Blackflame
by Sharon DornhoffHere's a REALLY odd idea, for how to reconcile the MML-created "Nightmare Dimension" theory on blackflame's origin -- and the hins' evident predilection for the Thought-Sphere -- with Gaz8's reference to the ruling Hierarch of Energy having created the stuff:
What if blackflame were, indeed, created and sent to the Shires by the Full Hierarch of Energy... but by the NIGHTMARE DIMENSION'S version, not Ixion? After all, it'd make sense for the ND to have its own quintet of Full Hierarchs, since it's got its own Immortals: Full Hierarchs, whose spheres would correspond to Nightmare versions of Energy, Matter, Time and Thought, plus a Sphere of Stasis as the chaos-loving NDs equivalent of Entropy. And such reigning ND-Immortals might well consider their KW counterparts to be twisted perversions of themselves (!), since the views they hold on stability vs choice (order vs anarchy, as Lawfuls call it, or stagnation vs freedom as Chaotics do) would place them directly at odds. In effect, the ND-Full Hierarch of Energy would be an "anti-Ixion", who'd regard the Sun-Prince as OPPOSED to the Energy-Sphere as it exists in the Nightmare Dimension.
Perhaps when the rift opened between
dimensions in the Five Shires, this hypothetical "anti-Ixion" got
an all-too-clear glimpse of the KW dimension, and was repelled by
how Ixion uses his position as master of Energy to enforce order
(ick!) and a strict religious hierarchy (aughhh!) on subordinate
Energy-Immortals and his mortal worshipers like the Oltecs. To try
and sabotage these "evil" practices of his/her Normal counterpart,
"anti-Ixion" altered blackflame to make it useful to a Mystaran
race -- the hin -- whose natural affinities lay with (Normal)
Thought ... the very Sphere which opposes Ixion's, within the
Normal continuum. Hin Heroes who then attained Immortality in the
Sphere of Thought, under the sponsorship of as-yet-undetermined
Mystaran Immortals (probably Frey & Freyja, IMO; Odin doesn't
seem light-hearted enough for most hin to look up to, and
Korotiku's a bit TOO light-hearted ;-D), also inherited custody of
blackflame from "anti-Ixion", after the rift's closure made any
contact between the two dimensions too difficult to be feasible.