Oliver Ophiucus Inchwoode entered ICES, the Interstellar Commerce and Exploration Service, right out of college with a degree in Applied Non-Euclidean Physics. His shakedown assignment after Space Services Academy graduation was a Sol system Long-Period Orbital charting cruise, monitoring known LPO objects and searching for previously uncharted ones. On one of their legs his ship visited the Trans-Neptunian Observatory complex situated in a resonance orbit of the near Kuiper belt. Despite having been launched two and a half centuries earlier the instruments were still in at least partial working order. The primary purpose of the TNO was remote surveying of potentially habitable planets suitable for exploration and colonization during Earth’s expansionist period.
The vessel to which Inchwoode was assigned was a true interstellar envoy-class starship with a crew of 4,270 (a mixture of humans and high-functioning hominid androids) and facilities for every contingency likely to be encountered in the course of deep space exploration. The ship was equipped with an impressive array of defensive weapons and a sophisticated negative-inertia temperospatial rift drive that could cross multi-parsec distances effectively instantaneously, at least from shipboard perspective. Their mission was open-ended exploration and contact in galactic sectors far removed from the Sol system.
In the eighth year of its mission Inchwoode’s ship encountered the sentient-life planet Pliumnos orbiting a red dwarf approximately 6000 light years from Earth. The predominant race of natives were humanoids at Sociotechnology Stratum Three-Delta, which means they possessed complex social structures with metal tools and a decent understanding of biology and medicine, but no electronics or other advanced technologies. The Pliumnos solar system was embedded in a strange cosmic ribbon with an enigmatic physical signature known as the Dark Energetic Continuum. As the various landing parties conducted their surveys, Inchwoode’s group encountered anomalous activity incompatible with the known state of planetary industrialization. Upon further investigation they discovered the existence of practitioners of magic on Pliumnos.
Magic, of course, had long been deemed impossible because it seemed to violate some basic tenets of macro-scale physics. However, the evidence for its existence was right there before their eyes and undeniable. Most of the team and the supervisors to whom they reported regarded these demonstrations as some form of elaborate hoax or perhaps mass hypnosis, despite the fact that the landing parties were equipped with safeguards against that sort of thing, and disregarded the claims. Inchwoode, though, was not so sure and availed himself of a closer look. He was so impressed and intrigued by what he saw that when it came time to return to the ship he resigned his officer’s commission and stayed behind to enroll in an arcane academy. He compressed his name down to “Oloi.”
<p>Twenty-eight orbits of Pliumnos around its star later, Oloi achieved Archmage, believing himself to be the only human from Terra ever to do so. It was shortly after that the adventure with Avzwenr took place (see Gathering of the Titans). Seven years beyond that, after thirty-five years on Pliumnos, Oloi reached his eighth decade of life and decided to begin the transcendence ritual before advancing age rendered it more difficult for him to accomplish. In his youth Oloi had sported hair of a rich golden-brown that glimmered and shone with the lightest touch of sunlight. Now his head and face gleamed whiter than gossamer worm webs spun between leaves of the gumjack tree on a moonlit night or ash new-spewed from the belly of a bubbling Pliumnosian rumblepot.
Once he’d abandoned his physical body and taken up residence as a transcendent in the Dark Energy Continuum, Oloi began to hear rumors of another transcended mage that referred to himself as ‘human.’ Finding him was another matter. The Continuum was a ribbon averaging around ten parsecs in width that wound its way through most every galaxy in the universe. It was virtually undetectable by conventional instruments, except as a sort of vague energy anomaly. Flying through it in a spacecraft you would be hard-pressed to notice anything different, either visually or electromagnetically. To a transcendent, though, it was a multidimensional self-contained universe. It required many years in his personal reckoning to locate the other human, although time had little meaning there objectively.
When he and Plåk finally became acquainted, Oloi was introduced to N’plork and began to refer to his home as ‘The Slice’ after the fashion of its inhabitants. Prior to that he had simply thought of it as the ‘Continuum.’ Oloi was a regular visitor to N’plork and came to regard it as his adopted home planet, primarily because Earth was not embedded in The Slice and therefore inaccessible to transcendents under most circumstances. It was also Plåk who introduced him to the concept of the Noil Emissaries, a group of transcendents who acted as servants of the deity-like collective sentience of The Slice itself, charged with maintaining balance, harmony, and uniform energy distribution throughout their assigned sectors. Oloi proved to be an ideal candidate and was selected to serve alongside a senior Noil named Namni, who eventually became his adversary (see Goblinopolis).
While The Slice has its own native topology, flora, and fauna, residents can form the raw material of that realm into just about anything they desire. Oloi’s home there is quite fetching, with gardens, fountains, columns, and a range of architectural features drawn from his memories of both Earth and Pliumnos. Transcendents need neither food nor drink, but most continue to dine at least on occasion because it’s a comfortable ritual that reminds them of their former existence and provides additional opportunities for social interaction with their fellow Slice dwellers. While he keeps to himself most of the time, Oloi can, when the urge overtakes him, set a mean table and is therefore in something of a demand as a host. His sporadic fetes are always well attended and never, ever boring.