Moros

"*Man is made of dirt - I saw him made. Man is a museum of diseases; a home of impurities. He comes today and is gone tomorrow; he begins as dirt and departs as stench. I am not made of dirt. I am the infinity to your transience; the boundless Void to your dust in the wind.* "
— Moros

Empyrean
Timaeus
Meghido
The Aethyr
Allfather
Daemon-Sultan

**Moros** is a primordial entity who serves as the overarching antagonist of the *Invidere* series. He was the first known corporeal being and creator of Emanation, the universe or dimension which is home to Aquila and the local planetary cluster. In the space between the seconds at the absolute temporal edge of Time and reality, the entity known as Coda spontaneously formed from nebulae of primordial quintessence; a disembodied consciousness neither alive nor dead, and with knowledge and dominion over all things as its heart pulsed with the very lifeblood of reality itself. Though ageless and agender in its rawest physical form, Coda is often referenced with the assumption of a masculine, fatherly personality, giving rise to his alternate epithet of the *Allfather* or *Acim-Adhar.* At the zenith of his power, all things are warped and twisted into his perfect image, and by his indomitable will alone are the laws of reality written and changed at a whim.

As the ultimate creator of the Emanation universe, he possessed nigh-omnipotence until the conduit of his power, the Heart of Chaos, was stolen by his children, the Titans. Aided by Moros' consort Rhea, whom he created to serve as his equal, the Titans used the Heart to destroy their Father's paradise of Eden and created the worlds of Emanation from its broken shards. Moros was banished to the *Aethyr* for millennia along with his remaining loyal children, where he conspired to take revenge upon the Titans and return the universe to its rightful state. One thousand years before the events of Invidere, he returned to Emanation with his legion of demonic followers and attempted to destroy Aquila, but his plans were thwarted by the sacrifice of the gods and the world's mortal champions. His body was destroyed and his essence scattered throughout space, leaving his servants to plot his resurrection for centuries. He nearly recovered his physical form in the 4800s but his efforts to permanently destroy Emanation were stopped by the Outlanders, who broke the cycle of war between Moros and his children by returning his Heart to him with the help of Rhea and Wisdom. Though he would never forgive the betrayal of the Titans, he came to accept that Emanation had become the home of mankind, who had earned his respect by proving their ability to shape their own destinies independent from the gods. Thus he withdrew back to the Aethyr with his love Rhea for all time, aspiring to one day build a new Eden with his Heart restored.

He was known by many obscure monikers and epithets, but his true name was Coda. Of what little is known with regards to his origins, Coda was an inhabitant of the dimension that preceded Eden which met with a calamitous end when its leaders attempted to create life itself through their experiments in quintessence. A mere child at the moment of the apocalypse, Coda survived the collapse through mysterious means and his essence was warped beyond recognition, condemning him to an everlasting existence with only fragmented memories of the old world. His true name was wiped from existence by the Titans after their betrayal, thereafter known to the world only as Moros. On Aquila, he was mostly referred to euphemistically as the Ancient Fear, conjuring images of a cosmic horror from the Before Time which would one day return to the living plane and bring all to ruin.

As the supreme being of the Invidere universe, Moros held incomparable power and influence even when lacking physical form. His unrivaled control over quintessence made him the greatest sorcerer in history, capable of manipulating both the natural and supernatural worlds with ease. After his corporeal form was destroyed by Dantalion and Wisdom, his disembodied essence was able to affect change in the physical world by influencing the minds of powerful mortals such as Triton. It was his intercession which saved the Outlanders from being destroyed by the Mad King by bringing their souls to the Void and allowing them to escape back to Emanation.

Moros was depicted in myriad ways by the mortal cultures of Aquila, ranging from a feathered serpent whose tail strangled all of creation to a simple hooded necromancer with an hourglass staff. The Templars envisioned him as the formless expression of primeval chaos who served as the Shadow to Rhea's preserving Light.

The Allfather was ultimately motivated by primal desires, showing that in spite of his immortality he still possessed a measure of mortal instinct. He despised his rebellious children with every fiber of his being and showed great care and affection for those Titans who remained loyal to him, particularly his favorite children Zeralith and Therion. Despite their animosity, Moros came to respect the Outlanders, initially viewing them as pawns to help kill the gods of Aquila but growing fond of their selfless determination to save their world. He saw much of himself in them, and it was their heroism which convinced him of man's worth despite their origin as the progeny of the Titans. Rhea also held mortal-kind in high regard, and Moros' love for her convinced him that Emanation was worth preserving.