#outer influence

[vonbaghager]

The Isolationist is as much a place as it is a being; its immense corpse sits in a lightless realm of space somewhere "under" everything, "catching" information as it falls away. Not even ideas wish to die, so once knowledge is utterly forgotten, it is pulled into the orbit of the Isolationist and eventually pulled completely inside. It's body is a graveyard of forgotten concepts and ideas. Anyone mentally projecting themselves inside of the empty mental plane of the Isolationist finds a massive, warped archive where all the collected information has been carefully sorted by third parties. Mages and scholars of all species, and even Great Ones, have all had a hand/manipulative appendage in taking advantage of the dead mindscape of the Isolationist, creating a library for the lost information and using the strange gravity of the Old One to trap living and dead ideas for study. There is a tense sort of civility in this mindscape. Even the most alien of its inhabitants are rendered in ways safe for the other seekers of knowledge to perceive; each being inside is 'filtered' not only by its own self-perception, but by the infovorous nature of the archive removing unneeded details from their mental projection. They are reduced to extremely simplified caricatures of themselves, allowing those with more fragile senses to safely view and, in some (but not all) cases, communicate with one another. Since the majority of them enter the archive to pursue knowledge, interactions are usually brief and uneventful if they occur at all, with the only conflicts arising when multiple beings seek the same knowledge. Once it is possessed by one person, it is no longer forgotten, and thus cannot be "returned" to the archive until it's "current user" forgets it. Especially selfish beings have, in the past, chosen not to share what they've learned, taking their stolen secrets to the grave and beyond it in some cases. The biggest danger in the archives, though, is the Isolationist itself. Dubbed "the Librarian," the collapsed remnants of the Isolationists final concious thoughts slowly drift through the archive like a mobile event horizon, usually harmlessly bobbing about... Until someone makes too much 'noise.' What the Librarian decides is 'noise' is not fully understood, as it's equally likely to respond to a loud quarrel between two seekers as it is to close in on someone who's simply thinking too loud. In some cases, it doesn't respond at all, no matter how 'loud' a disturbance gets. Near as anyone can tell, the Librarian views the entirety of the archive as a singular being--itself--and anything acting contrary to that must be... Well. It must become part of the archive. Those caught by the Librarian meet hideous fates, spun into lines of frayed thoughts and ideas as everything they were, are, and will be are scattered across the archive before the living memory stitches them back together as their own autobiography, filling in all the details of their lives by physically prying the information from their minds... And the minds of everyone and everything that knew them. The archive is a home for forgotten information, and everything in it must be forgotten, scoured from every history book and every mind in existence.

[zeetrollplays]

Rovius Ambers, who came to be known as the Depraved, was a redblood of notorious merit. Little is known of his early life, a childhood perhaps cursed by his birth beneath the spilled chalice, but in open defiance to this superstition he found twisted fame and fortune. Taking head of a house of ill repute, Rovius promised his patrons freedom from society's prying gaze. A place to indulge in whatever desires they possessed without the outside world knowing, protected by Rovius' growing fortune and spreading web of influence.

Eventually, his house became a mansion, his rumors became reputation, and his guests became monsters. Bored with the pleasures he already offered, they began to demand ever more horrific indulgences, and Rovius was all to happy to provide. He broke not only the laws of the land and of society, but of the physical world. Tales here become blurry, some say he dabbled in dark arts, bringing forth the dead and unusual spirit creatures. Others say he went further, summoning demons, angels, or the fae. Or all of the above. Whatever the case, the actions Rovius undertook changed both that mansion and the man himself. He was no longer content allowing others to live out their fantasies, and began to live out his own with the strange beings he had conjured.

He sank deeper into whatever studies had brought him to the doors of the unnatural in the first place, delegating the upkeep of his manor to subordinates whose names are lost to time. He no longer wanted the company of other trolls, becoming disillusioned with the food, drink, drugs, and partners that Alternia provided him and sought increasingly alien means of entertaining himself and his guests. The mansion became a labyrinth believed to have no bottom, each floor down leading to ever greater and more horrific scenes debauchery as his patrons embraced their own increasing hideousness.

Eventually, word began to spread a little too far. The rumors of his undertakings began to reach the ears of those who couldn't simply be bribed away. People with more power than the wicked men and women that frequented his establishment. People like the Empress. For a time, his actions were acknowledged but ignored... but as more and more details reached her of what truly went on deep beneath the ground, the disgust the Empress felt grew to levels she could no longer tolerate. When she learned that he was undertaking some form of ‘grand ritual,’ in blatant disregard of her efforts to quash sorcery, she decided he no longer deserved the luxury of a trial.

She put an order out for his axecution, an act reserved for traitors against the troll race, and sent a small army to his doorstep to rid the land of the disgusting presence that had been plaguing it for far too long, an army equipped to deal with whatever sorcery he had no doubt armed himself with. They found figures strewn about the lawn dressed in shredded finery, screaming and laughing for reasons they could not discern, incapable of forming coherent sentences but inexplicably terrified of the manor, violently turning away if it ever entered their field of vision. Reports of that day say many of the otherwise-incoherent trolls thanked the soldiers as they were executed one by one.

Prepared for the worst, they breached the accursed place. When the doors of his manor came down, that trained crew of heavily armed trolls found nothing. A mansion once luxurious, but now free of any furniture or decoration down to the carpeting on the floor. Exploration revealed nothing but a impressively large but completely empty single-floor basement, but the oddest was that every surface in the manor was coated in layers of dust that suggested it hadn’t been occupied for decades.

[vonbaghager]

DECEMBER

Once a ‘mere’ wendigo, December’s hunger reached new heights as people from other lands came into its territory, carrying with them a belief in higher powers. December devoured these invaders and, using their connection to their gods, ripped open a hole into their divine home and devoured them as well. Gorging itself on entire pantheons, it became a god in its own right, its endless appetite turning from a hunger for the warmth of life into a craving for warmth itself; Heat is the very lifeblood of the cosmos, and now it was all the beast wanted.

Its hunger eventually saw it swallowing every star in the sky as it drank up every bit of heat it could, plunging the once vibrant realm into a cold sleep. Fueled by a belly filled with stars and gods, it broke from the confines of its plane and now swims through the infinite realms, sinking its teeth and claws into new, warm, fresh realities.

It cannot simply break through the barriers that surrounds them, though. It must wait for someone to open the door for it, to let it in. Such is the price it pays for its own twisted divinity. It takes many guises, some of which are shown here, as pieces of its power find weaknesses in the border, each of them fooling mortals into widening the entrance just a little bit more until December can pull the entirety of its massive bulk inside.

(art by @blinkpen!)

[vonbaghager]

The Scholars of the Eaten Realms

The Gardener, also known as the Maw, is not a malevolent being as many would believe. It’s purpose is to devour planes of existence that have become devoid of life or activity to clear the way for new universes to be born, and in its duty it plays a vital role in the infinite realms. It’s poor reputation is owed to the numberless “maggots” that crawl across its hide, the ravenous sea of teeth that follow it wherever it goes to feast on the scraps. These maggots sometimes find themselves in healthier realms and then do as true maggots do: burrow in and feed, triggering a potentially lethal infection, the stench of decay attracting the Gardener itself to a universe not yet ready to die.

Not all that follow the Gardener are simple, hungry maggots though. Among the sea of teeth are beings collectively known as the Scholars of the Eaten Realms, a coalition of entities great and small interested in the preservation of histories that would otherwise be lost in the jaws of the Gardener and its horde of parasites. They enter universes on the verge of death to research, collect, and preserve all they can, but more often than not they must struggle against the eternally hungry maggots for mere scraps–though, it should be noted that the scale some of the Scholars operate on means that “scraps” can sometimes be planets.

The eldest Scholars have learned to see the signs of death in many realms with a mere glance, allowing them to arrange for journeys millennia in advance while life still exists and thus histories can be more casually researched. Still, though, there are occasions where there simply isn’t enough time to do an exhaustive analysis, so whatever can be collected must be stolen away, sequestered in the pocket spaces that surround the Gardener and studied at leisure. Again, this can sometimes include entire worlds, so it can be more than a little startling for the stolen populations.

[zeetrollplays]

The Diviner, the Bloodletter, the Vain, and December all have cults on Alternia

in order of size:

Diviner (several thousand) Bloodletter (~2,000) December (less than a thousand) Vain (several dozen)

and their influence spreads out into the Empire proper in roughly similar proportions, though since December is focusing its efforts on Alternia, its cults elsewhere in the Empire have started to shrink

[vonbaghager]

Having a beer with your friends: Cracking open a cold one with the boys

Making an offering to avatars of December: Cracking open a boy with the Cold Ones

[zeetrollplays]

The current situation between December and Gl’bgolyb can be described as December hanging from a cliff by one hand and Glubby relentlessly stomping on its fingers

[vonbaghager]

Great Ones: Creatures of great power born from, created in, or otherwise manifesting in our universe. -Ascended Beings: Creatures that were once mortal, but became higher entities through one method or another. Outer Entities: Creatures of great power born from, created in, or otherwise manifesting from realms close to ours; from connected, alternate, higher, or lower dimensions. Far Gods: Creatures of great power from realms not connected to ours in any meaningful way. Overlaps with the previous categories. Primordium: Creatures born from, created in, or otherwise manifesting from the unworked and chaotic space between the infinite realms. Transcended Beings: Entire planes of reality that underwent a transcendence event, all beings combining into a singular one. -The Shattered: Entire planes of reality forced through a false transcendence event via use of the Shattered Sky. They are broken, horrible things. Eternal Ones: The Gardener and the Clockworks, beings which oversee the "health" of the infinite realms. -Eternity's Gate: The Endless and Her Highest Order, the aforementioned Gate and its creator, respective.