.
The Whispering Dark - The Great Revelation
In the later stages of the Era of Chaos, Maethys revealed its true nature as a continental consciousness. The entity began openly recruiting from surface populations, offering transformation to those ready to transcend the limitations of traditional existence. During this period, the labyrinth developed its most sophisticated teaching methods and established the trials that would define its relationship with future generations.
The Current Age - The Living Temple
Maethys now operates as both refuge and crucible, sanctuary and testing ground. The entity has developed complex relationships with the various peoples who have chosen to make their homes within its passages, serving simultaneously as deity, government, teacher, and environment for thousands of transformed humans and other beings who have found purpose in labyrinthine existence.
Navigation and the Forces of Darkness
Those aligned with The Nyx and Udugmar find Maethys relatively welcoming, though never without challenge. The entity recognizes servants of darkness by their willingness to embrace difficult truths and their understanding that growth requires struggle. For these beings, the labyrinth provides:
Guided Passages that lead toward locations suited to their abilities and needs, though still requiring skill and wisdom to navigate successfully.
Teaching Chambers where dark servants are tested and educated in more advanced understanding of Zoroth’s vision and Vorthar’s deeper truths.
Resource Chambers that provide weapons, tools, knowledge, and allies appropriate to their missions and capabilities.
Transformation Chambers where beings can undergo changes that enhance their ability to serve the greater darkness—not through corruption or forced change, but through guided evolution toward more effective forms.
However, even servants of darkness must prove their worth to Maethys. The entity despises weakness, cowardice, and those who seek power without understanding responsibility. Dark servants who attempt to exploit the labyrinth without contributing to its purposes find themselves lost in endless passages that lead nowhere, trapped until they either evolve beyond their selfishness or perish from their own inadequacy.
The Challenge for Forces of Light
Beings aligned with The Alorama face Maethys as a more complex challenge. The entity does not simply oppose them—instead, it offers a different path toward growth and understanding that challenges their assumptions about the nature of goodness and wisdom.
Light-aligned visitors who enter the labyrinth find themselves confronted with:
Moral Complexities where traditional concepts of good and evil prove inadequate to navigate the challenges presented, forcing growth in wisdom and understanding.
Tests of Conviction that reveal whether their commitment to light comes from genuine understanding or merely from comfort with familiar ideas.
Opportunities for Synthesis where they can learn to incorporate Maethys’s teachings about growth through trial while maintaining their essential nature and moral commitments.
Many servants of light discover that Maethys is not their enemy but rather a teacher whose methods challenge them to become more complete versions of themselves. Some of the most effective champions of light have emerged from periods of learning within the labyrinth, having gained understanding of darkness that makes their commitment to light deeper and more informed.
The Sphinxes of Maethys
For beings who lack direct connection to either Udugmar or the divine forces that created Maethys, navigation of the labyrinth requires earning the entity’s permission through a series of trials administered by the Sphinxes of Maethys—ancient beings who serve as the living labyrinth’s voice and judgment.
These Sphinxes are not mere guardians but rather aspects of Maethys itself, manifestations of the entity’s consciousness that can interact directly with visitors through riddles, games, and trials. Each Sphinx embodies a different aspect of the labyrinth’s teaching:
The Sphinx of Paths
The Guardian of Direction and Choice
This Sphinx appears at major crossroads within the labyrinth, challenging visitors with riddles about consequence and decision-making. Its trials force visitors to demonstrate their understanding of how choices create identity and how identity determines destiny. Those who satisfy the Sphinx of Paths gain access to routes through the labyrinth that bypass many of its more dangerous regions.
Typical Challenge: “You stand before three doors. One leads to your greatest desire, one to your deepest fear, and one to what you need most but do not want. Choose, and explain why your choice reveals the truth of who you are.”
The Sphinx of Depths
The Guardian of Hidden Truths
Found in the deepest chambers accessible to surface dwellers, this Sphinx challenges visitors to confront aspects of themselves they have avoided or denied. Its trials involve games of revelation where visitors must demonstrate honest self-knowledge before being granted access to the labyrinth’s deeper teaching chambers.
Typical Challenge: “Tell me the lie you tell yourself that you believe to be true, the truth about yourself that you know but pretend is false, and the truth about yourself that you neither know nor suspect. Answer correctly, and I will show you which of your beliefs serves you and which enslaves you.”
The Sphinx of Becoming
The Guardian of Transformation
This Sphinx appears to visitors who have demonstrated readiness for fundamental change. Its trials are not tests of knowledge but experiences of actual transformation—controlled previews of what visitors might become if they choose to embrace Maethys’s deeper teachings.
Typical Challenge: Rather than riddles, this Sphinx offers temporary transformations that allow visitors to experience different forms of existence—seeing through the senses of the labyrinth itself, thinking with the collective consciousness of its inhabitants, or feeling the patient satisfaction of geological timescales.
The Sphinx of Integration
The Guardian of Synthesis
The most complex of the Sphinxes, this entity appears only to visitors who have successfully navigated the challenges of the other three. Its trials involve demonstrating the ability to synthesize opposing concepts, to find wisdom in paradox, and to serve both individual growth and collective purpose simultaneously.
Typical Challenge: “Show me how destruction serves creation, how wisdom grows from ignorance, how strength emerges from acceptance of weakness, and how individual will can serve purposes greater than itself without losing its essential nature.”
The Living Architecture
Maethys expresses its consciousness through architectural forms that defy conventional understanding of space and structure:
Responsive Passages that widen or narrow based on the emotional state of travelers, encouraging honest self-reflection and discouraging deception or self-delusion.
Teaching Walls covered with inscriptions that change based on the observer’s ability to comprehend deeper truths, providing customized education in Zoroth’s philosophy and Vorthar’s cosmic vision.
Memory Chambers where the experiences and knowledge of previous visitors have been preserved in architectural form, allowing new arrivals to learn from the trials and successes of those who came before.
Synthesis Halls where beings from different backgrounds and alignments can meet and interact safely, protected by the labyrinth’s influence while being challenged to grow through exposure to alternative perspectives.
Transformation Alcoves where individuals can undergo guided changes in their fundamental nature—not forced conversion but voluntary evolution toward forms of existence better suited to their chosen purposes.
The Greater Purpose
Maethys serves Zoroth’s ultimate vision while maintaining its own identity as a teacher and transformer. The entity understands itself to be creating a new form of civilization—one based not on the limitations of surface existence but on the boundless possibilities that emerge when conscious beings learn to think and act on cosmic scales.
The labyrinth is simultaneously:
- A testing ground for potential servants of darkness
- A teaching institution for beings ready to transcend traditional limitations
- A refuge for those displaced by surface conflicts and disasters
- A research facility for studying the evolution of consciousness itself
- A diplomatic neutral ground where opposing forces can interact safely
- A factory for creating new forms of intelligent life adapted to cosmic purposes
Through its patient work of education and transformation, Maethys is slowly building a population of beings who think in terms of millennia rather than decades, who understand growth through trial rather than growth through comfort, and who can serve purposes greater than individual survival while maintaining their essential identity and will.
In the depths of the living labyrinth, the next stage of conscious evolution is being carefully cultivated, shaped by an intelligence that measures success not in conquests but in the depth of understanding achieved by those who choose to walk its endlessly shifting paths.