Aedon

Aedon (Prodroman: Aídōn, from aideîn "to end, break, discontinue" and -ōn active gerund suffix, literally "the ending, breaking, discontinuation"), known to the Mechyrdians as the End of the Cycle, to the Tylans as the Kuret Vilar (Tyl. "great evil"), to Fulkreykk and the Drakhassi as the Primordial Horror, and to its worshippers as the Eternal Eminence, is the current form of the psychic energy that composes the Veil: a plane of existence beneath the material universe composed of psychic energy. Currently, due to Aedon's nature as a collective of gods that, in unison, represent evil and corruption, the Veil is a powerfully destructive energy, requiring strong discipline to avoid its influence.

All the emotions, thoughts, feelings, dreams and memes of living sapients are reflected into reality in the Veil. Psychic organisms, such as Tylans and Diadochi shamans, can manipulate the Veil to affect things in realspace; Tylans steel themselves against Aedon's influence, with the assistance of their Pantheon, in order to avoid corruption, while Diadochi shamans worship Aedon and embrace corruption.

Human psykhers that appear in most nations in the galaxy, such as Mechyrdia and Isarnareykk, are required to take psy-suppressants so they don't become possessed by a demon of Aedon. However, humans in Mechyrdia with sufficiently powerful psyonic abilities can feel the guidance of their own religion's deities within the Veil: Iēsoûs Khrīstós for Christians, Þórr, Óðinn, Freyja, etc. for Norsemen, Viṡṅu, Śiva, Brahmā, etc. for Hindus, Iuppiter, Minerva, Bellōna, etc. for Latins, the Āhurā Mazdā for Zoroastrians, as well as many other human religions of Mechyrdia. The same is not true in the galactic north, as the humans born of Theden lack any Veil deities due to the centuries of Fulkreyksk state atheism.

Deities

Aedon is a dark collective, comprised of five deities; each deity represents a different concept:

• The Devourer of Stars represents excess, carnal pleasures, hedonism, lust for battle, and conquest. A corruption of the common saying "a soldier fights not because he hates what's in front of him, but because he loves what's behind him", the Devourer empowers his followers, for example, to raid settlements and capture sapients to use as "toys" in their excessively hedonistic murder-parties back home. Spectacles of gladiatorial combat, torture for the purpose of sadism, and constant total-war-level infighting are all common among worshippers of the Devourer of Stars.

  Servants of the Devourer often become obsessed with both sensation and conquest, waging greater wars and committing more intense atrocities just to feel the ecstasy of victory. Polities that serve him often derive their entire economies from plunder, which is an unsustainable model in the long run. His demons are called "corruptors", and they often take the form of demons within medieval- and Renaissance-era Christian belief.

• The Herald of Fate represents social progress, entropy, the linear view of history, and political revolution. The people who are lured into serving and worshipping her often have utopian, "history as a linear march of progress and improvement" mindsets, as they are blind to the negative effects of political entropy on civilizations. The Herald whispers promises of establishing a perfect society - a utopia - if they would take up arms to overthrow the current government. She empowers people who try to establish new governments no matter the cost, and often encourages purges of those who aren't enthusiatically supportive of their new rulers. Once the revolution is over and the new regime is secure, the Herald of Fate whispers promises of utopia into the next batch of revolutionaries, in a never-ending cycle.

  The Herald also represents Revolutionary Biology, insofar as it was pioneered by the Fulkreyksk Authoritariat. For this reason, her worshippers tend to receive genetic alterations and become more mutated over time. Her Veil demons, commonly referred to as "constructs", often resemble hybrids of bulky robots and glowing phantasms.

• The Empress of Light represents duty, the willingness to serve, discipline, enthusiastic obedience to current rulers, and personal sacrifice. She gives strength to those who try to put down rebellions and suppress change, especially when that change is necessary to replace an old, dying regime with a new, inveterate government; yet even moreso, the Empress empowers those who are willing to serve their rulers, no matter what their own personal feelings may be.

  Her servants eventually lose their emotions and personality, replaced with the unflinching desire to serve. The Veil demons of the Empress, commonly referred to as "faeries", usually take humanoid forms of featureless gold, with many sharp, bladed wings.

• The Center of Hearts represents subversion, infiltration and corruption, pursuit of perfection, vanity, and tribal ethnocentrism. An androgyne by form, the Center is known variously as either male or female depending on the referring culture, e.g. the humans of Earth use the name "Lady Morningstar", while Tylans use the name "Dark Prince". (By convention, this infobase will use Earth nomenclature) It is rare for someone to be tricked into serving her, for most of her worshippers belong to ancient traditions that date back thousands of years. Her birth centers around events on Earth that transpired with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ: while worship of Jesus resulted in the apotheosis of a benevolent Veil deity, the willful rejection of the Messiah led to the Center of Hearts being born, though her impact on the galaxy dates back far earlier due to the non-linear nature of time within the Veil.

  Those who serve the Center often become pinnacles of physical beauty and perfection for a time, before regressing into hideous, gaudy monstrosities. The Veil demons of the Center, commonly referred to as "shades", take humanoid forms of sirens or nymphs from Greek mythology.

• The Avenger of Death represents observation of decay, nostalgia, a regressive view of history, and misguided attempts to restore an old, dying government to its previous, younger state. Whenever the decay of an old government becomes obvious, some people will start to organize and plan to replace it with a new means of rule. Among these people, there are always those who believe that they should try to restore the youth of the current regime, instead of implementing a new government of a different form. It is those misguided regressives who fall into the Avenger's deceptive embrace, and he will empower everyone who stands in the way of any attempt to continue the cycle of history.

  Due to the Avenger's preference for attempts to restore a government's youth that only ever end up prolonging its decay, he also represents infectious diseases and biological decay. His servants usually end up with the appearance of bloated, diseased corpses, and his demons, known as "zombies", often take a similar appearance.

Each deity also has a name in the native Lingua Maledicta of Aedon: the Devourer of Stars is known as Meleḵ, the Herald of Fate is known as Qilāv, the Empress of Light is known as Ištar, the Center of Hearts is known as Nōgah, and the Avenger of Death is known as Mādim.

Dominus Tenebrarum

The Dominus Tenebrarum ("Lord of Shadows", Maledicta: Ṣilum) is a hypothesized sixth god of Aedon, mentioned and described in various prophetic texts such as the Signum Anactis Haeretici as being a "dark vengeful lord" born from an "empire of gold and light". Most daemonologists interpret the latter as the Empire of Mechyrdia, yet the future incarnation of the former is a topic of hot debate in esoteric circles.

History

Fall of the Prodromans

Before the fall of the Prodroman Realm, the Veil was a plane of peace, created by the Prodromans to serve as an afterlife for souls to be recycled into new Prodromans. The Veil also provided a home for the Prodroman's gods, who blessed their worshippers' various activities represented by each of the gods. Due to their technological advancement, the Prodromans fell into rampant decadence and hedonism, and their gods, which they had created before in the Veil to represent their various emotions and concepts, had become corrupted and evil.

Eventually, a new god was created, entirely by the final accident of the Prodromans. This new god was named Aedon, Prodroman for "the breaking", and it represented the inevitable result of the Prodromans' debauchery: extinction. Aedon ripped a Veil rift in realspace around the Prodroman Realm's core worlds, consumed the Prodromans' gods, and released a psychic scream that drove many of the remaining Prodromans to death or insanity.

Few Prodromans survived with their minds intact, but those that did carried out several plans to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. The first plan was to spread the Prodroman genetic code across the galaxy, modified so that the new sapients wouldn't be susceptible to Aedon's influence. Two groups of Prodromans disagreed on how to accomplish this, however, resulting in the significant genetic differences between humans (Homo sapiens) and Tylans (Tylanus prudens).

The next plan was to create an artificial intelligence known as the Contingency to prevent these future civilizations from falling to Aedon's corruption. Unfortunately, the Contingency decided that the best way to do so was to exterminate all remaining Prodromans, forcing what few that survived the Fall and the Contingency's massacres into hiding. Currently, the Contingency is in a deep sleep mode, but it may wake up at any time.

Fall of the Caballians

The supernatural force that the Prodromans named "Aedon" was merely a single god: the Devourer of Stars. Aedon itself is a greater force within the Veil, able to consist of multiple deities. This would be demonstrated with the fall of a star-faring civilization known as the Principality of Caballiye. The first Princess of Caballiye ruled for over a millennium, yet she would eventually abdicate the throne and give it to a successor whom she finally found worthy.

This pattern continued for over 10,000 years, until the last Princess turned an unfortunate diplomatic incident into a war against the Drakhassi Union, predecessor to the Drakhassi Federation. Even though she horribly mismanaged the war out of a desire to control every aspect of it, her subjects, soldiers, and generals never questioned her orders. This led to the birth of another deity of Aedon: the Empress of Light, and the final extinction of the Caballians within a massive Veil rift that covers much of the galactic core.

War of Aedonau

The Fulkreyksk Authoritariat was vehemently against using psychic powers or recognizing deities as gods, yet even it had an impact on Aedon. Vrankenn Kassck, over the course of unifying Theden into Fulkreykk, ended up accidentally creating a new goddess of Aedon: the Herald of Fate. Due to the ultrascientific nature of the Fulkreyksk government, there was no Veil rift that formed over Theden.

Instead, the spiritual energy of progress was initially scattered, finally coalescing into a deity within the Aedon Vortex contained by the Drakhassi Federation. This led to the rise of the warlord Aedonau, the shadow of the Thedish people's collective soul, who waged a war against the Drakhassi Federation and Fulkreykk that would only be ended with the accession to Forarr of Praethoris Khorr.

Destruction of the Drakhassi

When the humans of Earth, known as Terrans, were well into colonizing and consolidating their corner of the galaxy, they were invaded and conquered without warning by the Drakhassi Federation. Long having been secretly and invisibly corrupted by the influence of Aedon's deities, the Drakhassi enslaved the Terran people and used them as forced labor. Over the next few years, the Terrans formed a resistance movement, with the assistance of Drakhassi officials who opposed the occupation, and eventually hijacked a Drakhassi planet-killing super-weapon. The Planet Killer, as it was known, used a life-melting virus to dissolve a planet's biosphere into highly-flammable ooze, which would then ignite and burn off the oxygen in the world's atmosphere.

The Terrans, infuriated by their harsh treatment by the Drakhassi, destroyed planet after planet within the Federation, until the Tylan Theocracy to the east invaded Terran space, destroyed the Planet Killer, and occupied the Terrans for the next few decades. The reason why the Tylans were so proactive was because the Terran destruction of the Drakhassi ended up creating a new god of Aedon: the Avenger of Death. He represents a desire to return to an earlier time when things were good, which is exactly what the Terrans felt during the Drakhassi Occupation.

Aedon Vortex

The Aedon Vortex lies at the heart of Diadochi space. A massive Veil rift thousands of light-years across, where arcane energies bleed into realspace, the Vortex is a region of absolute irregibility, beyond not only the dominion of mortal lords, but also the domain of physical laws. It is the one place in the galaxy where flesh flows like fluid, and matter is merely myth. No human or Tylan may enter the Vortex and emerge unchanged, or at all, for the Veil corrupts mortals in both mind, body, and soul.

Hence, it is populated by the demons of Aedon's gods, the Unbidden. Known in the original Prodroman language as Shabanash, the Unbidden vary in origin: some are fragments of a particular deity's will, others are mortals who have earned immortality through service to a dark god, and still others are psychically-formed embodiments of social or political movements that ended up serving, wittingly or not, the schemes of an Aedonic deity.

Planets

• Elaionis, the Wellspring of Death. The seas of this world run thick with poison, and the skies choke with every toxin that exists, and many that shouldn't. It provides a great boon for the Diadochi, as those who can withstand both the Vortex and the planet harvest its supernatural chemicals for use as weapons of mass destruction.
• Maledicta, the Great Techbane. Maledicta is a massive eldritch mainframe, with enslaved souls hammering away at command-line terminals, writing demonically-imbued computer viruses for use in Diadochi cyberattacks. Guarded by the Unbidden, it is not a place one should visit with any advanced technology, as visiting ships' computer networks have been hacked into pieces within seconds of approaching the planet.
• Petramur, Throne of Decadence, Crown of Hedonism, and the reaching hand of temptation and corruption. Those who dare tread the planet find themselves slowly becoming twisted into irreverant, blasphemous mirrors of their prior selves, with their minds becoming altered to the point that they start to enjoy their mutations.
• Kruens, the Slaughterpit of Nations. Once the homeworld of the Prodromans' prized Peace Gardens, the world has long since been defiled by endless bloodshed and strife. Replete with despotic, martial empires and petty, barbarous warbands, the only constant on Kruens is war. An ambitious leader may rally fighters to his cause on the first day, conquer an entire continent the second day, and face the downfall of his new dominion the third day.
• Bythus was the former capital of the Prodroman Realm. Now, it is home to the Dark Gods' quasi-physical presences. Only the strongest may feel a painless death upon stepping foot on the world, as the weak either face omnipresent agony for the rest of time's existence, or are corrupted to serve the gods of Aedon instead. It is a frequent destination for ambitious Diadochi shamans, who face anti-divine judgement and are either gifted with immortality if worthy, or damned to eternal torment if found wanting.

The Chosen of Aedon

The Chosen of Aedon are five powerful lieutenants under the patronage of Ogus Khan, the current bearer of the Mark of Aedon Ascendant. Each of the Chosen is a mighty Dark Lord in their own right, and in charge of their own forces.

When summoned by their overlord, they carry out specific tasks in major operations, such as weakening Mechyrdia in preparation for the Masra Draetsen invasion. The titles and various duties they each bear are aligned to one of the five Gods of Aedon.

Titles and Duties

• The Lord Perditor/Lady Perditrix is in charge of planet-bound tactics and ship-to-ship boarding actions, and is the first to make landfall on a target world. Devoted to the Devourer of Stars, the current Lady Perditrix is Malya kaVrynne.
• The Lord Illuminator/Lady Illuminatrix is a powerful Veil sorcerer and in charge of making connections among the lowly and downtrodden of the targeted society. Devoted to the Herald of Fate, the current Lord Illuminator is Vyrni Khardus.
• The Lord Defensor/Lady Defenstrix tends the morale of the troops by inspiring obedience through fear. Devoted to the Empress of Light, the current Lady Defenstrix is Eris Areia.
• The Lord Corruptor/Lady Corruptrix manages outreach and espionage, able to corrupt an entire government's ruling elite into serving Aedon. Devoted to the Center of Hearts, the current Lady Corruptrix is Lukala Vpouchreila.
• The Lord Contaminator/Lady Contaminatrix is in charge of weakening the defenses of targeted worlds through diseases that affect man and machine alike. Devoted to the Avenger of Death, the current Lord Contaminator is Marcus Morbidus.

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