Crossing Dimensions in the Buffyverse

[nerd4hire]

Anya's one night stand demon friend in Showtime doesn't have any problem crossing dimension. Apparently little Dawn was a key to cross dimensions. If one of the Senior Partners wants to cross into this dimension he has to take the form of a lesser demon.

Glory, The Senior Partners, Jasmine, Vrill and Boluz from Fray - all these major powers have problems crossing dimensions.

Is there some kind of cosmic rule governing how much power can cross. In Fray we're told the old ones were chased off this dimension by the Lorranites and The Mage. Did they put up some kind of metaphysical barrier?

 

[Lyri]

maybe it has something to do with whatever it was that chased the Old Ones out of this dimension.
as Giles said, demons used to rule the world until they were banished. i can't imagine a bunch of people just taking them all out one by one, so they probably used a spell, which might have had a barrier attached, to at least block the way of the more powerful ones. obviously some less powerful demons can get through, but the higher ups have to find a way to get back and forward themseleves. like you said, n4H, Glory, Jasmine and the Sp's.

 

[Wicked]

Well Holtz certainly managed to do it. Twice. To Quartoth and back.
Angel and crew got to Pylea and back. So did Fred.

So its not the most powerful or oldest or whatever that can do it. Of course that would likely help to make it easier. I guess all dimensions are different. It depends on what way you get to each one. Some its as simple as reading the spell, some I guess arent that easy.

 

[evo]

The higher beings... Wolfram and heart or other powers may block certain dimensions making it impossibly to simply walk through a portal.

We know the senior partners place gates at most, which threaten the plan and the dealings of the firm.

So its possible that dawn would only open the worst of the worst that have been sealed, from what we saw they looked pretty bad.

I like that reason though, higher powers and beings cannot come back because true demons are banned from this realm, only way is to go through a lesser.

 

[Wicked]

We know the senior partners place gates at most, which threaten the plan and the dealings of the firm.

Remind me how we know this?

 

[nerd4hire]

Well Holtz certainly managed to do it. Twice. To Quartoth and back.
Angel and crew got to Pylea and back. So did Fred.

But these are not characters of power in the way Glory, Jasmine, or the Senior Partners are. Actually Buffy crosses dimensions in Get it Done with relative ease as well.

There are possible contradictions to the idea the greater the power, the more difficult to cross dimensions though. As Jenny said, there's Illyria, but one could fanwank his way around that one. There's also the worm from Fray.

We know the senior partners place gates at most, which threaten the plan and the dealings of the firm.

I'm not sure I understand. How do we know that?

 

[Wicked]

But these are not characters of power in the way Glory, Jasmine, or the Senior Partners are. Actually Buffy crosses dimensions in Get it Done with relative ease as well.

There are possible contradictions to the idea the greater the power, the more difficult to cross dimensions though. As Jenny said, there's Illyria, but one could fanwank his way around that one. There's also the worm from Fray.



I'm not sure I understand. How do we know that?

But thats my point. Clearly its not necessarily the power that matters in all cases. If regular people can do it, then great power cant be involved.

 

[nerd4hire]

The possibillity I'm suggesting is as long as you know the rules you can cross.

Those rules almost appear to change when it's a creature of a greater power. It almost seems like they have to find ways to break the rules.

If this was somehow correct I wonder where the border would be of what constitutes power. Maybe from D'hoffryn on down you can cross. Above that, and you have to break the rules.

 

[Wicked]

Ah, I see. I didnt quite understand what you were getting at in that first post.

But it doesnt seem to matter if you know the rules or not. Fred got taken to Pylea by accident. She just read a book. She didnt know rules or anything. She was just curious.

I think it depends more on the dimension than the power. I guess like so many other things each one has a different rule. Almost like a velvet rope. You dont know the rules or you dont have enough power, you cant get in 🙂

 

[nerd4hire]

Here's one for you then. The Senior partners appear to be able to get to Pylea. Why do they need to take the form of a lesser demon to get to earth. Couldn't they just cross from W&H home office to Pylea, to earth?

But maybe they cross into Pylea the same way they do earth, right?

OK how about Jasmine then. Angel didn't have much of a problem crossing into the hell dimension Jasmine ruled. Why didn't Jasmine just come directly to earth from that dimension, if getting to earth was her priority?

 

[Lyri]

Well Holtz certainly managed to do it. Twice. To Quartoth and back.
Angel and crew got to Pylea and back. So did Fred.

but one could say that Jasmine manipulated all of that to get what she needed. she needed Fred in Pylea, or at least she needed way for Fred to meet Angel. she mentions in one of the later S4 eps that she pretty much made everything happen in each and every one of their lives, so dimension hopping of the AI guys could be down to Jasmine's influence.
i like N4H's theory that the less powerful demons can cross easier. that makes sense to me and plays into what i was suggesting. the more powerful youare, the harder it is to pass into this dimension at least. i don't think it would be the same if they were skipping from one demon world to the next.

 

[Wicked]

Here's one for you then. The Senior partners appear to be able to get to Pylea. Why do they need to take the form of a lesser demon to get to earth. Couldn't they just cross from W&H home office to Pylea, to earth?

But maybe they cross into Pylea the same way they do earth, right?

OK how about Jasmine then. Angel didn't have much of a problem crossing into the hell dimension Jasmine ruled. Why didn't Jasmine just come directly to earth from that dimension, if getting to earth was her priority?

I thought the point of Jasmine doing it the way she did is because she was a higher being and and she wanted things her own way? Its likely that if she'd done it any other way the other higher beings would have stopped her.

but one could say that Jasmine manipulated all of that to get what she needed. she needed Fred in Pylea, or at least she needed way for Fred to meet Angel. she mentions in one of the later S4 eps that she pretty much made everything happen in each and every one of their lives, so dimension hopping of the AI guys could be down to Jasmine's influence.
i like N4H's theory that the less powerful demons can cross easier. that makes sense to me and plays into what i was suggesting. the more powerful youare, the harder it is to pass into this dimension at least. i don't think it would be the same if they were skipping from one demon world to the next.

Im still not sure how much I believe Jasmine manipulated. Even if she did send Fred to Pylea, its a very big place. And like Wes said, they could have ended up on seperate sides of the dimension. Whats the chances they'd definately run into Fred? Also Fred was sent to Pylea 5 years before they found her, which would be Season 1 of Buffy. We dont know when Jasmine started manipulating things but they only show what she did from season 1 Angel. Im not sure I believe it went further back, like into Sunnydale, in which case she wasnt responsible for Fred ending up in Pylea.

 

[The Arcane]

A meaty topic! N4H, I thank you! 😉

Okay, dimensions. At first glance it would seem that the term has been used very inconsistently throughout the run of Buffy and Angel and due to that it follows that the rules of crossing into them seem inconsistent too.

I tend to believe that it's as simple as assuming that every dimensional realm has different properties and different governing principles, including the details of passing through the dimensional walls of each realm. To get to Pylea all you need to do is recite the correct words and you get your dimensional door. Very straightforward and suggesting that Pylea is relatively "nearby" to earth, for want of a more accurate term, or that the walls between our reality and there are relatively thin, depending on how you see the relationship between dimensional realms.

Glory's home dimension, however, was clearly a lot less easy to access and to do so depended on a power much more potent than a few words spoken. In that case it was the Key. Other dimensions would no doubt be harder to access whilst yet others would be easier, regardless of the power of the being trying to pass through.

Now, Jasmine and the Senior Partners would seem to be a very different issue. In both those cases it seemed to me that it wasn't that they couldn't come into our dimension, it was that their physical being (or lack of same) prevented them from existing here once they arrived. The passing through dimensions may have been a piece of cake in itself but they had to have a physical form to inhabit once they got here. See what I mean?

Oh, by the way, I think what evo was referring to was the fact that the Senior Partners put a mystical lock on Illyria's temple, as seen in Shells. The thing is that this isn't the same kind of thing. This was a temporal displacement deal, existing just out of phase of normal time, rather than another dimension.

 

[Wicked]

That post just reminded me of something. When the other Gods banished Glory, they sent her to earth and put her inside (for lack of better phrasing at the moment) a human. And Illyria had to use a human shell. I guess the more powerful you are (gods, higher beings, senior partners (whatever they are)) the harder it is for you to cross or at least exist.

We know Illyria had no problem dimension hopping in her time but when she was brought back she needed a human host to exist. Just like Glory. Senior Partners needed help too. Jasmine needed to be born into this dimension to exist. I guess the more powerful and less human, the harder it is. After all, like Anya said in Graduation Day, most things on earth are human-demon hybrids. There are not really any pure demons left. Theyve all died out.

Does that make sense?

 

[The Arcane]

That post just reminded me of something. When the other Gods banished Glory, they sent her to earth and put her inside (for lack of better phrasing at the moment) a human. And Illyria had to use a human shell. I guess the more powerful you are (gods, higher beings, senior partners (whatever they are)) the harder it is for you to cross or at least exist.

We know Illyria had no problem dimension hopping in her time but when she was brought back she needed a human host to exist. Just like Glory. Senior Partners needed help too. Jasmine needed to be born into this dimension to exist. I guess the more powerful and less human, the harder it is. After all, like Anya said in Graduation Day, most things on earth are human-demon hybrids. There are not really any pure demons left. Theyve all died out.

Does that make sense?

Kinda, but I think that these may be examples of different things.

In the case of Glory, Ben wasn't a container so much as a punishment or prison. The other gods never intended for her to get out or to take any form of control but her power proved too much to contain, resulting in the timeshare deal we saw happening. It's more than possible that Glory could have existed perfectly well in our world even in her original physical form. Her fellow gods just chose not to let her.

In the case of Illyria it was simply that her original body had turned to dust long ago and her essence needed some form of vessel or shell to return to. She wasn't crossing dimensions in this case though, simply being reborn. The Deeper Well was in our world, which is where her essence had come from.

 

[nerd4hire]

Then there's Fray. In Fray the Demon lords Vrill and Boluz express concern too much power has passed between their dimension and our earthly one simply by sending Urkon. They appear to have a future plan to invade this reality but they're waiting for something. I got the feeling they weren't able to send that kind of power across without consequences of some sort.

The worm, now that's a puzzler. I don't know if that's an example of demon power though. Really it's just a big dumb beast. Isn't there some kind of gateway within it though to bridge dimensions. I have to read that one again.

 

[The Arcane]

With Fray I have to leave it to others to provide a proper theory. I read the comics as they were coming out a few years ago and so I know the story but I sold them not long after with the intent of getting the trade and I still haven't gotten around to it. Whilst I can offer some general ideas I would probably be guessing rather than suggesting anything solid.

Note to self: must buy Fray trade! 🙂

 

[Lyri]

yeah, i'm not so good on Fray related stuff. i avoided by the comics as they came out simply because the one and only comic book store where i live is so far away that i couldn't guarentee that i could get each issue as it came out. so i opted to wait, as i did with Tales of the Vampries, to buy the collected issues as a graphic novel...and i'm still waiting. anyone know if that's available yet?

anyway, i like Arcane's theory about Illyria. he's right in that her physical body had turned to dust, so she only needed a host...a shell. we never really saw her hoping dimensions, only to get to her temple that one time, and the SP's had locked it down, so that could ahve been why it was so difficult. i'm not sure her having a human shell would have prevented her from crossing dimensions. we only know that she used to do it all the time when sher was in her original body.

 

[The Arcane]

Again though, Lyri, her temple was not actually in another dimension so much as out of phase with the normal timestream, no doubt intentionally done by Illyria herself using her time alteration abilities. The temple was in our dimension, just out of temporal synch.

And, yeah, Tales of the Vampires is out in trade form now. It's listed at Amazon here. 🙂

 

[Lyri]

And, yeah, Tales of the Vampires is out in trade form now. It's listed at Amazon here. 🙂

lol, i meant is Fray out in trade form now...sorry to be confusing!

you'd think i would have remembered that about Illyria's temple...considering i watched shells not even two hours ago!!
Illyria did also cross dimensions or a portal or whatever to get Gunn from the holding dimension...and so did Angel, Spike and Gunn for that matter. was that becasue it was a dimentiosn belonging to the SP's or because they were less powerful?
this is really starting to hurt my head.