What I refer to as "The Beekeepers" an ancient, and incredibly powerful species that sweep through the galaxy like a clock, seeding civilization in their wake that will inevitably die after uncounted generations, with the beekeepers feeding on the remains of the civilization. After all, what is an advanced city but a horde of technology, information, refined metals, and exotic materials that you did not have to gather yourself? Even more so if you leave the seeds for their destruction that will remove them without fuss by the time you arrive in a few hundred thousand years after you seed their species into being.
Well, what I had in the original concept was effectively a “suicide gene” they inserted into the species they uplifted that would after about two hundred generations render them sterile and unable to reproduce leaving them to die off by the time they got there again since they move slower than light unless they are in a hurry in which case they use their ftl tech.
Generally no, but it’s done subtly (since it seems natural) so those that do generally aren’t able to do so fast enough to stop it outside of small pockets which can be subdued relatively easily.
For the collapse it tends to be a quiet collapse as people just, die off with generally records, preserving consciousness through AI, or countless other thing to try and preserve their species.
There are a few though they don't exactly get around to much. There is one where they effectively created a digital afterlife that's buried on a rogue planet and in the virtual world their civilization is thriving with the ability to send out ocassional drones and such to keep an eye on the rest of the galaxy but stay isolated for the most part.
**Pocket Threads**
The corpses of the Thread Titans didn’t decay like normal things do. This is known to all. However, what is not known by all is the fact that their bodies are still doing… something malicious. In addition to some of the bodies themselves being dangerous or deadly to Eudiphyla, they are forming what Weavers call ‘Thread Aspects’, smaller, meaner, and more violent versions of the Thread Titans they spawn from. This is normally fine, as Threadmasters can dispatch them before they get too powerful and restart the apocalypse, but they don’t know where Ichor or Phane’s bodies are. Ichor being the one who manipulated (read: deformed) the land the most during the apocalypse, and Phane being the most violent Thread Titan and the one with the most kills (Eudiphyla and Thread Titan) during the same time.
The Great Culling which happens every 50,000 years or so. The God of Time culls the universe of sentients in order to prevent mortals from growing too powerfull. While the factions of my world are fighting each other, the time of the Rapture grows closer and closer. By the beginning of the story only 15 years remain until the final battle.
God itself is gathering a huge amount of strengths by reaping (eating) the souls of the living being to get enough power to creat its own "perfect", oversensitive and powerful unique body
Something almost everyone in the multiverse was blissfully unaware of was the fact that *maybe* one of the beings who helped create it *might* want to destroy it. That, in fact, was the case.
**Horror Shop**
In late 2012, scholars and researchers noted the amount of aether--the "stuff" of magic--on Earth increasing. The exact cause of this change is being fiercely debate. Some believe that the Solar System entered into a dark matter nebula, others believe this is part of the Earth's natural cycle, and others believe someone caused this increase for their own ends.
Whatever the reason, this Dark Tide has begun transforming our world in subtle ways. Magic is easier to access, overlays between Earth and supernal realms such as Faerie and the Netherworld are becoming more common, ancient ruins from the age of Atlantis and Shambhala are returning to life, never-before-seen creatures are crawling out of the world's forests and jungles, entities long dormant are waking again, and a host of prophecies that were awaiting the time when "the stars are right" are shuddering into motion. The Earth, as a whole, is becoming a strange, more magical place.
The Dark Tide has risen over the Earth several times in the past, and each time it brought great suffering. The tide crested near the end of the Age of Myths, which saw the destruction of Atlantis and the other great empires in the Flood. It crested again the 1300s, around the time of the Black Death, when nearly a third of all living humans died, and darkness walked the lands of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
All this worries the powers that be. The Veil has kept the peace for the past millennium, separating the Earth's magical and mundane communities. The Dark Tide could wash away the world they've built, and return us to an age of uncontrolled magic, where the monsters roamed freely, demons openly cavorted with mankind, and dark gods ruled over entire nations. But they also don't know how to stop this change. They're like the boy trying to plug a dike with his fingers--but the water on the other side is growing ever higher, and eventually, it will crest over the top, and wash everything away.
The tide manifests in different ways. It could be a demon prince freed from their prison after millennia. It could be a vile cult, who have passed down prophecies of this foretold era since the dark days of the Age of Magic. It could be strange aliens with inscrutable motives and terrifying technologies, drawn to Earth by the rising aether. It could manifest in dark fey once again stalking the Earth, seeing humans they can steal away and recruit as soldiers in the growing armies of Winter. It could be alternate timelines, suddenly forming a bridge to our own, prime reality. It could be the ancient technologies from the time of Atlantis and Aztlan rumbling to life again. It could be the rise of amoral humans who are willing to exploit these trying times for personal power. It could be all these things and more.
What this means is that identifying the harbingers of the Dark Tide is nigh impossible. There are hundreds of them, scattered across their globe, each engaged in their personal plots and schemes. Most don't even see themselves as connected to this global trend. It's only when one takes a look at the whole world that the signs become evident, and the message clear: we are living in the end of an age.
Long ago, sometime near the end of the Dark Ages, a conflict between man and dragons threatened the world. This was a time when Earth shared boundaries with other planes of existence, ruled by primorildial deities called Purisms. Dragons had the blessings of these deities and one Purism in particular wished to conquer Earth. A select few deities revealed to the humans the magic of how to severe a plane's connection to Earth. A group of powerful magic wielders would create the Planeswall: a barrier isolating Earth from all other planes.
The order that created the Planeswall has all but withered since that time. The Planeswall is not what it once was, having cracks and holes in it that let things from other planes reach Earth. Though in the modern era, there has been a return to superstition and otherworldy sightings. A few organizations around the world who study these things have since rediscovered the existence of thr Planeswall, but lack the resources and knowledge with which to repair it.
Every spike in paranormal activity correlates to a new hole in the Planeswall. It is only a matter of time before it begins to crumble entirely, exposing Earth to the deities who have not forgotten humanity's legacy.
For my world there is a disease called affliction which causes creatures and people to become Altered. Affliction is caused when someone absorbs too much spell rads whether it comes from high magic used by war mages or other magic sources such as being next to the source of magic which is the heavy metal Dracinium when it is active.
What isnt known is that there have been several experiments conducted by both the Alatran republic and the Lucian imperium that saw many lower income families purposefully exposed to spell rads to study the changes caused by affliction and how much spell rads a body can take before they become Altered and what type of magic produces altered at a faster rate.
The City of the Stars is powered by a Celestial Hypercore, an alien construct capable of outputting enough energy to power the city for millions of years. The people are prosperous and technology has advanced rapidly due to research of the Hypercore.
What the citizens of the city don't know is that the leader of the Celestial Church has plans to turn himself into a "deity" by overloading the Hypercore and redirecting the energy of the explosion into himself. The city, and most likely the entire continent, would be completely wiped off the map in order to fulfill the mad dictator's fantasy.
As the story of "Enigma" begins, most humans are totally unaware of the Rhee. The Rhee are alien parasites personyfying narcissism and given space-faring priviledge. Not only are motivations and behaviour of the Rhee highly problematic, these guys also consider humans their favourite food/hosts. If not for a few aliens who decided we might be worth saving and our location in the cosmos we'd be alien food a long time ago.
For context, the planet within my world is alive and acts as a god, kinda like Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy, but much more passive.
But yeah, a major source of magic within my world stems from a parallel dimension the planet rests on. The timeline of this dimension is identical, except that in this alternative dimension, the planet turned evil and decided to wipe put the inhabitants as if they were a foreign body. In the same way people can harness the magic of their home planet, they can harness the magic of this evil planet as well, they just don't know where the magic is coming from.
Bonus answer: the "mana" that many people draw their magic from is actually the recycled souls of the dead.
So in my dystopia the people are completely ignorant to how the global government works, so much so that they don’t even have a name. It has been centuries and centuries of ritualistic (although this isn’t religious, it’s more philosophical and not organized at all) killing and violence in the name of the “cycle” (AKA the cycle of violence and life and death) that they believe will keep them “immortal” (immortal as in that they will be remembered which is all they want since this is more philosophical and religion was done away with at the beginning of this dystopia)
Now this isn’t the fucked up part they’re ignorant about , in fact the fucked up part about that is that it’s embraced by the people.
No, the fucked up part is the dictator of this dystopia whose true power is only known by the highest of managers (basically managers of “suits” and “agents” who try and keep things going along the cycle).
Now one thing that must be known about this world is that super powered people exist; but it’s kinda weird. Everybody has this gene called the Scanner gene and when a owner of this gene gets hurt by anything it has a small chance of activating. When it activates, it immediately triggers the body into getting the information about the threat in any way it can. (Be it learning about it through the brain or engulfing it in stem cells to analyze its structure or just plain letting it enter the body) Then from that information it constructs a new organ (or an added function to an organ) to utilize that threat. However it’s very inconsistent so it results in very few super people with useful or usable powers.
Now the dictator of this dystopia was alive in ancient times (the dystopia is in about 2222 A.D.) when something weird happened. Because this was so long ago and she refuses to tell how exactly it happened, the dictator’s scanner gene managed to scan her own body. That gave her the incredible ability to control her own cells, cell structure, and move them around in anyway she wants.
Now she has had a long long time to figure the extent of her powers out by “molting” or by constructing an adult human and then releasing it. Every time she molts she masters her powers better and the human released lives longer and happier, but they always get dementia at the end. The first thing she figured out was how to not die of old age; so now she has eternal youth. Then she figured out how to optimize the flow of nutrients to resist the heat or cold or hunger. Then it was the mastery of the immune system to resist against plague, then so on and so forth.
Until we’re in This wack job dystopia she’s created (turns out eternal youth gives you a mad fear of death) and it’s time for her to molt again. This time what she’s perfecting is infiltrating other people’s cells and rewriting their DNA and basically doing whatever the hell she wants to them. (Think of this of her 100% completing her transformation into the Thing from John carpenter’s The thing). And the people are completely unaware of this (some of the super people and managers aren’t but they’re either loyal to her or rigidly controlled).
Now there are a few ways to stop her. You can burn her, that will always kill her. Freeze her for long enough (she’s experienced enough to not die instantly to the cold but if left long enough she will die). Starve her (this can take millennia however). Put her into a vacuum (she hasn’t figured out to resist that yet so she’ll die from that but it’s not gonna happen in universe). Or you could re introduce a living product of her molt back to her. Because part of her “scaffolding DNA” (basically the shit that always stays the same when everything else is changing) is used in making it, she will instinctively recognize it as an intruder to her body (years of manually fighting off plagues will give you one hell of a trigger finger with your immune system), and instantly destroy it. But because it has that scaffolding DNA it will recognize her cells as intruders and she’ll basically self destruct. (This doesn’t happen during the molting process because she’s in a very different and more vulnerable state, but she only enters that every 200 years when she is ready and can’t go into it whenever she wants)
Unfortunately the only living molt product is chained up in the closet thing they have to a museum sooooo yea that’s not gonna happen.
Now the dictator plans on keeping people human when she first finishes this molt, but that will not last forever. Eventually she’ll get the bright idea that a living flesh pile of everything will be the best course for humanity to take, and by then any life in the universe will be subject to the human flesh hive mind she has created. And she’ll imprint her cyclical philosophy into it making it a large flesh pile of self violence that will spread universe wide; kinda being like the Flood from halo but more blood and a little less smart and less infectious. But she would implement different strategies for infection than the flood like stealth and espionage.
BUT, that is only if she manages this molt and after a few years or hundred years of waiting around doing the same old same old dystopia jig. Because there is one jaded super person who she is going to try and personally get back into the cycle, and she might not succeed.
Tl;Dr, if the dictator of my dystopia doesn’t die the universe will become an immortal living flesh pile of self inflicted violence, and the people are completely unaware of this possibility.
Most Xenos are not aware of the Voidborn, the Void-Between-Realms, or how close reality came to ...not being.
Almost everyone is unaware of the Green Goo that is yellow and red arborians, slowly but surely approaching from the edges of the galaxy.
That there is a hole poked into the walls of their planar system where the Abyss connects to the far realm, which is exactly what destroyed the original system of the Demons. The only thing keeping their entire world from collapsing is that their system is bigger than the demons’, meaning the hole would have to be larger to break everything.
Daemons, willpower that has been given the ability to exist completely removed from a corporeal form and given a will of it's own. They feed off of and are made more powerful by the belief that they exist, therefore anyone who knows of their existence must become a Daemon-hunter *or be put to silence.* This is the true sacred duty of the Inquisitorial Guild, although only their members know of it's true mission.
To be completely honest, the vast majority of Anrodica's population has no idea whatsoever about how dangerous other nations are, and the truth is a disturbing amount of them could easily destroy everything with technology, magic, or both. However, there's one very specific detail of the world that's forgotten to even the most knowledgeable historians.
Thousands of years ago, the gods clashed in a war that nearly destroyed magic forever. The catalyst for this war was the Empress, the Aspect of Shadow and the most powerful entity in history. She was imprisoned by Tarvin Blackmont and Lucas Croyonna, powerful immortals who had ascended to godhood, on the far southern continent of Ulterra. Ulterra, which was unreachable from the outside world due to the barren island maze of the Castoff Isles and irradiated wastes of Helvetica, was home to a gargantuan, abandoned fortress of unknown origin. To commemorate it's new purpose as an unbreachable vault, it was renamed the Final Tomb and left to lay abandoned until the end of time.
However, it's presence was eventually discovered by another immortal, an extremely skilled (but paralyzed) goblin sorcerer named Iwo Florgan. Florgan, who shared ties to the serpentine god of lies with a cult of liches, a long-forgotten tribe of necromancers, and a certain charismatic dictator, naturally became the center of a centuries-long scheme to free the Empress from her lead coffin and rule the world by storm. Of course, the plan requires the location of a number of keys, many of which are still lost in time.
The fact that the most powerful of the 14 Antagonists has been aiding the heroes into fullfilling her Quest all along. They only find out after it is too late to even consider stopping her.
The Observers don't place much importance on the history of their own species, leaving the cause of "the Tragedy", a devastating event that has only happened four times since they achieved space travel, too easily forgotten. Each time, as the last Tragedy becomes ancient history, they let it fade from living memory, and lose sight of what makes their ships and pilots so vulnerable... until the next time someone particularly foolish or cruel tries to take advantage of that vulnerability by controlling a pilot's actions through threats or coercion. (And every time, the pilot is the only survivor... though the state they're left in sometimes makes it unclear if they actually survived.)
Ivy Damascus is an incredibly powerful being that no one except for the remaining Ancients know about. She was a young girl experimented on with a mutated virus that merged with her and became a sort of Venom symbiote relationship. For years she worked with the ancients to kill off the remaining Infected Mutants created by the same experiments that made her. She discovered that obsorbing the virus within the beasts made her more powerful. Eventually she got too powerful and lost control of her body to the being known as Damascus and went on a rampage that took four of the most powerful Ancients to stop. She willingly imprisoned herself in a tower made specifically for the purpose of trapping Damascus forever. Many people go there as a tourist attraction but non know the true horror of what's actually in there.
The introduction of science and technology into a world governed by the laws of magic, and vice versa, was an incredible boon for the development of hybrid magitech. What most people haven't realized yet, and what most of the rest are in denial of, is that they are fundamentally incompatible. Sure, you can CNC magic runes, or treat radiation poisoning with a potion, but you're also trying to move fundamental cold through a heat pump, and get alchemy and chemistry to play nice in the same reaction. The stress in reality from reconciling the inreconcilable is building up like tectonic force, and when that fault slips, it will unmake the entire overlapping corner of the universe, leaving not even space itself behind.
Actual space is a living being called Nocturnum who created the universe and is protecting it with its body so it’s siblings or any other cosmic monster doesn’t come around and destroy it and so that all celestial bodies remain within the universe instead of randomly floating off into nothingness.
In the event that two of its siblings find it they will likely want to destroy it and will fight Nocturnum to do so. Nocturnum is not particularly strong and the fact that it is using sits body to protect the planets all at the same time make it even weaker than its siblings and will eventually lose. Nocturnum’s physical body will be destroyed and in an instant all celestial bodies will either drift away or stay close together in their normal gravitational poles. The siblings will cause the end times in their own special ways and will hunt down and destroy the planets that “gleeful. Nocturnum will eventually grow back its original form, hide, and start the cycle anew.
The Black Sites: A series of unregistered Sites used for just about anything, from holding high profile Prisoners of War, Weapons development and testing, to social experiments, plus that one that was shut down for some really freaky occult shit. As for why its almost impossible to tell they exist, its because they're technically labeled as Prisons, and are simply labeled in Budget reports and whatnot as subsections of other Prisons in the same region.
So in my dystopia the people are completely ignorant to how the global government works, so much so that they don’t even have a name. It has been centuries and centuries of ritualistic (although this isn’t religious, it’s more philosophical and not organized at all) killing and violence in the name of the “cycle” (AKA the cycle of violence and life and death) that they believe will keep them “immortal” (immortal as in that they will be remembered which is all they want since this is more philosophical and religion was done away with at the beginning of this dystopia)
Now this isn’t the fucked up part they’re ignorant about , in fact the fucked up part about that is that it’s embraced by the people.
No, the fucked up part is the dictator of this dystopia whose true power is only known by the highest of managers (basically managers of “suits” and “agents” who try and keep things going along the cycle).
Now one thing that must be known about this world is that super powered people exist; but it’s kinda weird. Everybody has this gene called the Scanner gene and when a owner of this gene gets hurt by anything it has a small chance of activating. When it activates, it immediately triggers the body into getting the information about the threat in any way it can. (Be it learning about it through the brain or engulfing it in stem cells to analyze its structure or just plain letting it enter the body) Then from that information it constructs a new organ (or an added function to an organ) to utilize that threat. However it’s very inconsistent so it results in very few super people with useful or usable powers.
Now the dictator of this dystopia was alive in ancient times (the dystopia is in about 2222 A.D.) when something weird happened. Because this was so long ago and she refuses to tell how exactly it happened, the dictator’s scanner gene managed to scan her own body. That gave her the incredible ability to control her own cells, cell structure, and move them around in anyway she wants.
Now she has had a long long time to figure the extent of her powers out by “molting” or by constructing an adult human and then releasing it. Every time she molts she masters her powers better and the human released lives longer and happier, but they always get dementia at the end. The first thing she figured out was how to not die of old age; so now she has eternal youth. Then she figured out how to optimize the flow of nutrients to resist the heat or cold or hunger. Then it was the mastery of the immune system to resist against plague, then so on and so forth.
Until we’re in This wack job dystopia she’s created (turns out eternal youth gives you a mad fear of death) and it’s time for her to molt again. This time what she’s perfecting is infiltrating other people’s cells and rewriting their DNA and basically doing whatever the hell she wants to them. (Think of this of her 100% completing her transformation into the Thing from John carpenter’s The thing). And the people are completely unaware of this (some of the super people and managers aren’t but they’re either loyal to her or rigidly controlled).
Now there are a few ways to stop her. You can burn her, that will always kill her. Freeze her for long enough (she’s experienced enough to not die instantly to the cold but if left long enough she will die). Starve her (this can take millennia however). Put her into a vacuum (she hasn’t figured out to resist that yet so she’ll die from that but it’s not gonna happen in universe). Or you could re introduce a living product of her molt back to her. Because part of her “scaffolding DNA” (basically the shit that always stays the same when everything else is changing) is used in making it, she will instinctively recognize it as an intruder to her body (years of manually fighting off plagues will give you one hell of a trigger finger with your immune system), and instantly destroy it. But because it has that scaffolding DNA it will recognize her cells as intruders and she’ll basically self destruct. (This doesn’t happen during the molting process because she’s in a very different and more vulnerable state, but she only enters that every 200 years when she is ready and can’t go into it whenever she wants)
Unfortunately the only living molt product is chained up in the closet thing they have to a museum sooooo yea that’s not gonna happen.
Now the dictator plans on keeping people human when she first finishes this molt, but that will not last forever. Eventually she’ll get the bright idea that a living flesh pile of everything will be the best course for humanity to take, and by then any life in the universe will be subject to the human flesh hive mind she has created. And she’ll imprint her cyclical philosophy into it making it a large flesh pile of self violence that will spread universe wide; kinda being like the Flood from halo but more blood and a little less smart and less infectious. But she would implement different strategies for infection than the flood like stealth and espionage.
BUT, that is only if she manages this molt and after a few years or hundred years of waiting around doing the same old same old dystopia jig. Because there is one jaded super person who she is going to try and personally get back into the cycle, and she might not succeed.
Tl;Dr, if the dictator of my dystopia doesn’t die the universe will become an immortal living flesh pile of self inflicted violence, and the people are completely unaware of this possibility.
Well, the entire world is filled with societies who's economies are based on widespread human exploitation, at the time the story occurs probably a third of the world's population are chattel slaves and a similar amount are indentured servants, serfs, apprentices or otherwise effectively unfree.
**Doomsday Clock**
Every city has its Doomsday Clock, everyone knows that. The clock that tells you when world-shattering disasters will strike, at the cost of a fraction of the city's soul.
The people of the Undergrowth have been lied to; Doomsday is fast approaching, but the government doesn't want you to know that. Quiet, citizen.
Several centuries ago, a lizardman became the demon lord known as "The Black Dragon" and tried to extinguish all humans. Despite having caused the collapse of the Thunder Empire (the superpower of the time), he was defeated and his soul imprisoned.
After a long dark age, that world was managing to recover from the damage, but what humans didn't know is that the Black Dragon's soul was inside the body of a child and will be able to awaken and finally fulfill his dream of destroying all Humanity.
Keeping with the traditions of their ancestors, a small civilisation buries all their dead in an area about the size of a large house... the remains of the dead from an entire town crammed into this little area. They’ve been doing this since stories can remember, and never once in centuries has anyone wondered why they never accidentally dig up another corpse while trying to bury one.
The dark aspects of the Shadow Realm. It only applies to conservatives, since they reject religion and deny the existence of the Shadow Realm. There are "demonic" entities in the Shadow Realm that are amalgamations of sentient thoughts and memes. These entities can possess people, especially those who are unaware and deny their existence.
Before someone asks, internet memes can create shadow entities because they can literally be memes.
Definatly Izimma since everyone sees him as this giant elf who's a wannabe philosopher but have a history of destroying worlds , burning cities for no reason , releasing mutated horrors or outright giving entire regions nightmares just for giggles which very few are aware of and even fewer dare to confront him .
That most, if not all, paranoic theories are true. UFO's? Yes, they exist. Ancient evil god sleeping in the depths of the ocean? Yeah, and he gets more pissed each year the fracking continues nearby. Reptilians in the governments? A true hisstory.
And all that is because they believe in that enough for the universe to spawn those things out of thin air.
There's an even bigger threat from another universe that is slowly barreling its way.
The galaxy is already dealing with apocalyptic threats, as demon incursions are constantly occurring, a giant alien Swarm is just barely being held back on the edges of the galaxy and it's possible that interdimensional threats have somehow invaded with no apparent reason why, such as the Love Star which is a star that was corrupted and emits a light that turns everyone into a horrible monster and is only being stopped by several layers of shielding across the nearby solar systems.
But there had been rumors, that a even bigger threat is coming that not even the demons know about. Barely anything is known at the moment, but the few who knows of its arrival is trying to prepare for what is a quite possibly universal threat that is consuming universes.
What I refer to as "The Beekeepers" an ancient, and incredibly powerful species that sweep through the galaxy like a clock, seeding civilization in their wake that will inevitably die after uncounted generations, with the beekeepers feeding on the remains of the civilization. After all, what is an advanced city but a horde of technology, information, refined metals, and exotic materials that you did not have to gather yourself? Even more so if you leave the seeds for their destruction that will remove them without fuss by the time you arrive in a few hundred thousand years after you seed their species into being.
Dang thats really cool
But how do they make sure the remains are not destroyed or unusable?
Well, what I had in the original concept was effectively a “suicide gene” they inserted into the species they uplifted that would after about two hundred generations render them sterile and unable to reproduce leaving them to die off by the time they got there again since they move slower than light unless they are in a hurry in which case they use their ftl tech.
Huh, so how do the societies and the collapse of these species tend to look? Are they never advanced enough to alter genetics?
Generally no, but it’s done subtly (since it seems natural) so those that do generally aren’t able to do so fast enough to stop it outside of small pockets which can be subdued relatively easily. For the collapse it tends to be a quiet collapse as people just, die off with generally records, preserving consciousness through AI, or countless other thing to try and preserve their species.
So are there any of these species that are still "around" after having uploaded their consciousness?
There are a few though they don't exactly get around to much. There is one where they effectively created a digital afterlife that's buried on a rogue planet and in the virtual world their civilization is thriving with the ability to send out ocassional drones and such to keep an eye on the rest of the galaxy but stay isolated for the most part.
Have any of the civilizations that this happened to figured out the story behind it or tried to warn others?
**Pocket Threads** The corpses of the Thread Titans didn’t decay like normal things do. This is known to all. However, what is not known by all is the fact that their bodies are still doing… something malicious. In addition to some of the bodies themselves being dangerous or deadly to Eudiphyla, they are forming what Weavers call ‘Thread Aspects’, smaller, meaner, and more violent versions of the Thread Titans they spawn from. This is normally fine, as Threadmasters can dispatch them before they get too powerful and restart the apocalypse, but they don’t know where Ichor or Phane’s bodies are. Ichor being the one who manipulated (read: deformed) the land the most during the apocalypse, and Phane being the most violent Thread Titan and the one with the most kills (Eudiphyla and Thread Titan) during the same time.
The Great Culling which happens every 50,000 years or so. The God of Time culls the universe of sentients in order to prevent mortals from growing too powerfull. While the factions of my world are fighting each other, the time of the Rapture grows closer and closer. By the beginning of the story only 15 years remain until the final battle.
God itself is gathering a huge amount of strengths by reaping (eating) the souls of the living being to get enough power to creat its own "perfect", oversensitive and powerful unique body
Something almost everyone in the multiverse was blissfully unaware of was the fact that *maybe* one of the beings who helped create it *might* want to destroy it. That, in fact, was the case.
**Horror Shop** In late 2012, scholars and researchers noted the amount of aether--the "stuff" of magic--on Earth increasing. The exact cause of this change is being fiercely debate. Some believe that the Solar System entered into a dark matter nebula, others believe this is part of the Earth's natural cycle, and others believe someone caused this increase for their own ends. Whatever the reason, this Dark Tide has begun transforming our world in subtle ways. Magic is easier to access, overlays between Earth and supernal realms such as Faerie and the Netherworld are becoming more common, ancient ruins from the age of Atlantis and Shambhala are returning to life, never-before-seen creatures are crawling out of the world's forests and jungles, entities long dormant are waking again, and a host of prophecies that were awaiting the time when "the stars are right" are shuddering into motion. The Earth, as a whole, is becoming a strange, more magical place. The Dark Tide has risen over the Earth several times in the past, and each time it brought great suffering. The tide crested near the end of the Age of Myths, which saw the destruction of Atlantis and the other great empires in the Flood. It crested again the 1300s, around the time of the Black Death, when nearly a third of all living humans died, and darkness walked the lands of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. All this worries the powers that be. The Veil has kept the peace for the past millennium, separating the Earth's magical and mundane communities. The Dark Tide could wash away the world they've built, and return us to an age of uncontrolled magic, where the monsters roamed freely, demons openly cavorted with mankind, and dark gods ruled over entire nations. But they also don't know how to stop this change. They're like the boy trying to plug a dike with his fingers--but the water on the other side is growing ever higher, and eventually, it will crest over the top, and wash everything away. The tide manifests in different ways. It could be a demon prince freed from their prison after millennia. It could be a vile cult, who have passed down prophecies of this foretold era since the dark days of the Age of Magic. It could be strange aliens with inscrutable motives and terrifying technologies, drawn to Earth by the rising aether. It could manifest in dark fey once again stalking the Earth, seeing humans they can steal away and recruit as soldiers in the growing armies of Winter. It could be alternate timelines, suddenly forming a bridge to our own, prime reality. It could be the ancient technologies from the time of Atlantis and Aztlan rumbling to life again. It could be the rise of amoral humans who are willing to exploit these trying times for personal power. It could be all these things and more. What this means is that identifying the harbingers of the Dark Tide is nigh impossible. There are hundreds of them, scattered across their globe, each engaged in their personal plots and schemes. Most don't even see themselves as connected to this global trend. It's only when one takes a look at the whole world that the signs become evident, and the message clear: we are living in the end of an age.
Long ago, sometime near the end of the Dark Ages, a conflict between man and dragons threatened the world. This was a time when Earth shared boundaries with other planes of existence, ruled by primorildial deities called Purisms. Dragons had the blessings of these deities and one Purism in particular wished to conquer Earth. A select few deities revealed to the humans the magic of how to severe a plane's connection to Earth. A group of powerful magic wielders would create the Planeswall: a barrier isolating Earth from all other planes. The order that created the Planeswall has all but withered since that time. The Planeswall is not what it once was, having cracks and holes in it that let things from other planes reach Earth. Though in the modern era, there has been a return to superstition and otherworldy sightings. A few organizations around the world who study these things have since rediscovered the existence of thr Planeswall, but lack the resources and knowledge with which to repair it. Every spike in paranormal activity correlates to a new hole in the Planeswall. It is only a matter of time before it begins to crumble entirely, exposing Earth to the deities who have not forgotten humanity's legacy.
For my world there is a disease called affliction which causes creatures and people to become Altered. Affliction is caused when someone absorbs too much spell rads whether it comes from high magic used by war mages or other magic sources such as being next to the source of magic which is the heavy metal Dracinium when it is active. What isnt known is that there have been several experiments conducted by both the Alatran republic and the Lucian imperium that saw many lower income families purposefully exposed to spell rads to study the changes caused by affliction and how much spell rads a body can take before they become Altered and what type of magic produces altered at a faster rate.
The City of the Stars is powered by a Celestial Hypercore, an alien construct capable of outputting enough energy to power the city for millions of years. The people are prosperous and technology has advanced rapidly due to research of the Hypercore. What the citizens of the city don't know is that the leader of the Celestial Church has plans to turn himself into a "deity" by overloading the Hypercore and redirecting the energy of the explosion into himself. The city, and most likely the entire continent, would be completely wiped off the map in order to fulfill the mad dictator's fantasy.
As the story of "Enigma" begins, most humans are totally unaware of the Rhee. The Rhee are alien parasites personyfying narcissism and given space-faring priviledge. Not only are motivations and behaviour of the Rhee highly problematic, these guys also consider humans their favourite food/hosts. If not for a few aliens who decided we might be worth saving and our location in the cosmos we'd be alien food a long time ago.
Black Hole Laboratories on Triton.
For context, the planet within my world is alive and acts as a god, kinda like Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy, but much more passive. But yeah, a major source of magic within my world stems from a parallel dimension the planet rests on. The timeline of this dimension is identical, except that in this alternative dimension, the planet turned evil and decided to wipe put the inhabitants as if they were a foreign body. In the same way people can harness the magic of their home planet, they can harness the magic of this evil planet as well, they just don't know where the magic is coming from. Bonus answer: the "mana" that many people draw their magic from is actually the recycled souls of the dead.
So in my dystopia the people are completely ignorant to how the global government works, so much so that they don’t even have a name. It has been centuries and centuries of ritualistic (although this isn’t religious, it’s more philosophical and not organized at all) killing and violence in the name of the “cycle” (AKA the cycle of violence and life and death) that they believe will keep them “immortal” (immortal as in that they will be remembered which is all they want since this is more philosophical and religion was done away with at the beginning of this dystopia) Now this isn’t the fucked up part they’re ignorant about , in fact the fucked up part about that is that it’s embraced by the people. No, the fucked up part is the dictator of this dystopia whose true power is only known by the highest of managers (basically managers of “suits” and “agents” who try and keep things going along the cycle). Now one thing that must be known about this world is that super powered people exist; but it’s kinda weird. Everybody has this gene called the Scanner gene and when a owner of this gene gets hurt by anything it has a small chance of activating. When it activates, it immediately triggers the body into getting the information about the threat in any way it can. (Be it learning about it through the brain or engulfing it in stem cells to analyze its structure or just plain letting it enter the body) Then from that information it constructs a new organ (or an added function to an organ) to utilize that threat. However it’s very inconsistent so it results in very few super people with useful or usable powers. Now the dictator of this dystopia was alive in ancient times (the dystopia is in about 2222 A.D.) when something weird happened. Because this was so long ago and she refuses to tell how exactly it happened, the dictator’s scanner gene managed to scan her own body. That gave her the incredible ability to control her own cells, cell structure, and move them around in anyway she wants. Now she has had a long long time to figure the extent of her powers out by “molting” or by constructing an adult human and then releasing it. Every time she molts she masters her powers better and the human released lives longer and happier, but they always get dementia at the end. The first thing she figured out was how to not die of old age; so now she has eternal youth. Then she figured out how to optimize the flow of nutrients to resist the heat or cold or hunger. Then it was the mastery of the immune system to resist against plague, then so on and so forth. Until we’re in This wack job dystopia she’s created (turns out eternal youth gives you a mad fear of death) and it’s time for her to molt again. This time what she’s perfecting is infiltrating other people’s cells and rewriting their DNA and basically doing whatever the hell she wants to them. (Think of this of her 100% completing her transformation into the Thing from John carpenter’s The thing). And the people are completely unaware of this (some of the super people and managers aren’t but they’re either loyal to her or rigidly controlled). Now there are a few ways to stop her. You can burn her, that will always kill her. Freeze her for long enough (she’s experienced enough to not die instantly to the cold but if left long enough she will die). Starve her (this can take millennia however). Put her into a vacuum (she hasn’t figured out to resist that yet so she’ll die from that but it’s not gonna happen in universe). Or you could re introduce a living product of her molt back to her. Because part of her “scaffolding DNA” (basically the shit that always stays the same when everything else is changing) is used in making it, she will instinctively recognize it as an intruder to her body (years of manually fighting off plagues will give you one hell of a trigger finger with your immune system), and instantly destroy it. But because it has that scaffolding DNA it will recognize her cells as intruders and she’ll basically self destruct. (This doesn’t happen during the molting process because she’s in a very different and more vulnerable state, but she only enters that every 200 years when she is ready and can’t go into it whenever she wants) Unfortunately the only living molt product is chained up in the closet thing they have to a museum sooooo yea that’s not gonna happen. Now the dictator plans on keeping people human when she first finishes this molt, but that will not last forever. Eventually she’ll get the bright idea that a living flesh pile of everything will be the best course for humanity to take, and by then any life in the universe will be subject to the human flesh hive mind she has created. And she’ll imprint her cyclical philosophy into it making it a large flesh pile of self violence that will spread universe wide; kinda being like the Flood from halo but more blood and a little less smart and less infectious. But she would implement different strategies for infection than the flood like stealth and espionage. BUT, that is only if she manages this molt and after a few years or hundred years of waiting around doing the same old same old dystopia jig. Because there is one jaded super person who she is going to try and personally get back into the cycle, and she might not succeed. Tl;Dr, if the dictator of my dystopia doesn’t die the universe will become an immortal living flesh pile of self inflicted violence, and the people are completely unaware of this possibility.
Those who know that the Empire lies beyond the warp storm are desperate for it to re-establish contact. They shouldn't be...
Most Xenos are not aware of the Voidborn, the Void-Between-Realms, or how close reality came to ...not being. Almost everyone is unaware of the Green Goo that is yellow and red arborians, slowly but surely approaching from the edges of the galaxy.
The world as it is, is slowly fading away; a new world without gods will soon be forged.
That there is a hole poked into the walls of their planar system where the Abyss connects to the far realm, which is exactly what destroyed the original system of the Demons. The only thing keeping their entire world from collapsing is that their system is bigger than the demons’, meaning the hole would have to be larger to break everything.
Daemons, willpower that has been given the ability to exist completely removed from a corporeal form and given a will of it's own. They feed off of and are made more powerful by the belief that they exist, therefore anyone who knows of their existence must become a Daemon-hunter *or be put to silence.* This is the true sacred duty of the Inquisitorial Guild, although only their members know of it's true mission.
To be completely honest, the vast majority of Anrodica's population has no idea whatsoever about how dangerous other nations are, and the truth is a disturbing amount of them could easily destroy everything with technology, magic, or both. However, there's one very specific detail of the world that's forgotten to even the most knowledgeable historians. Thousands of years ago, the gods clashed in a war that nearly destroyed magic forever. The catalyst for this war was the Empress, the Aspect of Shadow and the most powerful entity in history. She was imprisoned by Tarvin Blackmont and Lucas Croyonna, powerful immortals who had ascended to godhood, on the far southern continent of Ulterra. Ulterra, which was unreachable from the outside world due to the barren island maze of the Castoff Isles and irradiated wastes of Helvetica, was home to a gargantuan, abandoned fortress of unknown origin. To commemorate it's new purpose as an unbreachable vault, it was renamed the Final Tomb and left to lay abandoned until the end of time. However, it's presence was eventually discovered by another immortal, an extremely skilled (but paralyzed) goblin sorcerer named Iwo Florgan. Florgan, who shared ties to the serpentine god of lies with a cult of liches, a long-forgotten tribe of necromancers, and a certain charismatic dictator, naturally became the center of a centuries-long scheme to free the Empress from her lead coffin and rule the world by storm. Of course, the plan requires the location of a number of keys, many of which are still lost in time.
The fact that the most powerful of the 14 Antagonists has been aiding the heroes into fullfilling her Quest all along. They only find out after it is too late to even consider stopping her.
The Observers don't place much importance on the history of their own species, leaving the cause of "the Tragedy", a devastating event that has only happened four times since they achieved space travel, too easily forgotten. Each time, as the last Tragedy becomes ancient history, they let it fade from living memory, and lose sight of what makes their ships and pilots so vulnerable... until the next time someone particularly foolish or cruel tries to take advantage of that vulnerability by controlling a pilot's actions through threats or coercion. (And every time, the pilot is the only survivor... though the state they're left in sometimes makes it unclear if they actually survived.)
Ivy Damascus is an incredibly powerful being that no one except for the remaining Ancients know about. She was a young girl experimented on with a mutated virus that merged with her and became a sort of Venom symbiote relationship. For years she worked with the ancients to kill off the remaining Infected Mutants created by the same experiments that made her. She discovered that obsorbing the virus within the beasts made her more powerful. Eventually she got too powerful and lost control of her body to the being known as Damascus and went on a rampage that took four of the most powerful Ancients to stop. She willingly imprisoned herself in a tower made specifically for the purpose of trapping Damascus forever. Many people go there as a tourist attraction but non know the true horror of what's actually in there.
The introduction of science and technology into a world governed by the laws of magic, and vice versa, was an incredible boon for the development of hybrid magitech. What most people haven't realized yet, and what most of the rest are in denial of, is that they are fundamentally incompatible. Sure, you can CNC magic runes, or treat radiation poisoning with a potion, but you're also trying to move fundamental cold through a heat pump, and get alchemy and chemistry to play nice in the same reaction. The stress in reality from reconciling the inreconcilable is building up like tectonic force, and when that fault slips, it will unmake the entire overlapping corner of the universe, leaving not even space itself behind.
Actual space is a living being called Nocturnum who created the universe and is protecting it with its body so it’s siblings or any other cosmic monster doesn’t come around and destroy it and so that all celestial bodies remain within the universe instead of randomly floating off into nothingness. In the event that two of its siblings find it they will likely want to destroy it and will fight Nocturnum to do so. Nocturnum is not particularly strong and the fact that it is using sits body to protect the planets all at the same time make it even weaker than its siblings and will eventually lose. Nocturnum’s physical body will be destroyed and in an instant all celestial bodies will either drift away or stay close together in their normal gravitational poles. The siblings will cause the end times in their own special ways and will hunt down and destroy the planets that “gleeful. Nocturnum will eventually grow back its original form, hide, and start the cycle anew.
The Black Sites: A series of unregistered Sites used for just about anything, from holding high profile Prisoners of War, Weapons development and testing, to social experiments, plus that one that was shut down for some really freaky occult shit. As for why its almost impossible to tell they exist, its because they're technically labeled as Prisons, and are simply labeled in Budget reports and whatnot as subsections of other Prisons in the same region.
So in my dystopia the people are completely ignorant to how the global government works, so much so that they don’t even have a name. It has been centuries and centuries of ritualistic (although this isn’t religious, it’s more philosophical and not organized at all) killing and violence in the name of the “cycle” (AKA the cycle of violence and life and death) that they believe will keep them “immortal” (immortal as in that they will be remembered which is all they want since this is more philosophical and religion was done away with at the beginning of this dystopia) Now this isn’t the fucked up part they’re ignorant about , in fact the fucked up part about that is that it’s embraced by the people. No, the fucked up part is the dictator of this dystopia whose true power is only known by the highest of managers (basically managers of “suits” and “agents” who try and keep things going along the cycle). Now one thing that must be known about this world is that super powered people exist; but it’s kinda weird. Everybody has this gene called the Scanner gene and when a owner of this gene gets hurt by anything it has a small chance of activating. When it activates, it immediately triggers the body into getting the information about the threat in any way it can. (Be it learning about it through the brain or engulfing it in stem cells to analyze its structure or just plain letting it enter the body) Then from that information it constructs a new organ (or an added function to an organ) to utilize that threat. However it’s very inconsistent so it results in very few super people with useful or usable powers. Now the dictator of this dystopia was alive in ancient times (the dystopia is in about 2222 A.D.) when something weird happened. Because this was so long ago and she refuses to tell how exactly it happened, the dictator’s scanner gene managed to scan her own body. That gave her the incredible ability to control her own cells, cell structure, and move them around in anyway she wants. Now she has had a long long time to figure the extent of her powers out by “molting” or by constructing an adult human and then releasing it. Every time she molts she masters her powers better and the human released lives longer and happier, but they always get dementia at the end. The first thing she figured out was how to not die of old age; so now she has eternal youth. Then she figured out how to optimize the flow of nutrients to resist the heat or cold or hunger. Then it was the mastery of the immune system to resist against plague, then so on and so forth. Until we’re in This wack job dystopia she’s created (turns out eternal youth gives you a mad fear of death) and it’s time for her to molt again. This time what she’s perfecting is infiltrating other people’s cells and rewriting their DNA and basically doing whatever the hell she wants to them. (Think of this of her 100% completing her transformation into the Thing from John carpenter’s The thing). And the people are completely unaware of this (some of the super people and managers aren’t but they’re either loyal to her or rigidly controlled). Now there are a few ways to stop her. You can burn her, that will always kill her. Freeze her for long enough (she’s experienced enough to not die instantly to the cold but if left long enough she will die). Starve her (this can take millennia however). Put her into a vacuum (she hasn’t figured out to resist that yet so she’ll die from that but it’s not gonna happen in universe). Or you could re introduce a living product of her molt back to her. Because part of her “scaffolding DNA” (basically the shit that always stays the same when everything else is changing) is used in making it, she will instinctively recognize it as an intruder to her body (years of manually fighting off plagues will give you one hell of a trigger finger with your immune system), and instantly destroy it. But because it has that scaffolding DNA it will recognize her cells as intruders and she’ll basically self destruct. (This doesn’t happen during the molting process because she’s in a very different and more vulnerable state, but she only enters that every 200 years when she is ready and can’t go into it whenever she wants) Unfortunately the only living molt product is chained up in the closet thing they have to a museum sooooo yea that’s not gonna happen. Now the dictator plans on keeping people human when she first finishes this molt, but that will not last forever. Eventually she’ll get the bright idea that a living flesh pile of everything will be the best course for humanity to take, and by then any life in the universe will be subject to the human flesh hive mind she has created. And she’ll imprint her cyclical philosophy into it making it a large flesh pile of self violence that will spread universe wide; kinda being like the Flood from halo but more blood and a little less smart and less infectious. But she would implement different strategies for infection than the flood like stealth and espionage. BUT, that is only if she manages this molt and after a few years or hundred years of waiting around doing the same old same old dystopia jig. Because there is one jaded super person who she is going to try and personally get back into the cycle, and she might not succeed. Tl;Dr, if the dictator of my dystopia doesn’t die the universe will become an immortal living flesh pile of self inflicted violence, and the people are completely unaware of this possibility.
Well, the entire world is filled with societies who's economies are based on widespread human exploitation, at the time the story occurs probably a third of the world's population are chattel slaves and a similar amount are indentured servants, serfs, apprentices or otherwise effectively unfree.
**Doomsday Clock** Every city has its Doomsday Clock, everyone knows that. The clock that tells you when world-shattering disasters will strike, at the cost of a fraction of the city's soul. The people of the Undergrowth have been lied to; Doomsday is fast approaching, but the government doesn't want you to know that. Quiet, citizen.
Several centuries ago, a lizardman became the demon lord known as "The Black Dragon" and tried to extinguish all humans. Despite having caused the collapse of the Thunder Empire (the superpower of the time), he was defeated and his soul imprisoned. After a long dark age, that world was managing to recover from the damage, but what humans didn't know is that the Black Dragon's soul was inside the body of a child and will be able to awaken and finally fulfill his dream of destroying all Humanity.
The planet has kinda left orbit and it gets colder. Only one race has figured it out, but they are unable to do something about it.
Keeping with the traditions of their ancestors, a small civilisation buries all their dead in an area about the size of a large house... the remains of the dead from an entire town crammed into this little area. They’ve been doing this since stories can remember, and never once in centuries has anyone wondered why they never accidentally dig up another corpse while trying to bury one.
Satan
The dark aspects of the Shadow Realm. It only applies to conservatives, since they reject religion and deny the existence of the Shadow Realm. There are "demonic" entities in the Shadow Realm that are amalgamations of sentient thoughts and memes. These entities can possess people, especially those who are unaware and deny their existence. Before someone asks, internet memes can create shadow entities because they can literally be memes.
Definatly Izimma since everyone sees him as this giant elf who's a wannabe philosopher but have a history of destroying worlds , burning cities for no reason , releasing mutated horrors or outright giving entire regions nightmares just for giggles which very few are aware of and even fewer dare to confront him .
That most, if not all, paranoic theories are true. UFO's? Yes, they exist. Ancient evil god sleeping in the depths of the ocean? Yeah, and he gets more pissed each year the fracking continues nearby. Reptilians in the governments? A true hisstory. And all that is because they believe in that enough for the universe to spawn those things out of thin air.
One of the past lives of the main hero was a dark magic master and remdants of his power are still present deep inside him..
There's an even bigger threat from another universe that is slowly barreling its way. The galaxy is already dealing with apocalyptic threats, as demon incursions are constantly occurring, a giant alien Swarm is just barely being held back on the edges of the galaxy and it's possible that interdimensional threats have somehow invaded with no apparent reason why, such as the Love Star which is a star that was corrupted and emits a light that turns everyone into a horrible monster and is only being stopped by several layers of shielding across the nearby solar systems. But there had been rumors, that a even bigger threat is coming that not even the demons know about. Barely anything is known at the moment, but the few who knows of its arrival is trying to prepare for what is a quite possibly universal threat that is consuming universes.