The 'Are We Not Monsters?' Void Entity Pantheon!
I've done a lotta lore expansion, exploration, and rewriting (mainly due to ignorance) while writing my fic. Canon has a nasty habit of packing its bags and jumping overboard, especially when my oblivious ass is at the helm.
So, for shits and giggles, I'll detail the entire pantheon of lesbians and entities that all are birthed from that amorphous dimension we all know and love. Sorry for the kinda flowery language and descriptions, I'm not good at writing descriptions.
Gonna start at the bottom rung of the ladder and work up into the truly eldritch goobers >:3
The Murmur (Fragmented): The shattered remnants of lives, strands of consciousness folded into stony flesh. Grasping arms, twitching legs, angular lengths of stone, animated by the latent energy of the Void. Without order, a mind to lead them, they are guided by little more than instinct. Treated as less than animals, little more than fodder for whatever weapons are turned toward them.
The Murmur (Whole/True): A whole mind wrapped in that stony flesh. Capable of exerting free will, of feeling emotion, of feeling fear. Not so different from you or I, from the Tenno, from the Grineer.
They stand as either an amalgamation of Murmur, all those frayed strands of consciousness coming together to form a ragged whole, or as a singular body. A body like yours, like mine, uncanny, but enough to be seen as something, someone. A True Murmur.
They all lay dead, slain by their Orokin-born brethren and scattered to the furthest strands of the Void and made to rot. The True Murmur are extinct.
The Murmur (Imprinted): The final and most coveted form of a True Murmur, wearing the skin of another, mind filled with the memories of another. They wear the face of the soul they are ordered to mimic, emoting, speaking, and thinking just as they. Doppelgangers that are sworn to serve the interests of the Void, whatever they may be.
Four remain. Four whose masters have decided to abandon them, or free them from their servitude. A wife, a daughter, a companion, and a forgotten love, all finding their places within the Origin system. Their stories are told in 'Are We Not Monsters'.
The Conceptually Embodied: Those who stand within the Void's power, but beyond its control. The Holdfasts are the best known, but there are so very many others that travel throughout the Origin System. Some know what they are, echoes of a reality that never truly existed, the bitter truth of a collapsed paradox. Some live their lives without knowing they never truly existed.
Death comes for some and neglects some others, she is quite busy and cannot be faulted for missing a few lost souls every now and again.
Void Angels: Manifestations of animalistic rage. While some were born from the Man in the Wall's interference aboard the Zariman, most others were born later, after the Fall of the Orokin. They are byproducts of plague, of the Void's Touch, of the Voidrot. Silvery flesh, like tumors, nestling within and bursting from the bodies of those most in tune with the Void, most saturated with its energy.
First your fingernails turn a pallid grey, then your gums. Your eyes bear a silver sheen, reflecting the light unnaturally. Your hair goes grey and the first nodules begin to push from your skin, following your nerves. Up your arms, up your legs, up your spine, until it wriggles its way into your mind. It could almost be considered a gentle death, were the Void not whispering down your ear the entire time.
The Tenno are most susceptible to the Voidrot, and are therefore almost exclusively infected and affected. For so long, death has been the only cure, either before or after the Void Angel manifests, finally enveloping their frail flesh. There are treatments, and a true cure at the latest point in AWNM, but it was a long road to get there, bathed in crimson and silver blood.
Void Cancer turns you into a forty foot tall embodiment of rage, don't catch it.
The Man In The Wall: The first of Albrecht Entrati's bastard children, a new type of creature, born from the Orokin's interference within the Void. While other life forms attempted to tear through the dimensional fabric to stand within the enigmatic Void, Albrecht Entrati was the first. He was the first to draw Lohk's eye.
The Man in the Wall was born from Albrecht's fear, that fear taking shape and form and gaining will of its own. A twisted facsimile, wronged and disfigured within it first moments of life. It learned anger and hatred, and all manner of horrid emotions. Happiness could only be derived from pain, wrenched from the bleeding bodies and silver flesh of those it corrupted and slew.
Until it tasted humanity, until it was forced to lower itself to the levels of those it so callously slew. Imprinted upon and nestled within the mind of the Tenno who very nearly slew it outright, whose lives had found themselves inextricably entwined. The Man in the Wall learned love, and how to love.
Whatever plans she had were cast aside, whatever goals she bore for the future were disposed of. She has taken a name of her own, she has given herself a face, and a body, and a personality. She sees what she has done and while she knows she cannot be forgiven, or redeemed, she has no desire to see those she's wronged suffer any further.
She is the current first person protagonist of AWNM, and she's finding herself quite out of her depth. Good luck, Vadanya, we all still don't know whether to hate you or not. Keep delivering pizzas to those in the present and you might be well on your way to forgiveness, however.
The Heart: The second of Albrecht Entrati's bastard children. An accident, an unintended byproduct of forever marching progress. A soul born by the great filter that beat beneath the diseased crust of Deimos. The Heart of Deimos, trapped, pacing about its cage, wishing to be free.
Master of the Voidflesh, caller of Angels, wily, tricksy, indifferent to the suffering that cleverness causes. Whether that be wearing the face of the man who spawned it, or behind the glowing emerald irises of Neci Rusalka, the Heart shall meddle.
Though... Indifference is only temporary.
And it probably wasn't a good idea to take up residence behind the eyes of so passionate a woman, so passionate a lesbian.
Lohk (Lower): Born of a most benign accident. The Void's Will cannot walk upon the Earth, or on any of the many planets beyond, without slaying all upon it. This container, this shape, is not only more palatable, it is also considerably less lethal.
Tragically, or perhaps fortuitously, this container that acts as a conduit for the Void's Will is in the shape of a seven year old girl. Impressionable, loud, curious, the Indifference is indifferent no more when looking at the world through her eyes.
She chose to sever herself from herself, for the good of the Void, to bring indifference back to what she once was. She chose to go the long way through time to the present. Through untold millennia she rested within that tomb beneath the ocean waves, waiting for those she loves to find her.
The Mother of the Living Void: Vandhya.
Lohk (Pure): The Indifference. A smile with no joy, a face with no eyes, four arms and four legs stretching out to infinity. Father.
The Hooded Woman: Where go the souls of the dead? Where fly those ethereal bonds that keep us tethered to our mortal shells? When time comes for us all to close our eyes and partake of that eternal sleep, under what sky shall they open again?
Within the Sanctum of the Hooded Woman.
Ivory shroud covering a tall form, shoulders broad, hips wide, a strong body. Long hair, forever uncut, shining a bloody crimson. Skin a dusky blue. Lips sewn shut with golden thread, a gift from the Executor Ballas to the final soul doomed to perish to the Jade Light.
Where do the souls of the dead go? Those who perish beneath the Jade Light of the Orokin. Where do their eyes open?
They never do, merely appearing as another pupil within the Hooded Woman's eye as she rests within her Sanctum.
It is by her hand that the Murmur do multiply, it is by her hand that the energy of the Void is glancingly replenished.
It is natural that all the other creatures of the Void would avoid her. Though her trade is death, her Sanctum is a safe place for those still alive, and animals she likes, and a little rat named Neenah.
The Nameless Ones: That creeping fear that tickles the nape of your neck, the kind that says over your shoulder to check. All around you the darkness falls thick, though a motion you see, your eye does tick. You hear a gentle voice sighs, between your ears it does lie, doesn't it, Kiddo?
The shadows are watching.
Biding their time, as they've always done.
But, don't make them wait too long, Kiddo, or they might just take control of your story themselves.
What stands above Lohk? Above the eternal Void? Nobody truly knows. All anyone knows is that they're angry, they're here, and they're whispering down your ear.
If you see the shadows blink, no the fuck you didn't.
