07 – Existential Threats

The rise of The Fel is the story of the rise of elemental evil through the fall of Endroren from light into shadow. Once the Lord of Essence and grantor of the gift of Sorcery, Endroren was cast out of the Halls of Lensae by his fellow Enaros for bestowing a gift that allowed mortals to command the power of the gods. Retreating into the shadows of existence, Endroren embraced The Fel he found there until it corrupted his own essence and motivated his vengeance, resulting in the near subversion of the world. To this day The Fel poisons the flow of essence, amplifying and empowering evil intent.

Endroren now lies chained to the center of the world. His prison was architected to drain Fel Essence from the surface, moving those who desire it to follow. Although he cannot walk amongst the people as the other Enaros can, his influence can still be felt through the shadows and the Fel Essence that flows therein. His creations continue to lurk there as well, often in league with those fallen souls who profit from misery, cruelty and pain.

Endrori are the minions of Endroren. When Endroren fell from Lensae he gathered each race the Enaros had created and used The Fel to reshape them. These twisted creations became the horde that stormed the Light, established the Age of Darkness, and nearly enslaved the world. Although beaten back and locked in their Deepland prison, pockets of Endrori can be found in the darkest corners of the world or slip through broken seals in a relentless drive to establish a new Age of Darkness.

Abomonae, fiendish manifestations of The Fel, are the fiends created by Endroren to drive his horde. Although closely bound to Endroren’s own essence and drawn deeper to bathe in his Fel glory, corrupt plots cause them to rise from the shadows and strike at the Light.

Fel Essence is essence corrupted by elemental evil and sourced from Endroren. Ever present in the ambient essence, it flows like the silt of a river, tempting any who desire power to shape it and stirred by those motivated by cruelty, hate, and possessed of evil purpose. It responds to a shaper’s touch more readily than natural essence and manifests greater power. A spell shaped purely of Fel Essence can even transcend the Malanoor, bypassing the will of the gods. Even the untrained can use their hate or fear to shape it to their will, manifesting dangerous, untempered power. However, this has a price, and weak-minded fools who draw more Fel Essence than they can manage risk corrupting their own essence, ultimately succumbing to The Fel as one of the Fallen.

The Fallen reflect the vilest motivations of mortalkin. These are individuals irredeemably corrupted by Fel Essence and in the thrall of Endroren. Physically they are shadows of their former selves and very clearly agents of cruelty and pain. Mentally they retain all previous knowledge, inverting their love and exaggerating their hate. The farther one falls from the Light, the more power one commands in shadow.

Even creatures can be corrupted. Such Fel Beasts have had their animal instincts twisted by hate and rage to become vile shadows of their former forms.

Across the void of space, beyond the pale of reality and dreams, can be found primordial horrors. Driven by entropy, these unknowable manifestations of chaos pursue elemental destruction, seeking to alter what it means to exist. These entities are reflections of the Qliphothic, which even the most learned of scholars can best describe as sentient primordial energy.

Defining the Qliphothic is not possible. It exists simultaneously as a primordial energy, a reflection of that energy in the form of sentient entities, and shards of reality that might be described as worlds that exist beyond dreams. It is impossible to refer to one aspect of Qliphothic without implying another. These are things that should not be known, yet he who knows them commands terrible power.

The most basic manifestation of the Qliphothic, Voidspawn are the chaotic mutations of living things. While most often encountered as horrible animals or even plants, the most terrifying are mutated Enari or Endrori, possessed of horrible intelligence and driven in madness towards pure destruction.

There is no known taxonomy of demons, as their forms are as varied in both shape and power as the stars in the sky. Sometimes called by those who serve the Qliphothic, there number also grows from their original incursion during the Cataclysm. The appearance of a demon often heralds a plague of Voidspawn, so any hint of them instills great fear.

The Fel is a meta-element, existing beyond air, earth, fire, water, space, and time. It rises from the shadow of the universe cast by the energies of life. While its corrupting force on Narosia is usually felt through the manipulations of Endroren, it also manifests through the corruption of lost souls who are unable to reach the Golden Halls of Lensae, creating undead abominations focused on nothing more than consuming life itself.

The Unliving are the most prevalent form of undead, unborn from the corpses of the forgotten dead. They rise, looking to consume life until they have regained an evil sentience that enables them to expand their feeding grounds. Thus a simple bloodless skeleton can rise to become a mighty vampire.

Thralls are the minions of the undead, serving either a magical master or a higher order Unliving. They have no will of their own and are exemplified in the classic sense by created skeletons, zombies, and mummies.

Shades are those souls that have been so corrupted by the Fel that they need not use the dead as a conduit to the physical world. They are abile to manifest as spectral forms of pure evil and also share the Unliving’s lust for life essence.