Entropy

Deepdark

Nameless

Lords of the Deepdark

Corruption

overview

As if the Gods didn’t have enough to worry about after the disappearance of the Motherlight and the Eldest, Entropy’s sudden arrival signaled a devastating turning point in the Universe. The Gods don't ever remember such a creature in their midst until after the Call, but for all intents and purposes, Entropy appears to be an Eldest as well, or at least has the overwhelming power of one. When it first arrived, several of the more powerful Gods went to investigate, hoping that it would be the answer to their dilemma, but found very quickly that it would become their biggest adversary.

Upon arrival, Entropy was nothing but madness, jealously guarding its Name and repeating that it had found it all by itself. The Gods coaxed it from the mad Eldest, but when it also made it painfully clear that it hated the Motherlight and would do just about anything to destroy her, there began to bloom an inkling of apprehension about this new entity. It was driven even more wild when the Gods told the creature that she was gone. With an ominous warning that she couldn't hide forever, Entropy vanished. Not long after, at the edge of the Universe, teetering on the edge of existence, the Deepdark was created, and Entropy promptly began punching holes in the fabric of reality and swallowing huge swathes of magic at an alarming rate to spread it. The Gods realized something had to be done. Immediately.

social

Much of its "history" takes place before the development of the Timeline, so it's not known when it came to be, but once the Gods bound it with the Light Lock and brought the Deepdark under sway of the Timeline, things become a little clearer. It developed the first true Nameless as its own Gods to carry out its bidding in its stead, creatures tied to Entropy for the rest of time and beyond it, doomed to never find Names of their own. This dark and cruel fate is only applicable to the Nameless that Entropy directly made, however; Nameless made secondhand by the true Nameless, other secondhand Nameless eating them, or being overwhelmed by corruption have a chance to follow the example of their Eldest and find Names of their own. Entropy doesn't much care about or for these unintentional Soulbound due to its inability to order them around, but most end up doing more or less what it wants anyway in an effort to assuage the eternal hunger.

It yearns to find the Motherlight and destroy her and everything she is. No one knows what led to such a burning, inconsolable hatred.

biology

• A vast, endless puzzle of anatomy consisting of all the things its Nameless have eaten, though it makes the effort to display the pieces of the Gods that have been consumed most prominently as sick trophies to taunt surviving siblings. Its favorite feature to flaunt is Time's brilliant blue eyes, which Death still can't look upon without having a total meltdown.

• Though Entropy appears to be an Eldest and often refers to the Motherlight as simply "the Mother," the Gods suspect that it's something else entirely.

skills

• It can control the Nameless with a thought, look through their eyes to keep tabs on the rest of the Universe, and could also consume the Universe at an alarming rate before being bound by the Light Lock.

• Achievements include the creation of the Deepdark, the introduction of star death, corruption, and the concept of consumption, though these aren't necessarily seen as "achievements" by its mortal enemies.

trivia

• It speaks the language of the Gods, for all the good it does, which is very little. Still, it makes it harder for the Gods to actively plot against it without Entropy knowing about it, so it takes its minor wins where it can.

• It abhors anything other than the Name it worked so hard to find and is quick to bring the full weight of the Deepdark down on any God who tries to give it an alternate name or title.

overview

Once Entropy was imprisoned with the Light Lock, it suddenly found itself unable to do much of use to destroy the Universe. However, just because it couldn't go anywhere didn't mean it didn't still have options. Taking a page from the Motherlight's book, it split off smaller pieces of itself to form the first Nameless. They're not particularly sophisticated, but they obey Entropy's direct orders without question. Due to the void in their minds left by being without a Name, they're filled with mindless hunger that drives them to consume everything in their path when they're not on a mission.

These first agents were formidable, relentless, and quick to expand the Deepdark's edges, as well as create tunnels throughout the Universe to more far-flung sources of magic, which they're especially attracted to. The Gods aren't quite powerful enough to destroy these first creations, but they are able to weaken them and banish them back to the Entropy's core domain. The Soulbound, on the other hand, didn't stand a chance, and were doomed to fade from existence like everything else when devoured.

Initially, this seemed like it would be enough, but then the Gods claimed a major victory by bringing the Deepdark under the Timeline's influence, and unable to destroy things in several times at once, Entropy's spread came to a screeching halt. Its retaliation was to modify the Nameless to consume the Names of Gods and Soulbound they encountered instead of their physical bodies, thus creating more Nameless to do its bidding. It also released corruption to infect the Universe, making another, significantly more enticing path to become Nameless by choice.

These new, secondhand Nameless were still filled with overwhelming hunger to fill the void of losing their Names and developed a compulsion to obey Entropy, but they retained a few pieces of their former selves that don't affect the first Nameless. They never shed their fear, giving them a preservation instinct that overrides everything, including compulsion, and while these souls are removed from the cycle of the Elyr and are doomed to fade upon death, every so often, one consumes enough magic that it finds a new Name amidst the endless starve and regains a sense of awareness and thought with a massive amount of internal magic at their beck and call. The Gods dubbed these new creatures as Lords of the Deepdark and are seen as Entropy's accidental Soulbound.

biology

• Much like Entropy, the Nameless are gruesome anatomy puzzles at a much smaller scale, and most are able to change their appearance to better suit movement and survival. These ungainly bodies require quite a bit of magic to stay stable, so while there's plenty of that to be used in the Deepdark to stay together indefinitely, finding them in the Universe outside of magic veins is surprisingly rare.

• Internal magic power is gained from eating magic, which is functionally the only difference between various Nameless, and at a certain threshold, Nameless become Lords of the Deepdark instead.

• Like the other Gods, Nameless are ageless, though they aren't at all immune to being snapped up by their stronger brethren as a meal.

• The Deepdark is the obvious preference of all Nameless, but barring that, they can be found lurking in the Universe proper in and near magic veins.

skills

• Natively, they can't do much other than eat, but they're extremely efficient at that and can eat absolutely anything.

• While the first, true Nameless are capable of obeying more complex orders, secondhand Nameless are extremely dumb and not suited to long periods of focus. They can't do much other than wander, eat, and somewhat change their shapes to make wandering and eating easier.

trivia

• The Nameless are universally hated, feared, and wiped from existence at the slightest opportunity.

overview

When Nameless add enough eaten magic to their internal stores, at a certain threshold, they start having the chance of finding Names in the constant starvation. If they're fortunate enough to achieve this, they gain consciousness and thought once more, completely detach from Entropy, and are able to use their internal magics as a form of corruption at will.

The real tragedy is that, in finding Names in starvation, that becomes the core of their being, making them still want nothing more than to consume everything in sight. This especially applies to Names, as it's a common belief that those Nameless made by a Lord have some kind of connection to them, though this has never been proven, and the Lords aren't talking. The only dubious upside to this is that Entropy only finds them a minor annoyance instead of a major one, and generally leaves them to their miserable "lives." The Gods, like with most things Entropy-related, nuke any Lords they find directly out of existence.

social

While alliances between a few have been known to happen, they always break down into who can eat the others the fastest when their purposes for allying are served. They are also extremely proud of their Names and flaunt them at every opportunity. They rarely go by any other titles, having worked so hard to earn the Names they have.

Disturbingly, some Lords are manipulative enough to at least flirt with those they find interesting or want to unnerve. Nobody likes this.

Nothing is known about when the first Lords appeared; only that at a certain point in the Timeline, Gods started finding Nameless with way too much intelligence to be garden-variety. Their numbers, while still miniscule in comparison to literally any other lifeform, are still steadily growing with the Deepdark's spread.

biology

• Most retain their anatomy puzzle origins, but some have been known to adopt more Soulbound-like shapes to blend into crowds for purposes unknown.

• Their forms are a little more stable than the common Nameless, but they can still draw upon anything they've eaten previously to guide them. They don't reproduce to any degree, and most Lords who find each other immediately set themselves to figuring out who's going to eat who.

• Internal magics keep them together rather than free-floating corruption in the Deepdark, so while their population is much smaller, they're more capable of withstanding the effects of little magic in the environment and thus are more evenly spread throughout the stars.

skills

• Their internal corruption magic becomes their biggest asset, and since they're ageless, most are deeply experienced in using it and have developed a whole host of things to do with it that normal corrupted Soulbound can't ever hope to find out before losing themselves to madness. It’s suspected that the oldest of them are more powerful than the original Nameless.

• Lords speak in Entropy's native language and use it to command groups of weaker Nameless when they need numbers for a particular target. Otherwise, they speak whatever they need to speak to carry out more elaborate goals than simply eating whatever they come across.

trivia

• Completely reviled by most they come across, but powerful enough as a general rule to walk away from said revulsion unscathed

Overview

Corruption is the warped magic of the Deepdark and an extension of Entropy's toxic influence, and both Gods and Soulbound are susceptible to it if they allow it to touch their Names. It appeared with Entropy and was first utilized by some ambitious and misguided Gods who hoped that wielding the raw magic of the Eldest would allow them to destroy Entropy entirely, Time being the leader of this particular insanity. The plan massively backfired, and the corrupted Gods were either consumed by other Nameless, became Nameless themselves, or had to be killed to prevent them from taking out huge sections of the Universe in Entropy's stead. Entropy considered this a resounding win and spread its magic throughout the Nameless to entice other Gods and Soulbound to the same fate, and unfortunately, it works more often than it should.

Augmented power is all well and good, but the inevitable conclusion of the condition is the worse-than-death sentence of becoming Nameless once the spread of corruption grows enough to consume the user's Name. The spread is inevitable, fed by certain physical actions or when the corruption is actively used. Actions required to cause the spread seem to vary somewhat between users, but eating is almost guaranteed to be a spreading action for every user. It's fairly simple to keep the corruption from completely consuming a Name, but the spread is also internal, replacing biological systems and parts of the brain as it grows and leading to madness that makes it impossible to maintain the wall between corruption and the Name.

Power transfers between users make it possible to bleed out large chunks of corruption so the overall spread is slowed. The real trick is finding someone to take it.

social repercussions

Among the Gods, becoming corrupted is an automatic death sentence if any siblings find out about it and tell Death. There's too much at stake for such powerful, insane entities to be running around the Universe.

Among the Soulbound, reception varies, though for the most part, openly corrupted users are treated with fear and loathing and are quite often killed upon discovery to avoid spreading their influence. Gods who know about corrupted Soulbound are quick to destroy them, but corruption is somewhat prevalent and requires a deep awareness of a planet to find them, so direct destruction by a God is generally only possible when a Soulbound grows powerful enough to end the entire planet in one fell swoop.

Prevention

Prevention is as simple as refusing to allow the corruption access to a Name to consume. With such an easy method of avoidance, you'd think that there would be less corrupted users wandering the Universe, but the power is a temptation too strong for many to resist.

Prognosis

The inevitable end of the corruption's influence is becoming one of Entropy's Nameless, which doesn't dissuade people nearly as much as it should.

initial infection

Mostly transmitted when a corrupted user transfers power to an uncorrupted user. Alternatively, if an uncorrupted user wishes to corrupt themselves and there are no corrupted users nearby for a power transfer, consuming enough pieces of dead Nameless in some way will also plant the seed, if the user-to-be can tolerate the initial corruption invasion (and stomach eating pieces of Nameless, which is unquestionably the least appetizing thing in the Universe).

Possible skills gained vary widely between users, often limited only by imagination and leading to some creative applications, as well as the ability to open portals into nearby Deepdark tunnels. Stronger users can find themselves commanding groups of weaker Nameless, but this isn't common.

Initial power levels of corrupted users for both vectors match the initial power levels of the source and grow from there, so it's a somewhat attractive option for the short-sighted and frail, both physically and magically, to launch themselves ahead of the pack for as long as it takes to be overtaken. Of course, that requires either finding a powerful user, or defeating a particularly powerful Nameless that hasn't already become a Lord of the Deepdark. Lords of the Deepdark are considered a special sort of "user" by the magic, so consuming pieces of them does absolutely nothing to transfer power, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to convince them to share...

Symptoms

Before a user loses their Name, they're gifted with significant power with extremely flexible uses; unsurprising, since corruption is the direct magic of an apparent Eldest. Signs of corruption are always present somewhere on the body as void-black markings that differ in appearance with every user and grow more numerous as the spread progresses. The marks aren't painful, but they are striking and obvious, so corrupted users who wish to hide their corruption need to cover their skin with clothing or by some other physical means. Illusion doesn't work for hiding corruption in the Soulbound only; most magic in the Universe is fed through the Gods for the Soulbound to use, and therefore is less potent than the raw magic of an Eldest. The Gods can use illusion to hide their markings, but it's not uncommon for these spells to break down, and any God that's been corrupted is destroyed with extreme prejudice by their siblings.

Madness is all but guaranteed as the user reaches late stages of spread, sections of their mind replaced with corruption and hindering thought process beyond eating everything in sight. Once the madness hits, that's generally the point where Name consumption isn't far behind, and those who knew the user's Name before the corruption slowly lose memory of it. They say there are ways to stave off the madness and prolong the spread past normal levels, but corrupted who've figured them out aren't talking about them.

Lords of the Deepdark are exempt from the markings and the madness, but they're Lords of the Deepdark. That's more than enough sign anyone needs that they're unspeakably corrupted.

Treatment

There is no treatment for corruption, though it can be slowed by transferring power to another user to rewind the spread. Power transfers do nothing to adjust power potential for the supplying user, instead merely "reversing the clock." Once they're corrupted to a certain point again, their power will be at least identical to what it was the last time the spread reached that far, and often even more so because of the experience gained from extra time using it. However, the power transfer speeds the spread of the receiving user. Fortunately, others can't be forced to take corruption, as even the most weak-willed have to give it some path of acceptance to their Names, but that's not to say people haven't been worn down through other means into accepting the power.