The Void is the subject of endless dark tales, bedtime stories, and nightmares - and more recently, a very real threat. Increasing activity from the fringes of the Great Sphere has colored the adventuring life with a dark and deadly cloud upon the horizon. 

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In additon to voidal dangers, many other forces have entered the picture, causing widespread destruction and chaos throughout the aether. Consider if any of these threats might have an impact on your character, either in the current day or in their past history.

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The Mirrored God

This entity is one of the Elderborn: godlike beings from beyond the Void. They are fundamentally alien to all the aether represents, with no connection to even the Six Sisters who first created it. They are older, unknowably powerful - and quite often, they covet the teeming life within the sheltered Sphere.

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Some years past, the Mirrored God first breached the Verge. Its body resembles an organic, twisted mass of black tendrils and spiny projections in the shape of a massive ship the size of entire worlds. Its spiked prow rammed into the Verge and shattered it like glass, but the barrier reacted swiftly - but not in time to banish the thing entirely. It now rests wedged and trapped in the Verge, keeping a hole torn open in its structure from which it can pour its voidal minions out from the depths. Somewhere deep within the vessel's bowels, an ancient mirror reflects a mass of formless faces that whisper to any who would hear its call.

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The Mirrored God spares none when it consumes a Pearl. It gives one warning only - to submit, or be subsumed. Those who submit are made into its minions, and those who refuse are made into food for its voidal children, the worlds corrupted and turned into twisted landscapes which serve as spawning points for more of its fiendish creations.

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The breach is a dire situation, but its location is years' travel from the major civilizations of the Iona - with the exception of the City of Secrets and capital of the Vacivian Sylori, Medeas, which has sealed itself off from the rest of the network due to its location at the precipice of the threat. Medeas has been tasked with handling the Mirrored God alone, and it is failing.

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The Mirrored God is not the first Elderborn to siege the aether and successfully cause destruction - previous Eons have ended on the eve of these entities' arrival, which in the past has been connected to the slaughter of countless people and the near or complete extinction of several civilizations.

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Nihila

Nihila, the long-vanished Sister of Void, is the only creator goddess whose fate has not ended. She is said to reside somewhere within the Void, where legend has it that she commands an obsidian city called Neveren, populated by legions of her voidal children and the Paragon aethrin most loyal to her service. 

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Nihila's intentions are unknown, and those entities which might have insights are reluctant to share them. Those who worship Nihila and the Void believe that she serves as a protector deity, working tirelessly to guard her sisters' creation from the threats of the Elderborn from outside. Others believe she is conspiring with entities like the Mirrored God in a conspiracy to claim the aether for herself. None can say for sure, except the creatures most feared and shunned from polite society...

 

Voidgates

These yawning, destructive portals appear as shredded portions of the aether's very makeup. In increasing amounts since the Mirrored God's appearance, voidgates have opened without warning in the dark regions near the Verge, and the few lucky adventurers who lived to tell the tale mention harrowing experiences. The gates suck in and consume all that comes near, inevitably destroying anything that comes into its pull - with no escape. At the same time, voidal creatures pour forth from these dark maws, immune to its entropic effects.

 

Corrupted Behemoths

Across the aether, massive entities called Behemoths were once known as gentle giants, where they grazed upon uninhabited islands of earth, water, and crystal to 'clean up' stray elements in the aether.  In more recent years, reports of 'corrupted' Behemoths marked with strange tattoos and runes have appeared, with berserk behavior of sudden aggression - and predation - toward travelers' ships. Many believe these reports to be hoaxes or flights of fancy.

 

Rogue Daimon Activity

Lastly, increased activity of rogue chaos daimons has been widely reported throughout the aether, where entire cargo ships have been assaulted and destroyed by organized groups of daimonic beings. They seemingly serve the Chaos Triad, specifically Rue and Calamitas - but they never collect any spoils, nor do they specifically kill more than incidentally. Their goals are obscure.