Hikaru: Hahah ... wow. I wonder about myself sometimes.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the copyright holders of Tales of the Abyss, nor am I making any material profit from this work; it is purely fan made fun.
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Fonons are essential components of matter that emit sound, there are seven known types of fonons, and they gather in layered rings around the planet Auldrant, commonly called the fon belt.
From the outermost layer of the fon belt, the types go as follows: the Sixth layer is Light, Fifth layer is Fire, Fourth layer is Water, Third layer is Wind, Second layer is Earth, and the First layer is Shadow.
Each fonon type is drawn onto Auldrant by not only its natural gravitational force, but also by the planet's fon slots, points on the planet and every single existing object where fonons tend to concentrate in large number. The planet's fon slots are especially more adept at drawing in fonons from the fon belt because of the memory particles--fragments of the planet's memory from the core--are themselves a particle type different from fonons, but tend to draw fonons of all types.
People learned to use these fonons and developed techniques called fonic artes, an ability that became the basis of Auldrantian civilization. Now, the presence of the fonon does not make any other particles of molecular matter--atoms and elements, ions, neutrons, protons, electrons--any less important, but there is a key reason why fonons became extremely important to the people of Auldrant.
Unlike atoms and other forms of molecular matter, fonons are freely flowing on their own and do not have as rigid and set a structure as do atomic structures. Skilled fonists--people who channel and manipulate fonons at will--are able to easily converge and pull apart fonons, whereas that is not even possible in the case of certain molecular structures and atomic particles.
In fact, fonons are so freely flowing that they ever permanently stay in place in certain forms--biotic and abiotic--are due to the combination of fonon types along with atomic particles.
In addition to embodying the elements, there is another aspect of fonons that has made them of extreme importance to Auldrantian civilization--fonons of all types emit a signature vibration frequency, and when harnessed properly these vibrations can resonate and generate energy--a process familiar to fonists, as this phenomenon is the basis for using fonic artes.
In early Auldrantian civilization, fuel and power were used in the form of gathering large amounts of a certain fonon type and causing them to resonate to generate their power. Of course, this was not especially useful to civilization until machines began to develop, but in very early humanity only a few people knew the secrets of fonic artes, and fonists usually passed their secrets and skills through their families.
While using fonon resonance as a way to generate power for machines in earlier civilization was sufficient, a group of fonists investigating one of the planet's fon slots found a more efficient way to power fonic technology--the use of memory particles.
Originating in the planet's core, memory particles had much pent-up energy from being confined in the intense pressure inside the core and being bounced around other memory particles constantly before being shot out of the core via one of the planet's ten major fon slots.
Upon harnessing the latent power of memory particles, the old fueling system of using fonic resonance went obsolete, and the way was paved for the Dawn Age of Auldrant.
As technology progressed, civilization was strained at fixed periods of time due to the over-consumption of memory particles--new memory particles are always being formed the core, but it takes time for the new particles to shoot out of the core, therefore if an industrialized country built around a planetary fon slot ran their fon slot dry of memory particles, it would often collapse before new memory particles were able to shoot out the fon slot in enough numbers to power a country so reliant on memory particles.
Before the true Dawn Age began, human civilization was always constantly progressing and regressing, advancing when memory particles around the planetary fon slots in their territory were plentiful, and pushed back when the memory particles went dry.
The period of advancement we now call the Dawn Age was the time when Dr. Southern-Cross had proposed a permanent fueling system using the planetary fon slots--Sephiroth--to constantly channel and funnel memory particles in and out of the planet's core in an cycle to have memory particles as freely flowing as fonons are and never again have a shortage of energy.
The most powerful Sephiroth were those on the poles of the planet, so Dr. Southern-Cross among others had utilized those Sephiroth to create the Planet Storm. We know them now as the Absorption Gate of the North Pole, where memory particles and fonons enter the core, and the Radiation Gate, where memory particles and fonons exit the core.
It was in fact the Planet Storm that allowed the beginning of the Dawn Age, but is common misconception that the Planet Storm was developed during the Dawn Age.
Up until then there were only six known types of fonons--but the Planet Storm had brought about another fonon type: the Seventh Fonon.
Although Dr. Southern-Cross had thought it of little consequence at the time, a side effect of the massive force of the Planet Storm is that it brought in not only memory particles, but fonons of all types from the fon belt within the planet's core, where the intense pressure, heat, and kinetic energy forged a new type of fonon that is a variant of all six fonon types plus memory particles.
The Seventh Fonon indeed was a curiosity to the fonologists who studied it. The fonon of sound, the Seventh Fonon had the power to break down matter to an atomic level, but it also had the power to reform matter. Being a freely flowing fonon and therefore usable by fonists, this meant that fonists who could use the Seventh Fonon could use it to heal injured or diseased people--a significant advantage over using the older methods of conventional medicine.
The destructive power of the Seventh Fonon is through a phenomenon that, prior to the use of memory particles as an energy source, previously had no real destructive force. The interference of Seventh Fonons with one another amplifies their fonon frequencies, and in small amounts, the resulting resonance is inconsequential.
But in large quantities, the amplified frequencies have enough power to completely obliterate everything in a given space--including parts of the atmosphere. This is known as hyperresonance. However, two Seventh Fonists are required to generate a hyperresonance, and the exact circumstances of hyperresonance are innumerable and unknowable. Even when a hyperresonance occurs between Seventh Fonists, it is only about one fourth the true power of hyperresonance.
Further study of the Seventh Fonon revealed exactly why it could break down and reform matter--being a combination of all six fonon types (and therefore conflicting elements that ought to cancel out one another), the Seventh Fonon is inherently unstable. Secondly, it is forged with memory particles, fragments of the planet's memory--the established natural order of healing artes will tell us that the process of healing is actually the feeding of memory particles to the wounded or diseased area of the body, and the particles cause the body to "remember" the proper form and/or order of the injury or diseased area, thusly speeding up the healing process exponentially.
But the most significant change brought about by the Seventh Fonon was the fact that as a usable fonon within reach of certain fonists, it would give fonists and fonologists a chance to more effectively study memory particles, the planet' s memory, in greater detail.
Seventh Fonists and Fonologists discovered that if one could use the Seventh Fonon, one could see the future. These prophecies are known today as the Score.
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Hikaru: Whew! I'll go into more detail in certain subjects in later chapters ... the beginning is just a overview of how fonons--particularly the Seventh--impacted Auldrant and its civilization. Later subjects will include, but are not limited to, fon slots, fonic artes, strike artes, utilization of fields of fonons, fontech, the laws of attraction and repulsion of fonons, etc.