AN: This is a repost of a thread on SB that I hope will work out so far the reception besides likes has been abysmal. I am hoping it is better here.
Welcome one and all to my latest of many threads. Now as to what this thread is about? We are going to craft both a setting and a story of the saga and ages of this one Haven from madness and insanity in a monstrous universe of what could only be called Demons.
Now this thread is a little different from the usual in that I have various basic facts of the setting set up. But there is a lot that had nothing done for it that you will fill in. I will just provide the broad strokes.
Now as for the rules
First for this Thread while each poster adds to the setting by posting facts and then building off of the facts each poster posts I would really like Omakes to be written about this setting in the Thread as we go on. Be creative and have it be in universe documents if you want or something else. I just think it would lead to more investment into the setting and fun for everyone while also giving us a chance to show off and improve our writing.
Second rule you can disagree with what someone has written but you must explain why and they in turn must engage with you on the issue. Civil discussion from both parties to come to the best compromise.
With that said let's get started with the basics. Once long ago before the Void of the Dead Cosmos there was the First Universe of light and form but it was destroyed in a apocalyptic cataclysm that left only a bleeding corpse of space and time. This abomination of Entropy and Chaos was named the Dead Cosmos by the last dying whisper of what remained of the previous universe. The Dead Cosmos was a pulsating wound that bled horror and madness and overseeing it all were the Inheritors of Entropy. The Kings and Queens of the Monsters of Chaos that now were the dominant force of life if the warped and twisted spawn of death that arose from the ruins of the First Universe could be called life.
The Inheritors were ruled by the Mystic Sovereign a entity born to enforce the Laws of Entropy upon the Dead Cosmos so that no hope would ever be allowed to shine in the endless Void. And the Inheritors enforced their will through their power over Necro Matter. The new substance of energy and matter that compromised the foundation of the Dead Cosmos.
The First Universe would have called it a living force of darkest magic bonded to the fundamental laws of Creation but to the eternally screaming deziens of the Dead Cosmos it was the flesh of their universe and worst of all the Blood of the Inheritors. There were some beacons of defiance in the form of the Wanderers. Nomads who traveled through the celestial wasteland of the Void trying their best to survive and live with only fragments of broken lore and knowledge of the Arcane Technology of the First Universe to protect them. But this story is not about those brave souls but one of their nightmares. Our tale begins with one of the Inheritors.
The Inheritor of Calamity, Lord of Fire and Darkness, Wielder of the Sword of Annihilation, Storm Reaver and many other titles. But for the sake of brevity we will simply call him Bal, The Iron Devil. Among the Inheritors Bla was the most simple and brutal in his desires.
He wished to kill everything down to their very souls and so he did. The others demanded worship, pain or any other numerous miseries to sate them but Bal? Reveling in a inferno of slaughter while destroying everything he could find in the Void was his joy. Not even the Mystic Sovereign commanded Bal for he was wild and raw, more a force of brutality and violence unleashed then anything else. But Bal harbored a deeper madness then even his savage frenzy. Bal was obsessed with Creation and the act of making.
On his war path he sought out forbidden secrets of Life that had existed with the First Universe. And somewhere in the depths of the Cosmos covered in astral gore he discovered at last what he desired. Bal offering his own Blood and flesh created something that was not fully of the Dead Cosmos. Now this first creation coming directly from Bal was a primordial hunting ground full of eldritch Beasts and other creatures of carnal bloodlust with the power of his Blood flowing through them. But they knew love and joy, sorrow and mercy and under the hand of Bal they flourished and grew. In comparison to the rest of the sordid Cosmos it was a new Eden.
Over the ages the Blood of these first Elder scions of Bal grew weaker and more diluted until the descendents of the first children of Bal could no longer survive the harsh and deadly world Bal had made. Bal hearing the prayers of those who were flesh of his flesh tried to create a sanctuary for his grand children but the destructive nature of that power made such a action mute. He could not provide the home they needed and the Beasts saw them as weak and unworthy of the Oldest Father's love. Bal was forced to feel despair as a piece of the one thing he did not not hate in all of the Cosmos would die and he could do nothing to aid them.
Yes Bal could do nothing but one of the Elder Beasts who had studied the notes and archives of her Father could. She was named Elaine and she was the first child of Bal. Unlike her brothers and sisters who had their Father's wrath as well as dread sorcery she was a artist and creator who tended to the wounds of her siblings and spoke with her Father about his maddening dreams of Beauty.
She could not truly wield the Old Magics because her Blood coming from her Father was Ruin and Murder. But she found that she could purify the corruption of her essence in a act of self Sacrifice to create something her Father could not. A land free of the taint of his murderous power.
Like her Father she was simple in the creation of this new world and just created a vast set of Rings for the weaker races to migrate to. As the First Inner Rings had been made from the Blood of Bal so were these new Outer Rings made by Elaine the kindest of his first Children and through her ritual of purification she become something akin to the old goddesses of the First Universe though one of Pain and Sacrifice. This is how the Young race of man and the others came to the Outer Rings.
Now the two main sources of Magic are Purification and Iron Sorcery. Purification used by the Outer Rings is purging your Blood of Cosmic taint to channel a holy light that can be used to perform miracles and other incredible acts of Creation but it is severely taxing on body and mind to use as it requires great pain to cleanse the Necro Matter of Bal in the Blood
Then there is there is the Iron Sorcery of Bal. Like him it's ruinous, brutal and downright berserk. Some posts that explain it
]
Welcome one and all to my latest of many threads. Now as to what this thread is about? We are going to craft both a setting and a story of the saga and ages of this one Haven from madness and insanity in a monstrous universe of what could only be called Demons.
Now this thread is a little different from the usual in that I have various basic facts of the setting set up. But there is a lot that had nothing done for it that you will fill in. I will just provide the broad strokes.
Now as for the rules
First for this Thread while each poster adds to the setting by posting facts and then building off of the facts each poster posts I would really like Omakes to be written about this setting in the Thread as we go on. Be creative and have it be in universe documents if you want or something else. I just think it would lead to more investment into the setting and fun for everyone while also giving us a chance to show off and improve our writing.
Second rule you can disagree with what someone has written but you must explain why and they in turn must engage with you on the issue. Civil discussion from both parties to come to the best compromise.
With that said let's get started with the basics. Once long ago before the Void of the Dead Cosmos there was the First Universe of light and form but it was destroyed in a apocalyptic cataclysm that left only a bleeding corpse of space and time. This abomination of Entropy and Chaos was named the Dead Cosmos by the last dying whisper of what remained of the previous universe. The Dead Cosmos was a pulsating wound that bled horror and madness and overseeing it all were the Inheritors of Entropy. The Kings and Queens of the Monsters of Chaos that now were the dominant force of life if the warped and twisted spawn of death that arose from the ruins of the First Universe could be called life.
The Inheritors were ruled by the Mystic Sovereign a entity born to enforce the Laws of Entropy upon the Dead Cosmos so that no hope would ever be allowed to shine in the endless Void. And the Inheritors enforced their will through their power over Necro Matter. The new substance of energy and matter that compromised the foundation of the Dead Cosmos.
The First Universe would have called it a living force of darkest magic bonded to the fundamental laws of Creation but to the eternally screaming deziens of the Dead Cosmos it was the flesh of their universe and worst of all the Blood of the Inheritors. There were some beacons of defiance in the form of the Wanderers. Nomads who traveled through the celestial wasteland of the Void trying their best to survive and live with only fragments of broken lore and knowledge of the Arcane Technology of the First Universe to protect them. But this story is not about those brave souls but one of their nightmares. Our tale begins with one of the Inheritors.
The Inheritor of Calamity, Lord of Fire and Darkness, Wielder of the Sword of Annihilation, Storm Reaver and many other titles. But for the sake of brevity we will simply call him Bal, The Iron Devil. Among the Inheritors Bla was the most simple and brutal in his desires.
He wished to kill everything down to their very souls and so he did. The others demanded worship, pain or any other numerous miseries to sate them but Bal? Reveling in a inferno of slaughter while destroying everything he could find in the Void was his joy. Not even the Mystic Sovereign commanded Bal for he was wild and raw, more a force of brutality and violence unleashed then anything else. But Bal harbored a deeper madness then even his savage frenzy. Bal was obsessed with Creation and the act of making.
On his war path he sought out forbidden secrets of Life that had existed with the First Universe. And somewhere in the depths of the Cosmos covered in astral gore he discovered at last what he desired. Bal offering his own Blood and flesh created something that was not fully of the Dead Cosmos. Now this first creation coming directly from Bal was a primordial hunting ground full of eldritch Beasts and other creatures of carnal bloodlust with the power of his Blood flowing through them. But they knew love and joy, sorrow and mercy and under the hand of Bal they flourished and grew. In comparison to the rest of the sordid Cosmos it was a new Eden.
Over the ages the Blood of these first Elder scions of Bal grew weaker and more diluted until the descendents of the first children of Bal could no longer survive the harsh and deadly world Bal had made. Bal hearing the prayers of those who were flesh of his flesh tried to create a sanctuary for his grand children but the destructive nature of that power made such a action mute. He could not provide the home they needed and the Beasts saw them as weak and unworthy of the Oldest Father's love. Bal was forced to feel despair as a piece of the one thing he did not not hate in all of the Cosmos would die and he could do nothing to aid them.
Yes Bal could do nothing but one of the Elder Beasts who had studied the notes and archives of her Father could. She was named Elaine and she was the first child of Bal. Unlike her brothers and sisters who had their Father's wrath as well as dread sorcery she was a artist and creator who tended to the wounds of her siblings and spoke with her Father about his maddening dreams of Beauty.
She could not truly wield the Old Magics because her Blood coming from her Father was Ruin and Murder. But she found that she could purify the corruption of her essence in a act of self Sacrifice to create something her Father could not. A land free of the taint of his murderous power.
Like her Father she was simple in the creation of this new world and just created a vast set of Rings for the weaker races to migrate to. As the First Inner Rings had been made from the Blood of Bal so were these new Outer Rings made by Elaine the kindest of his first Children and through her ritual of purification she become something akin to the old goddesses of the First Universe though one of Pain and Sacrifice. This is how the Young race of man and the others came to the Outer Rings.
Now the two main sources of Magic are Purification and Iron Sorcery. Purification used by the Outer Rings is purging your Blood of Cosmic taint to channel a holy light that can be used to perform miracles and other incredible acts of Creation but it is severely taxing on body and mind to use as it requires great pain to cleanse the Necro Matter of Bal in the Blood
Then there is there is the Iron Sorcery of Bal. Like him it's ruinous, brutal and downright berserk. Some posts that explain it
Re working it Iron Sorcery is extremely powerful but that's the problem. As the Necro Matter In your Blood rises you become more and more a living calamity. The Blood of Bal is ruin and destruction. Though you may have the might of a god you can only smash and sunder, though your sword may be sublime you can only cleave and rend. As the weight of the Dead Cosmos fills you are transformed into a Beast of raw power.
You must move inwards until at last when you are bursting with the Darkness and Fire of the Void you stand alone at the Center where the Dead Cosmos intersects with the Beauty of Creation and Bal stands alone unable to walk among his children. Basicsly it's a Magic set to overkill that will either tear you apart or make you so monstrously radiant with the Energies of the Cosmos you must leave for the safety of others.
Simply Awaken the Blood and practice using the Magic. But the more you draw on it the more the Necro Matter of the Dead Cosmos becomes denser and thickens In your Blood. If it reaches critical mass like a collapsing star your flesh and spirit will implode leaving nothing left but a ascendent Demon of the Cosmos. You get to be like Bal unable to interact or touch the Beauty of Creation.
Though the Iron Devil has been working on a way for him and the Forsaken those of his children who have been consumed by his Blood to walk in the Outer Rings and speak with others not corrupted into visceral rage and bloody Magic. Bal makes all of this wonderful world and he can't be a part of it because he is too Eldritch and Terrible. Not in tenticale mass way but in the sheer make up of his being is total annhilhilation for what he has made that is not of the Dead Cosmos.
I think it is quite fitting to the nature of Bal himself.
Bal cannot help but to destroy and fight, so it makes sense that magic that comes from him can only be used for offensive acts and destruction for the most part.
Now I will also post the first Omake and anyone willing to beta it I would be very thankful for your aidI don't know exactly how the inner circles would look like, but when it comes to spells, I think that elemental attacks would be the most common form of spells to make this kind of magic, speacially Fire and eletrical elements.
Of course, you can always be creative if how you make destructive spells, like a spellthat makes it rain acid on your enemies and strip them to the bone...
The sky is beautiful to behold as the silver stars shine like polished diamonds. The grass waves in the midnight breeze ripple and the leaves of the forest bordering the clearing shake. Rustling with soft whispering sound. All is peaceful and quiet even as something slithers and squirms through the earth. It bleeds rot and breathes insanity as it breaks out of the soil. It is twisted angles that sheer away perception and conortions of space that break reason. Like a origami puzzle it folds and bends itself into a upright shape that is still inverted and twisted. It has turned itself into a humanoid kaleidoscope of warped colors and folded unlight. The grass around the formation of oily slick planes and angles begin to change.
On the outside the green of the tufts is the same but on the inside the root is pealling away to reveal new pale rot. A gray pestilence is eating away at the grass and is spreading to the trees to splinter sap and putrifiy thier innards. The trees and grass become bloated and reek of a sweet sickness. The Emissary of bent light and broken dimensions takes a hand of neon lines cutting through space to leave open wounds that reveal endless Void and pierce them through the tree interwaving strands of razor red light and serrated azure energy as it digs into the core of the curious object.
Thin strands of it's being trace through and around the roots of the tree. Spreading to invest the entire clearing and beyond. It extends his senses out feeling for the touch of Entropy that is ever present throughout the Cosmos. He spread over miles and miles investigating every nook or cranny of this world but he did not find what should have been there. There were no fields of bleeding flesh, mountains of broken cancerous bone did not pierce a hemorrhaging sky nor did pulsating stars rupture with celestial gore. There was grace of form and beauty of shape residing in a peaceful and calm environment.
Where were the rites of slaughter? the chants of despair and screaming calls of madness? As the tendrils of the Emissary spread ever further in a widening radius it found only gently sleeping creatures of untorn skin and unbroken bone. Marvelous cities of intericate machinery awash in oceans of information pouring from countless founts. Children of all things playing in well made parks and laughing with their parents!!! It was a unspeakable travesty against the Laws of the Inheritors that there was purpose or meaning beyond nihilistic hunger. But the worst of this nightmare was yet to come because as his sense of the world expanded ever larger and found ever more signs of joyful life it came across far away in a distance covering thousands upon thousands of miles the first traces of the Cosmos yet upon this inconvincible world. With anticipation thrumming throughout its being the Emissary connected with the first pieces of Necro Matter if had found in this bizzare reality of softly rustling tress and rippling grass. The strands connected with the soil of a far away land and the first thing it felt was
Fire
and
Darkness.
The Emissary retracts its tendrils as fast as it can and attempts to retreat collapsing into a rolling mass of shattered shards and unraveling strands but it is already too late. The first sign is the sky rolling with apocalyptic thunder and seething with lightning. The second is the pulsating drum beat that shakes the earth and resonates with the Blood of those living nearby in their homes of hyper advanced technology.
Their minds are awash with visions of crimson and they shake and shiver from a boiling bloodlust that burns in their heart and surges like magma through their veins. Eyes expand into black pits and uncontrollable growls gurgle from their throats from the oldest to the youngest. And the third sign of what is to come is when the very clouds become heavy with a ponderous weight that forces the very condensed air of the sky still a brew with lighting and thunder to dip downwards to almost touch the earth. The Emissary can only shake as it is unable to escape the encroaching Calamity. The clouds burst apart and then there comes a sound like a thousand howling hounds of a hundred burning hells. A spear of molten black crashes from the heavens to impact the earth and from it arises a holocaust of obliterating darkness.
The ground for miles around is crushed and pulverized to dust as the imploding mass of destructive entropic energy struggles to expand only to collapse again and again into a molten core of seething power. Flames like a living inferno blast outwards every time the ponderous beat of the core of this black oblivion beats. The core turns a searing red and begins to crack as something struggles to break free. A earth shattering roar is unleashed as a form of molten flesh bursts from the core and begins devouring the darkness around it. Ripping and tearing at its own body a titanic form of stripped skin and scarred hide behind to take monstrous form. It is hard to see behind the haze of blistering air and distorted space that surrounds it. But there is a suggestion of great clawed feet like a gigantic wolf. A upper body with six limbs flayed and scorched it would seem by the very blood that flows from the stripped flesh. A chest with veins of ebony surging with liquid power and encased in a cage of bone sparking with electricity a beaten heart of black that when it beats there is a subsonic roar of raw violence that drives any who hears it into a laughing berserk frenzy as a vicious lust overrules their mind.
And crowning this temple of murder wrought in raw flesh is a head with horns mounted on its skull like curved spears driven through its brain and eyes that are dying stars screaming wrath and fury as they drown in the void. The Beast moves towards the Emissary it's jaws salivating with acid drizzling from it's hungering maw. It runs on pounding feet, eyes afire with fury and claws open wide to eviscerate the Emissary of the Mystic Sovereign. But before it can tear apart the entity of the Dead Cosmos in a orgy of soul rending violence it shifts its form again. Once more turning upon itself in a frenzy of self cannibalism until only a pool of bloody Necro Matter and picked clean bones remains. The Emissary slowly uncoils letting the angles and shards of its being spread outwards to reform into its humanoid shape again and as it does it thinks in the inverted colors of its thoughts that it has survived something that has been the doom of whole galaxies. It thinks it has avoided the Hound of Slaughter. And that hope is killed in its infancy as it sees the remains of a God bubble with scalding heat and a form being to press outwards from the churning slime.
The shape that rises from the sulfuric plasma is a humanoid body armored in sheets of hardened blood blackened by heat held together by threaded links of bone interwoven through it. The slime drips away to unveil a face that would be handsome if it was not so twisted by hatred and eyes that are obsidian pits to a barbaric hell. The Inhertior of Calamity shakes his head and a mane of fine black hair waves in the breeze like barbed blades. The Iron Devil is the first to speak and the Emissary feels the lines of light that are it's body break.
"So He finally sends his meddlesome spies to investigate my Creation. Well it was bound to happen in the end and I have been waiting to witness another of the Cosmos behold my Beautiful work"
The Lord of Fire and Darkness gestures to the mountains beyond and the clear blue sky they touch with a grand gesture and his mouth of ferocious fangs split wide open in a gruesome smile of beaming pride. The Emissary looks at the Cosmic God of Brutal War and is scared like a young child that finds something strange and unnatural but is trapped near it
Speaking in tones of slicing light it replies
" You are the creator of this sacrilege? It is Law that all things of purity and beauty be ruined. How can a one of the Inheritors, those closest to Entropy not understand that?"
The Iron Devil no longer looks for a sign of praise in the Emissary at what he has done and instead replies back with scorn
' Foolish as it was, I had hoped that others of the Cosmos could be shown the artistry of this world and understand as I did the need for Beauty. Alas that the brutal nature of the Void will ever prevail among Demons. All the Cosmos is is hunger and primal desire, there is no true satisfaction or simple joy, no peace or contentment of basic existence. No, there is only ever more killing and cycles of unending ruin. Ask not how I came to forge this gem of celestial wonder Emissary for it was a long journey but instead question how could I not? How could I not labor to bring forth this paradise of balanced form and shape? You must see the revelation as I did, can you not? "
The Emissary is frozen with the dreadful feeling it has found a madness not even the Dead Cosmos could embrace and gives its final words.
"Bal, Inhertior of Calamity, Dragon of Wrath and Beast of Murder, in the unholy name of the Mystic Sovereign and the Cosmic Laws of Entropy I charge you with the crime of Creation and hearsy of peaceful life.
You are stripped of your station and given the sentence of being the slave of the Chained Leviathain, as for your Creation it will be defiled and unmade as a example that the Agony of the Dead Cosmos is never able to be defied."
The Hell God looks at the Emissary stone faces until his face begins to literally crack from mirth and the black squirming and shifting Necro Matter beneath his shell of human skin is revealed in gruesome fault lines.
" You think I will let you take what is mine? That I will kneel because you invoke some ancient laws and declare I am to be made a begging slave? "
The Emissary no longer hiding in dread speaks to the Destroyer of countless worlds with a clashing harmony of contempt and arrogance
". I have seen your Creation and even if you can not be taken it will die when the Agents of the Cosmos come to kill it. You can watch as your work of insanity is tortured into its proper place in the universe."
Bal does not reply as he rips something from his spine and smashes it into the ground in front of him. It is a bar of burning black and simmering red that pulls in the moonlight around it into the charcoal depths of the burning blade. A sheen like a waterfall of blood flows over the monstrous sword held in place only by the unrelenting jaws of the fanged hilt that holds the screaming blade in place.
It howls for the death of everything and even the pommel of this weapon is spiked and barbed to mangle the hand that dares wield it but Bal does not care for the pain, unbothered by it as it is simply made more fuel for the cauldron of fury that his is mind.
" Before you witness the Sword of Annihilation unleashed Emissary I want you to remember a basic fact of the Inheritors. It is our Blood that forms the flesh and bone of the Cosmos and my Blood is Murder. As you are unmade ask yourself what lies slumbering on a world seeded by my hands? "
The Emissary never made the connection as a blade that crashed through the space between it and it's prey severed his existence in half and the astral viscera spilled from this act was absorbed by the reaving Blade of Annihilation. But the Elder Beasts of the Inner Rings heard the scream of the Sword of the Oldest Father and the Forsaken in their prisons of Void smelted Iron feel the trembling in their Blood lost to Fire and Darkness that means one single glorious truth to both. War has come at last and the time for fury let loose is nigh.
But for those of the Outer Rings who fear the sleeping Blood and the terror it brings it is a warning that the hellish grandfather of Creation is coming and deeper still in the dreams of children they find themselves wandering through a temple of hollow halls guided by the Song singing in their Blood to find Priests who drown them in baptisms of gore and chant the same prayer
" By Fire and Darkness I awaken Murder "
The Child held under thrashs and howls as primal instincts surge through muscle and bone.
"By the Blood of the Iron Devil I sow Chaos"
The Child feels their flesh burn and their veins splinter as black spears of Necro Matter pierce through them and fuse with their tissues.
"By the Name of the Beast I plant the Seeds of Destruction"
The Child Childs beats against the hand holding them now with hands warped with bloodlust and words gargling from their throats snarling with focused malice. The Priests lifts up the newly reborn Child and holding them to their breast whisper their final words.
"When the Enemy comes you will hunt them without mercy, you will kill them with brutality and you will butcher them with joy. But for now sleep and return to your bed Marked by Bal and know though you will not remember this He has given his faith and love to you so you may protect that which is precious to you."
Softly does the Child fall asleep in the arms of the Priest and when they awake tomorrow the children who dreamt this Dream awake they will not recall the Temple not the baptism of the Priest the only thing they will feel is the Song resonating in their heart and they will think nothing of it.
Let's make something clear. Bla loves the Rings and his Daughter Elaine and all of her children. And he wants to help and protect Creation. That is not a good thing by most modern ethics or morals. Because Bal does things his way and it typically means there is going to be hell to pay. Also thoughts on the Omake
On the outside the green of the tufts is the same but on the inside the root is pealling away to reveal new pale rot. A gray pestilence is eating away at the grass and is spreading to the trees to splinter sap and putrifiy thier innards. The trees and grass become bloated and reek of a sweet sickness. The Emissary of bent light and broken dimensions takes a hand of neon lines cutting through space to leave open wounds that reveal endless Void and pierce them through the tree interwaving strands of razor red light and serrated azure energy as it digs into the core of the curious object.
Thin strands of it's being trace through and around the roots of the tree. Spreading to invest the entire clearing and beyond. It extends his senses out feeling for the touch of Entropy that is ever present throughout the Cosmos. He spread over miles and miles investigating every nook or cranny of this world but he did not find what should have been there. There were no fields of bleeding flesh, mountains of broken cancerous bone did not pierce a hemorrhaging sky nor did pulsating stars rupture with celestial gore. There was grace of form and beauty of shape residing in a peaceful and calm environment.
Where were the rites of slaughter? the chants of despair and screaming calls of madness? As the tendrils of the Emissary spread ever further in a widening radius it found only gently sleeping creatures of untorn skin and unbroken bone. Marvelous cities of intericate machinery awash in oceans of information pouring from countless founts. Children of all things playing in well made parks and laughing with their parents!!! It was a unspeakable travesty against the Laws of the Inheritors that there was purpose or meaning beyond nihilistic hunger. But the worst of this nightmare was yet to come because as his sense of the world expanded ever larger and found ever more signs of joyful life it came across far away in a distance covering thousands upon thousands of miles the first traces of the Cosmos yet upon this inconvincible world. With anticipation thrumming throughout its being the Emissary connected with the first pieces of Necro Matter if had found in this bizzare reality of softly rustling tress and rippling grass. The strands connected with the soil of a far away land and the first thing it felt was
Fire
and
Darkness.
The Emissary retracts its tendrils as fast as it can and attempts to retreat collapsing into a rolling mass of shattered shards and unraveling strands but it is already too late. The first sign is the sky rolling with apocalyptic thunder and seething with lightning. The second is the pulsating drum beat that shakes the earth and resonates with the Blood of those living nearby in their homes of hyper advanced technology.
Their minds are awash with visions of crimson and they shake and shiver from a boiling bloodlust that burns in their heart and surges like magma through their veins. Eyes expand into black pits and uncontrollable growls gurgle from their throats from the oldest to the youngest. And the third sign of what is to come is when the very clouds become heavy with a ponderous weight that forces the very condensed air of the sky still a brew with lighting and thunder to dip downwards to almost touch the earth. The Emissary can only shake as it is unable to escape the encroaching Calamity. The clouds burst apart and then there comes a sound like a thousand howling hounds of a hundred burning hells. A spear of molten black crashes from the heavens to impact the earth and from it arises a holocaust of obliterating darkness.
The ground for miles around is crushed and pulverized to dust as the imploding mass of destructive entropic energy struggles to expand only to collapse again and again into a molten core of seething power. Flames like a living inferno blast outwards every time the ponderous beat of the core of this black oblivion beats. The core turns a searing red and begins to crack as something struggles to break free. A earth shattering roar is unleashed as a form of molten flesh bursts from the core and begins devouring the darkness around it. Ripping and tearing at its own body a titanic form of stripped skin and scarred hide behind to take monstrous form. It is hard to see behind the haze of blistering air and distorted space that surrounds it. But there is a suggestion of great clawed feet like a gigantic wolf. A upper body with six limbs flayed and scorched it would seem by the very blood that flows from the stripped flesh. A chest with veins of ebony surging with liquid power and encased in a cage of bone sparking with electricity a beaten heart of black that when it beats there is a subsonic roar of raw violence that drives any who hears it into a laughing berserk frenzy as a vicious lust overrules their mind.
And crowning this temple of murder wrought in raw flesh is a head with horns mounted on its skull like curved spears driven through its brain and eyes that are dying stars screaming wrath and fury as they drown in the void. The Beast moves towards the Emissary it's jaws salivating with acid drizzling from it's hungering maw. It runs on pounding feet, eyes afire with fury and claws open wide to eviscerate the Emissary of the Mystic Sovereign. But before it can tear apart the entity of the Dead Cosmos in a orgy of soul rending violence it shifts its form again. Once more turning upon itself in a frenzy of self cannibalism until only a pool of bloody Necro Matter and picked clean bones remains. The Emissary slowly uncoils letting the angles and shards of its being spread outwards to reform into its humanoid shape again and as it does it thinks in the inverted colors of its thoughts that it has survived something that has been the doom of whole galaxies. It thinks it has avoided the Hound of Slaughter. And that hope is killed in its infancy as it sees the remains of a God bubble with scalding heat and a form being to press outwards from the churning slime.
The shape that rises from the sulfuric plasma is a humanoid body armored in sheets of hardened blood blackened by heat held together by threaded links of bone interwoven through it. The slime drips away to unveil a face that would be handsome if it was not so twisted by hatred and eyes that are obsidian pits to a barbaric hell. The Inhertior of Calamity shakes his head and a mane of fine black hair waves in the breeze like barbed blades. The Iron Devil is the first to speak and the Emissary feels the lines of light that are it's body break.
"So He finally sends his meddlesome spies to investigate my Creation. Well it was bound to happen in the end and I have been waiting to witness another of the Cosmos behold my Beautiful work"
The Lord of Fire and Darkness gestures to the mountains beyond and the clear blue sky they touch with a grand gesture and his mouth of ferocious fangs split wide open in a gruesome smile of beaming pride. The Emissary looks at the Cosmic God of Brutal War and is scared like a young child that finds something strange and unnatural but is trapped near it
Speaking in tones of slicing light it replies
" You are the creator of this sacrilege? It is Law that all things of purity and beauty be ruined. How can a one of the Inheritors, those closest to Entropy not understand that?"
The Iron Devil no longer looks for a sign of praise in the Emissary at what he has done and instead replies back with scorn
' Foolish as it was, I had hoped that others of the Cosmos could be shown the artistry of this world and understand as I did the need for Beauty. Alas that the brutal nature of the Void will ever prevail among Demons. All the Cosmos is is hunger and primal desire, there is no true satisfaction or simple joy, no peace or contentment of basic existence. No, there is only ever more killing and cycles of unending ruin. Ask not how I came to forge this gem of celestial wonder Emissary for it was a long journey but instead question how could I not? How could I not labor to bring forth this paradise of balanced form and shape? You must see the revelation as I did, can you not? "
The Emissary is frozen with the dreadful feeling it has found a madness not even the Dead Cosmos could embrace and gives its final words.
"Bal, Inhertior of Calamity, Dragon of Wrath and Beast of Murder, in the unholy name of the Mystic Sovereign and the Cosmic Laws of Entropy I charge you with the crime of Creation and hearsy of peaceful life.
You are stripped of your station and given the sentence of being the slave of the Chained Leviathain, as for your Creation it will be defiled and unmade as a example that the Agony of the Dead Cosmos is never able to be defied."
The Hell God looks at the Emissary stone faces until his face begins to literally crack from mirth and the black squirming and shifting Necro Matter beneath his shell of human skin is revealed in gruesome fault lines.
" You think I will let you take what is mine? That I will kneel because you invoke some ancient laws and declare I am to be made a begging slave? "
The Emissary no longer hiding in dread speaks to the Destroyer of countless worlds with a clashing harmony of contempt and arrogance
". I have seen your Creation and even if you can not be taken it will die when the Agents of the Cosmos come to kill it. You can watch as your work of insanity is tortured into its proper place in the universe."
Bal does not reply as he rips something from his spine and smashes it into the ground in front of him. It is a bar of burning black and simmering red that pulls in the moonlight around it into the charcoal depths of the burning blade. A sheen like a waterfall of blood flows over the monstrous sword held in place only by the unrelenting jaws of the fanged hilt that holds the screaming blade in place.
It howls for the death of everything and even the pommel of this weapon is spiked and barbed to mangle the hand that dares wield it but Bal does not care for the pain, unbothered by it as it is simply made more fuel for the cauldron of fury that his is mind.
" Before you witness the Sword of Annihilation unleashed Emissary I want you to remember a basic fact of the Inheritors. It is our Blood that forms the flesh and bone of the Cosmos and my Blood is Murder. As you are unmade ask yourself what lies slumbering on a world seeded by my hands? "
The Emissary never made the connection as a blade that crashed through the space between it and it's prey severed his existence in half and the astral viscera spilled from this act was absorbed by the reaving Blade of Annihilation. But the Elder Beasts of the Inner Rings heard the scream of the Sword of the Oldest Father and the Forsaken in their prisons of Void smelted Iron feel the trembling in their Blood lost to Fire and Darkness that means one single glorious truth to both. War has come at last and the time for fury let loose is nigh.
But for those of the Outer Rings who fear the sleeping Blood and the terror it brings it is a warning that the hellish grandfather of Creation is coming and deeper still in the dreams of children they find themselves wandering through a temple of hollow halls guided by the Song singing in their Blood to find Priests who drown them in baptisms of gore and chant the same prayer
" By Fire and Darkness I awaken Murder "
The Child held under thrashs and howls as primal instincts surge through muscle and bone.
"By the Blood of the Iron Devil I sow Chaos"
The Child feels their flesh burn and their veins splinter as black spears of Necro Matter pierce through them and fuse with their tissues.
"By the Name of the Beast I plant the Seeds of Destruction"
The Child Childs beats against the hand holding them now with hands warped with bloodlust and words gargling from their throats snarling with focused malice. The Priests lifts up the newly reborn Child and holding them to their breast whisper their final words.
"When the Enemy comes you will hunt them without mercy, you will kill them with brutality and you will butcher them with joy. But for now sleep and return to your bed Marked by Bal and know though you will not remember this He has given his faith and love to you so you may protect that which is precious to you."
Softly does the Child fall asleep in the arms of the Priest and when they awake tomorrow the children who dreamt this Dream awake they will not recall the Temple not the baptism of the Priest the only thing they will feel is the Song resonating in their heart and they will think nothing of it.
Let's make something clear. Bla loves the Rings and his Daughter Elaine and all of her children. And he wants to help and protect Creation. That is not a good thing by most modern ethics or morals. Because Bal does things his way and it typically means there is going to be hell to pay. Also thoughts on the Omake