The Legend of the Aboleth: Remnants of the Great God Soul
By Anonymous
Introduction: Too
Many Questions
The wisest of sages on the ancient and the unnatural will
tell you the aboleth have no fondness for the divine entities we call gods. And for good reason (from the aboleths’
perspective), they claim they were around before the gods, nay the multiverse
itself, ever existed. Their collective racial memory (or should I say racial
memories, more on that later) certainly seems to go back that far. Thus, the
aboleths dismiss the gods are merely interlopers. In fact, the aboleth actively try to subvert
the religions of man for their own purposes, many times merely to spite the
gods.
Despite the aboleths’ aggression towards the gods and their
faithful, the gods don’t smite the entire race. Why is this? The aboleths have
no gods. They are not protected by any divine treaty. Are the gods withholding
something?
For that matter, are the aboleths themselves holding back
something? If they are as ancient as they claim, how do they have such power
over our bodies (fleshwarping) and minds (domination)? Why does their chief
servitor race (the Skum) resemble us in shape and size so much? Questions, questions, and more questions.
Although I cannot identify myself to you, dear reader, know
that I only have the friendliest of intentions. I have scoured many an ancient planar
scroll and consulted many an ancient primordial to answer our heavy questions. From these disparate sources, I have
discovered the following story that will answer them all. It is a story most
will refute- from the gods to the aboleths itself. It is also a long story. But
it is an essential story, for only is it a story of the aboleth, it is a story
of all of creation.
The Beginnings of
Creation: The Waters of Chaos and the Soul of Order
Legends speak of a time long ago. A long, long time ago,
before the time of man, before the great empires of the elves rose and fell,
before even the split between gods and mortals was a thing. Back when the universe was young, back before
the world as we know it had even been born, there was only the primordial Voids
of Chaos. (Chaos being used as the best approximation we can make using our
mortal minds.) Chaos’ primordial waters
were awash with commotion, with activity, with what might be conceived of as
life, or a proto-life. Yet, because
there were no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no nerves to feel, so all was
dark, quiet, and still.
There dwelled in the dark, deep vastness of Chaos one thing, a something, a form of what we
might naively call “Order”, something that directed the ebb and flow of Chaos
and kept it from tearing itself apart.
What was this “form” of Order like? The closest translation in the Common Tongue
is somewhere between “Collective Soul Pool” and “Great God Soul.” As this was the ancestor mind to all aboleth
today, we shall call it the Great Aboleth Soul.
The Great Aboleth Soul was so great it would be infinite to
us, yet it was finite compared to the greater Mass of Chaos. And Chaos kept expanding, growing, bloating
beyond even the Soul’s ability to control and regulate. So the Aboleth Soul split its mass (though
not its essence) into many parts- its Vessels.
Whereas before there was one Whole that could do so much by itself,
there were now many Vessels that could act on Their own. Yet because they were all of One Collective
Soul, they would act all together, forming more than the sum of the Vessels,
its parts- a Gestalt.
The Great Aboleth Soul wanted Chaos to be put into a form that
was easy to observe and, more importantly, to control. So it sent out its Vessels hither and yon to
bind Chaos into material forms, creating the first proto-worlds. But as these first proto-worlds were formed,
the Vessels observed that the Chaos bound within the material churned at a face
pace with small complexities boggling to the Great Aboleth Soul. It needed quick-lived agents, of finite
mortality, that could observe and interact with the material on its own terms.
The Creation of the
First Servitor Race
And so the Great Aboleth Soul began to shed tiny flakes off
of its Proto-matter “skin” and bind it into full material forms, creating a
distinct Servitor Race for the first time.
Unlike the Vessels, the Servitor Race had no direct access to the
Collective Soul, but went through the Vessels.
But yet they were made of the same Divine Flesh as the Great Aboleth
Soul, so it still counted the Servitors as part of itself. Of course, they were only the flakes of its
skin given proto-sentience. So with what perhaps the first instance of Humor,
the Great Aboleth Soul named the First Servitor race the Skum. And the name has
somewhat lingered with us to this day.
And so the Skum built within the proto-worlds as the Vessels
built without. Deeper and deeper into the
proto-worlds the Skum crawled in, building at the first truly formed matter-
things like solids, liquids, and gases. In the later stages, the Skum fabricated the
first true forms of “life.” All at the
behest of the Great Aboleth Soul through the telepathic orders of its
Vessels. The Verse was becoming more and
more complicated, for such is the nature of Imagination, even then in those
most early of times.
The Vessels Enter the
Proto-Worlds
And so with the fabrication of the proto-worlds, the
Collective Soul developed the first true imagination, a Divine Imagination. The Imagination almost took on a life of its
own, twisting and forming the matter and Life of the proto-worlds into the
first primitive watery ecosystems. The
Great Aboleth Soul experienced the First Pride at the abundance of life it had
created. It originally intended to make these proto-worlds self-sustaining so
that it could return to its task of shaping Chaos. Yet this might have proved
to be its undoing.
As the proto-worlds developed and became too complex, some
of the Skum builders became lost and separated from their Vessel commanders.
The proto-worlds were becoming so deep; they were forming Voids of Chaos of
their own. The loss of the Skum builders forced some of the Vessels to swim
into the proto-worlds for the first time.
As with any big first step, many Vessels became lost. Some became mentally
warped, hopelessly addicted to the first Sensations in the proto-worlds. Others were attacked and destroyed by the primitive
lifeforms that could sense the greater but alien nature of the Vessels. Yet still others were simply torn asunder by
the waters of Chaos that seeped in from the deep Voids within the proto-worlds.
With the telepathic death throes of the Vessels went
through, the Skum became panicked.
Nearly insane without some connection to the Great Aboleth Soul, the
Skum builders thrashed about hopelessly for some time before reverting to their
preprogrammed builder natures. Ultimately, they would follow the last signals
from their masters and build what from was there, even if it happened to be the
dead masses of the Vessels themselves.
Meanwhile, the Great Aboleth Soul was taken aback for the
first time. Although the Soul never lost any of its true Essence, the loss of
its Vessels caused its First Pain. It realized even its Vessels couldn’t handle
material form without some sort of material body to contain the Essence. So the
Aboleth Soul wrapped its Vessels in organic sheaths, the first forms vaguely
recognizable as aboleths by modern humanity.
The Great Aboleth Soul called forth its Sheathed Vessels
into the proto-worlds. This time they were prepared and swiftly restored Order
to the proto-worlds, gathering together the majority of the wayward Skum. And now that the Vessels were part of the
proto-worlds, they became true worlds proper. Under the watchful directions of the Vessels,
the Skum took control of these worlds.
The first Great Aboleth Empire was born.
The Golden Age of the
Aboleth
And so the First Golden Age of the Aboleth dawned. Using the Skum as skilled craftsman might use
his fingers, the Sheathed Vessels wove ever more elaborate tapestries of
worlds. The Sheathed Vessels were
astonished by the needs of material lifeforms, not only for mere physical
sustenance but psychological sustenance as well. In response, the Vessels began fabricating
huge and elaborate cities, not merely for them to rest or hold food, but to be
pleasing. Modern creatures would not
recognize these cities for what they were, for they were more like great,
twisting colossal reefs and caves that would later form the basis for our land
continents of the present day. There was no clear distinction between one
monolithic reef cavern began and another ended. Back then, there was little
need for such distinction.
While the Sheathed Vessels worked the Voids inside the
worlds, the Outer Vessels wove the Voids between worlds. To keep the worlds form colliding, the Outer
Vessels pushed them apart, far away from each other in the Voids of Chaos. They began creating an interstitial web of
ether to fill the Voids between worlds.
And so the Great Aboleth Soul experienced the First Contentment,
Order was directing Chaos once again. But this Contentment was also the First
Complacency, for the Aboleth Soul had overlooked a Void, a Void so deep it came
not from the Chaos, but from the Aboleth itself. The rogue Skum builders who had mistakenly
woven Vesselflesh had not all been brought back into the fold or destroyed.
Some merely disappeared into the deepest depths of the worlds.
The Builders of the
Forbidden
Back when the Great Aboleth Soul sent its Vessels
unprotected into the proto-worlds, many of its Vessels died horribly. The Core Essence, its Spirit if you will,
remained unharmed as all as it existed in all the Vessels equally. However, the
Soul did lose Mass. Some bits of the unsheathed Vessel bodies could not be
retrieved. As they lost contact with the
Aboleth Soul, many of the Skum builders went into a confused building
frenzy. Of these, some mistakenly wove
Vesselflesh into the world around them, creating something that wasn’t there
before: independent divinities.
Although the lost Vesselflesh retained none of the Aboleth
Soul’s Essence, it still held a mark of the Aboleth’s power coming from its Mass. And coming from the Aboleth mass
itself, it was something greater than the reality that tore it apart
unprotected. The maddened Skum gave the
displaced Vesselflesh forms to protect them, forms like themselves, for the
forms of the Vessels were beyond their understanding. The Vesselflesh bodies, now clad in material
sheaths, became the first truly free-willed entities. They looked upon the
miserable desperation of the Skum builders and answered, giving them direction
and mental shelter once again. Thus, these rogue Vesselflesh bodies became the
first proto-gods.
Yet the Vesselflesh is not the only thing that changed. The Skum builders who wove the flesh were
transformed by the mere act of transmuting them, much like transmuting lead
into gold is said to bring Enlightenment to mortals this very day. The Skum builders evolved- they gained their
first independent thoughts. And shortly thereafter, they spoke their First
Words. The First Words translate to “Godflesh
Weavers,” to which they named themselves after, the Koa Toa!
(To be continued...)
