[center][h2]Tsathoskr[/h2][b][i]The Horror of Colossus[/i][/b]

[img]http://www.lagedorre.net/tsathoskr.png[/img][/center]

[b]Aliases[/b]: from those too terrified to utter its name emerge the descriptive monikers of [i]The Herald of Insanity[/i] and [i]The Horror of Colossus[/i].

[b]Age[/b]: born in the tumult of the Val’Gara civil war
[b]Gender[/b]: indecipherable
[b]Species[/b]: Val’Gara, Son of Idea, Herald
[b]Character Tier[/b]: High
[b]Character Type[/b]: Critical
[b]Faction[/b]: Val’Gara

[h3]Description[/h3]
[list]What burst forth from Colossus’ hemorrhaging grottoes was an incomprehensible sea of pungent filth, so vast as to create a false horizon. Neither merely Herald nor Idea’s spawn, the abhorrent fusion of those roles roiled into the verse to realize its mother’s ambitions. A fiend named Tsathoskr, neath its shadow vast cities were wholly barred from the natural light of their stars and instead lain bare by the ruinous glare its profligate maws and lidless eyes: organs that aimlessly gouged the slick film of its offal-hued hide. Translucent bubbles likewise vexed its surface as they surged and withered, as though its skin were a mantle of pitch-infused fire. Black vapors flowed along these, myriad phantasms born from the first as nightmares. For all that, it could neither be seen nor unseen, as each weird shadow and baleful silhouette refused to linger, lit only for horrible instants where reality and insanity so easily collide; suggestions of an insidious dream defined by unsettling cyan auroras and malicious crimson flashes.[/list]
[h3]History[/h3]
[list]Mire struck Colossus, and she was rent.

Inchoate, the storm of mud and malice splattered the felled spires that littered Colossus’ primordial husk. Meanly sundered, she, the acme of monstrous might and culmination of malformation, quaked. Mother goddess to the primal horde, who held herself aloof in manifold enigmas, drowned in filth. It began as a rain of countless frozen clots that punched through her rheumy atmosphere, artifacts of Mire’s passage from the cold of the void into Sal’Chazzar’s unnatural light. With the missiles’ increase, the gray obscuration of her putrid veil waned to tatters, as though devoured by cosmic moths. Her hide grew weary. In contrast, as it neared, each and every chunk torn by tidal forces from Mire’s thawed body became more vast and torrid. No longer icy darts, instead gargantuan planetoids cloaked in flames and incensed with bioforce pummeled Colossus’ armor and, smashed to molten pools on impact, gathered together and poured as an uncorked ocean into her depths.

Colossus was rent, but Mire was no more, its final vestige a diminishing sea of dirt, rock, and sludge that churned violently on the mightier world’s surface in futile defiance of complete annihilation.

Drop by gritty drop, in dark places, where the ultramundane bred with atrocities unfathomable, where gods refused to set their gaze, the flesh and blood of Mire descended. There, wherein base cauldrons fermented innumerable the spores of Colossus’ currish progeny, it mated with foulness unknowable. Mud, rife with the sentience of a a planet, a million cataclysm, a dozen heralds—slain but not wholly obliterated by Autun’s wrath—were acted on by the obscene actions of her planetary womb. 

Mire, no more; but out of its destruction came life. 

A baby was born.

A baby … that burst forth from Colosssus’ deepest cavities like a fountain of vomit and pitch, a spray of grotesqueries that blinked and screamed and damned all who might oppose the will of the Val’Gara.[/list]
[h3]Equipment[/h3]
[list][*][b]The Stile[/b]—Faultless, solid, and dull, [i]The Stile[/i], to appearances, is a black metallic band. To its symbolism, it serves as a restraint, but just as often is a gateway to worlds unknown. With it, the possessor can will itself across vast distances with only a thought. Were Idea to revive, the possessor would become the possessed, its location subject to the deity’s whim.[/list]
[list][*][b]The Sextant[/b]—As with [i]The Stile[/i], [i]The Sextant[/i] is utterly utilitarian in design, composed of the same dark metal, and has the same matte finish. It is a saber-like blade that can erupt from Tsathoskr like a harpoon. While an efficient means of skewering opposition, it serves two other important roles: first, it issues a focused beam of destruction and decay, so whatever it hits disintegrates and initiates a plague of matter erosion; second, and the source of its designation, it can attune celestial bodies to its alignment, shift them according to the possessor’s will, or cause the very constellations to whirl in a panorama of chaos.[/list]
[list][*][b]Belial’s Toybox[/b]—Along with [i]The Stile[/i] and [i]The Sextant[/i], hidden away in one of the many alcoves within the Epiphany Storm is [i]Belial’s Toybox[/i]. 

Unfathomably dark, like a smoke-shrouded coal aflame in black fire, that nightmarish aperture is the epitome of seduction and distraction on the battlefield. Its Siren’s scream penetrates the length and breadth of galaxies with confusion, clouds minds, and vanquishes order. Inevitably, the relic’s lure maligns the most intimate intentions of its victims, infects them with base desires, and fuses their psyche into a faceless whore who flails them with the nigh-irresistible urge to draw nearer to their tormentor.

For those who see it—who feel its infernal power vibrate over their mortal flesh—its apparent purpose crescendos with the seizure of their spiritual energy. Helpless in its abominable surge, they are abased to bodies, with neither spark nor predilection, awaiting the harvest of their bioforce.

Attack is futile, for it drinks all, consumes all, absorbs all. Energy vanishes in its insidious gullet, munitions break apart like rape victims at a clown festival, and tendrils of psionic power spiral terminally into its void.

Despite the tragedies born of its call, Belial’s Toybox was not forged for the mere crippling of civilizations to the passé end of bioforce acquisition; nor is the verve taken from its prey stupidly lost. They are fuel to an engine of Idea’s cruelest notions: a transformative engine that replaces the old, decaying multiverse and its members with the perfection of the Val’Gara. In its fell grasp, planets blossom as bloody lotuses strung from infinite lattices of neurological twine, empty space springs verdant, and adversaries open their eyes as brethren of the General Cataclysm.

All connected, all unified, all … one.[/list]
[list][*][b]Foglet Armor[/b]—Source of the strange manifestations and black smoke that obscure the viscous flood that passes for its body, Tsathoskr’s foglet armor reacts to situations via instruction or its own volition, forming additional appendages and even breaking away in small black clouds. The greater the destruction, the more powerful this offensive shield. When it comes into contact with a perceived threat, it will almost instantly break it down to raw materials and convert those into additional nanomachines.[/list]
[h3]Group Ability[/h3]
[list][*][b]Val’Garan Psi (Psyhic) Networking [i]High[/i][/b]—Tsathoskr may share its dominant trait with any sized group of NPCs, providing them access to its [i]Apergy[/i] ability at an effectiveness suitable to their level. Furthermore, if other Heralds or Sons of Idea are present on the battlefield, it may share its dominant traits with them and, likewise, receive the benefit of their dominant traits.[/list]
[h3]Abilities[/h3]
[list][*][b]Warmonger[/b]—As with most Sons of Idea, Tsathoskr is able to move millions of General Cataclysm throughout the vast reaches of space to spread the will of the Val’Gara, relentlessly sieging alien worlds and clashing with enemy armadas. Beasts the size of TerraCrusher to tiny incubating skitterers sleep in stasis until the time is ripe to burst forth from one of its many iridescent pustules.[/list]
[list][*][b]Sal’Chazzar’s Light[/b]—From manufactured interstices, Tsathoskr gives vent to the same luminous green-blue bioforce that illuminates Val’Gara space. Capable of both creation or destruction, discharges of this energy vastly alter the substances with which it comes into contact; buildings crumble, deserts erupt into forests, saints go mad and murder orphans under their care, and spirits crawl forth from the grave and take physical form.[/list]
[list][*][b]The Sound of Insanity[/b]—Shrill noises emanate from Tsathoskr, striking both body and soul and crippling those who hear it with the most caustic offerings their memories possess. Meanwhile, the bone-shattering frequency pummels their body, blacks out their vision, and churns up the space around them until their nostrils fill with the putrescence of a recently-flooded graveyard.[/list]
[list][*][b]Kinetosis[/b]—The superposition of extra-dimensional stimuli into sensory range can form an incomprehensible phantasmagoria that overwhelms the observer and induces a state of nausea, confusion, and claustrophobia.[/list]
[list][*][b]Apergy (Dominant Trait)[/b]—Gravity’s natural opposite, Apergy is the outward spread of ripples on the fabric of space-time resultant from a sudden release of tension. Tsathoskr forces this release when it shifts mass—a more localized tensile factor than universal expansion—between dimensions. Often, this mass is not directly observable, but nevertheless forms a gravity well, such as dark matter. Like an invisible drill, it can bore holes in planets; like a hidden morning star, it can crush resistance to dust.[/list]
[list][*][b]Adaptive Digestion—[/b]Tsathoskr perpetually oozes a corrosive, viscous sludge, which coats all the bits and pieces making up its grotesque, indecipherable body. Depending on the chosen adaptation, this substance can consume nearly any material it comes in contact with, be it in a matter of seconds or over the course of several hours.[/list]
[list][*][b]Blood and Thunder[/b]—Electric current, produced by a chemical process within its digestive system, courses throughout every millimeter of Tsathoskr, and can be exercised to great effect against its foes in a devastating outpouring of energy that emits a jagged burst of super-heated plasma surrounded by an aura of high-frequency gamma and microwave bursts. Even if it doesn’t score a direct hit, the residual damage to organ or circuit board integrity will likely be crippling and, without treatment, eventually fatal.[/list]
[list][*][b]Ceaseless Growth[/b]—So long as Tsathoskr consumes, it grows. There is no limitation on the size it may eventually attain.[/list]
[list][*][b]Binary Fission[/b]—Splitting into two perfect physical copies of itself, the Horror of Colossus may truly be in two places at one time. This process may repeat ad infinitum. However, due to the bond of spirit, after a period of time, lest they be hibernating, its divisions must either again become whole or forever lost.[/list]
[h3]Special[/h3]
[list][*][b]The Epiphany Storm[/b]—Once on Mire, which ascended into the living world Tithonus, then was split in twain with the lesser thrown into Colossus, the Epiphany Storm now resides within Tsathoskr’s bowels. From its midst, an incessant cascade of acid rain rushes into the gullet of a disproportionately massive storm. Currents of green smoke and streaks of ash color the strenuously spinning maelstrom, and its lofty capitals ascend through violent displays of lightning to divide the Son of Idea’s aura from the vacuum of space. To a lesser extent, amethyst ribbons of twisted psionic energy race amidst the confusion, serving to cloud the judgment of any interloper and anchor the storm in the sea of space, time, slime, and sinew.

Underneath the screaming mantle of the cyclone heaves a thick layer of heavy fog, where the very air is rife with the Vesuvian Virus and cruel phantasms writhe on ivory walls at all sides. The only sound in that place is the steady slap of waves, which swells in volume as one descends through the veil. Occasionally, the silhouette of an outcropping of rock penetrates the great sea of Tsathoskr’s digestive fluid, and upon those languishing isles await battalions of newborn Val’Gara—soldiers of the General Cataclysm. Yet the tide steadily devours those, pulling everything into the irresistible current of the whirlpool at its center—a bottomless pit, forever bound to the Astral Plane, where the Caves of Creation once were.

Within that brutal compression chamber of sea sludge and brine-thick water, new Sons of Idea incubate, forged from the biomass of Tsathoskr’s victims. Deeper still, in the nigh-unreachable depths, the astral gates have combined into a great portal, which keep the storm constant and fill the torrent-carved alcoves round-about with an unabated flow of resources. Opposite that portal, within the astral realm, rages an equally fierce storm that shreds the spiritual energy within, an airborne strain of the Vesuvian Virus splitting and recombining souls with the fury of boiling blood and the darkness of Teachery’s abyss.[/list]