The Nightmare
In light of his brother's most recent attempts to create viable life, Ardün sought to extend the same gesture to Nimagos as he had his sisters: the creation of a godly companion. Despite Ardün's good intentions, Nimagos was disgusted with his brother's offer, seeing it as a gloved insult to his own children and an unwanted reminder of what he could never achieve. In the deepest recesses of his mind, though he would never admit it aloud, Nimagos also feared that exposing the newling divinity to him would merely serve to destroy the creature over time.
As such, Nimagos turned his back on the fledgling deity, not even deigning to give the creature a name before departing from its presence and doing his best to avoid and ignore it. Left to struggle on alone, the deity's energy began to warp and wither, seeking a form of identity, but finding only overwhelming chaos. As the creature began to fold in upon itself, becoming naught but rage, hunger, and fear, the sisters and their new prodigies began to call for the creature to be put down. Yet when it seemed that the abandoned deity would be consumed by oblivion, one sister stepped forward and demanded a better way.
Undaunted by the hungering void, Ellastrophel called it by the name she heard howling on the wind.
In naming the foundering deity, Ellastrophel had also given it form, thought, and identity, and thus laid claim to her in protest of Nimagos's abandonment. Yet the other sisters were wary of the newly formed goddess and mistrustful of Ellastrophel's intent to claim two divine companions. Spurred by his sisters' displeasure, Ardün approached Ellastrophel to tell her that the spirit must go back to Nimagos as was first planned. Yet as he explained the delicacy of the situation, it was Ellastrophel's original companion who offered an alternative path.
Having been raised by the starlight goddess, Síorladh understood the other eidolon's need for the healing and respite from her earliest iteration that Ellastrophel could provide. As such, he offered to trade places with the spirit, offering himself as a replacement to Nimagos, despite the latter's absence and complete silence on the matter. Ellastrophel however was devastated at the thought of losing her beloved companion and guilt stricken at the thought that she had instigated a trade of one innocent soul for another. Nevertheless, Ardün seized the easy compromise and so it was that the new eidolon became bound to Ellastrophel and Síorladh to Nimagos.
The new suit was a good one for the fledgling goddess, and she blossomed under Ellastrophel's care and tutelage, growing into her own in leaps and bounds. Together, the goddesses charted the stars, observed how the moon pushed and pulled the tide, and documented the intricacies of the terrestrial world built by Ellastrophel and her sisters. Together, they built a world out of the Pillar of Stars, one of twelve such foundations for the very cosmos, filling it with their dreams of galaxies far away, and at its center, they built an observatory from which they could view and document the wanderings of their beloved stars. Together, they found happiness and joy in each other. Before long, the hunger and rage that had characterized the spirit's earliest days were but pale shadows in the deepest recesses of her psyche. Yet, the eidolon's relationship with her new siblings could hardly be more divisive or antagonistic. They viewed her as a shadow agent of Nimagos, the reclusive, hostile divinity of destruction, and imminently responsible for sacrificing their brother to the Unmaker's Maw. As such, they were cruel and dismissive toward the newling goddess with little exception. Despite her siblings' rejection however, the eidolon was happy with Ellastrophel as she had never known.
Their happiness was not to last.
One night, while the eidolon was out stargazing for their latest project, she was found by her father who had come with terrible tidings: Ellastrophel had been killed, most likely by his brother, Nimagos. Ardün had come to tell his daughter the news, but also to ask her blessing in swearing vengeance against Ellastrophel's murderer. Overcome with grief and horror, she gave her blessing and watched as her father disappeared into the night.
Yet the eidolon was not to be left alone to her grief. Instead, with Ardün gone, Ellastrophel's sisters came to find her and inform her of her new role as the regent of the Pillar of Stars in Ellastrophel's place. The sisters were adamant that since Ellastrophel had argued so stridently for the eidolon's custody, it was only fitting that her new protégé take her place. But the eidolon was terrified of the prospect, viewing it simultaneously as little better than eternal slavery and as the final certitude that Ellastrophel was indeed gone forever. Regardless of her protests, both verbal and physical, the sisters had not come to hear refusal, and so they bore her away in force to her new throne.
And so it was that the eidolon was pressed into the howling void left by Ellastrophel's violent departure. Where once there had been a realm of starlight and twilit wonder, there was naught but a crumbling wasteland as that corner of the cosmos continued to buckle in the absence of its living foundation. In the darkness, alone, the eidolon was left.
But in the darkness, she heard a heartbeat and she came to the understanding that some part of Ellastrophel must yet persist. It was to this end that she began to struggle against the crushing tide of the void, determined to find that spark of Ellastrophel's soul.
As the eidolon stumbled across the ravaged landscape, she found pieces of half-forgotten memories playing out in front of her as if plucked from El's own mind. She saw the day Ellastrophel had called her out of the abyss of hunger and fear. She saw the day Ellastrophel showed her the stars for the first time. The first time they saw a meteor shower. The first time the eidolon learned what a dream was. The first time they found a fallen star, smoking in a crater of its own making. She saw all the times she had spoken to Ellastrophel about her disillusionment with her family, with her role, with her place in the world. She saw the day she had presented Ellastrophel with an astrolabe, the first of its kind crafted from her own hands. She saw all the times they had laughed together, cried together, and rejoiced together. She saw what could have been a life spent together in happiness.
As the deluge of memories began to drown the young goddess in a swirling void so similar to the one she had once been, she was found by the most unlikely of allies: the eidolon Kiemra.
Channeling the power of her own essence of balance, Kiemra wove a storm out of the rushing darkness with the eye centered on her agonized adopted sister. In the calm of the storm, Kiemra spoke quickly and quietly her sister, urging her to break loose from her chains and leave this place of torment behind. Thinking that her sister had truly come to save her, the eidolon rose and shattered the tethers that bound her to the howling void within the Pillar of Stars.
And, with hands bloodied and spirit unraveled, crawled free.
Coming to in the ruins of their once beautiful observatory, the eidolon took her first breath of freedom and choked. For there, standing as though alive, was the corpse of Ellastrophel, suspended like a puppet in a mockery of life with eyes wide and empty. Before the eidolon could draw another breath, to scream, to cry, to beg how, Kiemra gathered her up in a rush of wind and spirited them both away to Kiemra's home in the mountains.
This time, when the eidolon tasted freedom, she spat it back out. Turning on her sister, the eidolon demanded to know what their siblings had done to her beloved companion. Kiemra desperately attempted to explain that they had contrived a way to let Ellastrophel have a hand in avenging her own murder, but the eidolon was not satisfied, especially when Kiemra tried to delicately describe the nature of the Cage they had wrought for Nimagos. It was in that moment that both sisters felt the Cage shiver shut on Nimagos and Ardün. Before she could gather her breath, the eidolon felt the Sisters' resolution wash over her, felt the Curse of Iron take root in her very soul. For of course the plan had been theirs all along and of course they had sought to rid themselves of not one nuisance but two. And now they were trying to inflict their resolution upon all of the gods, upon her.
As the implications of this treachery unfolded in her mind, the rage that had begun building within the eidolon as she had begun arguing with Kiemra erupted from within, much as it had in the days before she had known Ellastrophel, when all the world was raw and sharp and unending, howling pain. The earth itself began to tremble with the eidolon's fury, and with the finality of a cataclysm, Kiemra's mountain home was rent apart, the peaks crumbling and shivering apart to admit the ravenous waters of the Sea. The eidolon's rage had wreaked a new landmark in the form of the Teeth that now marked the jagged division between the land that would become known as Ferrin and the vast expanse of Mao'dan. The echoes of her wrath still rip through the peaks in the form of [BLANK].
Heedless of Kiemra's horror, the eidolon departed the devastation, vowing enmity in return for the damage her siblings had wrought on her, her mentor, and their father.
Over the following years, the eidolon searched tirelessly for a way to liberate her father from the macabre prison in which he had been trapped. She alone of her siblings sought to challenge the Sisters' mandate for she felt responsible for having given her blessing to Ardün to hunt Nimagos in the first place. Eventually, she recognized the potential of the human creatures that Nimagos had created as the only sentient beings to have escaped the Curse of Iron inflicted by the Sisters. Although loath to involve herself with these beings that had been so unfairly gifted with the spark of Ellastrophel, eidolonfinally found one that she could both tolerate and convince to undertake this mission. This human was the woman Rhuel.
Under the eidolon's guidance, Rhuel entered the Tomb of Stars where Ellastrophel's body lay in mock repose. Using the gifts granted her by the god Terenor, she peeled back the layers of iron sheathing the body and reached inside, withdrawing the screaming spirit of Ardün. But before the eidolon or Rhuel could celebrate their victory, the rest of the gods descended on the Tomb in a fury and smote the soul from Rhuel's body.
Horrified and enraged by her siblings' violence, the eidolon met their fury with her own. She condemned their wanton slaughter and demanded recompense for their apathy, citing their duplicity as the impetus for humanity's newfound knowledge of the Cage. The rest of the gods responded in kind, claiming her own willful disregard for the sacrifice made by the Sisters to spare the world from the destruction of the warring brothers. Indeed, the argument would have come to blows had not Kiemra made herself heard over the din and demand they discuss what they should do with the rest of humanity now that they could pierce the Cage. Moved by loyalty for her fallen companion, she vouched for humanity's potential, and it was eventually decided that humankind must be given sufficient motivation to support the gods over their still imprisoned father. So it was that Ardün was more than happy to share stories of Nimagos's depravity and violence within the Cage, offering his corrupted hand as "proof" of his brother's sadism. Thus, the legends of Nimagos as the hated Unmaker, the Entropic Tyrant, the Demon Beyond the Veil were born.
Yet as the rest of the gods returned to their home realms, the eidolon realized she was not alone in the Tomb.
Lingering in the place where the husk of her body had fallen, the spirit of Rhuel lingered, sustained by the fragment of Ellastrophel's soul. Seized by a sudden inspiration, the eidolon grasped the spirit and retreated to the far east of D'neth. Hidden away in her new mountain haven, the eidolon examined the lingering spark and came to a staggering epiphany. While in life, the fragment of Ellastrophel had animated Rhuel's soul; now, in death, humanity might be good for far more than simply rescuing her lost brother. They could even be used to restore her lost love.
At last, the eidolon understood that each human possessed a single mote of Ellastrophel's animating spark, and as such, if the eidolon could determine the right composition of fragments, could she not perhaps return her love to life? But how to determine which fragments were the right fragments, and how many would be necessary? Perhaps the answer lay in the truth of Ellastrophel's original creation. She had been created as part of a complimentary set of sisters, one facet of a divine dodecahedron. Perhaps twelve fragments would be sufficient to reconstruct her shattered soul. But how then to determine which fragment of the ever multiplying millions were the right twelve? To that problem, she had no answer.
Before the eidolon could begin to truly delve into her thought experiment, a new horror took her by surprise. Under the direction of her own father, D'neth was overtaken by a quartet of terror, the Demons of Discord: Hunger, Slaughter, Madness, and Malady. As the demons rampaged across the world, igniting the first fires of war, the eidolon was besieged by a sudden onslaught of nightmares. Having never been built to withstand the grief and pain of a global conflict, the eidolon was consumed by the crushing agony of a thousand thousand mortal victims of war. The ceaseless rush of sleeping terrors and waking horrors brought her back to those earliest days of her existence, before she had known the comfort of starlight, when all she had been and known was howling emptiness.
To make matters worse, her adopted siblings had crafted a plan for vengeance against their sister in secret that they knew would undo her wholly: they Unnamed her. Stricken from every record, removed from every song and prayer, and replaced with cruel circumlocutions, the knowledge of the eidolon's name was eaten from the world under the guise of superstition and awestruck fear. Stripped of the name given to her by Ellastrophel and the knowledge of self it offered, the eidolon was consumed by the ravenous maw of war, no matter how desperately she sought to hide within the void that still lingered in her deepest being. As the years of slaughter wore on, the eidolon began to fracture apart, pieces of her psyche cracking and warping until they either twisted in upon themselves or splintered away entirely. In time, the eidolon forgot her own name, and became the monster the world feared her to be. Assuming the crown of the Nightmare, the pieces of herself that had sloughed away became walking Nightcrawlers, dread creatures of terrifying and myriad visages that haunted the darkest recesses of world to feed upon the only prey they recognized: humanity.
Yet as the dark waters closed over the goddess's head, there came a voice from under the surface. It was a voice she at once recognized and despised for it was the voice of Nimagos, the one being she understood as the very architect of all her suffering. Screaming her fury and her agony, the Nightmare tried to exorcise his presence from her mind, but no matter how she railed at him, Nimagos could not be dislodged from that shadowy corner of her thoughts. Finally, exhausted from fighting him at every turn, the Nightmare bade him speak and tell her what he wanted once and for all.
Nimagos's message was a simple one: help him escape the Cage so that he could permanently Unmake his brother. In return, the Nightmare would be free to destroy the spirit of endings in turn. Despite her thirst for retribution, the Nightmare was cunning. She suspected that such an offer was far too good to be believed, not to mention nigh impossible to orchestrate, but she also recognized an opportunity when it presented itself. So she agreed to his offer. Did Mora ever try or manage to smuggle a shard of herself across the Veil with Will when he was a baby? And that's how she able to peek in on him from D'neth while he grows up?
Divine Domains
Prior to her corruption, the Nightmare was the eidolon of dreams, fate, and waking hopes. After her fall, she became the eidolon of nightmares, fear, and despair.
Before her fall, moths were her sacred animal; after, she became the patron of crows.
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Tenets of Faith
Draw not her attention through either screams or silence, but rather pray that your whispers are lost in a sea of murmurs.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
The Nightmare dreams of being able to reconstitute the broken and scattered spirit of her mentor Ellastrophel. She believes that by seeking out individuals of unusual strength and resolve and putting them through a crucible of trials, unseen and unknown by them to be divinely orchestrated, she can distill pure sparks of Ellastrophel's spirit. In accordance with the divine sanctity of the number twelve and the combination of the twelve relics needed to commune with Ynara, she believes that twelve pure sparks are needed to accomplish her goal.
Her alliance with Nimagos is an alliance of convenience and opportunity. She relishes the thought of seeing him suffer as her beloved teacher did at the hands of the Unmaker and as she has due to his human creations. She believes that learning how to reconstitute the broken spirit of Ardün will give her valuable practice for when the time comes to do the same for Ellastrophel.
Social
Family Ties
Relationships
Queen of Nightmares
She Who Walks in Darkness
That Which Lurks at the Edge of Thought
The Whispering Woman
The Lich Queen
The Veiled Lady
The Eater
The Nameless
Comments