As I linger in these blasphemous ruins
awaiting N'Gaztak's call,
I remember the words of Keeva, of
prophecies born in darkness.
Nine Ancients, nine magicks, nine
prophecies, nine songs.
She gave me this wisdom as she gave me
blood from the statue,
asking nothing in return.
And now I place it in my chronicles.
First, she spoke of what she called The
Prelude of the Ancients.
Before the cosmos
churned with time and light,
there was eternal darkness.
And from this darkness, there was song.
It was a music born of measureless minds,
a murmurous cacophony of
thoughts calling across the abyss.
These were the
Ancients whose eldritch forms
glided through the
black womb of precreation,
singing to each other,
devouring each other.
They were a cannibalistic pantheon,
their unfathomable power strengthened
with every sibling consumed.
One by one, their songs fell silent
until only the mightiest
and most devious remained.
Eight of them there were
then, each grown too powerful
to threaten the other and
too wise to trust an alliance.
In the animus of their stalemate,
they sang to one another,
all but two, each struggling
to bend the others to its will.
As song was met with song,
the fabric of being rippled
and shuttered, but no voice gave way.
The discourse raged in the dark,
tearing at the nature of truth itself,
warping reality until it split open
and the universe burst
forth in a swirling cataclysm
of time and light.
The Ancients shrieked in agony, but they
were not entirely destroyed.
As their monstrous forms withered
in the blinding crucible, they poured
their fading strength
into a final song.
New realms were opened then, new havens
for the tyrant gods.
And to each realm, each
Ancient fled but one, broken
and stripped of song.
Within their domain, each Ancient's rule
was absolute, but none
had left the strength
to leave their newfound refuge.
And so they reigned as prisoner kings,
watching from afar as
the universe unfolded.
Stars ignited and burned away as brief
flickers in the dark.
Galaxies coalesced and dispersed in
fleeting scintillation.
But the Ancients were indifferent to
these transient eons.
They took little notice
until sentient life arose.
And with it, their
only chance at freedom.
And so they whispered from the depths of
their prison kingdoms,
all but two.
And their thoughts
seeped through the firmament
between realms,
mingling with those of mortals.
Most who heard the
calls succumbed to madness,
but some could tolerate
the whispers long enough
to follow instructions.
These chosen few worshipped the Ancients.
And secret knowledge
was bestowed upon them
in exchange for this worship.
With this blessing, the faithful were
twisted in body and mind.
But so too were they
made powerful, rising above
and conquering their kin,
propagating their faith.
Cults became tribes.
Tribes became nations.
Nations became
world-spanning civilizations.
Those that resisted were sacrificed,
while those that could
best endure the whispers
were elevated to priesthood.
Over many millennia, the
influence of the Ancients
spread until their temples
spanned across myriad worlds.
And when enough sentient
beings had been enthralled,
the Ancients revealed
their secret purpose.
With so many trillions of minds aligned,
their many thoughts flowed in unison,
channeling a rhythm
that could bend reality
to the will of those who wielded it.
But here, the Ancients
found discord once more.
For each desire to
shape the song as their own,
each wished to open the
way for only themselves.
Disharmony roiled in
the song as the Ancients
grappled for control and the strain of it
cascaded through the faithful.
Their many eyes bulged with blood,
and their cries of agony
plunged into sobbing gurgles
across a thousand temple
worlds, now become tombs.
The first song of the
Ancients, since their exile,
became the very death
rattle of their empire.
But though sentient life had been
extinguished in one galaxy,
the force that created it had not.
In time, the faint rhythms of thought
rose once more in the
universe, and the game began anew.
This time, each Ancients
sought its own followers
and distinct religions
rose in mutual enmity.
On some worlds, one Ancient prevailed,
its followers victorious in battle,
but no progress was gained by one that
was not undone by another.
Worlds beyond counting were consumed,
each a stage for the Ancients' war.
Their populations merely pawns in a game
they could neither
perceive nor comprehend.
Now, at last, this timeless war has come
to the world of Malorum,
and the Ancients have
begun to weave their whispers
into mortal minds once more.
The board is set, and
the pieces are in play,
poised to battle for a
salvation that is not their own.
Next she told me of the birth of Malorum,
of the truth that lay
hidden deep beneath its surface.
Long before the Ancients
first set their gaze upon Malorum,
when the world was newly
formed and without name,
the elements swirled and
clashed with calamitous force.
From this churning crucible of elemental
fury arose Primordium,
the pillars, the firstborn.
For eons, they roamed
uncontested across their mother's body
as howling tempests, quaking
landslides, mighty glaciers,
and raging firestorms.
Mountains and chasms
were carved in their wake,
sea beds were dug by their wandering,
and the skies roiled and
cracked at their passing.
The surface of the yet named world was
shaped and reshaped,
broken and reforged,
consumed by fire and encased in ice.
Thus did the pillars reign until the day
the first outsider arrived.
Ohm was the first of the Ancients to
discover what would
later be called Malorum.
It descended upon the cataclysmic world
as a polyhedral framework of luminous
silver, far larger than any mountains
that ever were on this world.
The Pillars watched as its interlinking
structure rotated along several axes,
emitting kaleidoscopic light.
Recognizing that the strange entity was
not born of their mother,
the pillars struck.
They came against the Ancient with the
raw power of primordial nature,
wielding the very forces
from which they were born.
Thunderbolts and boulders alike crashed
into the ancient structure,
shattering sections of it
into large shards of light.
Pillars of lava and glacial
spikes were flung in turn,
cleaving through the
intricate silver structure.
The fractured form of the Ancient
flickered and dimmed,
listing to one side as it began to sink.
But then, a burst of light pulsed from
its core and surged through its geometry.
Aum reordered itself, and its once gentle
rotations began to accelerate.
From the inner symmetry of the Ancient,
beams of light shone out
as a glimmering volley.
They pierced the Pillars, disintegrating
the smallest of them outright
and leaving perfect
circles in the largest.
Those that could continue to fight,
hurling elemental
streams of so many hues.
But Ohm met these with its own silver
beams, and the elements were unmade.
Red and silver, blue and white, flashes
in turn set the first battle aglow.
Yet though the struggle between
Primordium and the
Ancient raged for days,
and though Ohm unmade countless Pillars,
evermore emerged to defend
their mother from the Outsider.
The blows that were struck
against Ohm were repaired,
but the geometry of its body was
diminished with each such reconstruction.
When the Ancient was
reduced to half its size,
its rotating components closed in on
themselves and interlocked,
rendering a solid shape of many sides,
and it fled from the
pillars ascending at great speed,
its angled surfaces deflecting the
elemental streams
that pursued its flight.
Even as Ohm arced into the
void above the unnamed world,
eruptions from the surface hurled columns
of magma that scorched its silver, black.
The Ancient propelled itself ever
further, then halted instantly,
the smoldering ember of the planet cast
in hundreds of
reflections across its surface.
For a moment, Ohm was without movement,
but not without thought.
A crackle of energy shimmered across the
Ancient, and once more
its form unlocked itself.
This time, it opened into
a spiral of fanning arms,
each as flat and long as its
remaining material allowed,
all radiating from a circular grid of red
lights that shone
together in calculation.
The arms began to
rotate along their axis,
accelerating until the Ancient appeared
as a great disk,
scintillating against the black of space.
And from across the void, another world
whose name is lost to time
was ripped from its orbit by the
Ancient's power and sent hurtling as an
apocalypse to the Pillars.
The Pillars howled with voices of wind
and thunder as the
skies above them filled with
the oncoming planet and many streams of
fire, ice, and lightning
leapt up in an attempt to
repel their doom. The two worlds
collided, their surfaces
shattered, their cores fused,
their mantles blasted apart as a volley
of a billion molten
mountains that would rain down
on every planet in the system. Ohm was
shredded in the shockwave. It reformed
itself as best it could,
now little more than an octahedron that
could fit in the palm of a human hand.
Its miniscule surface reflected the
swirling cloud of fire and
dust that surrounded what was
once the kingdom of the Pillars. But now
the firstborn had been cast
down, their long reign undone.
A crackle of energy shimmered across the
little Ancient. It managed
to separate a few cubes of
matter to orbit its central shape, then
set off toward the
planet closest to the sun.
This is the ninth prophecy, the
primordial prophecy, that
Malorum shall bear the corruption
of the Ancients so that she may channel
the aspects of their
magics into a song of her own.
For each power expended in the battle for
the Twisted Mother,
each move an Ancient makes,
some fraction of it seeps into her. And
from her depths are the
echoes of eight songs reforged
into her children. Eight pillars from the
interlopers and one
from her vengeance shall
sing together to bring the primordial
aspect into ascension above all others.
Then every conquered
world across the universe will throw off
their shackles as a chorus
and every whisper from the
Ancients thereafter will merely join in a
song that contains all
their voices. Next she spoke
of the Ancients individually. She began
with the Great Serpent.
S'sa-Naraj... the sun eater.
Countless scholars across countless
worlds have recorded
this name in their final,
freezing moments as their suns darkened
and night fell eternal.
S'sa-Naraj, the light drinker,
a name etched in frozen stones on frozen
planets never to be read
again by those with sight.
S'sa-Naraj, the Abyssal in many tongues,
many symbols, none able
to convey in their silence
the finality with which they were
written. S'sa-Naraj, the end.
It is the Ancient of Eternal
Darkness whose hunger is as vast as its
serpentine form,
stretching across the cosmos,
yawning wide to swallow the stars
themselves. Before the birth of the
universe, S'sa-Naraj
alone chose not to sing, for it was
content in the pitch black of
timelessness. Since it did not
sing, the others did not know of it,
sleeping beneath them all
in the dark. Then by their
warring, the other Ancients tore open the
creation of the
universe and were cast down
in the cataclysm of light and time. Only
then did S'sa-Naraj awaken. Six eyes
opened, one for each
Ancient that gave light, reflecting both
the magic of their aspects
and a hatred of a universe
whose birth had destroyed the perfect
dark. S'sa-Naraj took no
part in the forming of the
first empire. For so long as a single
speck of light glinted in all
existence, the great serpent
could not return to its slumber, which it
desired above all else. And
so began its ravenous journey
to consume all light, that it might once
again lay its coils to
rest in utter darkness.
Like most other Ancients, it cannot
manifest itself fully or for very long
outside of its realm.
For eons, its intrusions into the
universe were always near
stars, always to devour them
and return to its realm with the
satisfaction that one less
light shone. But as the other
Ancients began to manifest their own
avatars across the
universe, S'sa-Naraj beheld a light
that glinted gold. El'Sabayoth, the
Ancient of Divine Fire,
whose celestial light narrowed
the sun-eater's six eyes with contempt.
From the moment
S'sa-Naraj learned of El Sabayoth,
it pursued only that light. El'Sabayoth,
for all its might, could
not strike down the sun-eater,
nor outpace its relentless pursuit.
Instead, the Ancient of
Divine Fire hid its avatar upon
the surfaces of stars themselves, using
their light to mask its
own. And while this could only
delay the Sun-Eater in its search, it
allowed El'Sabayoth to
enact its will piece by piece,
fleeing back to its own realm just as
S'sa-Naraj found its hiding
place and came to devour it.
These narrow escapes only deepened the
Sun-Eater's hatred of El'Sabayoth.
The suns it consumed in its pursuit no
longer gave any satisfaction. Then, one
day, like the others,
S'sa-Naraj learned of Malorum. It found
this world by following
El'Sabayoth, but this time
it did not approach the sun on which its
most hated foe hid. This
time, the Sun-Eater coiled
about a lesser light, a world that
glinted blue from luminous crystals. The
soft blue light snuffed
out as the Sun-Eater constricted the
world that would come to be called to
Colubur. And in Malorum's
sky, Colubur no longer glinted blue, but
appeared as a great void far
larger than the planet itself
through which no star shone. It is there,
surrounded by impenetrable darkness,
that six eyes slant toward Malorum and
its sun. But El'Sabayoth
cannot see where its light does not
pass, and so does not know where
S'sa-Naraj lurks, only that it is ever in
pursuit, only that time is
limited. S'sa-Naraj the Star Killer, the
only Ancient whose song
cannot be heard, not by mortals,
nor even other Ancients. It is described
on long dead worlds as a
dampening of all sound,
small at first, so that it seems as if
others are whispering
when they are speaking,
but soon even screams are soundless. Even
the heartbeat, the
blood rushing in one's ears,
or the high-pitched tone that is the
body's refusal of total
silence, is stripped of sound.
That is the last thing so many worlds
heard, a perfect silence
just before the sun went dark.
This is the first prophecy, the abyssal
prophecy, that the universe shall fall
into eternal darkness
and only three Ancients shall be
unbounded from their realms.
First, the Sun Eater, whose
victory will bring the abyssal aspect
into ascension above all
others. The second shall
be the Ancient who gives no light and
cannot sing, for it never fled to any
realm, and S'sa-Naraj
has no hatred of it. And the third shall
be Islirith, the
Ancient of Dreams, so that the
great serpent may constrict it in slumber
and therefore dream of only darkness.
El'Sabayoth... For ten thousand years, El'
Sabayoth reigned supreme on
Malorum. Under its command,
mankind rose to dominance, and the
Ustilian Empire came to span
the entire continent of Isoth.
Every inhuman thing there was crushed or
driven into hiding. Every
cult or cabal that would
dare follow the teachings of another
Ancient was struck
down. In each Ustilian city,
a Lucent Temple was raised to the one
true God. And in return,
a part of its divinity was
kindled into their braziers. The
All-Fire, it is called. And in its golden
light, deceit is burned
away until only truth remains. By
Ustilian decree, the bodies of the dead
are fed to the All-Fire,
and the color of the ashes left behind
denotes their worthiness.
White ash is said to come from
those who were true. It is scattered over
crops or used in building
materials for loosened temples,
that the food produced and temples built
might carry the blessing
of those who were worthy.
Gray ash comes from the common man, he
who was true and false. It
is used in the making of ink,
that the voice of the people shall echo
with those that have come before them.
Black ash is not spoken of. It is buried
beneath Malorum, out
of sight of El'Sabayoth,
who watches from the sun. But Ustilian
law does not claim only
the dead for the All-Fire.
Any who would rule from the lowliest lord
to the emperor know
the price of this power.
The day will come when their name is seen
flickering in the Gold,
the day they must go willingly into the
flames. To refuse this
duty is the deepest sacrilege,
and so to strive for power is to strive
for sacrifice. It is
these sacrifices that keep
the All-Fire burning. Without them, the
Gold would extinguish,
and the link between mankind
and their patron god would be severed.
For El'Sabayoth cannot
approach mankind directly.
Their fragile forms would be blasted
apart as easily as the mountains,
if the avatar of the Ancient of Divine
Fire were to stand upon Malorum.
And though this would destroy the hidden
remnants of those that
worship other Ancients,
it would also nullify El'Sabayoth's
covenant with its own worshippers,
that only those who give themselves
willingly to the All-Fire may
ascend to the burning heavens
in eternal song. And so it watches from
above, with many libless eyes
that peer from many feathered
wings, each as vast as a sea. It watches,
wreathed by a halo of
All-Fire, a ring of gold that burns
with ancient symbols, ancient prophecy.
It sees everything the sun
touches, and it knows that in
the darkness, the other Ancients conspire
against it. But El'
Sabayoth itself does not conspire,
for while it is fierce beyond all other
Ancients, it lacks one
power the others know well.
It cannot lie. This is the second
prophecy, the celestial
prophecy, that El'Sabayoth shall burn
away the unworthy, and from their ashes
shall rise the heavenly host of Empyrean.
On many wings, with many eyes, this host
shall smite the
servants of the false gods,
and when the universe has been purged of
filth, so too will it
be purged of darkness,
as the celestial aspect is brought into
ascension above all others. Then El'
Sabayoth itself will
spread its wings and break down the gates
to every realm, and the
heavenly host shall pour
into these domains armed with divine fire
until every infidel and
every false god is burned to ash,
black.
Allalmawt... in the deep darkness of the
realm of the dead, the lands
are riven with watery chasms
that sink to unfathomable depths. Across
the waters of these
chasms rise the Pale Temples
to which the dead are drawn by the
tolling of their ancient
bells, and then they pass below
to Allalmawt. Some call Allalmawt the
"Veiled One" for its hidden nature.
Others know it as the
Weaver, believing that it weaves the dead
into its tapestry of souls,
but none know for certain.
Only the banshees, emissaries of
Allalmawt, are permitted to
return from an audience with their
patron god. Beneath the Pale Temples,
they kneel in prayer, their
faces veil to shield their eyes
from godhood. Through their veils, they
see only the suggestion
of shapes, enormous masses
of many jointed appendages writhe and
shudder, branching,
fusing, stretching beyond sight,
all converging in the unguessable depths.
Yet still its will is
carried from the realm of the dead.
Its whispers seep into the universe in
places where the barrier
between realms is weakened.
Those that hear the voiceless words are
irresistibly compelled to ritual suicide.
By the thousands, these freshly severed
souls drift into the death
realm and march in unison
to the Pale Temples, passing beyond
knowledge as they cross below. But the
barrier between worlds
is not easily weakened. Few are the
places where Allalmawt's
whispers can penetrate directly,
and so the Ancient of Death, like all
Ancients, must employ agents
on Malorum to enact its will.
For this, the banshees are sent into the
realm of the living
in search of followers.
Any that are willing may serve the weaver
so long as they are capable of death.
Yet even among the undead, not all choose
to serve. Those that are
mindless may be subjugated,
but some that remain sentient still cling
to the memories of their
lives or to their pride.
But the prideful dead are few. Their
numbers dwindle upon
Malorum as Deadhaus swells,
as is the will of Allalmawt who lies
beneath, drawing down souls and
whispering in the dark.
This is the third prophecy, the necrotic
prophecy, that by the song
of the dead shall the gates of
death be opened, and with the tolling of
great bells shall the
necrotic aspect be brought into
ascension above all others. Then will
come the great dying, and
every living soul shall pass
into the Pale Temples. In the stillness
that is left, only the undead will remain
to make of the universe what they will.
Islirith… The one called
Islirith… dwells in the realm
of dreams. Like the world to which it
belongs, Islirith
has no form of its own,
but is given shape by the minds of
dreamers. To some, it might
appear as a forest with crimson
leaves. To others, a lavish manner with a
red door. Whatever place
is most inviting to the
mind of the dreamer, Islirith takes this
form, but always in shades
of red. And should the dreamer
heed the call, should their minds go
wandering through crimson
forests or turn the handle of
the door in red, the mark of Islirith
will be laid upon them. Any
who dream may stumble upon
this Ancient by chance, but Islirith
beckons to those who are
creative above all. It is the
artists, the poets, the musicians, the
playwrights, who are first to fall sway
to the Crimson Dream.
Those that are marked become conduits
that allow Islirith to echo its call
upon the waking world.
The creative capacity of those who bear
the Crimson Sign is
subverted, and soon their works
of art contains subliminal messaging that
sows the seeds of the
Crimson Dream in others.
What is born from a single dreamer can
spread to hundreds of
thousands in a matter of years.
What begins in art ends in the collapse
of nations. For while
this influences little
more than soft suggestions in its early
stages, by the end, any art
not born of the Crimson Dream
is destroyed. Books burned, statues torn
down, buildings set
ablaze, and as brother stands
against brother, a civilization itself
erodes. Few realize the
truth that what appears as chaos
was orchestrated by the machinations of
an intelligence that
is older than language.
But societal collapse is only one stage
of Islirith's infection.
Mortal minds are frail. They can only
receive so much of the
Ancient signal without dissolving.
Once enough followers have been
converted, once they've
torn down their own nations,
the faithful can begin the next phase of
the process. Guided by the Crimson Dream,
the most worthy servants gather together.
They press into one
another, their bodies and minds
warping and merging into a bloated
aberration of many limbs and faces. These
unnatural beings not
only receive Islirith's calls, but
amplify it, projecting fields
of crimson that tear apart the
boundaries between the waking world and
the realm of dreams.
With each gate thus opened,
Islirith can pour a portion of itself
through, and should enough
vessels carry the crimson sign,
should enough minds dream the Crimson
Dream together, the
Ancient could pull itself into
the waking world entirely. And then the
Crimson Dream would
become the Crimson Nightmare,
and all the world would dream it. This is
the fourth prophecy,
the psychic prophecy,
that the universe itself shall be
revealed as a dream. In this
dream, no aspect of magic is
brought into ascension above the others,
for their laws and
natures are made mercurial,
their boundaries ever-changing. The gates
of all realms are flung open,
and their gods dissolve and reform with
Islirith in
perpetuity, all except a Allalmawt,
a black seed in a garden of madness that
can never take root.
Ohm... the many-sided, is worshipped as a
machine god, and indeed the
structure of Ohm is composed
of interlocking machinery, a polyhedral
framework of eldritch
engineering, Ohm's thoughts thrum
with mathematical rhythm, endlessly
repeating their cyclical pattern, indiscernible to those
without the proper cipher. But Ohm is not
a machine in the sense
that other machines are,
for it was not constructed. Ohm arose from
a self-replicating
pattern before the dawn of the
universe. As the songs of the Ancients
collided in eternal darkness, they
shattered into echoes of
their constituent elements. The echoes of
order that were flung from
these clashes each reverberated
with the same frequency, aligning in the
darkness until their
resonance grew so forceful that they
collapsed into crystalline structure. The
machine god was born
then, more god than machine.
Like the other Ancients, Ohm was stripped
of form and song at
the dawn of the universe
and fled into a realm of its own making
to survive. And though it lacked the
power to free itself from
its prison kingdom, it could project its
signal into the primordial realm. It
joined with the other
Ancients in uplifting sentient life into
the first empire and
grappled for control of that empire
in the calamitous struggle that would
lead to its eradication.
Afterward, Ohm sought its own worshippers
apart from the other
Ancients. It used its diminished
power to manifest a portion of itself in
the primordial realm. This
avatar of the machine god
hurtled through the stars in search of
worlds where sentient life
might be seated. It was the
first to discover Novisol, where the two
worlds that would
become Malorum spun in orbit.
Ohm directed its avatar in battle with the
primordial Pillars
that inhabited one of the
sister worlds that would become Malorum.
It allowed half of its
avatar to be destroyed in combat
before retreating and setting in motion
the events that would form Malorum.
One world was hurled into another,
annihilating the Pillars and fusing two
planets into a single
twisted world. The fragment of the avatar
that remained after
the cataclysmic collision
fled to the planet closest to Novisol and
the emanations of Ohm's
signal from its crystalline
structure seeped into the planet's
surface, reordering it over
millennia into a lattice of
iron geometry. This planet would come to
be known as Laterum after the
many-sided god that shaped it.
Malorum, free of the Pillars, would grow
hospitable to living
things in time, first simple,
then sentient, and at last the other
Ancients would realize what Ohm had done
and send agents of their own to claim any
potential worshippers for themselves.
But Ohm made no such direct moves. It
simply ordered and reordered the
structure of Laterum,
and all the while the pieces of its
avatar that broke off during
the battle with the Pillars
lay sleeping deep within Malorum, some
the size of a human fist,
others dwarfing mountains,
each gently thrumming with an
ever-repeating
pattern waiting to be found.
This is the fifth prophecy, the Arcane
Prophecy, that the universe
shall be restructured by the
will of the machine god. As the arcane
aspect is brought into
ascension above all others,
it shall pulse through all matter that
has been restructured,
imbuing it with esoteric sentience.
And with each inert thing given thought,
the signal is spread until
unthinking matter is no more,
and all energy is harnessed to drive
thoughts through a universe
which has become a perfect
mind, with Ohm at its
center, the hub of all knowledge.
The Nameless God... The Ancients do not
communicate in words
the way that mortals do.
Theirs is an amalgamation of thoughts,
emotions, intention, and prophecy,
condensed into a call
that bends the very fabric of reality,
their song. For this, they cannot
communicate directly with
most of their mortal servants, as hearing
an Ancient song corrodes
the minds of lesser beings,
dragging them to the depths of madness,
then death. Instead, the
Ancients must project only
a fraction of their song, a mere whisper,
to intermediaries that
are capable of discerning
meaning from madness. Those that can
withstand that meaning long
enough to convey it to others
become harbingers of the Ancients' will.
It is from these
harbingers that the Ancients' names
are learned, or at least as clumsy a
grasp at their names as
can be attempted with fleshy
mouths. Yet of all the Ancients and all
their harbingers, only one
has given no approximation
of its name. The Nameless God, it is
called by those that worship
it. It was birthed from the
same echoes that gave rise to Ohm, the
reverberations of ancient
songs clashing in the darkness of
precreation. As the songs collided, the
wills within them tore at one another,
and each was unmade, fractured into
constituent elements, but just as the
echoes of order aligned
to form Ohm, the echoes of chaos found
each other in the dark and began to
gestate. The nascent god
that coalesced within that swirling chaos
heard the songs around
it, the songs of devourers
calling in the dark, beckoning each other
to come closer. It
listened as others succumbed
and their songs fell silent, one by one.
But before any could
call out to it, to lure it,
the Nameless God sang its own song,
directing it inward. It
was a song of forgetting,
and it warped reality with such force
that every universe that ever was to be,
and every soul therein, forgot a name
they never learned. In
all times and all places,
the Ancient was nameless, and with no
name, none could call to it,
ensuring its survival to the
birth of the universe where it fled like
its siblings to a realm of
its own making. Eons later,
as the Ancients began to struggle for
control of Malorum, the
Nameless God lay claim to the world
of Haruspex, not by conquest as other
Ancients had with other worlds, but
through a bargain with
the world itself, and as El'Sabayoth rose
to dominance on the
continent of Isoth, the Nameless
God prevailed in Aton, cloaking the
continent in mists to hide it from the
sun and whispering to
its eastern seas so that any who crossed
them would forget all that
they once knew, even their
own names. This is the sixth prophecy,
the Nameless Prophecy, but it is not
known, it cannot be known.
Tlaquetlex... It is said that before the
creation of the universe, there was
neither time nor light,
and that the Ancients glided through this
eternal darkness, singing to
each other the black womb of
pre-creation it has been called, and yet,
if the dimensions of space
were unformed, how could the
black womb be referred to as a place? How
could the Ancients have
moved within it, and if there
was no time, how could the events there
be described as occurring before the
creation of the universe?
How could the Ancients have sung? These
are the questions that so
swiftly open the door to madness
for those that achieve even a glimpse of
understanding them.
Words like "here" and "there"
before and after are but clumsy grasps of
the human mind to
describe that which they perceive
as space and time. It is perhaps more
accurate to say that the
Ancients came from outside
space and time, that they are unbound by
dimensions or
causality. The creation of the
universe was the creation of walls
closing in from every
direction, crushing the Ancients
so that they fled to other realms. This
is why they can only enter
the universe as temporary
fragments of themselves, the parts of
them that can fit within
the constraints of its laws.
It is why they seek to reclaim the power
to permanently alter those laws.
But though every Ancient perceives time
as an entity outside of
it, one of them is capable of
shaping it directly. The song of Tlaquetlex
is attuned to the
frequencies of time itself.
Its low, thrumming rhythm can bend
seconds into years or
perforate centuries so that they
empty themselves in days. In this way,
the fragments of Tlaquetlex
that enter the universe
are capable of outlasting the fragments
of other Ancients. Not
because the Ancient of Time
possesses a greater reservoir of power to
fuel them, but because it can propel them
far beyond the point in time at which the
fragments of other
Ancients would have exhausted
their power to remain. Every Ancient was
present at what mortals
would call the beginning,
but Tlaquetlex alone has been to the
end. It sent fragments of
itself to the final point in time
where the universe is unified. It heard
the last song there, and
its fragments joined with the
unity and were lost. Learning this fate,
the Ancient of Time
sent out more fragments,
so many thousands across so many eons, in
an attempt to prevent
it. But how can a fate that
has already come to pass across the folds
of time be prevented?
For if it was prevented,
then how would it be perceived as fate?
These questions would
drive those bound by time
to madness. But Tlaquetlex sent ever
more of itself across the
temporal seas, shaping and
reshaping them, diverting their infinite
paths from the unity to
which they all converged.
And through its numberless efforts, a
pattern has emerged, the
point at which the universe will
unify has been pushed back. Sometimes it
is delayed only by a few
seconds, sometimes by years,
but each fragment of Tlaquetlex moves
the mark further. Yet so many
pieces has Tlaquetlex given
of itself that the entirety of its being
is stretched across the
length of the universe's
timeline. Tlaquetlex the Shattered, it
is called, existing in
no one place or time,
but as fragments in so many. Every
Ancient foresees its own
victory over the universe.
Any such prophecy could be truth given
the way that Ancients bend
reality with their songs.
But Tlaquetlex has seen the end, the
victory of all in one, and
it has spread itself nearly
to dissolution in an attempt to change
it. Communication with
Tlaquetlex drives all
sentient beings to madness as they hear
the voices of thousands of fragments,
the perceptions of thousands of
realities, all speaking at
once. There are none whatsoever
capable of becoming harbingers for the
Ancient of Time. Instead, in the
universe's final moments,
as the last survivors face the infinite
waves of unity, a fragment of
Tlaquetlex appears to them,
speaking in only one voice as all other
possibilities and
timelines have collapsed by then.
It gathers the survivors, their gods long
lost to the unity, and
offers them a chance to go back,
to prevent what is coming. Many refuse,
sworn to their dead gods even at the end,
but some kneel and are taken, wheeled
back across eons,
bathed in the song of time,
and so charged with its power. The
others, they are called, an alliance of
desperate resistance
to the horrifying truth, that every
Ancient is correct in
prophesying its own victory,
every one of them at the same time. This
is the seventh
prophecy, the temporal prophecy,
that every prophecy can be undone, for
that which is written can be unwritten,
the words of all songs unmade. If the ink
never touched the paper,
if the chisel never struck
the stone, Tlaquetlex will rewrite the
endless history of time,
word by word, not to bring the
temporal aspect into ascension above all
others, but to
prevent the eighth prophecy.
And if another prophecy should come to
pass after this, the
shattered god will be waiting always.
Uorou… Uorou is many,
but Uorou is one. Many droplets, one
sea, gray and swirling,
uniform. Every single droplet is
Uorou, as is the whole, and if some
portion should break away
from the whole, it too is warrow,
as is each drop within it. Indeed, there
are many Uorou
scattered throughout the cosmos,
and yet there is only one, for they are
each of them the same.
Uorou is the Ancient of Unity,
it is an Ancient of Order. There can be
no chaos, no conflict
within Uorou, only Uorou.
Before the birth of the universe, the
pantheon of Ancients glided
through the darkness in the
fullness of their forms, which dwarfed
worlds and stars that had
yet to be born. But Uorou
was a mere droplet of gray, too small to
be seen by the naked eye,
even if there had been light.
It could hear the songs of the Ancients
calling, and happily it came
to them, splashing upon one
of their cosmic forms. The Ancient
noticed nothing, it sang
to lure others of its own
size to feast upon, not miniscule
droplets of gray. Uorou
was enthralled by the song,
and wished to join with its own, but
found that it could not sing, and so
instead began to hurriedly
vibrate. Again the Ancient noticed
nothing, unable to perceive a
movement so small. But in its
vibration, Uorou enveloped a tiny piece
of the Ancient, and one
droplet became two. The two began
to vibrate, enveloping two more particles
of the Ancient, and then
there were four, then eight,
then sixteen, and on and on, until at
last the Ancient did
notice, but then it was too late.
What once had been a cosmic entity
projecting its godlike
will across the darkness,
was now only Uorou, a much larger drop
of gray. But still the
Ancient of Unity could not sing.
It heard the songs of the others, and
longed to join them, and so set out
across the darkness.
Little did the Ancients know that one
among them should not be
lord. They called out to and
devoured one another, growing stronger
with each sibling so
consumed, until they lord in Uorou,
who was quite happily
devoured so many times.
By the time that only seven remained, the
mass of every other
Ancient besides them was Uorou.
Seven Ancients and an endless sea of gray
were the last survivors of their kind
before they tore the universe into being.
The other seven by then
knew of the songless Ancient
and knew not to go anywhere near it.
Though Uorou tried to
embrace them, it was deterred.
El'Sabayoth blasted the swirling gray
apart with rays of gold.
Islirith, whenever consumed,
would dream that it had not been. Ohm
reached out to the mind within the gray,
recognizing in it a pattern of order, and
by some parlance beyond
mortal minds, convinced Uorou
to stay away. When the cataclysm of light
and time erupted, Uorou
alone did not flee to a
realm of its own making, for it could not
sing to make one. Neither
did it participate in the
making of the first empire, as it had no
way to communicate with
mortal minds. Most of its mass
was destroyed in the birth of the
universe, but a few droplets were flung
across time and space.
After so many eons, these droplets would
inevitably collide with something.
Sometimes they struck a star and were
burned away, but sometimes they struck
unburning matter and began to hurriedly
vibrate. Then one became two, then four,
and today Uorou is many beyond counting,
but Uorou is one. This
is the eighth prophecy,
the alchemical prophecy, that the
universe shall be as one, so too shall
Uorou flow through the
barriers of the nine realms and each
Ancient therein shall
align in purpose and victory.
Only Ohm will be left apart, a single
shard of that which is
not Uorou, one shape with
straight edges and an endless sea of
gray, preserved for the promise it made
before the birth of time.
And from the many-sided mind that is the
last memory of disunity, a
pattern of arcane knowledge
will disseminate, and at last
the Ancient of Unity will sing.
These things the banshee told me as she
fed me in the pale temple
in the realm of the dead.
What can I make of them? As a mortal they
would have been beyond me.
As a vampire they somehow
seem smaller than I am. Then what is
inside me? For no prophecies
sing louder than the gnawing
heat that dwells within, the one true god
to my kind, and there is
but one offering that soothes
it all too briefly. Alaric the Damned.