This post originally went live on June 3, 2024.

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In fantasy, you may come across the term ‘primordial forces’.  It shows up in other genres too, but it tends to pertain to ancient powers.  Some may think of ‘primordial soup’, which was basically the goo that started off life on Earth.  That’s close to what we’re talking about, but still very far often.  So, what would be primordial forces?

Primordial forces existed before everything else and are considered older than the universe or whatnot.  They were here at the beginning of time and will exist for all of eternity.  This can include reality, matter, energy, magic, space, time, and many other forces.  The point is that they have to be something that existed at the beginning of a world’s existence.  So, you do have some limitations depending on how the story’s world works.

These forces tend to be what keeps the world together or birthed it as well.  This can allow life and death to be included since one could say primordial requires there to be living things.  Same goes for time, which would need beings to exist for it to be noticed.  Much of this depends on your personal definition and the building of your world though.  You can see that there is a lot of flexibility.  Still, they all share the traits of being ancient and becoming a building block for the world itself.  This is probably why the genetic soup gets the name.

Science has some primordial forces too, which are: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces, and weak nuclear forces.  Those last two cover a lot of ground, but that does simplify things.  Makes sense to me too.  These are the forces that keep our universe together, so they had to exist at the start.  Otherwise, the universe would never have formed and everything else wouldn’t be created.  Space and energy might be the only other forces I could see coming before them, but that might not be scientific enough for this group’s use.

Another possible primordial force is change.  Everything changes at some point, so one could say it’s a force.  It could be defined as evolution, but that doesn’t include non-living things changing.  So, the general term could be change, which explains how the original components of the universe become what people see during the story.  Maybe this falls under the strong and weak nuclear forces.

The interesting thing is that I kept finding different sets of primordial forces depending on the world.  So, I don’t think there’s a clear set.  Science does have the 4, but fiction tends to be different across the board.  Yes, the Infinity Gems could count as would DC’s seven forces of the universe.  I know at least the first one would be mentioned in the comments if I didn’t do it first.  It does prove the variation of systems and how there tend to be stories about people trying to capture all of this power.  Makes sense since one who controls the primordial forces of a world would be able to change that world to whatever they want.

So, what do you think of the overall primordial forces concept?