GreenLantern/AutocthonAsTheRootoftheVoid
Autochthon. The Great Maker. In an alternate state of being (with his component souls killed), he becomes the "Engine of Entropy" - a being of toil and artifice with no hope, relentlessly crushing and expending the utility of that before him - or so the stories go. It occurred to me, reading about this state of affairs (hinted at in the Alchemicals core), that perhaps this ... is already occurring.
Autocthon has been known since the beginning of time to be weak. Sick. Looked down upon by his peers. Why? What makes Autocthon somehow "wrong" in such a way that his peers are aware of the problem? Mind, his peers are vastly different types of being, each and all. Their forms, physics, structure, and goals are all drastically different. Why then, is Autocthon the one that stands out? What is it about him that is not merely different, but wrong? Over time, we find that the problem is his void-sickness. Something about him that wishes to end, destroy, twist, and mutate. Over time, it creates things inside of him that twist and form gremlinism, and the blight zones.
But what about before that time? What symptoms did Autocthon display of his sickness? What would it have looked like when he was in Creation? Would Autocthon have created, intentionally or not, beings meant to grind down, to wear, and destroy? What would these beings have looked like? By creating humanity, Autocthon created a race of weak things that die. They live brightly, burn out, and die. The cycle of thermodynamics is complete with them. My claim is that Autocthon is not just the great maker, he, even in his current form, is the cycle of endless thermodynamics - the things he creates can never truly last, in fact, they must always decay. And he can never stop creating.
What of the Gods? Created in part by Autocthon, they would seemingly avoid this endless cycle of thermodynamics - they live, resurrect, and continue. And yet Gods can be killed. By Primordials, certainly. But the primordials themselves requested the Gods' creation. Autocthon knew, at his core, that the Gods, once designed, would have no reason to be killed by the Primordials. Unless there was a flaw - Pride. Jealousy. Desire to play at the games. Autocthon could have designed Gods without this urge, without the ability to play - but he did not. In the Creation of the Gods, he ensured that they would eventually cause friction against the Primordials, and be put down.
But what of the Primordials themselves? Again, the massive might of Autocthon's dark intellect works to end all things. The Gods themselves were bound by the Primordials to not harm them. To end the primordials required a weapon capable of doing so. The Exalted. Autocthon's warriors of ending all things. Properly created, they worked to end the Primordials, something that could not be done easily, or would naturally occur.
And the Exalted? Their lifespans are finite. All Exalted will end. Even still, the Creation that they maintain might endure. Best to put a fatal flaw in them. The Great Curse? Are we sure that it was the dying breath of the Primordials? Or merely a designed in 'feature' of the Great Maker? Consider the Alchemical Exalts - the only ones to neither suffer from finite lifespans, nor from the Great Curse - because eventually, Alchemicals will all fall prey to the Gremlin Syndrome, as they become one with Autocthons dark Clarity. There is no chance of young, fresh Alchemicals not falling prey, because unlike other Exalted, Alchemicals require functional humans to create them. Other Exalted can procreate independently. Even two Exalts can repopulate all of Creation - not so with the Alchemicals. Once the rest of Creation has fallen, no Alchemical, Gremlin or not, could ever restart things. And with time, even that Alchemical must fall prey to Gremlin Syndrome. As they all will.
In a more cosmic sense, then, what of the Underworld? Why would Autocthon work for the 'death' of his Primordial siblings if the concept of the Underworld, and thus the void, was not a well studied concept? I claim that Autocthon, more than any, knew of the Underworld. It is his very soul engine that the Underworld was created in mimicry of. Much as Creation's re-incarnation system became flawed, in that it stored souls rather than passing them on to lethe, so too does the Great Maker's internal engines. The large holding tanks within his being are essentially the progenitors and guide posts for the underworld itself. While Creation was built by many Primordials, it is Autocthon's Exalted that managed to clog up the works by killing Primordials, creating the modern Underworld, and opening the pathway for the whispers of the Void. Before the existence of the Underworld, there was no source of Void whispers in Creation. It is only through Autochton's improper soul-processing process that could have had whispers of the void before that. And those whispers led to the Exalted, and to the cycle of reduction that now occurs.
My claim, then, is that the passing of ages, the eventual death of all things, and the problems with Creation - especially as the Primordials see them - can all be traced back to Autocthon. His sickness, and his malfunctioning soul engines. Engines that, due to his nature and relationship to thermodynamics and entropy, require decay, and failure as part of their being. The sickess that the other Primordials saw was that unlike all others, it is Autocthon's nature to die. The other primordials natures are such that they persist. They endure. They can live without change. But not the 'Great Maker'. The Great Maker is cursed from the start, in that he, and the things he needs, must consume a finite resource. Must wear out. Must fail. And will bring all the others with them.
... ...
But there is hope.
Autocthon is not necessarily lost. Even with his sickness, it is still his calling to create. It is an unfortunate reality that the things he creates, and the way he creates is not perfect. It leads to flawed creations. The only things that may stand the test of time are those created with other Primordial intervention. Things that might have had the flaws worked out, or worked around, as the other Primordials became involved.
Creation itself, for example. My memory tells me that Gaia, and Cecylene had some input here. Perhaps Creation is not itself flawed. And most importantly, the Unconquered Sun. Created primarily through a sequence involving the Ebon Dragon and the Great Leader, the Unconquered Sun's only possible relationship to Autocthon is that part of the Daystar Engine Dirigible itself was stolen from Autocthon, as he worked on it. There is a chance, then, a strong one, that not all is lost. As the Sun is a stated opposite to the Ebon Dragon, he is strong, vibrant, and enduring. As a product of the Great Leader in his prime, the Great Leader stated the Sun's power, his nature as unconquerable - and so it would be. All things listened to the word of the Great Leader in his prime.
And of Autocthon? He still has only one true flaw - his flawed soul engines. If new engines could be constructed, ones that ran 'cleanly' and did not fail, did not accumulate waste products. Then Autocthon himself could be perhaps fixed. What would such an engine look like? What kind of enduring power source could that be? The same kind that powers the Daystar Engine Dirigible. What was it that was taken from Autocthon's workshop, so long ago? Could it be a power source that Autocthon himself disconnected at some earlier point? Could the Daystar's Engine really be a missing organ from Autocthon, with its absence causing his sickness? If this is the case, then there are many possibilities. Alternately, perhaps the Engine was being created by Autocthon for the purposes of curing his sickness. Perhaps he did not have time to finish. Perhaps his sickness would prevent him from finishing. Or perhaps, he had finished, and could simply not install it, because to do so would have altered who he is too fundamentally.
And thus we are at the modern day. If the burning and consumption of fossil fuels - literally, the fuel created in the act of death and souls, cannot sustain the Great Maker, perhaps Solar Fusion can. Solar fusion in the truest sense. Install the Daystar's Engines into Autocthon. Provide the Great Maker with the greatest source of power ever known. Excise the blight from him, and the soul engines. Just as Ligier is the heart of the Great Leader, so too may the Unconquered Sun become the heart of the Great Maker, and the shepherd of Creation anew.
Just a thought.
-- GreenLantern
Comments welcome.
