Paragons Design Journal #4
Fortean Phenomena
Not all paranormal events in the world can be connected to a paragon “agent.” Since the Breakout, strange things simply happen from time to time, with no apparent rhyme or reason. These events have come to be known as “Fortean” after Charles Fort, famous cataloguer of the strange and unusual.
Explanations of Fortean phenomena are as common as those for paranormals and their powers, and about as reliable. There are a number of theories, but no hard evidence for any of them as yet. Like paranormals, many Fortean events seem unexplainable, at least by the known laws of science. Some of the known unusual events include:
• Rains of frogs, crickets, fish, or small stones that appear out of nowhere (often at night with a clear sky). They last only a few minutes, and then stop. When examined, the fallen objects appear completely normal, although they’re often foreign to the area where they fall.
• Incidents of spontaneous human combustion, where people rapidly burn to ashes without any heat damage to their surroundings or even their clothing.
• What has been termed “the Babel effect” in which people in an area suddenly lose the ability to communicate, developing a kind of spontaneous aphasia, which eventually reverses itself after anywhere from minutes to hours. Conversely, there’s at least one known incidence of people in an area suddenly gaining the ability to understand each others’ spoken language, in spite of language barriers.
• Unexplained lights or noises, often associated with unidentified flying objects or “ghost lights” moving through dark and abandoned areas.
• Poltergeist phenomena, including sudden unexplained sensations of cold, free-standing liquids freezing solid at room temperature, objects suddenly moving or even flying violently across a room, glass spontaneously shattering, and so forth.
• The sudden appearance of unexplained objects, such as four dozen ticking clocks, all set to the correct time, appearing in the parlor of a French home, chiming the hour, then disappearing, or three steel pyramids, each a half meter high, appearing four meters in the air above a Shinto shrine in Japan, hovering there for 52 minutes, then vanishing.
The exact line between “true” Fortean phenomena and mere unusual happenstance is even more blurred than with paranormal abilities. Scholars generally require an event to be truly unusual for it to qualify, and the catalog of possible Fortean events is an order of magnitude greater. Many people include virtually anything out of the ordinary, and some would include every unusual or unexplained event in history, from the Bermuda Triangle to the Tunguska Blast to the existence or sinking of Atlantis.
Fortean Theories
Three major theories attempt to explain Fortean phenomena: The involvement of paranormal agents, some as yet undetermined influence from the Imageria, or the fluid and fundamentally chaotic nature of reality itself.
Paranormal Agents
The most common explanation for unusual phenomena is that a paranormal is responsible, whether the “agent” knows it or not. That is, all Fortean events are actually exercises of paranormal power, but sometimes—indeed quite often—the paragon isn’t consciously causing the event. Since there’s no common means of detecting paranormal influence, there’s no way of proving or disproving the theory, although critics point out many phenomena occur while no one is present. Supporters counter that paranormal powers often seem to transcend space (and even time) as we understand it, so proximity many not be an issue.
There is at least some support for this theory in that some “Fortean” events have turned out to have paranormals as their cause: Either as part of a knowing hoax, or the work of a latent, or newly awakened, paragon lacking control over his or her powers. When the paranormal is exposed, the phenomenon stops. However, this makes up only a fraction of Fortean events and can’t explain all of them.
Imagerial Influence
Another explanation of unusual events is influence “bleeding” into the material world from the Imageria, essentially paranormal “energies” or “forces” come through from another dimension and manifest as strange events. This theory relies on the existence of the Imageria or something like it, so it’s less widely accepted. It also doesn’t explain how, or why, these “imagerial influences” occur, essentially using one complete unknown to explain another.
Things like imagerial protrusions and entities lend some credence to this theory. Paragons with more experience in the Imageria—such as the Pact—also have some success in screening out imagerial forces and stopping, or preventing, Fortean events.
Fluid Reality
Perhaps the most disturbing theory regarding Fortean phenomena involves the nature of the universe and causality. It posits a much more fluid and chaotic structure to reality than was previously believed. What we perceive as order and structure in our universe is little more than happenstance; the seemingly stable world can give way to random unusual events at any moment, with no apparent cause.
If this theory is true, it’s unprovable simply because nothing in reality is truly stable and there is no such thing as “natural” or “scientific law,” instead there are only “common habits” of the universe, which can change suddenly and without warning. The implications of such a level of cosmic meaninglessness are enough to keep many for pursuing it too vigorously.
