ORICHALCUM UNIVERSE: The Malignium

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by warellis

Is it just me or is Earth like the psionic horror petri dish of the universe? :P

I get the feeling one Terrans break free of the gravity holding them down, these horrors will be coming along with us. :|

:LOL:

That's not entirely wrong. But it's also not entirely correct.

Earth does have more than our share of 'supernatural' problems, as human and near-human inhabited planets go. This is a side-effect of the fact that Earth is the ancient common homeworld, and thus Earth was ground zero when it all went to crap for the Familiar Eldren and the Rivalrous Eldren 70,000 years ago.

But the various effects of that, and the subsequent chain of events flowing from it, already stretch far beyond Earth, and some other worlds have some problems of their own, too.

[Johnny1A.2]

The MALIGNIUM continued...

There is little point in trying to cover in detail all the activities of the Malignium, or Ahkrinor, or its consumidoro creations, over the course of the centuries as new civilizations arose and the world began to recover from the Cataclysm. Suffice it to say that where there was great suffering, where there was needless cruelty or useless brutality, the intangible hand of the Malignium was often to be found as the cause, both worsening whatever horror was happening, and taking new strength from the suffering as well.

The Malignium also found a partial solution to the problem of the antipsionic 'aura' large populations of humans generated. It discovered that as its power returned, and grew, that it could expand itself outward in space so that its essence was mostly outside the range of the effect. It was still able to act, and feed, through its consumidoro servants, and by closing in again at convenient moments to feed and wreck harm.

It would be a terrible error to ascribe all the horrors and troubles of the blood soaked history of humanity, post-Cataclysm, to the Malignium. By no means was it solely responsible for the sorry catalog of wars, plagues, and horrors that make up so much of the historical story. Human beings were and are fully capable of making such troubles entirely without aid.

Still, things were worse, by a considerable margin, than they would naturally have been, because of the presence of the Malignium in the world.

Around the year 500 B.C., though, a new and horrific development befell, or rather, was engineered.

For a brief time, the Rival stirred in its comatose 'sleep', and it perceived the Malignium, and remembered its origins in a failed experiment tens of thousands of years earlier. It also noted that the Malignium was not alone.

At the time of its strange 'birth', somewhere in the approximate neighborhood of 45,000 B.C., the Malignium was simply one of many, many similar entities that had emerged, as noted earlier. Most of those entities had been repelled by the Malignium, and each other, pressed apart and away from Earth by that mutual repulsion. In spite of that mutual loathing and fear and hate, they were all deeply linked as well, in some ways they were separate, in other ways they were almost like different, very similar versions of one thing.

The Rival peered out into the galaxy, and recognized that the malice that drove the Malignium also drove its kin, and they had crossed space and gravitated to those worlds that were host to humans, or near-human, populations, there to begin preying on their people much as the Malignium had done on Earth. The Rival perceived that on some worlds, their influence had been minor, on others, horrific.

The Rival had always known that the Malignium and its ilk existed, of course, but it had regarded them as a failed experiment, and spared them little attention during the brief periods of its lucidity. Now it perceived that this had been an error, and that the Malignium and its strange ilk represented an unappreciated opportunity to further its own ends.

The Malignium, and its ilk, were alive on their own now, and so not directly controllable by the Rival, or at least not in its trapped state. Still, it was an Eldren, and it had vast power even entrapped. It reached out now, and strengthened the connection between the Malignium on Earth and the other creatures out in the galaxy. The result was instantaneous, the creatures became consciously aware of each other, even across galactic distances, able to exchange information, and draw upon each other for power.

The result was, in fact, rather like a larger version of what already existed on Earth, and some other worlds as well. On Earth, the Malignium was not alone, as noted above some of the other 'entities' of its ilk had remained on Earth with it, bound to it and controlled by it, linked to it and each other. It had been the roughly equally potent versions of itself that had been repelled into space, taking with them each some of the weaker versions.

All of these entities had always been linked together at a deep, non-conscious level, the conscious connections had existed only between the local groups of them on various planets. Now the Rival intervened to bring the connections between the greater ones into a similar state. Across thousands of worlds, thousands of 'versions' of the Malignium now found themselves inextricably connected together, a development bringing both greater power, and a deeply ingrained, reflexive hatred and mutual revulsion.

The Rival remained conscious only momentarily, but its work was done. The Malignium, as a singular and plural entity, was changed forever. Its power was far greater now, its knowledge incomparably increased as the various versions of itself communicated, but the mutual loathing and hatred that existed between the different 'versions' or 'compartments' of itself created a psychology like nothing else in existence.

To be continued...

[Johnny1A.2]

The MALIGNIUM continued...

It is difficult to describe the nature of the mentality that now dominated the Malignium. We shall use the singular term for the collective, galaxy-spanning entity for convenience, that name is as good as any of the other names ever applied to the other 'versions' of the entity. It was neither a single mind, nor was it a group of separate minds. The closest description possible would be to call it a 'fractal' form, the same basic pattern repeated at different scales, or in different places, but all the same underlying thing.

One could compare the greater Malignium to a case of multiple personalities, or one could describe it as a fusion of entities, and either would be accurate to a point. It was always thus, but after the intervention of the Rival, it was conscious of its own multiple, diffuse nature. This did nothing to reduce its innate malevolence, though now the different 'facets' of the Malignium could also turn this loathing on the other aspects of itself.

Yet the now-conscious unifying connection served to increase the power and danger of the Malignium by orders of magnitude. Now, each 'expression' of this ethereal monster was aware of most of the past and deeds of the other 'expressions', and could draw upon vast reservoirs of knowledge for their own use. The increased perspective offered vast opportunities.

If we now use the term 'Malignium' for the 'whole' of this vast creature, we need a term for the individual expressions of it that were to be found on this planet or that. A term used by specialists aware of the existence of these creatures is 'exemplifications' of the Malignium. Another word, more commonly used, was coined by a Spanish scholar of such matters, and would translate into English as something like 'a Malignial'.

We shall use that term for specific 'exemplifications' of the Malignium.

The Malignials learned much from each other once their links were made fully conscious. From the Malignial of Earth, the other Malignials learned to create their own versions of consumidoro. From a Malignial across the galaxy, the Malignial of Earth learned the story of the creation of the Beasties, and how that other Malignial had play a role in it. Another Malignial revealed its role in the destruction of the civilization on the planet Charr'yn, and the terrible subsequent events that had arisen from that moment. Yet another Malignial revealed something of the strange, eerie history of the planets Siccaria and Cytherea, twin worlds whose strange history would greatly affect the Earth in centuries yet to come, though even the Malignials could not know this at that time.

Now able to 'compare notes' with itself, the Malignium finally understood how the Downfall of Atlantis had affected worlds far across the galaxy, 'awakening' many races and peoples to full sapience, and at the same time stamping them with a certain 'humaness' in the process.

Within a few day of the emergence of the conscious connections between the Malignials, the collective Malignium knew more of galactic history than any non-Eldren being in existence, and it understood that history better than any Eldren did, because it was closer to the human perspective. That is, it knew these things and understood them better than any entity but one, but we can not yet discuss that other entity. Suffice it to say that this other entity was and is of key importance, as we shall eventually see.

The day to day activities of the Malignium on Earth did not much change because of this new perspective. Its agents and its monsters continued to behave much as they had before, but the plans of the Malignial of Earth were much changed by its new knowledge and new perspective.

By 400 A.D., those plans had advanced substantially if subtly. As Classical Civilization slid down into death from old age, the Malignium advanced its plan in an attempt to create new states ruled from behind the scenes by its consumidoro. Always working against it were various beings who did not even understand what they fought, but knew that something existed and was at work. Their efforts often partly canceled out.

One thing the Malignial of Earth had become aware of that was of vital importance, though: the ancient collective entity known as the Unity had survived the Downfall, at least in potential. It was current 'dormant', or that might be the closest word, it existed in potential but had not yet come back into existence, and on its own, it might never do so.

It was not, however, on its own. The Rival, in its momentary periods of lucidity, was working to bring enough people descended from the single 'member' of the Unity that had survived the Cataclysm together to reawaken the collective. It was slow going, because after thousands of years, the people carrying that taint were scattered all over the world, and not all were equally 'tainted'.

Indeed, as time passed, the possibility of a successful 'restart' for the Unity was decreasing steadily. If enough time passed, it would become effectively impossible, and that ancient horror would be left to the drowned (literally!) past. The Malignium estimated that another thousand years might be enough to make that restart of that entity impossible.

To be continued...

[Johnny1A.2]

The MALIGNIUM continued...

The Malignium took no direct hand in the reawakening of the Unity. Already it was frightened that that the Rival was as aware of its existence as it had proven to be, though the Malignium, in its myriad facets, had benefited from that attention of the Rival in that instance, there was no guarantee that this would be the case in the future!

On the other hand, the Malignium, through its Terrestrial Malignial, kept a careful watch over the attempts to 'revive' the Unity, and it was immediately aware when the Rival succeeded, after several failed attempts, at 'restarting' the Unity, in 1263 A.D.

The Malignium was of various minds about this development. It certainly remembered, through its Terrestrial manifestation, when the Unity had been a tremendous power, in the years before the Great Cataclysm. The Malignium could well remember how it had basically corrupted Atlantis, and ruled it from behind the scenes. Indeed, that was the inspiration of its own plans now.

The Malignium knew, in fairly extensive detail, exactly how the Downfall had come about, indeed, it probably knew more of the details of that terrible event than any other conscious being.

The Malignium knew also that the Unity, though very, very weak just then, after its long-delayed revival, had the potential to grow into a tremendous power again, indeed, it had the potential for power to rival that of the Malignium itself, with the passage of time and the growth of its 'membership'.

The Malignium also knew that the Unity was itself a partial 'creation' of the Rival, and indeed that it was a second run, a second attempt, at what the Rival had tried to do when it created the Malignium. In that sense, the Unity might be seen as a natural rival of the Malignium. Certainly, there was no place in the plans of the Malignium for a competing power like the Unity, sooner or later, as the Unity grew and regained more and more of its ancient strength, conflict between the Unity and the Malignium was inevitable.

It would have been fairly simple, indeed, to for the Malignium to extinguish the newly reborn Unity. It was still weak and confused, and the Malignium was now very, very strong. The Malignium could summon more than sufficient telepathic power to simply snuff out the reborn Unity, or it could slay the relatively few people who currently comprised the collective.

Two factors argued against this course, however. The first was that the Rival would eventually awaken again, and the Malignium feared its reaction to such a deed. As strong as the Malignium might be, it was only a shadow, a wraith of nothingness, in comparison to the might an Eldren, even a trapped Eldren.

The other factor was the potential of the Unity to be useful.

The Malignium had grown into a tremendous intellect, and was possessed of vast experience drawn from thousands of years of experience across countless worlds. That vast mind could see 'opportunities' in the reemergence of the Unity, the more so if it could somehow intervene to guide or redirect the Unity from time to time. To do so would be a delicate, dangerous matter, but the rewards could be huge.

The Malignium sensed that the Rival itself had now slipped back into a comatose state, meaning it was free, for the moment, to lay plans to deal with, contain, and use the Unity. The Malignium moved quickly, for such an entity, knowing that it would never again have as good an opportunity as it did just then, with the Rival unconscious and the Unity still pitifully weak.

The Malignium, through both the very occasional direct intervention, and more often through the deeds and manipulations of its consumidoro and other creatures, 'guided' the re-emerging Unity in ways that suited the Malignium, while working to keep itself unknown. As far as the Malignium was aware, the Unity had never suspected its own existence.

(In fact, the Malignium would later learn that this was not entirely true, in the late days of Atlantis the Unity had deduced/sensed the existence of something else manipulating world events, but it had never gained any clear idea of what it was perceiving.)

As the Unity began to rebuild its ancient empire, and its networks of human servants, the Malignium observed, and used its own more deeply buried, more subtly hidden networks of consumidoro and pawns to manipulate the manipulator, to work to steer the Unity subtly in its preferred directions.

To be continued...