Eselias Florient, High Priest of Isalap, written shortly before his sanity broke.
The Cthonae live in a sac, attached to the universe as created by the Child. Like a parasitic, pus filled bag, they cling to reality, feeding on what they can, but in the main part trapped to stare into a place that holds the key to the emotions they cannot otherwise feel; to them, the thought of feeding from a being's emotion is a wondrous thing, but they view that person's fear and pain with utter indifference. One type of evil is that which lies veiled behind an air of respectability, but the worst is the horror of true indifference. It is a thing most vile, and the most dangerous of all horrors exhibited by a truly sentient being.
The greatest amongst them simply float in the blackness they are trapped within. They know no light, vast, bloated, horrific to behold. Around them swarm their servants - thousands of lesser insanities, grooming, mewling over their masters, as they are crushed and devoured in it's wake, it's torpid drift unknowing of these insignificant beings; even if they registered them, they would not change, cannot change, for their waking dreams are of things so vast that it would break the universe. To it's irrefutable laws their minds are as alien as their forms, and cannot occupy the boundaries of reality itself.
In some ways the greeter Cthonae suffer, but they simply don't understand what it means to do so, and this is no concern to them, simply not registering at all. There are many powerful beings amongst their number. Some simply drift and feed on what they can sieve from the dark; others tear at each other, but some are aware of what is beyond and they hunger for it; they exist upon the simple though of breaching the divide and feeding from the wealth of it's life and emotion.
The Worm of Oblivion is one such being. Fastened to the sac of the Abyss, it's devours what it can of reality, but the sac heals swiftly, and it cannot progress beyond a simple suckling, like a parasitic foetus, malformed and disgusting by nature. There are others who show similar power, but he is the greatest of all. His size would allow him to curl around an entire planet, feeding from it, taking all life and matter without thought or even an awareness of the pain and fear of those it drains of life.
Others include Cthuguar the Shrivener, Anbaen - King of Purgatory, Kalacris the Prince of Torment, Cruach of Unfettered Slaughter and the Malfomer, the Breaker, known as Mirimazael. Below them are levels of servant beings, from the lowest, the Drunes and other, more unspeakable filth, rising to highest, which bear some semblance to the nature of their lord.
Cthonae desperately wish to break into reality, to taste reality, to suck emotion from the life forms they find, to savour what they take from, but they are never sated in this. At first, the lesser entities break through, for it easiest for them, they then create bigger cracks and holes in the fabric of the Universe, and bring stronger siblings through, eventually allowing the open maw of the god through, to either feed off the planet's life itself, or dragging the sleeping dragon back into the abyss, to suffer as nothing else could.
Bandit's Take on the Abyss
Cthonae - Blasphemy of the Abyss
Ctonae go here |