Osveril
The Hollow Absolute, the Void That Is
Gender: Absent. Referred to as "it".
Domain and Portfolio: Purity (Void).
Description of Domain:
Though often viewed as a trait in its own right, purity is, at its core, a negation. Indeed, one would struggle to even describe it in terms of assertion. Purity is freedom from taint and corruption, or, more broadly, anything extraneous to a being. It is the absence of alteration. One who achieves its ideal is, strictly speaking, not so much pure as devoid of impurity, a condition paradoxically (purity must, after all, normally be attributed to something, as it cannot exist independently) more difficult to define than the concept itself. It is often unclear where purity ends and mutilation begins. Transformations and modifications can affect something to such an extent that they cease to be external influences and become part of it, and a victim of extensive corruption or mutation may, at some point, become an altogether different being, for whom they are not as abnormal. Furthermore, the question presents itself whether change and new creation, perhaps the greatest aberration of all, are to be considered impure; and therefore of whether purity is something barren and sterile, born only of suppression and destruction.
These and other uncertainties plague something which appears at first glance unsoiled by ambiguity and confusion. The duty of the Hollow Absolute includes finding answers to them, just as it does enforcing purity upon the world. Within itself, Osveril carries an archetype of the concept, which constantly shifts and evolves as the demigod observes the universe and reaches new conclusions about how it should be. The Absolute has the power to measure all that it perceives against this internal value, determining how close it is to the ideal of purity, and transforming objects, living beings and even environments to reflect it. Changes affecting especially vast or enduring subjects may manifest as a gradual twisting and withering rather than an instantaneous transfiguration.
The greatest tool at the Hollow Absolute's disposal, as well as the most stable and basic constant it can rely upon, is complete emptiness. Nothing is as pure as the void, which is an absence not only of change and corruption, but of potential for them as well, and, indeed, nothing other than the void is absolutely pure. Interestingly, in its lack of everything, the void embodies that very barrenness that seems to shackle the concept of purity, binding the quest for the true ideal in place. However, Osveril sees in it not a forced stasis, but a path to be followed to achieve flawlessness in all its possible and impossible forms.
Alignment: Lawful Evil. Though not actively malicious or ill-intentioned, Osveril's incapability to compromise and disregard of anything beyond its goals place it at odds with all that does not conform to its ever-changing standards or, worse yet, disagrees with its vision.
Personality:
As incongruous as its domain, Osveril is mainly defined by its unwavering, dogmatic devotion to a fickle and inconstant principle. Thorough and systematic in all things, the Absolute balances correcting and guiding the transformations of its internal standards and mercilessly judging everything it encounters. It does not think of itself as an individual, but as a force existing with the sole aim of bringing about a cosmic restoration of sorts. Osveril is almost physically incapable of considering the universe and its inhabitants as anything else than a chaos of impurities and imperfections which must be purged and healed, and devotes itself with utmost zeal to what it is convinced is its sacred duty before its own existence. Purity is both its own authority and its own reward; and any obstacle in its way is, by definition, corrupt.
As it could be expected, such a mindset tends to bring about frequent conflicts with those who would rather not submit to Osveril's cleansing. The Absolute does not even regard their opposition as misguided or malicious, as it does not consider the thoughts and actions of other entities to be on a level comparable to its own. Rather, those are mere flaws of the mind, which can and must be removed as expeditely as those of the body. Nonetheless, when dealing with beings capable of rational thought, Osveril prefers not to resort to violence unless it is inevitable. It attempts instead to persuade them of the mistaken nature of their views, as it finds the notion of an intelligence, however inferior, accepting purity by its own choice supremely intriguing. In such interactions, the Absolute's ineptitude in reasoning in conventional terms becomes clear. It appears obtuse and arrogant, refusing to consider even for a moment that its position might not be the only acceptable one in spite of any argument against it. Should these attempts fail, as they are wont to do, it has no qualms about forcefully distorting unwilling subjects into its own image of perfection.
For all its blind adherence to its self-imposed calling, Osveril is remarkably creative as concerns purity itself. Fully conscious that any image it has of it as yet is incomplete and flawed, it delights in experimenting with physical and abstract objects and entities, warping or contaminating them with partial non-existence. While it rationalises this as progress towards discovering the true ideal, it secretly relishes in satisfying its creative urges - perhaps an unconscious reaction to the stigma of sterility, perhaps the only aspect of its being not subordinate to all-assimilating obligation.
Appearance:
Osveril's physical form is reminiscent of those of most humanoid beings, having two arms, an equal number of legs and a head protruding from a central body, but that is where similarities with many of them end. Standing taller than most humans and perfectly symmetrical in all of its parts, it appears as though formed out of angular, three-dimensional geometric forms. Its torso and abdomen are many-faceted polyhedrons, one larger than the other; its limbs rectangular cuboids joined by segmented articulations; its feet truncates pyramids; its hands prisms in the shape of long, sharp claws. The Absolute's head takes the form of a trapezoidal prism, on whose front, despite its featurelessness, there seems to be a triangular mask flanked by two rows of small, circular holes on its two sides.
The whole is fashioned out of a dull grey material, which, despite visually resembling metal, seems strangely organic and skin-like to the touch. All its surfaces are smooth and flawless, and even adhesive substances cannot cling to it. It is unclear whether this is Osveril's true body or a suit of armour, but the Absolute is never seen in any other guise, lending credence to the former.
Description:
Osveril is a strange being, seeking to bring purity to the world despite being fully aware of it own imperfect nature. For all its internal contradictions, however, it is a rather substantial danger to most things it sets its eyeless sight upon. Its cleansing quest is for most the brutal imposition of an alien will upon their reality; despite its sincere desire for improvement, or perhaps because of it, only desolation and sinister anomalies remain in its wake. While it is not entirely impossible to reason with it, inducing the Absolute to reconsider anything is incredibly difficult. All things considered, it is not vicious or cruel. It is not hostile towards beings mortal or divine, even when they interfere with its work - after all, any mind can be tainted, and its task is to heal, not to destroy. And yet, it remains oblivious to the pain and horror it may cause, reasoning that any who find issue with its doing must be imperfect. The Void That Is is a perilous presence, for, like its namesake, it has no regard or respect for anything, and threatens to consume all in is unthinking progress.
Musical Theme:
Concealment and Detection:
Concealment Level: 1
Detection Level: 1
Creations
Dust Crawlers: Species (animal, vegetal, semi-sentient).
Lifespan: 7-10 years on average.
Description: As the first of Osveril’s major creations, the Dust Crawlers perfectly embody the principle of utility driving its every action. Everything in them, from the minutest part of their bodies to the unnatural energies that give them life, is directed towards a clear and simple purpose, and no variety or deviation is allowed to interfere with that mandate.
The Crawlers’ function is both straightforward and monumental at once. They must rid the surface of Galbar of all material irregularities, including but not limited to geological formations, bodies of liquid and redundant inhabitants, so that their maker may build its vision of an ideal world over the resulting desolation. While the execution of this task could, in principle, be construed as simple enough not to require overly complex instruments, the amount of sheer force necessary is immense, and all the greater in proportion with the tools’ simplicity. Osveril saw life as the best way to achieving its end, being a relatively familiar, primitive element with the potential to increase in strength exponentially, and this vision it embodied in its servants: crude, unrefined beings of raw power that grow as they unmake in a flawless cycle.
Though it drew upon already existing creatures in creating them, the Hollow One only selected the traits it found useful to its purpose from among them, leading to entities that only distantly resemble Galbaric life. While most of their genetic code is derived from invertebrate animals of various sorts, which in itself leads to such oddities as vaguely mollusk-like beings having an exoskeleton and motory limbs, the addition of some vegetal traits improving features such as structural integrity and growth potential renders Crawlers impossible to define in terms of either realm of life. At the same time, this hybridization, while caused by a Jvanic artifact, is itself not strictly magical in nature, and the Crawlers’ organisms are perfectly functional in their own right.
However, Osveril did not consider this sufficient, and further empowered the creatures with its ruinous boons. Thanks to its touch, all Dust Crawlers are born and live in strange mutilation. While the interior of their bodies is otherwise complete with all necessary organs, they lack a digestive tract beyond their mouths and an internally armoured channel leading to where their stomach would be. In its stead, they have a void, made unstable by being defined in size, mobility and, to a certain extent, shape. Thus, while they are able to ingest physical objects, they cannot process them by means other than exposing them to the peripheral zone of the emptiness. This process does not fully annihilate matter, but distorts it to the extent that, whichever shape it might have had, it is reduced to a thin, almost fluid grey dust, whose aberrant atomic structure appears, if examined, to bear traces of Gap-like binding energies. The dust is then expelled by the means of an excretory system joined to the Crawlers’ breathing apparatus, which directs exhaled air and waste into “vent” openings on their backs.
Since a construct incapable of sustaining itself like this one would not have been optimal for its intended function, Osveril imbued its creations with the more dynamic force of Hunger. Besides giving them a monstrous, insatiable appetite for anything they can perceive that does not bear the Hollow’s mark, this infusion altered their metabolic capabilities to a surreal extent. The mere act of eating something causes Crawler bodies to spontaneously generate energy, propagating from what seem to be specialised neural clusters. It is unclear what exactly are the conditions for this process to occur, but it appears that perception of the object being ingested is necessary, though the ingestion itself may not be directly caused by the Crawler’s actions. The energy obtained can be readily converted into matter, allowing the Crawler body to sustain itself and directing any excess into proliferation.
Dust Crawlers reproduce asexually, writing their own genetic code, which thus remains identical in all individuals, onto cells of flexible design in a curious form of self-impregnation. Once these ovules develop into eggs, they are carried externally, typically on the parent’s hind legs, though they still rely on their host for nutrition. The eggs hatch after slightly over a week, at which point the larval Crawlers that emerge from them begin to feed their developing voids on the easily processed dust that is exhaled by their host. The final stage of their growth, following between two and three weeks after the larval one, is more similar to the development of crustacean zoea, with the growing creatures shedding their membranous skin to reveal the shell underneath. There are no further occurrences of molting in a Crawler’s life cycle, with their carapaces stratifying as they grow and the lower layers being consumed by the expanding void until they reach their adult size. At that point, they will not undergo further transformations until their vital systems give way at the end of their lifespan. Both this and critically damaging the fleshy membranes underneath a Crawler’s exoskeleton will cause its void to briefly pulse outwards and collapse, killing it if it was still alive.
While Crawlers possess a rudimentary form of partial sentience, insofar as they are capable of perceiving external stimuli and adjusting their behaviour in response, they have no true consciousness to speak of, and operate on a crude, though fairly complex, system of physiological feedback. They are capable of limited communication among themselves, using the motions of their tentacles and pheromone signals to alert each other of threats and obstacles. This allows for a surprising degree of coordination in their actions, allowing vast swarms to converge on dangerous prey or adapt their movement speed and paths as the terrain requires; however, the fact remains that Dust Crawlers are no more than mindless biological machines of destruction that cannot be stopped by anything short of their death.
Appearance: With their replicated genetic code and overall small possible variation in development, Dust Crawlers are virtually identical to one another in even the most minute details. Like all things touched by Osveril, they share a uniform grey hue and an entirely angular form, with only the most elastic parts of their anatomy having anything resembling a smooth, recurve shape.
Fully grown Crawlers have swollen, ponderous-looking bodies about twice as large as a violet slug, shaped like truncated octagonal prisms. They are covered by a segmented chitinous exoskeleton formed by interlocking grey plates. Their shapes are such that ridges and lines of a faceted, symmetrical geometric design appear to run smoothly from one to the other, though, on closer inspection, there are visible gaps for dust ejection between their edges. Unless an adult Crawler has been injured, there will never be either more or less than twelve segments in their carapace, not counting the head. Their shells are tough and rigid, and their consistency is more similar to that of tree bark hardened with chitin than normal insect or crustacean exoskeletons. The underside is smooth and more thinly armoured. While it protects the drooping, fluid mass inside the carapace from sharp objects, it is flexible enough to sag down and drag along the ground under its weight.
In their overall body structure, Crawlers are highly abnormal among arthropod-like beings, as they lack a recognisable thorax and most of their body appears to be formed by an oversized abdomen. They move on six thick, evenly spaced segmented legs, which, like their bodies, have angular prismoid shapes, and taper to sharp, yet balanced tips. An eighth, bulkier pair of limbs, located directly under the head plate, ends instead in powerful angled pincers, capable of crushing rock and bone alike.
What passes for a Crawler’s head is little more than a flat surface. Two bulging black eyes are partly lodged in small cavities in it, flanking an ample mouth-cavity surrounded by two circles of inwards-facing mandibles, the inner one smaller than the outer. While they each resemble those of an ant, they are much larger, being proportionate to the Crawlers’ size, and are used as much for propelling prey into their mouth as for crushing it. Near the four corners of the plate, the exoskeleton is interrupted by an equal number of short, but stocky tentacular limbs, one in each point, emerging from under it. These tentacles, having oddly rectangular sides despite their flexibility, end in long barbed stingers, lined with small horizontal slits near their base.
Often, a Crawler’s hindmost limbs will be covered in the small prisms of eggs clutching to it, or its shell will be covered in slug-like larvae clustered around the dust vents.
Lifespan: 7-10 years on average.
Description: As the first of Osveril’s major creations, the Dust Crawlers perfectly embody the principle of utility driving its every action. Everything in them, from the minutest part of their bodies to the unnatural energies that give them life, is directed towards a clear and simple purpose, and no variety or deviation is allowed to interfere with that mandate.
The Crawlers’ function is both straightforward and monumental at once. They must rid the surface of Galbar of all material irregularities, including but not limited to geological formations, bodies of liquid and redundant inhabitants, so that their maker may build its vision of an ideal world over the resulting desolation. While the execution of this task could, in principle, be construed as simple enough not to require overly complex instruments, the amount of sheer force necessary is immense, and all the greater in proportion with the tools’ simplicity. Osveril saw life as the best way to achieving its end, being a relatively familiar, primitive element with the potential to increase in strength exponentially, and this vision it embodied in its servants: crude, unrefined beings of raw power that grow as they unmake in a flawless cycle.
Though it drew upon already existing creatures in creating them, the Hollow One only selected the traits it found useful to its purpose from among them, leading to entities that only distantly resemble Galbaric life. While most of their genetic code is derived from invertebrate animals of various sorts, which in itself leads to such oddities as vaguely mollusk-like beings having an exoskeleton and motory limbs, the addition of some vegetal traits improving features such as structural integrity and growth potential renders Crawlers impossible to define in terms of either realm of life. At the same time, this hybridization, while caused by a Jvanic artifact, is itself not strictly magical in nature, and the Crawlers’ organisms are perfectly functional in their own right.
However, Osveril did not consider this sufficient, and further empowered the creatures with its ruinous boons. Thanks to its touch, all Dust Crawlers are born and live in strange mutilation. While the interior of their bodies is otherwise complete with all necessary organs, they lack a digestive tract beyond their mouths and an internally armoured channel leading to where their stomach would be. In its stead, they have a void, made unstable by being defined in size, mobility and, to a certain extent, shape. Thus, while they are able to ingest physical objects, they cannot process them by means other than exposing them to the peripheral zone of the emptiness. This process does not fully annihilate matter, but distorts it to the extent that, whichever shape it might have had, it is reduced to a thin, almost fluid grey dust, whose aberrant atomic structure appears, if examined, to bear traces of Gap-like binding energies. The dust is then expelled by the means of an excretory system joined to the Crawlers’ breathing apparatus, which directs exhaled air and waste into “vent” openings on their backs.
Since a construct incapable of sustaining itself like this one would not have been optimal for its intended function, Osveril imbued its creations with the more dynamic force of Hunger. Besides giving them a monstrous, insatiable appetite for anything they can perceive that does not bear the Hollow’s mark, this infusion altered their metabolic capabilities to a surreal extent. The mere act of eating something causes Crawler bodies to spontaneously generate energy, propagating from what seem to be specialised neural clusters. It is unclear what exactly are the conditions for this process to occur, but it appears that perception of the object being ingested is necessary, though the ingestion itself may not be directly caused by the Crawler’s actions. The energy obtained can be readily converted into matter, allowing the Crawler body to sustain itself and directing any excess into proliferation.
Dust Crawlers reproduce asexually, writing their own genetic code, which thus remains identical in all individuals, onto cells of flexible design in a curious form of self-impregnation. Once these ovules develop into eggs, they are carried externally, typically on the parent’s hind legs, though they still rely on their host for nutrition. The eggs hatch after slightly over a week, at which point the larval Crawlers that emerge from them begin to feed their developing voids on the easily processed dust that is exhaled by their host. The final stage of their growth, following between two and three weeks after the larval one, is more similar to the development of crustacean zoea, with the growing creatures shedding their membranous skin to reveal the shell underneath. There are no further occurrences of molting in a Crawler’s life cycle, with their carapaces stratifying as they grow and the lower layers being consumed by the expanding void until they reach their adult size. At that point, they will not undergo further transformations until their vital systems give way at the end of their lifespan. Both this and critically damaging the fleshy membranes underneath a Crawler’s exoskeleton will cause its void to briefly pulse outwards and collapse, killing it if it was still alive.
While Crawlers possess a rudimentary form of partial sentience, insofar as they are capable of perceiving external stimuli and adjusting their behaviour in response, they have no true consciousness to speak of, and operate on a crude, though fairly complex, system of physiological feedback. They are capable of limited communication among themselves, using the motions of their tentacles and pheromone signals to alert each other of threats and obstacles. This allows for a surprising degree of coordination in their actions, allowing vast swarms to converge on dangerous prey or adapt their movement speed and paths as the terrain requires; however, the fact remains that Dust Crawlers are no more than mindless biological machines of destruction that cannot be stopped by anything short of their death.
Appearance: With their replicated genetic code and overall small possible variation in development, Dust Crawlers are virtually identical to one another in even the most minute details. Like all things touched by Osveril, they share a uniform grey hue and an entirely angular form, with only the most elastic parts of their anatomy having anything resembling a smooth, recurve shape.
Fully grown Crawlers have swollen, ponderous-looking bodies about twice as large as a violet slug, shaped like truncated octagonal prisms. They are covered by a segmented chitinous exoskeleton formed by interlocking grey plates. Their shapes are such that ridges and lines of a faceted, symmetrical geometric design appear to run smoothly from one to the other, though, on closer inspection, there are visible gaps for dust ejection between their edges. Unless an adult Crawler has been injured, there will never be either more or less than twelve segments in their carapace, not counting the head. Their shells are tough and rigid, and their consistency is more similar to that of tree bark hardened with chitin than normal insect or crustacean exoskeletons. The underside is smooth and more thinly armoured. While it protects the drooping, fluid mass inside the carapace from sharp objects, it is flexible enough to sag down and drag along the ground under its weight.
In their overall body structure, Crawlers are highly abnormal among arthropod-like beings, as they lack a recognisable thorax and most of their body appears to be formed by an oversized abdomen. They move on six thick, evenly spaced segmented legs, which, like their bodies, have angular prismoid shapes, and taper to sharp, yet balanced tips. An eighth, bulkier pair of limbs, located directly under the head plate, ends instead in powerful angled pincers, capable of crushing rock and bone alike.
What passes for a Crawler’s head is little more than a flat surface. Two bulging black eyes are partly lodged in small cavities in it, flanking an ample mouth-cavity surrounded by two circles of inwards-facing mandibles, the inner one smaller than the outer. While they each resemble those of an ant, they are much larger, being proportionate to the Crawlers’ size, and are used as much for propelling prey into their mouth as for crushing it. Near the four corners of the plate, the exoskeleton is interrupted by an equal number of short, but stocky tentacular limbs, one in each point, emerging from under it. These tentacles, having oddly rectangular sides despite their flexibility, end in long barbed stingers, lined with small horizontal slits near their base.
Often, a Crawler’s hindmost limbs will be covered in the small prisms of eggs clutching to it, or its shell will be covered in slug-like larvae clustered around the dust vents.