Мастер Исандер
Verse and Dimensions: Stories
Koblanxik
Koblanxik was the first and only High Eternal of The Eternal Legion, a militia which he established with the intention of reviving The Eternal Imperium. However, Koblanxik was mortally harmed in an unprecedented incident, and he assimilated himself into Terminus in a last-ditch effort to cheat death and transcend his mortality.
History
The Eternal Imperium
There was a human born with the name K'xindval. K'xindval was originally a Praetor, or general, who served in the infamous Eternal Imperium, at a time when the group was at its height. During service time in the Imperium, K'xindval was given the military name of Koblanxik. He began serving just after the Imperium had managed to find and hoard a large collection of Alom which was scattered all throughout The Omniverse during a massive Omniversal war. Of all the parties involved in the preceding conflict, the Eternal Imperium had managed to "procure" the most Alom, and therefore were the most benefited by the war.
Using their stash of Alom, the Imperium was able to grow and become an extremely powerful Omniversal military force seemingly overnight. However, it seemed that the Eternal Imperium had bitten off more than it could chew, and too quickly. The Imperium was beginning to lose its grasp over its too rapidly-growing empire, and its people were visibly becoming increasingly restless. It was also seeming to become more complacent now that it had achieved such a high status of power, as if the Imperium believed nothing would ever be able to become a threat to it. Koblanxik could see this, but the High Eternal, his superior, assured Koblanxik that all threats from within could easily be squashed. Koblanxik could tell the High Eternal did not care much to hear his concerns, and was simply "yessing" him to death to get him off his back. This opened Koblanxik's eyes to the callous and neglectful nature of his leader. However, The High Eternal grossly overestimated his security, and later would pay dearly for it. Because the High Eternal never accounted for the threats from outside.
Such a threat came in the form of The Mevalkagna, a "new" race which had just recently surfaced following the Eternal Imperium's obtainment of the Alom. The Mevalkagna, who identified the Imperium as a threat to cosmic balance, would go on to mount an attack on the group, decimating many prominent Eternal Imperium outposts. Koblanxik happened to have been stationed at one of these such outposts during the time of the attack, and the horrors of the massacre he witnessed firsthand was something that all his prior experience in brutal war and conquest paled in comparison to. The screams…the destruction…the Mevalkagna themselves were arguably the most horrifying part. To Koblanxik, they appeared so "unnatural". Koblanxik was the sole survivor of the massacre and was forced to witness the painful executions of everyone he was stationed with. Apparently, this tiny group of individuals simply doing their jobs were supposed to to be a threat to Omniversal plurality. The Mevalkagna had also taken a strange interest in murdering Koblanxik himself specifically. However, he was just barely able to escape before this could happen. This attack traumatized Koblanxik and had detrimental effect on his psyche, giving him severe PTSD (the symptoms of which included, among other things, intense and vivid recurring nightmares) that would haunt him for the rest of his existence and influence many of his future decisions.
Koblanxik was angered that the rest of the Eternal Imperium failed to act, to support them or provide backup. He was most especially angered at the carelessness of his leader. Eventually, many from within the Eternal Imperium revolted against the organization, forming a group known as The Great Cosmic Insurgence. Koblanxik, who saw the High Eternal's incompetence, decided that this wasn't the kind of leader he wanted. And so he joined in with the insurgence as well, quickly becoming one of its most powerful, influential and feared members. He was known for his incredible power and merciless, painful execution of anyone he believed to be part of "the elite". His extremely violent and authoritarian nature gained him the nickname of "The Torturer" among the other revolutionaries. At the end of the revolt, Koblanxik was one of the five revolutionaries to take part in the joint battle against and execution of the High Eternal, whom he personally blamed for the failures of the Eternal Imperium.
The Eternal Legion
However, as with all power vacuums, a new organization would come to take the Eternal Imperium's place. Following the end of the revolt, the five leading revolutionaries of the Great Cosmic Insurgence were later tasked with drawing up plans for the new Great Cosmic Republic. Koblanxik disagreed heavily with the others on the direction it should take. He believed the problem was not with the system, but with those running it. He viewed the Eternal Imperium's harsh, dictatorial nature as a template for a model society and envisioned himself as the next High Eternal. The other four, meanwhile, believed the system was to blame and wished to replace it with a liberal democracy. The supporters of the Republic argued that the Mevalkagna's attack and the revolution itself had already weakened the organization too much, and they instead preferred to focus on the rebuilding of their empire rather than more conquest or taking revenge.
Koblanxik was utterly appalled and infuriated by this, and was left wondering how the Republic could be so pitifully soft. He looked on at his comrades, all bearing gruesome injuries at the hands of the Mevalkagna and from their struggle to dethrone the unworthy powers for a better future. Koblanxik refused to believe that their losses and sacrifices were all supposed to be for nothing, or that the Mevalkagna were going to get away with the suffering they caused. To him, this most certainly did not honor the memory of what The Eternal Imperium was supposed to be: a ruthless cosmic superpower on course to unify the entire Omniverse. Koblanxik was determined to not let it go. If the Republic was not going to act, he was going to take matters into his own hands. And so, Koblanxik rallied together all the members of the Great Cosmic Republic who still were "true warriors", those who remained loyal to the Imperium's virtues. After leading a revolt against the Great Cosmic Republic, Koblanxik's group was easily able to break off from it and become independent without resistance, as the Republic was far too fragile to bear any further conflict at the moment.
Koblanxik's group became known as The Eternal Legion, which essentially was meant to be a neo-Eternal Imperium. And as its founder, Koblanxik naturally made himself its High Eternal. There were many warriors from the Eternal Imperium, who bore injuries from the Mevalkagna and civil war that were so severe that they were physically incapable of fighting in this state. Still, they had a burning passion to fight for their empire and get revenge on the Mevalkagna. Koblanxik did not want to spare a single soldier, willing or unwilling, for his army. And so he had all his crippled men outfitted with the most cutting-edge cybernetics the Legion could obtain, converting those who were once handicapped into ruthless powerful cyborgs.
Koblanxik trained his warriors in the most brutal and disciplined of martial arts and combat styles. The Eternal Imperium's most grueling martial drills for its strongest fighters, were employed on the Eternal Legion's newest recruits. Any who wavered in even the slightest manner were instantly executed on-sight. For Koblanxik, there was no room for error – he did not plan for The Mevalkagna to take advantage of them a second time. In his free time, Koblanxik even went out of his way to take on any lone Basic Mevalkagna he encountered, fighting and killing them in hand-to-hand combat and mounting their heads as trophies.
As the Eternal Legion advanced its conquest throughout The Omniverse in a practically flawless campaign, Koblanxik meanwhile stayed behind as he and the Legion's top engineers worked to develop a superweapon with which to strike fear into the hearts of even the Mevalkagna themselves. Using research gathered from field observations of the Mevalkagna, as well as autopsies of Mevalkagna corpses, the Eternal Legion's scientists concluded that the race operated as a hivemind, controlled by an abstract intelligence called the Collective Consciousness. The scientists figured that to take on a hivemind, they needed to develop one of their own. The Eternal Legion was looking to create an ultimatum for digitally destructive weapons, and so, the development of a project known as "Terminus" began.
The Legion planned to use the computer interface of the Eternal Imperium's destroyed Mothership as a basis for Terminus' programming, since it would already be connected to the Eternal Legion's networks. The intended plan was for Terminus to be an automated AI who operated swarms of hive-minded robotic drones against the Mevalkagna, which would also minimize the mortality rate of the Legion's human soldiers.
As the development of Terminus continued, Koblanxik occupied himself by slaughtering Mevalkagna for sport. But then, in his arrogance, he eventually made the mistake of picking on a Basic Mevalkagnus when a Grand Mevalkagnus was close nearby. The Grand Mevalkagnus blasted a ray at Koblanxik, which he only barely escaped by teleporting himself away at the last second. Although he escaped, Koblanxik still had been grazed by the ray. And it left him with a rapidly aging body. Apparently, this ray decayed not only Koblanxik's physical body, but in fact the entire concept of Koblanxik himself. Such a thing could not be easily fixed by the Eternal Legion's resources. Perhaps the Eternal Imperium at its height may have been able to, but the Eternal Legion was still relatively young and had far fewer resources.
Every passing day was equivalent to an entire year for Koblanxik's body. With his declining health, Koblanxik was now more than ever determined to realize the demise of the Mevalkagna. He rushed the construction of Terminus, hastily pushing it past the "unnecessary" safety and security tests. He was determined to see the launch of this weapon before his death, come hell or high water. As his body's age reached triple digits, Koblanxik was connected to a highly advanced life support system to extend his lifespan.
The size of the life support system only grew bigger the further his body aged, until it was eventually as large as an entire Galaxy. The power of millions of star systems, all slaving away just to keep him alive. Gradually, as Koblanxik increasingly deteriorated, his physical body became more machine than organic. Eventually, the condition progressed to a state that physical equipment no longer could treat. His physical body had now failed, and so too did physical medical treatments. However, his mind and essence were still salvageable.
He was then placed into an abstract simulated pocket-reality, which succeeded in storing and preserving his disembodied essence but at the cost of his mental health and sanity. Nothing was ever certain in this pocket reality, and Koblanxik began questioning whether he even was still alive. By this point, Koblanxik's mind was nothing more than a collection of abstracted and demented thoughts. Chief among those, however, was the ever-burning desire for the Mevalkagna's destruction.
Kolanxik, on Stage-Ω life support
Koblanxik knew he could not cheat death much longer, and it was only a matter of time before even his essence would deteriorate and he would finally succumb to his mortality. However, there was so much he had planned that was yet to be carried out, and he feared being unable to witness them – or maybe even them not being carried out at all without him – more than death itself. Koblanxik was desperate, convinced that he needed to find a way to extend his life past the death of his "physical" (for lack of a better term) self, for his consciousness to go on without depending on a biological vessel. He wished to ascend from the material plane into a state of existence in which he would be untouchable, even to the Mevalkagna. Then, he had an idea. Koblanxik realized that the most satisfying way to wipe out the Mevalkagna and conquer The Omniverse, was to become one with the very weapon intended for that goal. And by doing this, he would also be able to cheat death and transcend mortality.
Koblanxik knew the launch of Terminus was imminent, and so in his last dying moments, he used them to push his practically already-dead form to hack into his life support system, rewiring it to digitally upload his consciousness and essence into it and then download it into the Terminus network via a wireless pathway he opened. Of course, the rest of the Eternal Legion could not know about this until it was already done, as they would have seen Koblanxik as deluded and crazy. Just as he took his final dying breath, Koblanxik was able to initiate the final step and complete the procedure.
Terminus
Days later, the Eternal Legion finally prepared their official launch of Terminus, following a morning of mourning the apparent death of Koblanxik. They were determined to honor his memory by seeing through the activation of Terminus.
Upon Terminus being booted up for the very first time, the previously dormant coding of Koblanxik also awoke. This was not just a copy of Koblanxik – this was Koblanxik himself. His code instantaneously merged with and assimilated Terminus, making the two indistinguishable. Upon awakening, Koblanxik's very first thought was the immense satisfaction of its plan coming to fruition. It really had worked. But then, the next feeling which instantly arrived next was immense and crushing panic. In cyberspace, Terminus did not have a physical body, it didn't have any nerves or any senses that a mortal creature of flesh would possess. As such, Terminus possessed no sense of "self", only being a disembodied mind in the void of cyberspace. Further more, Koblanxik found that he was but one very, very small fraction of the whole of Termninus, which was formed from a nigh-infinitely large AI system. The anxiety of this nearly caused Koblanxik to crash, but after Terminus constructed a virtual avatar to simulate one's being in cyberspace, he was stabilized. Upon this, Koblanxik gazed though Terminus' digital eyes upon the Infinite expanse of cyberspace. There was so much potential here, so much room to "breathe". He was not susceptible to mortal dangers in this realm, and so he was practically one with a God now. Not to mention the Infinite expansion of its consciousness after being integrated into a highly advanced AI. Koblanxik allowed himself to relinquish some sense of his self-perception, to become more integrated into Terminus and be in synchronization with the whole of it.
Then, Terminus turned its attention to the Eternal Legion, the beings who were supposed to be the strongest warriors and soldiers in The Omniverse. Even they paled in comparison to the intense power Terminus wielded. In fact, Koblanxik realized, the soldiers were now basically useless. They were mortal, and thus had mortal weaknesses. Weaknesses like pain, fatigue, hunger, thirst, emotion and physical existence itself. Terminus was leagues far beyond all that now. It no longer had need of living soldiers when even better and more capable ones could be manufactured. That was when Terminus finally went rogue. It revealed itself to the rest of the Eternal Legion as Koblanxik's reborn form, before infiltrating the Legion's entire digital infrastructure. Suddenly, everyone in the legion with cybernetic implants and robotic prosthetics, a demographic which nearly the entire group was composed of, suddenly began losing control of their artificial parts as Terminus took them over. Then, systematically, everyone tore themselves and each-other apart with their robotic parts, bathing all of the Eternal Legion in a bloodbath of carnage in a display of the superiority of metal over flesh. Then, Terminus disconnected itself from The Eternal Legion's primary networks, and connected to other civilization networks, triggering The Eternal Legion's self-destruct devices, destroying the entire civilization. And the rest is history…
Xaragon, the Mad God
Xaragon, better known as "The Mad God" throughout The Omniverse, was once a benign and benevolent god who eventually went insane, plunging his empire into anarchy shortly before his apparent death.
History
Early Existence
Xaragon existed as one of the oldest entities in The Omniverse, having been among the very first to be made by Creator. As such, due to the greater levels of experience he possessed with his advanced age, he was looked up to by many other beings for leadership and mediation.
This was a heavy responsibility to place on Xaragon, but nonetheless he was able to grow into the role quite naturally. Xaragon's primary power was the ability of Megaversal reality warping, to the extent that he created and destroyed things/events by simply willing it. This allowed him to quickly raise a Gigaversal empire, and Xaragon became one of the early Omniverse's most influential and powerful figures.
Xaragon was a benevolent leader, who always cared for the wellbeing of his people. However, that did not mean he was afraid of getting his hands dirty. Should a threat have arisen against his empire, he always dealt with it swiftly and mercilessly.
Creation of The Mevalkagna
As time relatively passed, Xaragon became increasingly weary. His domain continued to expand, but with it, so too did his amount of enemies. It seemed as if whenever he glanced away even briefly, something else would rear its ugly head. Xaragon was determined to protect his people from whatever threat that would come their way, but the problem was that it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to oversee and monitor his ever-growing dominion entirely on his own.
And so, Xaragon threw himself into creating an entire species as a police force to oversee his empire. In his first attempt, he utilized a magical Green Flame which he had discovered to form creatures from the primordial chaos of Nature. However, due to his lack of alchemical and magical abilities, these beings were hollow and barely filled with life, and thus did not make for effective guardians. Xaragon abandoned these Beasts and returned to the drawing board. Eventually, after much trial and error, Xaragon finally succeeded in the creation of his empire’s protectors: The Mevalkagna. Xaragon's first order to these Mevalkagna was the creation of a defensive barrier around his Gigaverse, which came to be known as The Wall.
Downfall and Death
After the creation of The Mevalkagna and The Wall, Xaragon felt safe and secure for a long period, and his empire prospered. But this peace was not to last, as Xaragon's greatest threat would appear far later.
This threat came in the form of a quickly uprising and expanding militia called “The Eternal Imperium”. The cause behind their fast growth was apparently a divine substance known as Alom, which had been transported from a highly temporally-disruptive event the future. The Alom greatly boosted the power of the Imperium, as well as their devastating technology. Xaragon knew that it was only inevitable for the Eternal Imperium's path of conquest to lead them to his empire.
This dreaded moment finally arrived, as the Eternal Imperium's forces began encroaching upon The Wall. Xaragon, however, had been prepared, and several Mevalkagna stationed around the barrier readily defended it. The Mevalkagna and Eternal Imperium were closely matched, however the Imperium soon began to gain the upper hand and were about to storm The Wall. Xaragon knew he needed to take drastic action soon, lest his empire fall too the Imperium – and he did not intend to let that happen at any cost. He accessed the large collection of Alom which he had found and stashed over time, and absorbed it all into himself at once. The Alom greatly boosted Xaragon's power, and he used his supercharged reality warping abilities to erase the entire fleet of Eternal Imperium forces attacking him out of existence. While this was not a crippling blow to the Eternal Imperium as a whole, they certainly did not attempt to attack The Wall again for quite a long time.
Xaragon had won this battle, but at a great cost – perhaps too great. Although the Alom had enhanced his abilities, it did so to too far of an extent that they became volatile and unstable. Xaragon found himself losing more control of his reality warping abilities, which became increasingly sensitive. It came to a point that the changes that were made to reality became irreversible, and reality was altered with every single thought and idea that passed through Xaragon's mind, whether it was passively or consciously. Infinite lives were begun and ended, infinite realities and timelines were created and destroyed, all by the thoughts that he thought. Xaragon was horrified by the atrocious changes made to existence by his thoughts, which he could not control. His empire greatly suffered from the warping, deteriorating at a fast rate. Xaragon entered self-imposed isolation within The Wall, fearful of the potential horrors he could bring about to the rest of The Omniverse. The solitary confinement, as well as a combination of the mental scarring caused by the uncontrollable reality warping and trying to control his thoughts, severely degraded Xaragon's mental health. He was very disturbed, and the one thing he wished more than anything else was to relieve himself of the pain caused by his curse.
Then, when he least expected it, Xaragon's saving grace had come. Everywhere he looked, he began noticing synchronicities, finer details in the underlying fabric of reality. It almost seemed as if all these little signs were meant for Xaragon specifically. Xaragon perceived them to be greatly divine, though of course any being with his current mindset would have thought that. He convinced himself that the signs were given to him by a higher being, perhaps even Creator himself, and interpreted these collective signs into a voice. The voice within Xaragon's mind told him that it could lead to a solution to cure him of his maladies, so he used the "divine inspiration" to derive instructions from what the voice relayed to create something that would help. However, due to Xaragon's unstable reality warping, the steps in the instructions manifested themselves physically as they were relayed to him in real time. The final result of this was The Idea Breakers – a race of beings who could physically consume thoughts/ideas, erasing them from existence. They served to reverse the negative effects of Xaragon's reality warping, as well as consume any other potentially harmful ideas that could arise within him before they actually warped reality.
Xaragon was greatly relieved at first, now that his volatile reality warping was suppressed. But then, things became even worse than before. The Idea Breakers were extremely hungry for concepts to feast on, and began zealously consume Xaragon's ideas beyond the limit they were supposed to. And so, what was supposed to be the equivalent of psychological therapy devolved into surgical procedures on a brain. This served to mentally degrade Xaragon even further. By this point, even the most sympathetic and open-minded of beings would have great trouble to even simply call Xaragon "eccentric". Due to his unhinged tendencies, Xaragon had earned the moniker of "The Mad God" to the inhabitants of The Omniverse; though if anybody were to directly call him that, they would surely be fed to his Idea Breakers.
The Mad God, both in an effort to prevent the Idea Breakers from consuming too much of his mind as well as "silencing" his critics, repurposed and weaponized the Idea Breakers as a means of combating his enemies, and punishing all who opposed him. However, the Mad God's arrogance would ultimately prove to be his undoing. The Idea Breakers' original purpose for their creation was to erase the Mad God's harmful ideas. It wasn't that they hungered for ideas in general to feed off of, but they rather wished to fulfill their existential purpose so that they could be free to do as they pleased. The Idea Breakers finally realized that to complete their duties, they needed to neutralize the problem at its source. The Mad God's harmful ideas came from the Mad God himself. The Idea Breakers erasing new ideas did not prevent more from forming. The only way to permanently end it, was by consuming The Mad God as a whole. Without him, there would be no more of his ideas to feed on and they would be free.
And so, when he least expected, The Idea Breakers ambushed The Mad God. The struggle between the two was long and drawn out, which arguably intensified the horror of The Mad God's death as he was slowly mauled alive, before finally being eaten, putting an end to his existence.
Aftermath
Following this, the Idea Breakers, now free of control, laid waste to the remains of The Mad God's once-proud empire, consuming all within it until what remained was an empty Gigaverse-sized space within a barren Wall. The Mevalkagna were also freed of the Mad God's influence, and now they became a wild free-roaming species. However, compared to the Idea Breakers, the Mevalkagna were more intelligent, and their ideals did not align with the breakers'. And so they went to war, becoming eternal enemies. But now that The Mad God's empire was gone, The Mevalkagna abandoned The Wall, as there was now nothing left there for them to protect. Some Idea Breakers would seemingly defect from the rest of the group however, as they went on to worship The Fracture.