Vesligarn: Crucifex of the Paraelements

[Marcarius5555]

This is a world that's connected to another one that I've begun exploring on this forum, a description of which can be found in the following thread: Serinba'al: The Lands of Torment.

In many respects, this world is a mashup of ideas from many of my favorite settings/franchises -- Dark Sun, Violet Dawn, Earthdawn, Iron Kingdoms, Dune, Scarred Lands, Destiny, Dragon Age, Lexx, Farscape, Aliens, The Elder Scrolls, etc.

As with the other thread, I'm open to/interested in, reactions, questions, comments, suggestions, etc. Once I have it sufficiently fleshed-out, I might try to run a PbP in this world if there were sufficient interest (admittedly, I realize that this much, and this strange of, lore might prove challenging).

The origins of the gods-forsaken world of Vesligarn are, perhaps, ultimately, found in the nearly-as-cursed planet of Serinba'al, the Lands of Torment.

In the First Age, in the depths of the frigid seas that covered most of Serinba'al during the forgotten Time of Technology, the Age of the Artificer Princes, likely the keenest mind from among the enigmatic and, presumably, long-departed race of the peramasians dwelt intently upon the secrets of time and eternity.

Though the sauroid carnifex are, in the latter eras, acclaimed as the greatest people molded by the dark hand of the malign powers known, alternatively as the First Gods, the Neverborn, the Prometheans, and other, similar appellations, in truth, it was the little-remembered race of the peramasians, given birth from the half-sleeping enormity of their master's recumbent tetrahedral forms in the most profound depths of the primordial seas, that hold this distinction. Also known by the few that remember them as the caulosians, the diplychodan, or the recaurvusians, the peramasians were either birthed from the unfathomable inner workings of one among their dark gods, or were pre-existent creatures of the ancient oceans raised to life by contact with the half-dead immensities of the 'First Gods'. Likely, no conscious mind other than that of the Lord of Shadows himself now knows the complete truth of the matter...


A peramasian explores the oceans of the First Age

In any event, this keenest mind among the peramasians strained the entirety of the deep intelligence which permeated the three brains encased within the curved profile of its sickle-like head. Though in a later age its unconquerable soul should assume the form of Veslimgore, Dreadmaster of the Temple-State of Veldigris the Ebon City, its original name was many hundreds of thousands, or even millions of letters long, and could not be uttered even could it be written, for the peramasian language was uttered only in frequencies so high as to be inaudible to any other mortal race. This solitary soul with its dark, unquenchable curiosity, directed the great power of its wandering mind throughout the chilly reaches of the young world.

Its mind wandered far and wide, through the warring dominions of the Artificer Princes, as well as the peoples of the concealed dominion of Psychro-City, whose teeming multitudes, including temporal refugees from the declining kobold realms at the close of the Eight Age, believed themselves hidden, deep beneath the ice, a secret preserved inviolate from the remainder of creation.

After studying all other minds and bodies of the First Age, observing as either an invisible psychic rider or even incarnating a temporary physical form to explore the domains of this distant era, it turned itself to the great, unanswered mystery of its origins. And thus, in the fulness of time, this enterprising consciousness came to ponder the great edifice of the immense dark tetrahedrons which lay in the deepest recesses of the icy seas. Slowly, its attention grew to encompass the inner workings of these strange monoliths, and it came to understand the secret of the origins of the universe and all that transpired within it.

For these slumbering entities were but one of three classes of beings that had created time and eternity. One, the brahm manifested as immense white spheres, and represented the principle of order and creation. Another, the viṣṇur, lords of balance, were gray toroids who ruled the present age, and served as the patrons of the Artificer Princes, though even their greatest servants did not possess even an inkling of their true nature. Finally, the śiv were the very creators of this dark mind and all its kin -- the ebon tetrahedrons that were the masters of disorder, chaos, and dissolution. What exactly these entities were is perhaps unknowable, in this, or any age. Alien machines that survived the destruction of a previous universe? Ascendants of a sort as great above the dragons, automatons, and phoenixes as these advanced beings are exalted over mortals? In any event, they have assumed countless names and visages throughout the succeeding Four Quadrillion and more years -- gods, devils, demons, and others.


The śiv slumber within the icy seas of the First Age

This wisest of the peramasians eventually came to understand that the śiv, the viṣṇur, and the brahm were the first thinking entities in this universe, and at the beginning of time the first two of these opponent powers had struggled mightily with one another, a conflict which it termed the Dawn Fire. In the wake of this titanic struggle, the brahm were cast beyond the galactic rim, an immense distance from which they gradually sought to return, and the śiv were likewise thrown down, but whereas their light-bearing adversaries' throttled minds journeyed for a long age beyond the light of the nearest stars, the lords of darkness slumbered in the depths of the deepest sea. Here, their half-conscious hate gave birth to the very mind that would first understand their true nature. Having observed the Dawn Fire, but taken no part, the viṣṇur reigned unchallenged in the First Age... that is, until the malignant intelligence of that ancient genius among the permasians resolved to bring an end to their rule.

And so it came to pass that it awakened its sleeping gods, causing the destruction, first of Psychro-City, and then the domains of the Artificer Princes as it invoked the First Visceration upon Serinba'al. As it witnessed the destruction its creators wrought with their infinite malice and unquenchable hunger, this dark mind birthed the end of its terrible meditation in an unwitnessed moment of profound enlightenment. It would, it resolved, rise to join the ranks of its creators, and become the greatest among them.

This most ambitious of all minds passed its consciousness through a thousand, thousand lifetimes in the intervening ages. It witnessed the rise of the great carnifex civilization of the Third Age, as well as its devolution in the Great Fire. This terrible cataclysm was called upon it by their draconic foes to avoid the sinister potentates of the carnifex empire invoking a new Visceration, a threat with which their awakening of the śiv had threatened the world. These beings' long slumber beginning at the close of the Second Age was maintained until the Fifth Age, when the impact of the comet known as the Harbinger opened their antediluvian tombs.

All this the peramasian witnessed, and more, for a thousand, thousand life times, until its soul came to dwell in the mortal body of a human born in the city-states of the Serpent Coast at the end of the Eighth Age. In this body, it was known first as Velismar, and then, later, when it was initiated into the cabal known as the Obsidian Compact, as Veslimgore the Implacable. Here, Velismar aligned itself with the cabal of sorcerers who sought to throw off the yoke of the kobold successor states of Thyssscycthia, and who, in this quest, awakened the sleeping intelligences of the carnifex blight lords Aten-Setinekht, Ramenmernba, Umaymamhes, Babmouthmertekert, and Urmeritsteshrshen. And so Velismar, the latest body of that ancient peramasian, became a disciple of the enterprising blight mage Belsayrian the Invincible. In the ensuing Wars of Purification, Velismar, now Veslimgore the Implacable, the Reaper, the Harbinger of the Last Day, was the mightiest general of Belsayrian the Elder. When he was reborn as a blight dragon, a draugothim, at the end of the many centuries during which the Wars of Purification raged, Veslimgore single-handedly extinguished the lives of several of the greatest kobold cities -- Shamshaar, Ur-Gulgammoth, and Karrakar, cursed names whose ruins still mark the hinterlands of the Temple-State of Ukkur the Red and Terrible City.

Yet, Belsayrian knew not, indeed could not know, the even darker design which animated the passion of his greatest ally.

After the founding of the Obsidian Compact and the commencement of the Ninth Age, Veslimgore withdrew into the black city of Veldigris, deep within the blight which marked the northern eastern coast of the strange half-realm of Seapasia. Though its compatriots had speedily concluded that this heretofore unknown demi-plane which they had discovered on the far side of the moon gates of eastern Carcharoth was a recreation of their territory's shape in an earlier age, Veslimgore continued to seek the truth of their new domain, and, when he discovered it, kept this dark finding to himself. In fact, Seapasia was not an ancient recreation of the Lands of the Altar in Serinba'al, now blighted by the Wars of Purification, but the last refuge of the surviving peramasians, an interior concavity of immense depth only accessible from the crater on the far side of the planet whose creation had ignited the Great Visceration of the Fifth Age.

Here, the last remnant of Vesligmore's lost kin persisted, alongside the recumbent forms of their dark creators. Reaching out to his fellows, Veslimgore, whose first name, as we have mentioned, is both unable to be written and unspeakable, prepared the end of the world. With keen strategy, Veslimgore pretended to be found out in its dark designs by the other Dreadlords of the Obsidian Compact, when in fact he had himself seen to it that they should become aware of this sinister research. Though the other Dreadmasters and Dreadmistresses, even their leader Belsayrian the Elder, unlike the ancient peramasian mind that lived within the Dreadmaster of Veldigris, could not understand the true nature of the śiv and their role in the creation of the universe, and as the true identity of the various families of dark gods that had been worshipped throughout the proceeding eight ages of the world, they did comprehend that their wayward brethren intended to awaken some insidious power associated with the carnifex blight masters whose spirits they had imprisoned at the conclusion of the Wars of Purification. Though they believed they successfully razed the shadowed towers of Veldigris and sundered the soul of its master, in fact the most ancient spirit of Veslimgore merely passed into another form within the depths of the earth beneath his former capital.

Here, he reached out to the remnant of his ancient kin who dwelt beyond the psychic veil with which they had surrounded the domains of the Obsidian Compact, and even they did not fully comprehend their fellow's true intent...

Many centuries later, from his hidden realm of New Veldigris, deep beneath the charred blight of the north eastern shores of Seapasia, Veslimgore directed his thoughts to probe the thoughts of the remaining Dreadlords searching their true natures. From some evidence known only to his ancient mind, Veslimgore concluded that Dreadmistress Cilbalba the Insightful of Myanmor and Dreadmaster Kaltorr the Cruel of Tha'ar the Golden were the very souls he had sought for a thousand, thousand years to fulfill his great design. As with the destruction of Veldigris, the sacking of Myanmor by the forces of Dreadmaster Hambadan the Courageous of Ukkur was but a feint which permitted Cilbalba to disappear from history, a stratagem which would be replicated many centuries later by Kaltorr the Cruel within the depths of the Inverted Pyramid. Together, this trinity of darkness conspired to enact the greatest ambition -- to join the ranks of the enigmatic forces which directed the fate of cosmos.


Dreadmaster Veslimgore plots within his hidden fortress of New Veldigris

Uniting and then dominating the consciousness of a cabal of the greatest among the peramasian mind lords, Veslimgore awoke the sleeping legions of the śiv and began anew their destruction of the world. They nearly cleansed the forsaken wastes of Carcharoth, Saan-Gabiathan, Ge'ezhanur, and the other lands of Serinba'al before mysteriously disappearing before the last mortal souls were snuffed out. Then, as soon as civilization had seemed to regain somewhat its perilous footing within the cursed earth of the Ninth Age, the Visceration resumed. And so it was a hundred or a thousand times as Veslimgore lengthened the tortured death of the world for an agonizing age.

Finally, according to a calculation only he alone could fathom, Veslimgore devoured the consciousnesses of its fellow mind lords and seized entirely three of the greatest śiv. At last, the ancient design of the curious peramasian who had first discovered the true nature of the world in the cold depths of the dark seas of the First Age was completed -- it had become the greatest of all beings, the destroyer of the universe, the master of all shadows. He placed, as well, the minds of his fellow conspirators within those of other śiv. Between his own form, the now unique trinitarian consciousness of three śiv, as well as his allies, Veslimgore and his confederates became the mightiest force in the cosmos. They devoured all life in creation and cast the universe into an unquenchable darkness... until, at least, after an unfathomable age, Veslimgore, whose name is forgotten, remade the cosmos, as it had been...

And so was born again the śiv, the viṣṇur, and the brahm, but now, above them all, was the Divine Shadow, the Trinity of Sublime Darkness, the First Principle, the Maker of the Universe, the Shadow Itself -- the infinite power that had been Veslimgore was now the unchallenged master of all things. And yet, for some reason known only to itself, the Divine Shadow permitted history to largely repeat itself, witnessed the early speculation of the ancient peramasian, most curious of its brethren, as it divined the true nature of the cosmos... except not that of the Divine Shadow, which hid itself from the knowledge of this greatest sage of the antediluvian world.


The Divine Shadow arises at the beginning of a new world

However, where the hand of the Divine Shadow was absent from the mortal realm until the Ninth Age, it was felt heavily in the inner and outer planes.

First, the Divine Shadow tainted the transitive plane of the outer planes with its darkness, transforming the Astral Sea into the Shadowstar Sea.

For reasons known only to its own council, the Divine Shadow shattered the Elemental Strongholds that ringed the three parallel material planes of the cosmos. It divided the Prime Elements and Paraelements alike. Earth was splintered further into Rock, Water divided into Ocean and River, Air into Wind, and Fire into Flame. These became known as the False Prime Elements, or the Pseudo Primes. Later, during the Ninth Age, the Divine Shadow sundered the Paraelements, creating dozens of False Paraelemental Strongholds or Pseudoparaelements.

Furthermore, the Divine Shadow overturned the order of the lower planes, which number among the many demiplanes of infinite size which hover in the transitive domain known as the Shadowstar Sea which surrounds the Inner Planes. The Nine Hells, Gehenna, and the Abyss are the greatest 'shards' within the Shadowstar Sea oriented towards the planes of pure consciousness that surround the universe and embody, law, chaos, good, evil, and balance in all their configurations. The Divine Shadow deposed the devils from hell, the yugoloths from Gehenna, and the demons from the abyss, raising the ancient baatorians, the baernaloths, and the obryith and qlippoth to rule again. Though even the natives of these planes did not understand the true nature of this planar revolution, the lords of each of these races had in fact been visages of the brahm. As with many of the faiths embraced throughout the ages, the new powers were visages of the spherical principles of rebirth and order, while the primeval powers were masks of the śiv. Thus it was that the śiv who assumed the identities of Zargon and other esoteric powers rose again to dominance of the Lower Planes.

Now, the power of the śiv was ascendant throughout the myriad dimensions. Despite this, the history of Vesligarn, the recreation of Serinba'al, proceeded much as it had in its previous iteration. However, the Ninth Age has assumed a worse form than even the cursed epoch of its predecessor. The Second Sun which hangs over the parched earth of Carcharoth is joined by the Ghost Moon, a manifestation of one of the Pseudo Paraelemental Strongholds.

In other respects, the Divine Shadow has altered the Vesligarn in matters that are difficult to quantify. Except for shadow magic, which is ascendant, there is no other form of arcane enchantment available to mortals. The only practitioners of this art are the enigmatic Umbral Savants, the servitors of the Divine Shadow. Consequently, the carnifex Hierophants of the Third Age, the Dreadlords themselves, as well as their warlock servitors, are all dark druids able to draw upon arcane magic, but not blight mages.

The races of Vesligarn are sundered by the transformation of the Elemental Strongholds -- the elves sundered into the riverine high elves, and the oceanic and typhonic drow, among other alterations.

As before, Veslimgore has arisen amongst the Obsidian Compact, but in this iteration of history has explored the deep mysteries of shadow magic within the lightless recesses of New Veldigris, in the course of which explorations he has contacted the mind of the Divine Shadow, a strange paradox known only to the consciousness of the ultimate dark creator of the present world.

What terrible design the Divine Shadow might prepare for the close of the Ninth Age of Vesligarn, none but its own dark mind can know....