Dzéwà, The White God
From a distant planet it came. Voracious, ravaging, unyielding. It proclaimed itself a god, and who would dare to gainsay it, when its powers were many and all crossing the boundaries of mortal keen? The Shan embraced it willingly, awed by the carnage it wrought and by the malignant hunger it casts into the air by its sheer presence. It is beautiful to behold and terrible to withstand - an avatar of coalescing fibrous matter, plantlike and blossoming like a flower, given manifested strength and potency from the otherworldly will that shapes its corporeal flesh. It is The White God, The Many Limbed, the Strangler of the Cosmic Forests - it demands worship and will get it one way or another - either through fear or awed supplicants eager to please it uncanny hunger.
Iod, the Shining Hunter
One can imagine the gods of the cosmos to be unconquerable. Vast entities of radiant power, their mesmerising flesh forms woven from the matter of the stars, their wills encompassing space and time with laughable ease, their contempt towards lessers forms of existence almost palpable in everyday dread of the feeble mortals. And yet, the old adage that there is always a bigger fish holds true even for such incomprehensible monsters - nature, even if we use the term very loosely when it comes to such beings, still follow its simple forms. Predators that hunt other predators exist after all, and Iod is one of them. An endless traveller across the vastness of the cosmos, he seek the glory of the challenging hunts, drawn towards luminous souls and potent energies, seeking out gods of the aeons to put them down with his spear wrought by the essence of the slayed divinities. There is no escape, for he can travel through time and planes of existence. He slip through Dreamlands into reality, he sniff the aether of the diagonal spaces, he knows where his chosen prey is, and prowl endlessly in pursue to finally catch up and fight a true struggle of cataclysmic proportions. Stars dwindle, systems shatter and the tormented space scream in the duels. Som far Iod emerged victorious on all his hunts - and we can only be grateful that we will never be his prey, as unworthy and minuscule as we are.
Mordiggian, the Charnel God
The great collector of bones of mortals, the patron of corpses, and master of the marrow, he is the one who gathers power from the soulless husks of the flesh left behind… He is one of the strangest of the Old Ones. Not in form, which admittingly, is that of twisted flesh and ossified tissue manifested from the offerings to his being, but rather in his morbid – perfectly literally so – connection to the realms of mortal beings. Where other gods and cosmic entities often barely notice the fumbling, pathetic attempts at living that the fleeting microbes display (like the whole ‘civilization-building’ humans do, for example), Mordiggian found a source of power in their remains, in the empty, soulless husk given freely to the speedy grasps of entropic tendrils. There in decay and decomposition, he thrives, sucking on the grim aspect of death to engorge his own potency. Like a dragon on a hoard, he is attracted to great massacre sites and charnel houses, where his bounty is plentiful. Those who worship him are fools who mistake him for a god of death, a necromantic deity that can grant at least a simulacra of immortality – nothing is however further from the truth, as Mordiggian is not interested in mortals souls and minds; merely in their fleshy husks.
Byatis, the God of Forgetfulness
Few remember him, which is apt. For Byatis is the God of Forgetfulness. Those who are caught in his cyclopean gaze forget all, their mind turning to an all-consuming void that rips every memory out like weeds off a fertile garden. Those who foolishly turn to face the abominable entity and lock their gaze to the abyssal eye are lost forever, guided by the voices that pluck at their souls to turn steps towards the maw of the great old one, becoming the source of his imperishable vitality. It bears great spite towards humanity and once free of his imprisonment it might be the first bringer of desolation to the frail cities of men. For one daring, bold and impossibly shortsighted warlock of yore managed via great enchantments and potent sacrifices to bind the beasts of many names to his bidding, forcing Byatis to enhance his arcane potency, grant vision and eradicate the minds of his opposition. But in its enslavement, Byatis grew stronger, fed the mortal flesh and minds of countless sacrifices, until it regained its full powers, easily braking the tethers of the ancient rites to consume its jailor. Now, trapped under the castle, too bloated with energies to move, it rests in a stupor, digesting the monstrous magic that bound it in the first place. Once done, it might wake once more in the future unknown, to rip the hills that lay upon it now and burst from the very ground like szejtan of old, casting its baleful gaze upon the world ripe for the harvest of souls and minds.
grrrenadine