Xal'gyron

"Shall you prevail, our oasis will crumble to dust."

## Background

Xal’Gyron, also known as Xal, was a god-like creature that once lived in The Void. The circumstances of its birth, as well as its origins are currently unknown.

Xal was first described in a book written by Iris, a member of the Radiant Council. During the Radiant Council’s attempts to construct a portal to The Void, they erroneously linked the portal to somewhere inside Xal’s body. Over the course of numerous scouting missions, Xal’Gyron formed a friendship with Iris, even going as far as to create a small town near the portal and waiting there for her to arrive. On Iris’ final mission, Juniper also came along through the portal. After Xal described its nature to June, she attacked it, enraged at the thought of a third god to rival Gykallis. After being left with a nasty scar across its eye, Xal pulled them both back through their portal, and shattered it, making sure nobody could enter its world again.

An unknown amount of time later, in Season 2, Xal became aware that their body was rapidly decaying. Au’ora, while traveling the Void, encountered Xal’gyron and their decaying body. Seeing this as an opportunity to further spite Gykallis, as well as weakening his power over The Overworld, Au’ora struck a deal with Xal’Gyron and agreed to create The Meteor as a means for Xal to spread its dying world.

Over the course of Season 3, The Meteor gained more and more power as it was researched in its crash site. Unintentionally, Dr. Olivia Charlotte, one of the researchers at the site, fell extremely ill and eventually died due to her exposure to The Meteor’s corruption.

At the start of Season 4, The Meteor finally gained enough energy to open a portal to Xal’s realm, known then as “The Orb,” finally giving Xal a proper connection to The Overworld. Over the course of Season 4, the influence of Xal’s world became more and more powerful, enough for Xal to populate the corrupted area with its own creations. The citizens of Slimburg saw these otherworldly creatures as both a threat, and a source of great power, and began hunting down Xal’s creations to harvest their energy and craft powerful Meteor-based gear. This only caused Xal to grow more weary, creating more powerful creatures and eventually going as far as to resurrect Olivia’s corpse in an attempt to defend its last chance at survival.

Finally, at the end of Season 4, after a party of five activated the orbital cannon in The Facility, The Orb was struck down and destroyed, creating a massive implosion of energy that warped everyone and everything nearby directly into Xal’Gyron’s realm. Xal attempted to fight off its invaders, but to no avail. A majority of its essence was destroyed, with the remaining fragments ending up in an unknown location as the essence’s implosion warped everybody back to the overworld.

## Appearance

Xal’s outward appearance, referred to as its “Primordial form,” takes the appearance of a large, purple snake-like creature with a white underbelly. Its head has six eyes, arranged in pairs of three, pairs of dark purple nerve-like antennae, and two large protrusions on its sides, similar to a hammerhead shark. Both of its arms sport sharp claws and a dry, flaky “skin” rather than the scales on the rest of its body. Along its back are dorsal fin-like structures, leading to its tail, which sports a caudal fin similar to that of a betta fish.

Xal’s physical form, referred to as its “true” form, takes the form of a vaguely humanoid creature wearing a dark purple cloak. Its head has one large eye with a large, faded scar from a fight with Juniper, alongside two more compound eyes above its main one, and sports similar nerve-like antennae to its true form, albeit they instead glow a bright pink rather than purple. Its “hair” is a dark bluish-purple, and takes the form of a single, almost gelatin-like shape rather than strands of individual hairs. A glowing purple nerve connects its head to its nonexistent “body” underneath its cloak. It has a set of pinkish-purple crystalline wings, similar in shape to an atlas moth. It is usually seen with a singular floating left hand, accompanied by a golden bracelet covered in spikes, however it can summon as many extra hands as it may need.

Because this form is a projection created by its essence, it’s able to shapeshift into any form it wants. However, even though it’s a projection, any damage this form receives is permanently ingrained into Xal’s psyche, almost like a mental scar; This is why it still has the scar from its fight with Juniper, despite it technically being able to “heal” it whenever it wants.

Xal has also been seen taking the form of a large essence during Anathema, however this form was purely to preserve energy during combat.

## Personality

soul that would keep to itself, mostly on account of the fact that it was the only thing that existed in its own world. Despite its peaceful disposition, Xal was quick to fear, and would threaten to fight back when it felt as if it's under attack, although very rarely ever actually attacking. As shown through its interactions with Iris, Xal tends to be very friendly after it stops perceiving something as a threat, and shows great pride in the world it creates for itself.

After its interaction with Juniper, Xal closed themselves off from most other interactions and became mostly apathetic. From seasons 3-7, although never directly communicating with the residents of Farcombe, Xal became more hostile as it tried to defend itself from their attacks.

Finally, during Xal’s first true appearance in Anathema, it acted more akin to its original calm disposition and was willing to try to reason with the party, although its words were laced with dread as it knew it would most likely die.

To the residents of Farcombe, not much is known about the extent of Xal’s personality, as the only time it has ever truly spoken to them was during Anathema; Because of this, almost everyone sees Xal as evil, manipulative, and destructive.

## Biology

Being an entirely magic-based lifeform, Xal’gyron does not need to carry out any of the functions an organic lifeform would usually need to to survive. Because of this, it does not have any internal organs. This lack of organs leaves a massive, empty cavity throughout Xal’gyron’s entire body, intentionally designed by ??? to give Xal’gyron a space to use its essence’s powers.

Inside of this cavity lies what is essentially a nigh-endless desert made of hardened, white flesh, with generally flat, slightly hilly topography. The sides and roof of Xal’s innards are composed of bright purple, bioluminescent flesh speckled with eyes, creating the illusion of a purple sky filled with stars. Xal could also cause this bioluminescent skin to glow and fade, to simulate a sort of day and night cycle. In Xal’gyron’s skull lies a large cavity, roughly 1 km in length, housing its essence in the center. This cavity contains a floating landmass separated from the rest of its body and held up by magic. This cavity is also currently the only area of Xal’s body that the citizens of Farcombe (Save for Iris and Juniper) have been able to visit.

Common with all magic-based lifeforms, as Xal began to decay, its flesh turned to a white dust. Over time, this created large dunes of white “sand” composed of what are essentially flakes of Xal’s dead flesh. Some areas would form more mountainous dunes as dust from the roof of Xal’s body fell down like snow. In order to protect its essence, as well as to keep the landmass inside its skull afloat, the majority of Xal’s energy was concentrated near its skull. This greatly reduced and even stopped the decay of nearby areas, allowing them to retain their stone-like texture in contrast to the sandy dunes of the rest of its innards. It also allowed Xal’s projections of various Farcombian structures to last longer than its projections usually would.

## The Infection

The Infection as it is known started out simply as Xal'gyron's dreams and changes being layered over the world. In other words, Xal is imagining new ideas on top of The Overworld, like imagining the grass and dirt around the crash site to be white but not disfiguring them. When Gykallis and the residents of Farcombe started to attack The Infection, Xal's survival instincts went into full overdrive and became uncontrollable. It began to actually warp and biologically change the surrounding land, animals, and even people permanently.

How the infection works is that Xal'gyron's influence will begin to warp the victims essence with itself, and eventually takes over the entire thing if it isn't stopped. The stronger the essence of the creature, the more notable the changes are (As seen with the three human characters infected by it).

The infection cannot be spread through individual people who are afflicted, only objects that are directly linked to Xal'gyron themselves (like The Meteor or any armor/weapons derived from it) are capable of infecting organic life.

## Abilities

Xal can literally imagine anything. idk what else to write here

## Xal's Essences

* Conquest
* True Chaos
* Dreams

Xal has been in possession of three different essences over time.

Xal's original essence, the Essence of Dreams, allowed it to dream up anything it wanted in order to populate its world. It was also able to look into the memories and dreams of its inhabitants, and typically used that to create things from their dreams. Both of these abilities were limited to only work within Xal'gyron's body. Nobody, not even Xal'gyron, has seen what this essence looked like.

Xal's second essence, the (True) Essence of Chaos, came into existence when its fear and animalistic instinct to survive Gykallis' war against its infection warped its essence. The Essence of Chaos possesses similar abilities to the Essence of Dreams, however Xal'gyron is completely unable to control it. It will populate it's world at random with whatever memories it can fuse together, creating strange abominations of nature that most likely would not be able to survive. The Essence of Chaos also warped Xal's corruption into an true, deadly infection that spread out of Xal's control.

Xal's most recent essence, the Essence of Conquest, came into existence after the Essence of Chaos was destroyed. Now without an essence, Xal'gyron clung to the most powerful vessel it had, that being Olivia, and merged with it. This warped Olivia's Essence of Discovery into the Essence of Conquest. Both essences drive its user to search for and uncover things, however the Essence of Conquest specifically compels its user to take control of whatever it finds. The Essence of Conquest also grants it's user some of the abilities of the original Essence of Dreams, such as reading memories and mild creation powers, however they are far weaker and can function outside of Xal'gyron's body.

## Trivia

* Xal goes by any pronouns, but is most commonly referred to as he/him or it/its
* Prior to its name reveal in Anathema, Xal’Gyron was known as either The Orb or the Meteor Core.
* Xal’Gyron’s name contains the word “Gyro”, referencing the above fact.
* Xal’Gyron’s design initially came from the thumbnail drawing for Meteorology, in which Grape added the shadow of Watcher Prime in the background, as a teaser for the end of Season 7. When asked by Slimey if they were a new character, she lied, to which Slimey took it upon themselves to design Xal based off of the design of the shadow.
* Xal’s design also heavily references 02 from Kirby, most notably through its general face design, its scar referencing 02‘s bloody tear, and the “horns” on its head referencing 02‘s exposed nerve endings.
* Xal having wings made from crystal shards was originally not a reference to Kirby and the Crystal Shards, but Slimey thought it fit so well that it’s considered a reference now.
* Xal being inspired by 02 was teased in The Tea Party Where Absolutely Nothing Goes Wrong, in which Slimey intentionally plays a jazz cover of 02‘s theme as background music.
* Xal’s primordial form was inspired by the Ghost Leviathan from Subnautica, as well as Dunsparce from Pokemon.
* Xal’Gyron’s name starts with X because it’s Slimey’s favorite letter of the alphabet. All of Xal’s original name concepts also started with the letter X.
* Xal’s original name concepts were Xenogyrus, Xal’giron, Xerigon, Xerxes, Xenos, Xiomara, and Xenophon before Xal’Gyron was ultimately settled on.
* Several of Xal’Gyron’s attacks during Anathema were based on that of Kirby bosses, namely Void Termina, Astral Birth, Fecto Elfilis, and Morpho Knight.
* During The World With No Name, all of Xal’Gyron’s attacks were announced in chat as “Spell Cards”, referencing the Touhou series. Several of Xal’s attacks in Anathema are internally named after various Touhou characters’ spell cards.

* Xal’Gyron’s fight in Anathema has 2 unused attacks, and 11 scrapped attacks.
* All of Xal’s attacks in The World With No Name were manually controlled via command blocks by Slimey.
* Xal’Gyron’s hair texture is directly taken from Prime’s skin, and their cloak’s texture is taken from a model of The Knight from Hollow Knight.

## Gallery

Xal'gyron reference photoI miss it.... :(FumoXal fumo!!!!
Images here