The Pentagramaton, Chapter 1: On the Lies of Creation
Khaos
In the beginning was the first lie. For there is no beginning, no end. All that is has always been, and always will be. Nothing can be truly created, or destroyed, only changed. For untold eternities, little worlds and collections of worlds have spun through the Void, made of Dust, and Wave, and Flame, and Wind. For all of the infinite depths of timeless existence, there have been the Pentagramaton, the five fundamentals. Petty 'gods' step from the void, thinking themselves unprecedented, uncreated, and they spin Khaos into solid forms, and make a world, or worlds, or networks of worlds . . . universes, multiverses. But even as infinite as those can be, they are specks in the omniversal stew that is Khaos. They claim that the Outside of their little worlds is empty...but there is no emptiness, for the Outside is full to the brim with Nothing.
Each new world so often follows familiar patterns: the same physical laws, the same inhabitants, perhaps variations on the theme. Some are truly new, but they are far from the others, in so far as such a thing can be conceived of, Outside the bounds of worlds that bow to distance and time. They fight some great Khaos beast, and make from it a bulwark, a firmament, to defend their 'new' world. They make a dwelling place for lesser life, that once again so often follows the same familiar patterns. Each has their gods, who crafted that place, that instance, that milieu. Those gods seem omnipotent . . . inside what they have made, their little temporary soap bubble in boundless Khaos. And they fear what lies outside, the truly limitless expanse of Khaos.
Some of the greater of these beings make many iterations of their worlds, little changes here and there, perhaps to better resist the Khaos outside, and last longer. So you find the same gods in many worlds. Some travel to worlds they did not make, and take them from others, like an earthly nation goes to war . . . because they equate more worlds with more strength, and in fact it does add to their power. But they cannot comprehend Infinity. That Khaos, and those who have always been in and of it, have no limits at all.
We make no claim to special truth. Everything is true, somewhere, and thus, nothing can be forbidden.
But here is what little we can comprehend of the Five Who Are Always.
There is no First, among them, but we must start somewhere, so we start with the Void. The Faceless One is the incarnation, when it so chooses, of the Void, of the Great Nothing that fills Emptiness, the Silence Before the Sound, the small still voice, the Spirit. Alone of all of them, the Faceless one has somehow bound another to its service, and the Deva of Dust is forever subordinate . . . or perhaps it is not.
The Deva of Dust is the manifestation, the incarnation, the discrete notion, of the fundament of Earth.
Solid matter, source of life, source of death, what the materials worlds are made of. It is perhaps the actions of all those little gods taking from the Deva's substance that gave the Faceless One enough of an edge to subjugate him.
The Sultana of the Burning Plague nearly always appears female for some reason. She is flame, in all its glory, uncontrolled, untrammeled, unstoppable. She is fever, and fire, and the heat of every multiverse, the source of every sun. Her light allows sight, but...
The Lord of Wings and Eyes rules the immaterial, the ethereal, but the very real. The winds, the air you breath, the skies, the heavens, your capacity for sight . . . without him the Sultana's light would do you no good.
His Witnesses roam every corner of Khaos, and every tiny Creation, reporting back to him, with some unknowable goal.
The Lady of the Depths rules the waves. Water, oceans, the soup of Khaos, the ebb and flow of tides. Some say every moon channels her power. Down in the deep, shifting, crawling, change. Some say the Encephalid infestation found on so, so many worlds is her creation, or simply parts of her extruding themselves into those tiny bubbles of Order.
Know, then, that all is Khaos, and Order and Creation are temporary aberration therein, fragile as soap bubbles on the water's surface, bound to pop sooner or later. Khaos, on the other hand, is truly eternal. The gods in their miniscule enclaves call the Khaos 'Outside'. . . but in truth, even those little bubbles are part of Khaos.
Every world ever conceived exists in the depths of Khaos, some 'closer' and easier to reach, some further. Some worlds are so tightly bound together that one need not traverse uncontrolled Khaos to move between them. Others require long treks indeed. But always, always, the Khaos waits in the cracks, in Between . . .Outside.
(You could check out the first supplement in this series, Canon of the Void, here! https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/store/p/canon-of-the-v-oid
