Silence

The Silence, currently known as Sinister Silence, is the reigning deity of the Quiet World as a god of sleep, silence, and dreams. Like a dream, his form and personality is often changing, creating a new iteration of the Silence each time he wakes from his long slumbers. This leads to a lot of varying accounts of his recorded traits across time, leaving the uninitiated confused. Some traits remain with every iteration, though: true neutrality in the struggle between the two universal forces, almost always appearing in the likeness of a human male, and compulsively lying to lead mortals on what he thinks is the right path.

Due to not being directly associated with neither the forces of Harmony nor Misery, the Silence is not part of any larger pantheon, and remains largely unknown to most people of the world. However, he does have several worshiping cults, the largest of them being the Church/Cult of Silence in Blackhills, the Followers of the Silence in the Sands somewhere in the mountains of the Desert of Kalir, and the druid Circle of Dreams in Red Willow. There is also supposedly a smaller group of followers north of Arysa Krania, the capital of Aso, and a tiny group on the red moon of Ies.

The Silence was supposedly dreamt into being by the Quiet World itself long before other dreaming beings existed. Here he has spent most of his existence sleeping, dreaming other things into being within his world. While sleeping he remains incorporeal, and only takes physical form upon waking up. He rarely wakes up on his own, only doing so if the Quiet World is at significant danger of imminently being physically breached by strong forces of Harmony or Misery, such as avatars. The Church/Cult of Silence is known to wake up the Silence on their own in a secret ritual in which they themselves breach into his inner sanctum. They only preform this ritual when they feel their world is too overwhelmed with one of the two universal forces, and they need the Silence to help balance it out.

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Contents

Known Iterations

Sinister Silence

This is the current iteration of an awakened Silence, being awoken by the leader of the Cult of Silence, Auster Graylock III, in 2077 PGE after three generations of trying to enter the Quiet World.

Appearance

Sinister Silence takes on the appearance of a tall, slender human male, standing approximately three metres tall. His skin is extremely pale, with black markings on his face like corpse paint. His eyes' irises are as black as the void, making them indistinguishable from his pupils. He has long, wavy, brown hair going a little ways past his shoulders, and what appears to be a neatly trimmed goatee that's barely visible with the black markings. He seems to always hold a stern expression.

Behavior

This iteration's personality does, despite the name, only appear sinister in his looks. He has primarily spent his efforts in preventing or stopping nightmares from manifesting within the Quiet World, as well as helping several cursed mortals on their path to getting rid of their marks of Misery.

His sinister side showed, however, when an avatar of Harmony breached into not only the Quiet World, but the Silence's own palace. He imprisoned the avatar in the Sea of Nightmares with the intention of tormenting her with never-ending horrors as punishment for her transgression. He ultimately decided to show her mercy, though, as the avatar's actions came from good intentions, putting her to the work of ending nightmares rather than enduring them.

Soothing Silence

This iteration was the previous one from the Sinister Silence, waking on his own in 1700 GE after multiple attempts by an avatar of Misery to breach the Quiet World. In 11 PGE, eleven years after the banishment of the avatar's main forces in 1873 GE, he went back to his slumber.

Appearance

The Soothing Silence took on the appearance of an older, slightly robust, tall human male, his height being assumed to be just under two metres. He had fair skin with dark freckles, and rosy, prominent cheeks on a chubby face. His eyes were of a pale blue color, and narrow, due to heavy, bushy eyebrows weighing down on them. Light brown, wavy hair with streaks of gray went down to his shoulders, complimented by a full beard. He wore loose, white robes like that of a cleric, held firm to his body by a black linen belt.

Behavior

The Silence's demeanor in this iteration can be described as being a loving grandfather type, staying true to his name as being soothing and providing comfort to those plagued by nightmares. During the GE 1700's major conflict between the Gardemoor Empire and the forces of Misery, he would often appear to force helpless victims of torture and violence into a deep slumber, giving them pleasant dreams, silencing their fears, thus granting them a painless death.

There were many accounts from those who lived through the brutalities that in what surely would have been their final moments, they were visited by a soothing guardian spirit in their dreams who delivered them from their anguish, which inspired them to continue their fight. This guardian spirit is wrongly attributed by the Church of Harmony to have been an avatar of Harmony.

Nightmare

The Nightmare woke up sometime during the first golden age of the Archonate, in the early years of the GE-era. Arguably the height of worship of Harmony, the Quiet World was filled with an overwhelming amount of dream manifestations of a harmonic-dogmatic nature. This ultimately threatened the neutral balance of the plane, requiring a more malicious iteration of the Silence to resolve the problem.

This iteration was only awake for two months, demonstrating the effectiveness and power that the Silence can hold over people when the two universal forces are not directly involved. It also demonstrates how preserving the status quo of the Quiet World is the Silence's primary purpose, and he will use any means regardless of good and evil to maintain his purpose.

Appearance

This iteration would constantly change forms to instill fear into different people, taking on the likeness of beasts and monsters, eldritch beings, malevolent bosses from people's workplace, abusive parents, and even disturbing noises and foreign concepts. These images were only present in people's minds, and it is unknown if the Nightmare had a physical form within the Quiet World.

Behavior

The Nightmare was likely the most wicked and evil iteration of Silence. It intentionally went out of its way to cause psychological harm to people who in no way could know that their dreams could manifest and endanger the balance of a world they had never heard about.

Though sleep is an essential part of the Silence's portfolio, the Nightmare pushed its horrors upon those awake as well as those asleep. The dreadful hallucinations suddenly appearing to those awake would result in a lot of accidents, including deaths and inadvertent murders. Some of those who experienced the Nightmare's torments over an extended period of time were driven to insanity, and some even to suicide.

Waking Dream

The Waking Dream, also just called Silence, is the first iteration of the Silence after having supposedly been dreamt into existence by the Quiet World itself. The only accounts of the Dream's being comes from Sinister Silence's conversations with his followers, making information about the subject limited and largely secretive. Not much, if anything, is known by anyone other than the Silence about the Dream's history, appearance, or behavior.

The Silence claims that when the Waking Dream awoke, there were no other dreamers, and the Quiet World was rather empty. If true, this could imply that the Dream was the first sapient creature to ever exist, dating its awakening back millions, or possibly, billions of years.

Associated Organizations
The Church of Silence
Followers of the Silence in the Sands
Circle of Dreams
Alignment
Neutral
Follower Alignments
Any non-evil alignment, tilting towards the neutrals
Holy Symbol
An amulet with a crystalline blue butterfly alongside a crescent moon
Favored Weapon(s)
Longsword
Domains
Dreams, Peace, Twilight