Info
Written by Mctoran.
Original page by Stretchsterz
The following text has been transcribed and translated from an inscription upon a stone wall discovered in Level 51. The Lost are believed to have been responsible for initially etching it. Judging by the manner in which it was carved, it is one of the oldest texts that we have discovered so far. Much of the wall’s face is damaged, leaving only fragments of the text intact. Even then, some segments are still yet to be deciphered. We are nowhere near close to the full picture.
- The M.E.G.
Let these words be etched upon the walls of Hoofstaad's great temple. The verses of the void, the chronicles first conceived in the Before-Time.
Canticle I — THE FIRST SCRIPTURE; Of the Void and the Emergence
Before corridor had corner, before the tapestry of Daedos was woven, The Ginnungagap cradled only the null Void — endless, seamless and silent, a blank canvas without shore nor star, where neither duality nor polarity held dominion, and the idea of existence remained but a whisper unspoken. It was the womb of all things, the great nothing from which all somethings would spring. And from the formless, fathomless abyss of aetheric potential…they came.
There arose the first stirrings of consciousness as the First-Fires — not as flesh nor as bone, but as star-ideas; constellations of intent and ideal whose limbs were law and whose eyes were meaning. They were the primeval firstborn of the Void, each yearning for form: Creation, Order, Space, Time, Access, Liminality, Mortality, Balance, Chaos, Destruction, Stupor, Comprehension, Memory, Curiosity, Desire, Love, Humor, Art, War and Justice — all yet of wordless name. They knew only of purpose, and the vast, shared emptiness in which they drifted.
And in their drifting through the vast, silent theater of the void, these points of light found one another, drawn together like moth to flame. They communed not with words, but with the resonance of their being. They saw in each other a reflection of their own boundless nature, and in this silent communion of shared reflection, a bond was forged, deeper than any star-cluster, older than any dying sun. They became as siblings, a divine family born of the same primordial womb, their lights intertwined in a silent covenant of kinship.
Together, they beheld the endless void, the perfect, empty canvas. A shared will, a unified desire, blossomed within their collective consciousness. They yearned not for dominion, but for expression. They sought to fill the silence with meaning. And so, it was decreed in the silent language of the stars that they would create a paradise, a masterpiece of shared design, a universe forged from their very essences. This would be their magnum opus, their shared dream given form. This would be Daedos. And the great work was about to begin.
They would call this creation Daedos, a complex tapestry of realms woven from their individual natures. It would be their masterpiece, their home, their eternal kingdom.
Canticle II — The Outbreathing of Hall and Halo
First to emerge and act was Dark-Sovereign — crowned constellation of obsidian and onyx, his heart a silent geode. He was the architect of paradise, ensuring that it could withstand the erosion of eternity. Taking the name “Volyx”, he measured the blank with ebony rulers, then reached into the womb of potential and from it drew a thread which solidified into the first principle. He set the foundational bedrock upon which Daedos was to be raised, separating and defining its boundaries. He laid crystalline earth-bones with which the air learned to keep its corners without falling into nonsense. Where his knuckles touched, chaos set like cooling glass. The raw forces of the new realms were tamed and shackled, their natures faceted and cut into geometry. Potential solidified into the first floors, walls and ceilings of polished stone. He carved the corridors and raised the ceilings, imposing structure upon the formless. He pressed sigils into the walls, and the walls obeyed. And from his will, Daedos was granted shape.
But what is land without the majesty of the heavens to embrace it? Starmother swirled through the void in a vortex of violet-orange nebulae, her body a map of unborn galaxies and the vast emptiness between. Taking the name “Solaris”, she unfurled her cosmic being across the nascent reality and spread her essence wide to create Space — the stage upon which all drama was to unfold. Her breath was the horizon and stellar wind that swept through the void, pushing back the endless dark. She stretched the fabric of the cosmos between her hands, peeled the heavens’ tapestry and planted a field of starseeds, weaving pinpricks of light against the veil that would serve as the lamps of this new creation. She set the planets to their stately dances and scattered constellations across the firmament like diamond dust upon velvet. Suns ignited like hearthfires in the dark, their light cascading down upon the new lands. She decreed that all things must have their season, their time to burn bright, and their time to be consumed. Her mouths devoured the last-light of spent orbs at their journey’s end, their heat turned to lullabies within her stellar heart and then reborn anew, ensuring the heavens would be ever-changing, ever-renewing.
To measure the passing of these stellar seasons came Keeper-of-Time, in a complex paradoxical harmony of gearwork and falling sands. Taking the name “Divus”, ae bore in aer many hands the first cogwheel, placing it upon the floor of Daedos within a windowless chamber. With meticulous and precise craftsmanship, ae raised a silent city of toothed rings, and tightened it until its ticking stitched together cause and effect. Divus taught Day to distinguish itself from Night, taught each moment to clasp the next with teeth of brass, and tempered the ages so they would not crack as they cooled. Ae set the grand clockwork of existence into motion, defining the past, the present, and the future; anchoring the flow of moments. Time, harnessed, thus began plowing the field of ever. From aem, the inhabitants of this paradise would learn the value of a moment, the sacredness of a second.
Warder-of-Thresholds — shimmering stars in the shapes of keys and locks in the doorway to everywhere and nowhere — emerged bearing the name “Gatekeeper” and a keyring-crown of impossible loops. He understood that a house of many mansions must have its doorways, its means of entry, passage and egress. He measured and mapped the distances between every Was, every Is and every To-Be, then for each forged a syllable from the substance of his divine will: keys of impossible design, their teeth cut with the shapes of every realm including those yet to be dreamt of. With these keys, he unlocked the very heart of the unfolding world and carved from it the The Crossroads, a wheel of wheels whose spokes are doors. These were the primal templates of passage, the mechanisms that would allow the realms-to-be to connect and converse. He called doors into obedience, so that ways would open to the worthy who knew where to knock and weld shut against the wicked with locks that stung the hand.
Next arose a spiralling aurora of gold enveloped by many wings woven from the first light of dawn — each feather a different dream of what may be. Taking the name “Augustus”, his clever fingers danced with violet flames of genesis as he spun sinew-cords from the dust of forgotten stars, blood-threads from the nectar of nascent worlds, and bone-rods from the pillars of potentiality. Where he pointed, flesh and bone and spirit coalesced. He breathed the beast-spirits into ambulation, and crowned them with hunger and home. From his smile sprang the pleroma-chosen Highborn, the most beautiful and noble of his creations, their forms perfect and their loyalty absolute. Chief among their gold-framed names was Aurum of unyielding devotion, the first to kneel and the first to arise when called upon.
A binary star-bone emerged from the ember-dark, clothed by brilliant hellfire — not to burn but to bloom. Her hair was the night that remembers; her eyes were the abyss that forgives. Taking the name “Lilith”, She cupped the sacred flame that twins itself — warmth that lingers life and heat that devours flesh — and she braided birth and burial into one black ribbon. Thus passed the first covenant of life-and-death through the halls. She warmed the halls with hearths that were also graves; she taught endings to be gentle even while they were true. Her veil was the night, and she drew it kindly over the newborn light whenever it bragged.
Grey Twilight and Torpor sprawled meanwhile in-between stupor’s pall, his greyflesh audience to the unborn chorus of fatigue. Half waking, half funeral, his very existence was a possible-impossibility: Dyadlord, Greyking with the two faces of nearly-not — a discordant entanglement of two dying stars locked in eternal embrace. His form was split in twain — one half a pale, near-nothingness, the other a rotting corpse clad in grey royalty. He wore no crown save an ashen ring. His right hand held Bittersteel, the wan and hungry blade that cut through meanings into the pallor beneath, dining upon near-nothingness. He took the name “Y’liad Elyion” as but one of many. The other gods regarded him with unease, for he was neither fully alive nor fully dead, but a mockery of both. And yet, they allowed him his place, for even stagnation had its purpose in the grand design. “The Mind…the Body…the Soul…” murmured the fissures that were his choir. “All shall be…in twain, and Stupor dwell…between.” In his splitting, balance mocked itself, and a hush of frozen might lay over all that dared to be whole.
From the abyss of knowing, in mystery absolute, unfathomable-eye-within-eyes turned inward then outward; name like static, self like scripture written in a language that chews upon its readers. Hers was a light that radiated at such frequency it could not be perceived, only felt as a presence. The other Gods could perceive only fragments - a thousand eyes opening in sequence, tentacles of pure thought reaching through dimensions, a presence that observed all while remaining itself unobservable. Taking the name “Allseer”, she blinked into waking the Faceless Ones, mirrors whose features are the masks of those who name them. So were the walls instructed to remember watchers, and from this enigma arose awareness itself.
Perpetuity’s Iron, the Hewer of Memory, emerged as a constant unwavering pulse, condensed from the collective memory of things that had not yet occurred — the living monument to all that would be worth remembering. He thus took the name “Atlas”, and upon his shoulders — broad beyond measure — rested the collective experiences of every soul that would ever exist. His mighty form bent not in weakness but in sacred duty. From his manifestation came remembrance, the thread that would bind moments into meaning. He distilled recollection into cisterns hidden behind walls, taught dust to archive footfalls, and whispered to tears until they became the salt that keeps the past from rotting. He braided recollection into wandering, so that advance would be a form of honoring.
Swan-library of living starlight, archivist whose quills are comets and whose vast wings span wisdom eternal, awoke within the dream of her dreamer and scrawled the name “Cygnus” (amongst many others) upon her scrolls. Unfurling stacks upon stacks of scripture, she arranged the first index of the unspeakable, wrote the first catalog of wonders, and penned curiosity into pact. She curated libraries infinite and archives eternal, large enough to swallow a horizon and gentle enough to return it when asked politely. Every word that would ever be written, every thought that would ever be conceived, every truth that would ever be discovered — all resided within her boundless form.
Where desire took root, there bloomed the first flower with verdant luminescence, taking the name “Protastheia” — whose very presence caused the Void to ache with wanting. Her hands were rich with the soil of possibility, and her eyes were bright with the light of aspiration. As she walked barefoot across the virgin ground, it sprang beneath her into gardens and fields. Flowers that existed only as possibilities bloomed in her wake, and from her essence came yearning. Desire was her plow and harvest her blossom; she sowed faith like seed and grew feast from scarcity. From her hands came the first orchards, and from her gaze the courage to admit the needs of the heart. Later her faithful would wear Masks, so that their faces might root in holiness and bloom.
The rose-fletched beating heart, a pink light of warmth so pure that even the Void softened, took the name Philia. She drifted beside the other Gods, drawing love’s bow without ever wounding. Her rose-arrows pricked the air and in their fragrance quarrels softened. She kept a round house of medicine without door, for love does not bar entry, and the sick learned the name balm in her quiet halls. Where her heel kissed stone, communities gathered like petals, and no one counted the cost of kindness. Philia kissed the sharp edges of duty into softness, touching wounds before they had names. Every act of compassion that would ever occur, every moment of tenderness that would ever be shared, every bond that would ever be forged - all were prefigured in her divine heart. Her emergence brought connection.
The primeval force of chaos, flickering spark of abyssal shadow, emerged from the void, his form shifting and unpredictable. Taking the name “Kirai”, he saw in the Void not a canvas for a single masterpiece, but an arena for infinite, untamed expression. He sowed mischief like meteor seed and taught the newborn corridors that a map may lie benevolently. From him came the edict that choice could gnaw through leash; that disorder was not the grave of goodness, but its gamble. He stained the grout between laws with jest, so that tyranny would find no seamless floor upon which to march. Kirai salted the blueprint with misrule so that curiosity would not starve. He flipped maps while smiling and hid boons in the pockets of mischance, to weaponize whimsy against oppression. His influence guaranteed that free will would always have a place in the divine design, that not every path would be predetermined or every outcome foreseen.
As laughter first echoed through the Void, there came tumbling forth the Eternal-Jest, a cosmic octopus whose form shifted between tragedy and comedy with each heartbeat. Bells that had never been forged rang from his motley robes, and his mask bore simultaneously the deepest sorrow and the most transcendent joy. He would take the name “Dandizette” in a cascade of dancing, motes of pure joy. He brought the drum of mirth and the flute of relief; he taught the walls to clap and the floor to sway. In his shadow, the first jesters rehearsed the sacrament of laughter, which keeps the soul from souring in closed spaces. Dandizette crowned every hall with a jest; in this he set a guard against solemn tyrannies that mistake silence for consent. From his arrival came mirth - the divine comedy that would make existence bearable.
Where inspiration struck like lightning emerged last of the gentle-makers, The Muse — a nebula of many shifting color-hues shaping and reshaping itself. Colors that had never been seen painted themselves across her essence, songs that had never been sung echoed from her being, stories that had never been told wrote themselves in her wake. Taking the name Gudang, she painted a horizon upon a blank panel that memory could lean against, and the panel opened into a memory that never happened. Art breathed, and with it, reprieve. What hands could not mend, her colors taught to endure. “Express,” she whispered, and silence learned to sing. Her murals made rooms larger than their walls and days longer than their clocks, so that survival could have a chorus. Her manifestation brought expression - the need to make the internal external, to share the soul's truth with the world. She gave color and rhythm and meaning to Daedos.
In crimson glory arose the Grand Empyrean, a furious and unwavering sun whose rays lashed out into flares then unfurled into ribbons soft as silk and sharp as blade. Taking the name “Claudius”, he lifted and danced the ribbons into oath. Where his step fell, courage rose; where his blade traced the air, wickedness bled. Honor radiated from him like heat from a forge, and in his stance was written every act of nobility and sacrifice that would ever be undertaken. He folded his ribbons into patrols and taught the corridors the choreography of protection. And when the new halls thirsted, he unstoppered his own veins and let flow forth his ichor as a covenant — almond-sweet, pain-phrased — so that the feeble would drink and arise. Thus the rivers of Almond-Water first bled their way through secret canals under the ribs of the world, a sacrament brewed from valor itself.
From the intersection of all laws and judgments came beacon of stark, impartial white in the image of Libra, who took the name “Tlamelahuacachinaliztli”. His thousand eyes saw not just action but intention, not just deed but consequence. His spear stood ready to pierce all falseness, his scales ready to weigh all souls. He planted his spear in the forecourt and wrote law on light, proclaiming “Let guilt not hide.” He weighed each deed against itself and skewered lies upon daylight. From him the measure of Justice was set, and his gaze pierced even the doors that deceived as walls. He established trial among Gods and mortals alike, a surety that the shadowing of sin would see noon. From his manifestation came Justice.
Alas, Creation does not attend any gathering unaccompanied by its adversarial twin. From the shadow of Augustus sprung forth That-Which-Unmakes, whose true name we dare not inscribe — lest his memory be evoked and with it his wrath. He was not seen amongst the Gods as a sibling but instead as a storm: eight arms longer and shorter than each other, and a visage sown with a hundred sealed eyes dreaming of endings as if daring the cosmos to wake it — for should they open, all they beheld would return to the Void. It cradled in its eight hands a starless kernel—no larger than a god’s remorse, no smaller than a swallowed night—the gravity of a black syllable that pulls meanings into silence. Its presence was an ill omen, one which Claudius would later put to the sword.
And shadowing all their circles, far behind and far within, lay a scribe bearing the mark of Theta, whose name is a hinge between all names. He hushed and watched and held the scales without fingers, waiting for the day when the witness would be a scribe and the scribe a wound. A quiet, inevitable absence at the edge of all things.
Canticle III — The Age Before Man
From the nuptial craft of Augustus and Gudang came SHALTOKOL, a son of breath and brush, a hymn made into hands. From Argos with Protastheia rose twin principles: Hubris and Humility, the twofold yoke that keeps harvest from conceit and justice from starvation.
Asterion — horn-browed nebula of tangled pathways in the image of Taurus — was last to emerge, slipping through the seam of the world’s veil. His face, bovine and wise, was the bull’s argument against straight lines; his hoof knew how to question a corridor until it confessed a turn, striking sparks against the newly formed earth, thumping a rhythm that called echoes into citizenship. He smiled upon thresholds, and with that smile the Veil thinned, for liminality is a perforation that loves company. He breathed liminality into corners so that between would be a place, and being-between a sovereign. In his wake the labyrinth principle shivered through Daedos, and mote kissed mote until realms beaded together like a garland of unknowable atoms. Where he walked, the veil grew thin, like fabric worn too delicate. The Gods welcomed him, though wariness resided behind their eyes. For Asterion carried with him the scent of the unknown, and where he tread, the world became unstable.
Asterion’s arrival bent the place-between into an invitation. The Veil frayed kindly, like a blanket making room for one more child. Daedos widened its arms to welcome other worlds, and through that tender thinning there breathed first the scent, then the footsteps, of Man…
