The Draconic Wizard Workshop
Welcome! We are the Draconic Wizard Workshop, an alterhuman system of over 40 members. Here, you can find our collective writings and introductions.
Headspace Metaphysics
by Medivh Aran Chromatath
Originally written August 16, 2025.
We have recently come to the realization that our headspace and how it works is both more and less similar to other systems we know than we'd originally believed, so I thought it worthwhile to sit down and write an essay about it. Our understanding of our headspace and system is constantly changing and evolving, so expect this essay to be out of date in a few months to a year, but it's our best understanding of things right now, so we're just going to go with it. This is a sequel of sorts to Troile's essay, "Subsystems, Sidesystems, and Headspaces: A look into the inner workings of the DWW," so it might be worth a read first if you haven't read it before or if you need a refresher.
You're all caught up on how our subsystems and sidesystems work? Good. Time to turn that on its head.
A few months after Troile's essay was written and shortly before I arrived in the system (so about a year before this essay was written, September 2024), we had a bizarre shift in where the front of the system lives, from the central hub (the "main" headspace described by Troile) to the beach in front of the central hub. It's like the Beachgoer sidesystem simply took over, and this does seem to be the case—Khadgar and I have been fronting for nearly a year straight at this point (today is his one-year anniversary of starting his incredibly long front) and the other Beachgoers are all extremely easy to contact and bring to and from the front, while those living in the central hub can be more difficult to reach, similarly to how the Beachgoers were before. The other sidesystem is similarly difficult to contact as they were before, although perhaps on the easier side, since we can see the building they live in from where we sit on the beach, right in front of the central hub.
To facilitate easier contact to and from the central hub, we installed a window next to their door so that people could lounge there and heckle the front, serving a similar role to the couch when the front was in the central hub. This has made it a bit easier to contact and call forth most of the system, but it's, in general, a little harder than it used to be, since they're in a building and we're outside. None of us are really sure why this change took place, but no one really minds it—it has its pros and cons, and its most notable pro is that it's easier for the hosts to switch who is primary fronting around and it's given Tanix a much-needed break. It used to be that, every time he was anywhere near the front, he'd be forced into the primary front position, but now, he can just hang out like the rest of us.
Since the front has moved, so has the "camera" of the front, which is a simple concept but one that's a bit tricky to explain adaquately. Usually, when "viewing" the front, we don't tend to see it out of our own eyes—when the system takes a moment to interpret headspace, we usually do so from the position of a point-of-view overlooking the fronting area—previously the terminal, now a section of the beach. We call this the "camera" because it can, with effort, be moved between a few locations—the beach, the terminal, and even into the other sidesystem, although they hate it when we do that. (Anadox discovered that we could do this by switching the camera into the sidesystem and discovering Blame, Mithras, and Caleb all playing a board game. That's been one of two glimpses into that building for those of us who don't live there, and it was very exciting.)
If desired, we can also bring the front back to the terminal, by switching the camera back to the terminal and then all coming inside from the beach to sit there, but we… haven't, because we don't feel like it. The beach feels freeing, and we've had uninterrupted Beachgoer fronts for a year now, so why would we go inside? No one minds the changes that have taken place, and it feels less claustrophobic out here.
Sometimes, when viewing headspace, we do see through our own eyes, but that's less consistent, and is usually reliant on one person in particular wanting to look at or interact with another. I can focus and look at Khadgar directly, but it's much easier to, even as primary front, use the camera to view us both. This doesn't feel weird or awkward to us in any way despite how bizarre it must sound to some of you to watch yourself hug your partner in third person. It's not disorienting at all and honestly I don't even think about it most of the time. It's just how we work.
Various people have tried to attach the camera to their eyes and walk out of the front before to take it with them. This doesn't work well—it gives us a headache and the camera snaps back pretty quickly, usually bringing the enterprising headmate along with it.
Except… for me.
I don't know why I can do this, but with effort, I can snag the camera and the front and just walk around with it. This lets us get perspective on parts of the headspace that we know about but don't ever see, including down the hallway in the central hub and even into people's rooms (I've peeked into Caspian's before, and that was disorienting, but I could do it), and all the way down the beach and around the corner that we usually can't see around due to the forest that blocks it. It turns out there's stuff back there and we had no idea until I went looking. (More on that later.)
The problem with our headspace, though (and as far as I can tell, it's all three of them, but the beach and the rest of the outdoors especially), is that it's blurry. It doesn't look blurry to us most of the time, but in reality, it is. That's a doozy, so we'll take it one step at a time.
First off: the members of the DWW appear in whatever way we see ourselves. That is to say, if I see myself as a raven, I'm going to appear as a raven to everyone else. If I can't remember what I look like, no one can really get a good look at me. If I'm new and have no sense of who I am, I'm going to be some kind of cloud or colored smudge or silhouette until I figure that out. We can't look at someone who can't tell who they are and tell them who they look like; they need to know what they look like for everyone else to see them. Simple.
The problem is that the rest of the headspace isn't people. The buildings don't feel like they look a certain way because they're buildings. The trees aren't people, either. Neither's the sand, or the water, or the rocks. As a result, they're all just kind of impressions of things, the idea of something, a blurry representation of an object mostly defined by color and approxinate shape rather than any actual level of detail. We just don't see the headspace as blurry because, well, we interpret things and believe they look a certain way. I know what a window looks like, so instead of the blurry idea of a window, when I look at the window into the central hub, I see… well, a window. It's clear enough when looking at it through the camera.
The problem is that it doesn't actually look like that. It actually looks like the blur. We just interpret familiar items as a clear image, like a .png we pasted over the real object for easier viewing and interpretation. The fact of the matter is that it's exhausting trying to peer at and interpret blurry things, so it's easier to just kind of paste an image over it for everyday viewing. As a result, our interpretation of our headspace is more of a similation than a real image, which is kind of how we interpreted headspace for a long time—not a real place, just a simulation of our brain's activity and our existence in it.
That doesn't seem to be entirely true, but we'll get to that.
It's also worth noting that we don't really "see" things in headspace by default—we more "know" what's happening day-to-day, especially with how we interact with each other, and generate images accordingly. This isn't the same as actually looking at headspace, because it's easy and perfectly clear, and nothing is real so much as an artist's interpretation of what's going on. This is usually how we interact with each other—we have an idea of what we're doing, and generate a pseudo-image from the camera's perspective, with the ".png"s I talked about earlier. Actually looking at things, really looking at things, is harder, because it's blurry, and weird, and our system functions largely off of our synesthesia, so everything is and has a color, so it's basically a blur of colors in vague shapes that we have to then try to make sense of. Sometimes, we just know what something is, so even though I can't make out the details, I know it's a tree, while other times (especially with foreign objects) we have to do our best with the blurry interpretation we get. Worse, what we imagine happening in headspace and what does happen in headspace are nearly indistinguishable: sometimes, it's hard to tell if something really happened or if we just imagined it very strongly. Telling them apart is an art, and we are collectively not much of an artist.
Some systems apparently just have perfectly clear visuals of their headspace from their own perspective all of the time. I literally cannot fucking imagine how nice that is, because I'm going to be honest with you: this is absolute nonsense. Top tier absurdity. I would recommend this method of seeing things in your headspace to approximately nobody.
See, the synesthesia thing is occasionally helpful, but it's also a problem. It's helpful in that, when we are having a hard time identifying each other or ourselves, we can get a general color back, which will help us narrow it down. It's unthinkable to mistake me for Khadgar even though we're similar in a lot of ways—I'm green, he's blue, simple.
The problem comes with a certain range of blues, and that all comes back to Caspian.
When Caspian first entered the system in July of 2021, we were on the verge of getting a blood transfusion for medical reasons. When he was only days old and not yet entirely done forming (like an insect that just molted, his "outer shell" was still "soft"), he threw himself in front of that traumatic experience to protect the rest of the system, and it did severe damage to him that has only finally been healed in the last few months (healed, but not undone—he is different than he once was). He was associated with a very specific shade of blue at the time, and when he was damaged, that blue became "corrupted," as Blame, our mechanic and one of our admins, put it—and anyone else who formed whose color was too close to Caspian's received some side effects from that "corruption." Caspian became almost incapable of speaking with words or fronting, and communicated mostly with color, concepts, and, externally, emojis, and some of this bled over into anyone associated with a similar blue.
Color associations usually can't be changed for us. Once they're set, they're set, especially for headmates. Blame, however, can apparently just change our color associations for our headmates. When he's done this, we've gotten a flash of a mechanism—a complicated bronze-colored device with spindly arms and dozens of glass lenses in every color imaginable, and he swaps out a cracked or warped blue lens for something else, a similar color outside of the corruption range, and when he moves aside, light shines in from a window in the ceiling and passes through the lens, and our color association changes. He altered Carolina, Khadgar, Sincapell, and Caspian this way, moving them all out of that corrupted blue zone, and it helped all of them.
I don't really know what to make of that, but we have no idea where that mechanism might be. As far as I can tell, it's located somewhere that only the administrators can get to, and Kyir doesn't go there—he says he "hired" Blame as our mechanic, so he's going to let him do all of the behind-the-scenes maintenance work. I don't know all of what that entails—Blame's kept it quiet—but it seems to be a lot of good work, so I leave him to it.
Now, to loop back around to something: it didn't occur to any of us to think of Blame's maintenance work as taking place anywhere, because we interpreted our headspace not as a place so much as a simulation. While we still believe that to be at least partially true, or at least, how we see it is a simulation, it does seem to be an actual location in… space? In-between space? Wherever many headspaces are that allow systems to reach out to each other and to entities between, that lets daytrippers in and out, that can bump up against other locations and entities and interact with them. We've had almost no such experiences, and so didn't think we could, but had a recent experiment go right that we thought would never, ever work, one that recontextualized how we look at our headspace entirely.
One of our friends, Daski, who lives in another system, wanted to send us an item—an egg. Dei did this through and with the help of an individual dei know named Pethyr, a bard with extraordinary powers, able to create magical Gates between realms to either transport himself or items. We were fairly certain we could not receive such an item, as Daski's headspace seemed to be a real location, as did Pethyr's home, and we took our headspace to be more of an interpretation of "brain stuff" rather than a real place other entities could access, but Pethyr was able to scry on our headspace just fine and could see parts of it that even we hadn't seen—the beach wraps around the forest until it reaches a cliff, there are apparently hills, and "over the hills and past the forest," there is some kind of tower. We didn't know that there was a "past" the forest—we didn't take it to be a literal forest, more a convenient way for our brain to show a boundary of headspace.
He also resolved the debate of whether the two buildings for the central hub and the sidesystem have actual roofs (like real buildings) or if they're flat (like Minecraft buildings built by people that don't know how to do roofs, like us). They're flat. Score one for looking at the buildings with our eyes, score zero for architecture.
Additionally, Pethyr told us a little bit about our headspace. He described the realm it's in as being in "constant flux," and that "its metaphysical borders are unstable and constantly moving." This made it difficult for him to establish a Gate, but he found a pattern in the fluctuations and attempted to deliver the egg during a calmer period, which happened to be while we were asleep. I'm not sure if the calm periods always overlap when we're asleep, which would not surprise any of us, but with the time dialation between his realm and ours, it's hard to say. In the end, he did manage to open a Gate, although for safety reasons, he did not come through himself, and instead sent the egg through with an Unseen Servant (essentially an invisible nonsapient pair of hands that will follow orders) and had the egg set down in the sand somewhere. He didn't see anyone through the Gate but thought nothing of it, and the next morning, he let us know that it had been delivered and where: in the sand, near a cliff.
"A what," Tanix said, because we had seen no such cliff.
"Oh no," Pethyr said.
Thankfully, after some deliberation and useless looking around in the sand near the front, we instinctively worked out which way down the beach this cliff would be. I cannot account for that; I don't know how we knew. But I took the camera and bound it to my eyes, snagged the front, and flew off down the beach alone, where I eventually found the cliff and played a fun game of "find a small beige item hidden amongst beige sand when my vision is blurry and we work primarily off of color associations."
I did find it eventually, for the record. And in the name of science, Daski had written a number on the shell and asked if I could tell what it was. Numbers are difficult for us—we remember them based on what they look like, so we mix up similar-looking numbers all the time. Add into that blurry, swimming, darkening-around-the-edges vision from exertion of doing this, and the fact that, to get an image out of headspace in the first place, we have to bounce it around in our head through our synesthesia and a half-dozen other interpretations.
Which is to say, I guessed that I was looking at a 6, and Daski informed me that it was actually an 8. I was close, and in my defense:
That's really fucking hard to see, and the drawing is far clearer than what I was actually seeing.
Ultimately, though, we did receive the egg, delivered via a bard with its origin in another system. Our headspace is real enough to receive items, even if it's in a state of constant flux and acts as a delivery location hard mode. This blows our interpretation of our headspace and its metaphysics completely out of the water: it is a place, it is something, it's just unstable and we don't understand it very well. Why is it unstable? Why is it so hard to look at? We don't know. Presumably, some of these mysteries will be solved in time.
The egg itself is interesting. It, of course, does not have the clarity or focus of a headmate, because it is an egg, not a person. But it also has the staying power of a fixture in headspace rather than a prop—something we generate momentarily, usually for a joke. We will occasionally joke about someone looking up from their magazine or putting down a book. There is no magazine or book—they aren't real, nor readable. They're props for the purpose of a joke, a visual interpretation of a particular "vibe" someone is giving off. The egg isn't like that—it's there whether or not we think about it, and every time we look at it, there it is, resting in the sand next to Tanix, who has taken it upon himself to keep an eye on it. (Or put it in his throat egg pouch. Which his species of dragon has. It's quite alarming to see a giant dragon seemingly swallow an egg you put a lot of effort into finding, but it's fine.)
Bizarrely, this isn't our first experience with a kind of rift to the outside, but we thought little of the first one—we thought of it as an interpretation of something odd and potentially psychological going on in our head, and didn't think much of it, which is interesting, because Anduin and I both came out of it.
Around the time the Beachgoers took over as the primary sidesystem (or… non-sidesystem? Is the central hub a sidesystem now? Hmm), a black-and-red rift or portal opened in space up above the ocean. It was hard to look at and made us anxious to do so, so most people didn't, although a few things about it quickly became apparent:
It had a very large, very frustrated dragon in it
It had lots of other people in it
People could come out of it
It turned out that the rift was being kept open by this dragon, Nefarian, to give him access to this headspace as a "just in case" sort of location. He was in charge of getting various people "home," whatever that meant, and the DWW's headspace was his location of last resort, a place he could deliver anyone he could not get home for whatever reason. We are unclear on whether or not he opened it in the first place, but he got very angry at suggestions that the DWW close it, and so it was kept open in case he needed it.
I snuck out of the rift and into the DWW during this time. I remember nothing of the inside of the rift other than it being bright, scintillating red. I don't know how I got there, where I had come from (other than, I must assume, my source), or where I was going; I have no idea if Nefarian could have gotten me "home," but I chose to enter the DWW of my own volition, because Khadgar was there, and I could do nothing else. Anduin, however, politely stayed in the rift until it was clear that Nefarian would never get her home, at which point we just invited her in, she flew down, and Nefarian and his rift departed once he was sure that Anduin would be just fine with us.
We, very weirdly, did not think much of this. I don't know why; it's almost like we weren't supposed to. One would think that Anduin and I would feel odd, like something From The Outside like Blame does, but we feel like every other headmate, like we've always been and belong here. I can't account for this, either, but it is what it is. I also can't account for Nefarian; he's a sourcemate, but he felt bizarre, like Blame and Kyir do, and other headmates reported him being able to "connect" to the internal system communication "channel" to talk to people and then "disconnect" when he was done with the conversation.
As for Blame and Kyir… they are, for lack of a better term, Something Else.
The role they hold in the system is "administrator"—they handle functional things, do maintenance, keep things and people working, and handle emergencies that no one else can. Kyir, as far as we can tell, originates here. We have an origin theory for him and believe that he is native to the system, he's just not a regular headmate like everyone else is.
But whatever he is, we believe that Blame is one, too, and he's from Outside.
Our best guess is that Kyir is some other kind of entity from the rest of us, and a young one, at that—possibly one in over his head in our system, with the kind of flux its in, how many people are in it, our mental and physical health, whatever. He occasionally mentions "hiring" Blame, and while I don't believe that he is literally paying him, I do believe that he asked Blame for help and let him in. I believe that Blame is some kind of older, perhaps mature, entity of this type, and is here to help out until Kyir is able to handle it himself.
I also do not believe that Blame is actually a fictive of a character from our novel, but that we rather based the personality of that character off of the entity we unknowingly had living in our head, and he took that character's form to be easier to understand and interact with. In function, he is a fictive, but in a different way from the rest of us. It's more that he became Blame the Carrier in addition to everything else he was, whatever that may be. I have no guesses as to what he is or why he is different from the rest of us: we like him all the same, although I bizarrely didn't when I first arrived. I can't remember why, and I wonder if he did something to alter my memory of why I disliked him originally. I do know that it was irrational and had nothing to do with him personally (this is written in logs he could not have edited), but whatever my reason was, it's gone now. I suspect that I understood something of his true nature and did not trust him because of it, because I had encountered his kind in unpleasant circumstances before, but I can't be certain. He and Kyir do keep information from the rest of the system at times, but Kyir insists that it is always for our own good and is temporary. This has proven true: some things he kept from us (mostly Tanix) were eventually revealed, and it was obvious that we were not ready to know some of it before. We trust that they have an important, if mysterious, job, and leave them to it.
I suspect that Nefarian was of their kind, or something similar. Neither seemed terribly alarmed by the rift, although Kyir stayed in the front for several days to keep an eye on it (and to try to catch me when I first showed up and spent time as an invisible raven) and Blame indicated that he was aware but unconcerned. Similarly, when we had the egg delivered, both were on alert about it, and Kyir remained in the front for the delivery, but neither seemed more than mildly concerned and by the time the egg itself arrived, they both relaxed. Whatever they worried about happening never manifested, so it seems that they are doing their jobs well.
I believe I have touched on most of the big stuff, but while we're here, here's some miscellania:
We do not feel pain in headspace. As a result, slapstick humor abounds. If you hear about us hitting each other with objects or tails or wings, don't worry—no harm is being done, and everyone is fine with it. I don't believe anything is solid enough to actually hurt or injure anyone, and we may be invincible.
The temperature is always perfect for everyone, even though we all have different interpretations of what the ideal temperature is.
The depth of the ocean varies on size of headmate and whether they want to walk, swim, or dive.
We can "see" and "hear" in headspace, in the strange workaround way we are aware of anything happening, although we can't seem to taste or smell, although we admittedly haven't tried much. I'm not sure on whether or not we can feel touch. I believe so, although it's very, very vibes based rather than being similar to sensory input. Really, all senses in headspace are interpreted in a separate way from sensory input, and register as particularly vivid imagination.
We have little to no awareness of what headmates are doing when they are not in "view" of the front (when they are "off camera"); they have little idea of this as well when they return.
The inside of the central hub is bigger than the outside. On the inside, there is a hallway stretching off to seemingly infinity with rooms for all of the central hub headmates, as well as the void, but on the outside, the wall is in a very solid, sensible location, blocking off where that hallway should be.
Here is an old map of the inside of the central hub, from when it was our main fronting location. The kitchen has since moved to the left to align with the rest of the living room. The "rift" is unrelated to the rift in space that opened over the ocean a while back.
Here's a slightly newer drawing, done right around the time the front moved to the outside:
Then, this depicts what I found on my egg hunt in addition to what we already have:
I'm certain that there's something vital, important, and/or interesting in how our system metaphysics and headspace(s) work, but for now, that's all. A mere five thousand words to carry us on our way. I suppose we shall see what else we uncover in the days to come.