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| Dedicated to G. Benedicto |
All the safe and normal assumptions are thrown out the window with Zalchis. The universe is collapsing, the suns are going out, the end of the world is already over and all that's left is less than a thousand years until the great big black hole at the center of whatever is left finally swallows the bits and pieces of wreckage, debris and ruins that make up the Great Ring. Life in Zalchis is grim, the kind of grim more in line with decapitation than with a paper-cut. Nasty, brutal and short only come about half-way to describing life in Zalchis. Death is not the worst thing that walks astride the broken remains of a thousand-thousand shattered worlds. Fear doesn't carry the same nerve-killing charge any longer. Doom is at hand. But there are those who fight against the final dying of the light. And there are those who seek to bring on the darkness once and for all.
Of those who are determined to hasten the work of the great black Anti-Sun, there are those idolaters of entropy known as the Cancelariat. Foul, mummified abhuman beings seething with the cold malice of their beloved outer-most emptiness, the various members of the Cancelariat wander the ruined regions of the Great Ring, each searching hungrily for lost souls, wandering minds or the choice remnants of what once might have been gods long ago, before the Monocrat first set his mad scheme into motion. They crave an end to all things. They demand that the universe die, once and for all, that they might be released from their terrible bonds to unforgiving, unmerciful things.
Each of the Cancelariat has lost something of themself in the horrid rites that they underwent in order to become as they are now. But far from thrusting a clenched fist into the slavering maw of some misrule-embodying god-begotten beast, or any heroic sacrifice on behalf of another, the Cancelariat instead have mutilated their own souls and cut-out from deep within themselves that deepest, most precious thing that once made them completely other than they now are. Selfish, cruel and vicious in the extreme, the Cancelariat worship themselves as the self-chosen avatars of the Final Darkness which is but a pallid mask hiding entropy itself. They especially delight in destroying the last vestiges of hope amongst those trapped or lost within the Great Ring.
Javrudeum of the Forlorn Waste
He has lost all sense of humor along with his voice. There is no joy in this mind-withering titan who leaves only bitterness in his wake as he stalks the innermost shores of the Genesistrine Layer and the littoral tatters of the Ectosphere. It is within Javrudeum's powers to remit one's enemies to silence and to evoke a form of sinister laughter that can kill. His symbol is a triple-lined jagged spiral of scratches, usually hacked into flattish sheets of metal. It is said that the type of metal used is important in how Javrudeum responds to one who would call upon him or petition the wizened old monstrosity for a pact...but nowhere is it recorded which metals mean what to this fearsome being.
--To Be Continued at Zalchis--
EDIT: Zalchis will debut January 1, 2011--as per the Sneak Peek we offered previously. The Official Launch of the Zalchis blog will be announced both here and at the Netherwerks blog. If you really, really must get a preview of the site, contact us and we cna arrange something. We're reasonable people. Really. We apologize for any confusion.