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The opposite of The Positive Energy Plane is The Negative Energy Plane, like the opposite of Lawful is Chaos. Okay.
Quintessence in PF is, you know, 'Soul-Stuff' created by The Positive Energy Plane. I was just browsing "The River of Souls" by Wes Schneider in AP 84, Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh to refresh my brain on Paizo's 'soul-stuff.'
I'll grab AP 141 tomorrow morning when it's no longer so past my bedtime and read up on The Negative Energy Plane in "Into the Void" by Patchen Mortimer to see if there's an answer, but for now,....
What is the opposite of Quintessence?
Quintessence is essentially outsider matter, so the opposite of quintessence is probably just anti-quintessence.
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Quintessence is aligned matter, so the opposite would be either potentiality or the essence of Matter (as opposed to Spirit Essence).
Secrets of Magic has more information.
Was going to try to dig into my tomes a bit last night but ran out the clock on other things. I don't remember that quintessence is actually made in the Positive Energy Plane so much as the plane takes the scraps of quintessence fed to it by the antipode and grows them into souls charged with positive energy to send off to get born (or hatched). As others have commented, my understanding is that quintessence is just the 'matter' of the outer planes, including both creatures and the physical terrain, so to me the opposite in the cosmos is the physical matter of the Inner + Material Planes.
(Tangentially related, a thing that has been bugging my worldbuilding brain for a bit now us that if spirit can take on any material form, what did the universe need to invent physical matter to make the mortal realm our of?)
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The closest things I can think of that you may be looking for are either the crystalline structures that sceaduinar are grown/spawned/budded from, or perhaps the intersection of the Negative Energy Plane and Shadow Plane where darvakka are formed.
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Yeah, this kind of thing is what I was thinking of, too -- and I didn't have time to get to the article in AP 141 today though I put it on my in-box at work to read Saturday first thing. But I dunno, black crystals and gems deep in The Negative Energy Plane feel more the symptom or result of "The Opposite" that I'm looking for. And I suspect it hasn't been designed in canon..
I don't remember that quintessence is actually made in the Positive Energy Plane so much as the plane takes the scraps of quintessence fed to it by the antipode and grows them into souls charged with positive energy to send off to get born (or hatched).
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Yeah, it's a Circle -- a cycle at least. Canon says explicitly that The Positive Energy Plane makes Quintessence but that it only does because the Antipode sends, um, 'quintessence energy' to The Positive Energy Plane. So, Circle or Cycle..
Quintessence is essentially outsider matter, so the opposite of quintessence is probably just anti-quintessence.
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This is likely what I'm going to have to go with -- a nod to the great Star Trek TNG: Anti-Matter is opposite of Matter.
I don't remember that quintessence is actually made in the Positive Energy Plane so much as the plane takes the scraps of quintessence fed to it by the antipode and grows them into souls charged with positive energy to send off to get born (or hatched).Yeah, it's a Circle -- a cycle at least. Canon says explicitly that The Positive Energy Plane makes Quintessence but that it only does because the Antipode sends, um, 'quintessence energy' to The Positive Energy Plane. So, Circle or Cycle.
Perhaps you have a reference for where that is written? It is somewhat inconsistent with my understanding of these processes and I haven't been able to find it myself, but I would like to compare and contrast snippets of lore.
Reading from Planar Adventures the impression I much more get is that quintessence is not strongly aligned with either positive or negative energy, but merely rather is bundled with it in a soul. For example, a ghost's vital essence is negative instead of positive, but it still would appear to possess the quintessence of its soul despite this.
The 'insubstantial and purified' quintessence described in "Where Do Souls Come From?" (also often referred to as potentiality) doesn't strike me as a fundamentally different essence than other quintessence, but rather a form of quintessence that lacks an 'alignment charge' so to speak. While pre-incarnate souls are grown or assembled on the positive energy plane out of, "quintessence, spiritual potential, and positive energy," with no indication I can find that only the third of these actually originates from the positive energy plane.
Meanwhile, Secrets of Magic (to bring up 2e-relevant adjustments to the lore) suggests that quintessence is a tangible form of raw Spirit, which would. It would seem to me that while the positive energy plane may be the 'start point' of the infinite cycle, it is more akin to a heart which takes in quintessence and funnels it back out to the multiverse as souls. A soul might be charged with negative energy but its fundamental quintessence is still the same quintessence.
But then, this is only as far as I can read with the sources I can find. I would be fascinated to find more information about the cycle of souls and nature of quintessence.
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Oh certainly.
But I'll begin with my conclusion: It sure looks as though my confidence in saying that "Quintessence" is what is created by The Positive Energy Plane should rather have been articulated that "Souls" -- or better, "Soul Energy" is what is created by The Positive Energy Plane.
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I usually start my search in the Pathfinder Wiki and then go straight to the AP on my bookshelf from where the canon first gets written. (Exceptions abound.) Here, my search immediately led me to AP 84 Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh, and to Wes Schneider's article, "The River of Souls." On page 71 Schneider writes a section titled "Where do Souls Come From," and I did a copy/paste of the beginning paragraphs of that below.
I also grabbed my copy of The Great Beyond by (Amber) Stewart because it's really the first PF canon really talking about this stuff. As such, it's the book I've owned and read through the most regarding tangentially similar topics so I'm more comfortable with it.
On Page three of The Great Beyond is a separated Text Box titled "Souls and The Undead." The first sentence of that reads as follows:
While the Positive Energy Plane serves as the birthplace of all souls,...Also on page three the opening sentence of description for The Positive Energy Plane reads as thus:
The glowing heart of life and creation, the origin-spark of mortal souls and the Material Plane itself, this plane....
Later, on page five, is a section titled 'The Life Cycle of the Soul.' But it's a good read that begins Pathfinder's conceit that "Life" in the campaign setting is a cycle, that the birth of a mortal is more like a middle point in the cycle. It does also say that "The soul itself begins in the glowing heart of the Positive Energy Plane."
What it does not have is the word "Quintessence." (Or "antipode")
(It also says that "The River of Souls" is only in The Astral Plane, so you know, things in the canon evolve -- as Jacobs has absolutely intended it to!)
The terms "Quintessence" and "Antipode" don't get used in PF canon until, I'm pretty sure, Wes Schneider's article in AP 84. And that's when I finally saw that a Soul and Quintessence aren't the same thing. But my first browsing of it, I was still confused.
The hope from my Thread, here, was to see if there is published canon of an opposite to "Quintessence."
It is clear that Souls and Quintessence are different, and here's how Quintessence is introduced:
WHERE DO SOULS COME FROM?
Many planar scholars claim that souls come from the Positive Energy Plane. While this isn’t incorrect, the truth proves more complex. Amid the searing light and unbridled energy of the Positive Energy Plane drift sparks of formless, unaligned quintessence. Over time, the plane infuses this unaligned planar force with its vigor and potential, creating what are, in effect, unaligned souls, devoid of all will or sentience..... Souls are not created entirely upon the Positive Energy Plane, though. While the plane serves as the starting point of a soul’s journey, a soul’s existence is a cyclical process — and this cycle begins at the end of a soul’s journey.
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So again, it sure looks as though my confidence in saying that "Quintessence" is what is created by The Positive Energy Plane should have been articulated that "Souls" -- or rather, "Soul Energy" is what is created by The Positive Energy Plane.
In Concordance of Rivals, on page 22, begins a two page section titled "The Cycle of Souls." Sadly, like all of PF's books on The Planes after The Great Beyond (from 'Book of the Damned' vol.1 to 'Chronicle of the Righteous') our beloved Publisher Erik Mona decided to include sections with a "hand-written"-like font to try to make the book more interesting, more seemingly 'real.' Unfortunately NO ONE can READ the Friggen font and the pages of all these books are wasted paper. I have no F'ing clue what "The Cycle of Souls" says in Concordance of Rivals just like I have no idea what the other 'hand-written-font' articles in the other books say either. (I have tried to read them, quite a few times over the years. What a poor publishing decision. Still, Mona is AWESOME!)
Oh certainly.
But I'll begin with my conclusion: It sure looks as though my confidence in saying that "Quintessence" is what is created by The Positive Energy Plane should rather have been articulated that "Souls" -- or better, "Soul Energy" is what is created by The Positive Energy Plane.
Ah, I think I understand much better now the nature of the original question! I would have to agree, souls certainly seem to be created in the positive energy plane from the base ingredients described. You are indeed right, as each bit of lore emerges concerning this aspect of the cosmos, our understanding evolves just slightly--and that can make it hard to keep track of the particulars!
Taking your original post in the spirit of souls and/or soulstuff, "What is the negative equivalent of a soul/the collection of energies that make souls?" is actually a question I half-way asked in another long hibernating thread from just after the Book of the Dead was announced. Either way, this being the case I would have to agree that probably the closest recognisable reference is the sceaduinar.
Planar Adventures describes the sceaduinar as,
"uniformly different from any other outsider in that what passes for their soul-stuff is made of negative energy, and this difference drives their bitter hatred toward virtually every other creature in the cosmos."
(minding that, at the time darvakka were considered primarily a form of undead, so were probably excluded from the comparison with other outsiders.)
Furthermore, while undead also happen to have souls and bodies powered by negative energy, sceaduinar see them as a mockery of what 'true negative life' would have been like and destroy them despite the apparent similarity.
Leaving aside undead and immortal natives of the Great Beyond, there is also the curiosity of the urdefhan mentioned by CorvusMask, who were considered native outsiders of the Material plane but are now simply described as humanoids. Said to be created by the Horsemen of Abaddon, they possess 'un-souls' which are powered by negative energy much like an undead, despite being for all intents and purposes living creatures.