The Babel Incident, also known as Babel (
The Incident involves the figure Paracelsus, a great alchemist who centuries ago developed the World Formula theory. He discovered their universe to be created upon the foundation of an infinite set of constitutive formulas. Believing that interfering with the World Formula would give answers to all of humanity's problems, Paracelsus undertook his greatest experiment yet—and set about the most profound cataclysm mankind has seen yet. After the dust had settled, those left behind found certain fundamental aspects of their world vastly changed. New species such as Vampires emerged into being, new sources of energy such as Astermite was discovered, and new avenues to interfere with the World Formula further opened up.
This article contains plot and/or ending details for The Case Study of Vanitas.
Read at your own risk.
History[]
Paracelsus studies the World Formula Theory
Renowned alchemist, Paracelsus, proposed the World Formula Theory, which stated that just beyond the human realm there was a world in which everything had been replaced by formulas. Paracelsus was of the belief that the constitutive formulas of the world could be rewritten at will, which would then make possible the idea of ridding the human world of its plagues against humanity and help guide the humans to a blissful happiness. Paracelsus became a man obsessed and gathered as much support as he could in order to proceed with his research, ultimately building toward an experiment involving the attempted rewriting of a large-scale formula.
The failure of the experiment caused an explosion that wrought a number of cataclysmic events upon the world, and in a time of need, the humans turned to religion for comfort. When the smoke cleared, the humans were disturbed to discover that The Babel Incident had created a number of things that had never before existed in the world. The formula that constituted coal was altered to become the blue mineral, Astermite, from which power could be produced without almost any environmental pollution; a flora formula was altered to create bioluminescent flowers; and, most importantly, the human formula had been altered and gave way to the existence of Vampires.
In addition to creating Vampires traditionally born on the night of the Crimson Moon, The Babel Incident also created Borders, which acted as passageways between the human realm and Altus, a world of sealed spaces created by the Incident; however, only Vampires could make use of them due to having also been created by the Babel Incident.
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Trivia[]
- Babel is directly named after the Tower of Babel,[1] an origin myth from the Book of Genesis serving to explain why humans across the world spoke different languages. The narrative became emblematic of the theme of human hubris, represented by the once united human race building a tower so high as to reach the heavens that God smote them down and scattered their languages to be incomprehensible to one another as punishment.
- The kanji in the incident's name (混沌) literally means "chaos" or "disarray."