Morgoth

Long has the accursed concept of evil poisoned the wellspring of creation. Men and women alike curse their gods and fortune, unwilling to tolerate the cruelties and injustices of their circumstance. Yet all the madness and darkness of the Multiverse can be pinpointed at a singular being. Timeless immemorial, an eternally hated and terrifying foe. A Black Emperor clad in furious shadow, always seeking, always plotting, always decaying the goodness of civilization and twisting it unto his dark vision. Indeed, the Eternal Enemy of all Arda... Morgoth.
Morgoth's journey is long and recorded in fragments throughout time through the artifices of different civilization. So ancient and powerful is this foe that different forms of him are recorded in the historical databanks of over a billion societies within our local Universe alone. Statues of his many infinitely varied likenesses eschewed, all menacing and awe-inspiring in some regard. But this reality was not always so. For Morgoth was once Melkor, the most powerful and noble of all Valar, created by Eru Illuvatar, the First God of All Creation. During this age, the youthful Melkor was tasked of defense with nascent Creation from the Void itself, the all-encompassing embodies of space's blackness. Creatures that were blind, lame, dumb, yet colossal beyond measure with power indescribable that were ancient even in those early days laid siege to worlds constructed by the Valar time and time again, only being driven off when Melkor arrived, slaying countless Void-Beasts. However, he could not be everywhere at once, and thus when the Valar began creating lesser Maiar Angels to assist in their work, much of them were designed with battle in mind to assist Melkor's eternal vigilant watch.
Yet Melkor grew jealous. A few centuries into his duty, he began growing envious seeing the early civilizations of Man, Dwarf, and Elf among others found new innovations and technologies even their Creators hadn't yet envisioned. All Melkor and his protectorate could do meanwhile, were stand guard and watch in awe of such things, never become involved. This jealousy, stewing in the private halls of Mandos where Melkor dreamed of being a Creator himself, took a head when he confronted his Lord-Father Illuvatar, only to be rebuked and humiliated before all his kindred.
The greatest mistake Eru would make.
In ostracizing Melkor, he had born a monster. Without warning a few days later, Melkor murdered Orome, his brother, and absorbed his powers of Creation. Yet since they were born in sin, Orome's essence had corrupted and scarred Melkor in a pain so horrific it overshadows all other punishments imaginable in the Multiverse. A ruined and tattered Melkor had been reborn Morgoth, now a determined Dark God, the first true evil. Not a force of cosmic nature, but a determined Hellish enemy that sought to undo all that was good. Morgoth turned his sights onto Arda, the collective work of the Valar where their most prized creations lay. Weaponizing his subservient Maiar armies and twisting them, he made the Balrogs and indoctrinated his first real General, Sauron, who ultimately became something of a son to Morgoth and one of the few he displayed a genuine affection untoward. 
Creation's first and most devastating War followed, the War of Wrath. During this conflict, other pantheons were drawn either against or for Morgoth's banner. Manwe commanded the offensive against Morgoth, and during this dark age the Eternal Enemy constructed many fortresses across the Multiverse and even sired numerous species within the dark laboratories of his primary residence, Angbang. These creatures included the plentiful and spiteful Orcs and the wretched, monstrous balefire breathing Dragons, alongside Trolls, Goblins, Hydras, Kobolds, and many others. These species bore genetic superiority over the creations of the Valar on a basic level, and they were meant to serve as the Eternal Army of Darkness. Manwe, King of the Valar and Morgoth's greatest arch-nemesis, felt terrible for these beings and wanted to grant them a redemption from his brother's monstrous hold, but never truly could. 
Morgoth also enlisted the help of other Evil Gods at this time, forming a pantheon to rival that of his siblings in the Shadow Hand, which included Knull, a former Void-Beast Morgoth himself had given life towards, the Outer Gods, Darkseid, the C'tan, and much more. The Shadow Hand's powers were great and their armies malevolent and powerful. Yet all their might remained equalized by the Valar and their friends, such as the New Gods and Forces of Light that existed across the cosmic sphere. The War of Wrath took place on a scale unimaginable, the membranes of entire universes clashing against one another in displays of raw power that shattered entire concepts and remade them. Species were casually brought unto extinction and resurrected in new, warped forms to serve their Dark Masters a day later. Galaxies were used as small-time weapons, and Multiverses were simply connections of incoherent synapses tossed around akin to bullets from a gun. Even minor battles lasted eons, and the pivotal ones nearly stretched on for eternity. Army sizes were immensely vast, numbers that our limited human vocabulary could never hope to properly enforce. Morgoth faced off against many great Heroes, such as Fingolfin, the War-Hero of the Elves who stood against his malignant darkness. 
Nevertheless, every war, even one waged by gods, must end. Morgoth recognized that his tireless Legions were making little progress conventionally. So, in the twilight aeons of the war, initiated a campaign of depiction and debauchery behind enemy lines, cultivating his first willing worshipers in the Human and Elvish races, those amidst their race that were more intrigued than disgusted by Morgoth's actions and sought a slight fraction of such power for their own twisted ends. These sociopathic first contenders became the foundation for the now mighty and long-lasting Cult of Morgoth, the Omniverse's most powerful and determined evil religious organization. Using the Cult to gather intelligence on enemy movements and plans, the Legions of Darkness were able to overrun much of the key Valar Defenses. Cornering Manwe at his Last City, a great and last battle took place in which all armies and gods were present, fighting furiously and in doing so destroying the entire Multiverse around them. In the end, Manwe took advantage of a momentary hubris in Morgoth, and the Hero struck him through the chest. But as Morgoth was a Valar, he was truly immortal, and so only became dormant, his physical corporeal self ensnared within the Halls of Mandos and guarded by The Hound. 
Many eternities passed, yet Morgoth refused to fade or become irrelevant. Ever the Master Planner, he'd made investments should his efforts ever fail, and Sauron took up the mantle of Dark Lord whilst Morgoth's spirit went to work cultivating his worshipers and manipulating future generations to worship him. Traveling to new realms within the brilliant cosmos, Morgoth's Darkness touched upon everyone from nascent tribes of struggling cave-people to highly advanced technocrats whose merchant fleets raked in their credit-billions. All peoples were susceptible to his silver tongue of manipulation, from the mightiest King to humblest farmer. At times, for his own sick amusement, Morgoth would engineer the downfall of an entire race solely to watch their chaotic selves consumed in self-made fire and blood. Often times though, he did this to prevent civilizations that held a great potential to perhaps someday be of consequence to him, 'murdering them in their crib' so to speak. A race of wise Lizard-Monks that could bring peace and harmony to others was aggravated into self-destruction after a demagogue rose up in their ranks proclaiming the necessity of emotion in their doctrine, ultimately causing a split in their order that brought about mutual destruction. The ancient Je'Daii Order eternally ripped in half as dark whispers reached certain members of their Order that were ambitious and desired to explore the Force further. It will never be known the true extent of Morgoth's efforts during the time period between his original downfall and the UR, but one can be assured a colossal slice of history was directly influenced by him. 
When the United Republic rose, Morgoth's twisted eye fell upon it. Immediately, his loyal Cult had infiltrated its ranks militarily and politically, giving him necessary insight into their plans of conquering Galaxies and improving them for the better. Of course, Morgoth had other dark designs planned, instead using his power of manipulation to once again stoke countless planetary governors in the Core Worlds and Inner Rim to initiate their own rebellions and separatist wars against each other and the wider Republic in an effort to weaken the central government established on Coruscant. The 'Warlord Era' as many describe it was in large part because of Morgoth's indirect involvement and the tireless effort of his cult infiltrating media organizations and using the innate power of psychological propaganda to confused and disorientate the local populace into hating each other and thus never uniting to help achieve Emperor Pike and his cabinet's dream. 
This was only Stage One however. During this time, Morgoth had come across Zog the Eternal, a young necromancer with great potential to push the boundaries of power using necromantic magics. Inducting Zog into his cult during the Orc's ostracized New York youth, a great deal of grimoires and ancient knowledges were bestowed upon him for use, of which Zog spent countless years studying carefully until mastering the magical art and even adding his own twists upon Dark Magic to make it even stronger. Now able to use such terrible powers to hypnotize crowds of people to achieve his bidding and raise the dead en masse as cannon-fodder minions without question, Morgoth knew he found an excellent servant that could help propel his aims into the new generation. 
While also manipulating Zog and playing member-states of the United Republic against each other, thus being responsible for billions if not trillions of deaths, Morgoth's worshipers had established themselves on a backwater world deep within the Unknown Regions that was a former Sith Alchemist base of operations that the Dark Lord held prior knowledge of, having stoked the Sith's very existence in the first place. From here, using the knowledges left behind by Sith mystics that Morgoth knew personally and their own wicked technologies to create a sort of 'Dark Science', they had begun tirelessly working on a new body that their God-King's disembodied spirit may inhabit whilst his actual form remain eternally chained. A nascent nation-state also began forming within this shadowy, unexplored echelon of space, as Morgoth instructed his fervent minions to establish an empire that he may take the helm of upon full revitalization. By now, the Cult had consisted not simply of evil creatures naturally bred to follow their Evil Master, but also countless intelligent specimens that had defected from the United Republic and countless other governments from across the Multiverse after being lured by the promise of great achievement and power by the Elder King.
As Zog was still in training and building another branch of the cult fully dedicated to magical studies and necromancy, another great pawn needed to rise that could ensure these few systems which had fallen under Morgothian control would survive and not fall into civil war and decay. From the human sect of the Cult rose Commander Vantel. Having formerly served the Governor of Coreilla's Planetary Defense Forces, Vantel had been responsible for an abhorrent amount of war crimes when said Governor initiated purges of the planet's military hierarchy and civilian population to cleanse it of suspected 'traitors', as he sided Coreilla with the United Republic against the rising humanocentric Nativist movements at the time, a widely unpopular move fueled solely by the immense tributes UR authorities sent the Governor. Vantel had grown infamous for his merciless style of rule and lack of joy or humor in any situation, with a professionalism bordering on sadistic tendencies, though his lack of emotion made him forever a mystery, as to whether he truly enjoyed making enemies suffer or simply followed orders like a drone. Whatever the case, he answered Morgoth's call not for the banal reasonings of the cultists which sought only to bring pain and misery, but rather to create a genuinely long-lasting Imperial autocracy.
Within the Temple of Darkness, Vantel was blessed by Morgoth and marked as one of his few, sacred Chosen to command the efforts of his society. Vantel went to work dampening the religious-branch's powers and creating a more militaristic and discipline-orientated caste of Warriors that obeyed Morgoth through usage of genuine tactical prowess rather than blatant sacrifices and displays of maniacal yet mostly ineffective evil. The Warrior-Caste quickly subjugated the religious-branch after a short uprising led by Arch-Evil Radagan, Arch-Evil essentially being the 'Pope' of the Morgothian religion. Radagan's extremist following were highly numerous in comparison to Vantel's specialized forces but vastly inferior in basically everything else, being uncoordinated and only having access to dumb brute creatures such as Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, and so on whilst Vantel's Warrior-Caste were regimented and able to pick off entire crowds of the barking worshipers from afar and even convinced many of the subjugated monsters under their rulership to rebel in promises of a better life under a reinterpretation of Morgothian doctrine. Ragadan realized the civil war was lost and barricaded himself alongside his most trustworthy and loyal followers within the same Temple of Darkness that Vantel's Blessing was received. The Temple Siege was the longest battle of the war, lasting about ten days until the beleaguered and starved cultists surrendered Ragadan for a long and horrendous public execution in the Dark City's town square. 
Vantel then went to work conquering new star systems for Lord Morgoth as their population had suffered greatly in the brief internal incursion. Nearby alien worlds and dimensions were much too primitive to properly resist the Warrior-Caste, those that were able to prop up sufficient resistance against the minions of Morgoth would have their worlds hollowed and brought to extinction as Vantel would not suffer rebellions. In these new patches of territory the Morgothian religion was propped up and worship of him was mandatory, and all children were subsumed into the Armed Forces in some capacity to serve their master. Those too old or weak for such service were instead repurposed or tortured into cybernetic worker-drones that assisted in banal day-to-day tasks. Eventually, great cities of Darkness were erected and the religious branch was allowed to reform itself under Vantel's supervision and under a more subservient Arch-Evil. These cities pockmarked the ruled worlds, acting as their central nervous systems and capitals. Droid factories were also quickly made on these worlds alongside other industrious buildings all managed by Captains of Industry, former Robber-Barons whose riches were now lost under Emperor Pike's imperialist centralization reforms. These private capitalists still were entirely loyal to Morgoth though and thus often cooperated with Vantel's faction to root out traitors and keep the peace. 
Despite the more civilized nature Morgoth's civilization was undergoing, it was still an Empire built on worship of an Evil God. With the resurrected religious branch came daily sacrifices made to their God's glory, each maimed soul further adding onto the new body they were constructing for their master's soul to inhabit. Joy, happiness, art, and culture were soon being stamped out in favor of an entirely warrior-society, an ultra Darwinistic vision in which those perceived as weak were made to serve the strong, and that of which devotion to Morgoth was everything. Entire generations had been lost with indescribable acts of genocide at Vantel's hand as he sought to provide a lesson to the constant malcolents whom sought to rebel. Ultimately, Vantel's statesmanship and brilliance had been exactly what Morgoth sought and the Dark Lord at last arrived to take possession of his new body that strongly resembled his old and true form. This day had been an explosion of celebration, with the Empire of Evil sacrificing millions of slaves they had received from trades and conquests to strengthen their God-King's arrival and the entirety of the Morgothian Military Corps and highest ranking members of the Cult present for such a Holy Occasion. 
Morgoth allowed Vantel to retain his position and made him a right-hand man for his aptitude and skill, but his true goal remained the control of the United Republic and greater Multiverse, ultimately at last slaying his Valar-siblings. Calling Zog and his minions from their researches to at last join him within the blackened unknown reaches of the Galaxy, they replaced the position of Arch-Evil and the Cult Hierarchs as the new prime religious authorities on discerning the desires of God-King Morgoth. After purging the now antiquated Cult hierarchical system, Morgoth went to work using his eons worth of knowledge on statecraft and war to expand his Civilization of Darkness even further, often leading the charge into securing new star-systems and ordering the construction of new warfleets with updated schematics and armaments. Using this might, Morgoth captained a push into the Andromeda Galaxy, where a new berth of civilizations awaited his lordship, many of which the Dark Lord had witnessed grow from their barbaric infancy into societal juggernauts. Through consistent crusades of bloody darkness and battles waged against the native populaces of some worlds, ranging from bug-esque hivemind species to independent races of Snake-People, all fell before the Dark Hegemony's banner. Ten solar systems were remade into the Andromeda Colonies, Morgoth's swath of territory within the neighboring Galaxy which ultimately grew to have a unique sort of culture and society compared to their Unknown Regions counterparts, yet still carried the same utter devotion and loyalty to Morgoth after generations of breeding with Morgothian loyalists.
WIP