Threats To Eden II: The Crawling Chaos

The Last Cataclysm affected more than just the land. While the oceans were in turmoil and the ground collapsing on the planet, beyond its atmosphere something more sinister occurred. The Mantle of Stars began to crack and from its once-beautiful countenance slowly bled a dark substance. When the Cataclysm’s last violent throes shattered in the Mantle of Stars, the space outside of Eden became forever defiled by an entity referred to by many names, but most commonly, the Crawling Chaos of the Forlorn Void. Adel’s inhabitants look up in the sky at night to see darkness and stars, but they are not staring into “space.” There is nothing empty or peaceful about the vast darkness outside their planet. This is a creature, a consumptive force that has over millennia swallowed countless worlds in its advance, and it has set its malevolent gaze upon the Adelians.

The Long Horrible Shadow

Dromidae scholarship believes (with some good reason) that the Forlorn Void has already swallowed most of the space outside Adel, and that Adel may be the last vestige of planetary life left in the universe. This is because the conditions which protect Adel would be difficult to replicate in any other setting by any other intelligent race. Due to the strange state of the Adelian planet, its natural processes are arrested except where they are moved along by the existence of Spirits. Their global essence flow is what keeps the Crawling Chaos at bay. But were it not for this it would’ve likely been swallowed, as all things have.

During the Cataclysm, what was once known as the Mantle of Stars shattered and allowed passage for the Crawling Chaos. This expanse of darkness surrounded the planet, dragging into its mass the burning bodies now known as the Sea of Stars. The Eden planet does not spin around a sun, no longer. Rather the flow of the Sea of Stars as it struggles through the body of the Forlorn Void moves the stars, sun and moon around Adel – it is geocentric. Starting from Andaliel, passage of time occurs clockwise. When it is day in Andaliel, it is night in Vedaria. The void cities of the Dromidae, through their artificial, magical propulsion, manage to stay mostly stationary in the void – and certain parts of Dromidae airspace, permeated as they are by magic, can also resist the pull of the Crawling Chaos.

The Consumption Begins

Were the Crawling Chaos allowed, it would swallow Adel into itself and warp it beyond recognition. Battered on all sides by its eldritch, foul energies, the people and land in Adel would mutate wildly until their ravaged forms became completely anathema to what they used to be. However, the influence of the Spirits prevents the Crawling Chaos from performing its dark deed. Instead, the beast watches, trembling mad with hatred as it flows around the planet, seeking a moment of weakness. When, at times, the essence flow lessens ever so slightly, the Crawling Chaos can send a tendril of its influence into the planet. Like a miasmic claw, a black gaseous thunderbolt upon the ground, the Tendril strikes the earth and grabs hold, its purple-black appendage seeming to stretch beyond the heavens, and begins regurgitate creatures to do its work.

These Aberrations are completely unlike the Aberration Masters that hide in Adel, waiting until their time returns again. The Pre-Cataclysm people did not worship the Crawling Chaos or even know about it. The Aberration Masters scarce know about it as well. Rather, the aberrations produced by the Crawling Chaos are mindless, ravening creatures designed only to harass and weaken the world as much as possible, before the Tendril is made to dissipate by the shifting Essence flow.

Adelians have met these creatures before, and aware as they are of some of the situation thanks to the Dromidae (who, however, don’t have the heart to explain the fullness of this horror to the Adelians), the governments of Adel have their armies ready to battle the creatures when needed, and have already devised many magic spells to affect Tendrils. The Adelians are the one hope left against the Crawling Chaos, and they do not know that they are. Having studied the creatures, Adelians do not fear them – they are seemingly mindless and they dissolve into black gunk in about a week after their creation.

The following are the creatures seen spawning from Tendrils and the names and descriptions Adelian scholarship has given them, as well as common names used by Adelian armies to more easily describe the creatures.

Ungula (Hollow Claw): All the creatures of the Forlorn Void share one similarity – their faces are composed of two strange yellow eyes and a gash of a mouth, as though someone had carved it on a pumpkin. The Hollow Claw is a small, hunched humanoid creature, made of rubbery, purple flesh, with one massive, jagged claw that is its namesake. It moves by running four-legged in an awkward dash, as though a child pretending to be a dog. Hollow Claw are said to be able to drain one’s essence and even one’s memories by slashing with its large claw, and their favorite tactic is to charge and jump at the enemy. They are the weakest and smallest of the void creatures, and used in number.

Lanius (Saw Wolf): One of the more unfortunately common creatures, the Lanius is large as two adults. Its simplistic, four legged shape allows it to move quite fast, and its jagged mouth is as though a saw, as though where the flaps are sharp, they are made of steel. But its most deadly ability is its power to huck globs of poison at its enemies, poison which is greatly scarring to flesh if it strikes. This creature serves as a sort of shock troop.

Siliqua (Spire Sage): A void creature head, complete with the unsettling face, from which sprouts a stalk ending in countless tentacles, and the entire thing floats. This is the void creature’s magic user, and it has a variety of tricks. It can decode and break down magical barriers with time, as though it possessed wit of its own and the power of calculation, as well as sling bolts of corrupting energy that can cause cancerous mutations.

Centurio (Void Warrior): Seven feet tall, four armed creatures with bulky bodies, as though mimicking the armor of a plated soldier, with an exposed, snout-like void creature face, the Centurio are the only void creatures known to use weapons. They have strange black blades, and crossbow-like weapons without strings, that shoot bolts of either Lanius poison or Siliqua magic energy. They seem somewhat top-heavy, but their bulky legs can hold them up. Centurio are reported to be seen giving orders, in their own way.

There are other creatures, but they have yet to be cataloged properly. Some reports say that there are creatures large as 50 feet that could spawn from the tendrils.

Adelians do not yet understand the pattern or purpose of void creature attacks. They are few and far between, and the last time they happened at any kind of large scale was over two hundred years ago. Void Creatures seem to seek only to destroy and defile as much as possible with their essence-draining claws, cancer-bolts and scarring poisons. In a sense, this is true – and while all these things are reversible and treatable by medicine and magic, if allowed to occur on a large scale they will create exactly what the Crawling Chaos wants – a weak, semi-alien, scarred planet for it to devour.