Old Ones: Great & Terrible, Baffling & Abstruse

Old Ones: Great & Terrible, Baffling & Abstruse is a tome stored within the libraries of the Academy of Erudition.

## History

Under the guise of acting under on the authority of the Exegete Vuruzum Zelnolar, the adventurer Rinn visited the city of Oxresh to scour the libraries for information pertaining to a number of topics, ranging from the Primordial Elemental Princes, to other planes of existence and its inhabitants - before turning their attention to any reports pertaining to the redetection of the vestiges of the Darkbringer since the Battle of Manifestation's Return. Unable to find anything of the sort, they would however stumble across a tome pertaining to other entities existing in the baffling distant spaces of the cosmos.

## Research

### Completed by Rinn Zelnolar - Inquiry (Study)

Few folk from the general populace find themselves regularly considering wider than their immediate surroundings, only from time to time considering the village down the road, the city across the river, the next Realm along from their own. Fewer still will consider that which lies beyond the Material Plane, unaware of the wonders and horrors that reside a step further than the boundaries - and yet even then one only steps into the Echoes, and that which lies between the Material and the Elemental Sphere. Disregarding the Wandering Worlds, from where the true forces of power and scope in the cosmos surely reside, forces of good and evil, law and chaos, and all else besides, one finds themselves in the Between and the Beyond, the lands of other, from which entities great and terrible, baffling and abstruse rise as lesser idols whether by their intention or something else entirely. In this tome produced for the Ministry of the Preternatural, we will consider six such entities known to fraternise with sorcerers, warlocks and other folks besides - Tinozhi the Towerer, 'HOXHXOH', The Consolid, Seedsail, Y'chak the Violet Flame and The City that Wheezes.

#### Tinozhi the Towerer

Tinozhi the Towerer, a name that they claim was given to them by a city of Aboleths long since razed, goes by a number of epithets, finding some favour with the titles of the *Ladder of Life*, *Echelon* and also *Tinozhi the Tanglemaker.* All make direct or indirect reference to Tinozhi's intense interest in the formation of complex hierarchies and other forms of social pecking order, the transfer of power, respect and loyalty between different individuals within a society, regardless of their nature. To this effect, they seem to work to create bonds, whether between individuals, settlements, even the Wandering Worlds. Temporary arrangements are abhorrent to Echelon, who instead delights in bindings of increasing size and complexity.

Presenting themselves as a vast pyramid of numerous levels and tiers that seem to perpetually shuffle and reorganise themselves, my speculations pertaining to Tinozhi the Towerer with respect to the ongoing studies have led me to believe that despite a number of similarities - first and foremost the obsession with order in its most correct form - the Towerer has nothing to do with the Wandering World known as the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, bearing no comparability to the constructs of the Plane, or any of their own constructions.

#### HOXHXOH

   Referring to this entity as HOXHXOH is definitively a misnomer, for it is not their name, or reminiscent of it. Instead, this Old One's name is, as noted in psionic communication of ideas for those that readily open their mind to it, a shape of fractal complexity untethered from the concept of conventional language. Nonetheless, the moniker of HOXHXOH seems agreeable to it, given the name possesses both point reflection and axial symmetry horizontally and vertically, and thus will be used within this text and others pertaining to it. Further to this, the form of HOXHXOH is incomprehensible, appearing only as a shifting mass of interfolding geometric shapes and patterns which continue to dance within the mind even when one's gaze is averted.

Despite this, HOXHXOH appears able to express at least two emotions, that of an intense joy, and a deep and mournful sorrow, if further expression is possible then I am yet to have witnessed it. The entity finds unerring focus in the purity of probability, from the patterns of the past, the future can be interpreted with pinpoint accuracy as clearly as one might solve simple arithmetic. HOXHXOH appears to make no distinction between those that attempt to hide details, whether mind-numbing mundane, or something of great and dramatic significance, for each and every point in the pattern must be acknowledged to extrapolate further data accurately.

#### The Consolid

Only the speculations of abject horror can explain the nature of The Consolid, an entity seemingly formed by dozens combined in body and mind alike. Roughly shaped like a spelljammer vessel of ancient design, evidence from brief observations and encounters suggests that The Consolid was likely created when the ship and their crew of hundreds found themselves combined in a vast consolidated mass, although the process by which this occurred is beyond knowledge - perhaps exposure to some terrible arcane flare, some hideous weapon wielded by a foe, or maybe an encounter with another Old One. The most twisted of these speculations suggests that the Consolid came to be when the individuals that now make it up willingly engaged in a ritual to fuse themselves to save what remained of their dying civilisation. Now, despite the ship-like appearance, the form of the Consolid is completely living and organic, the flesh, skin and bone of its constituent parts.

Regardless, The Consolid is not one entity, but many, and so cries out to all that it nears in body and mind with a hundred pained voices at once, and many other since added to its number since. Sprawling between the stars, it desperately seeks the means to end their ongoing state of existence, though none within its number can agree on how this is best achieved, and so it prowls, seeking out others to assimilate, hoping that in time one may be added to its biomass with the will and competence to free them all.

#### Seedsail

Known also as *Star's Till*, *The Winnowwake*, *The Spark of the Spawn* and *Nyrtyrer*, Seedsail is fascinated with life, particularly so life in infinite diversity and infinite combinations. Promoting fecundity wherever they pass their influence, they revel in finding things growing, thriving and living where it thought not to be possible, and seem to offer favours and boons readily to those that deliver unto their attention plants, beasts and all other types of life that they are yet to encounter. To the Star's Till, life is precious, but this is not to proclaim them a compassionate entity - all life is equal, none is to be favoured over any other, regardless of its perceived value, beauty, use, danger or any other parameter decided upon by other species - monstrous aberrations are just as worthy of life as a songbird to the Spark of the Spawn.

Those few with the power and scope to attempt to entreat with the Winnowwake do so knowing that they are fascinated with promoting life, and thus may offer blessings of fertility on crops, beasts and people alike, but in such cases it is impossible to tell what else may grow from said soil and stone, or be birthed when gestation reaches its end.

#### Y'Chak, the Violet Flame

Revered by Aboleths that maintain a dozen other names for the entity known only to them, Y'Chak the Violet Flame is a star infected with malice and intent, sowing both onto the places that it finds reason to turn its attention. Like the Seedsail, it finds great interest in the concept of life, but instead focuses on the processes that yield the destruction of life in their every form. To the residents of the Material Plane, the touch of Y'Chak may have been most readily felt during the so-called Lyndim Flare - although the reasoning for likely unknown to all but the most esoteric of scholars and researchers - in which the passage of the Violet Light across the Canvas of Night caused the sudden ageing and frailty of many across the continent of Ahlus, from commoners to the nobility. Combined efforts by the Ten Guilds of old Ahlus and the alchemists of the Realm of Sunstone managed to reverse the effect, by which time the machinations of Y'Chak had surely passed elsewhere.

Y'Chak is considered amongst the Elder Evils, and served by a myriad of star spawn that readily wear fire and smoke as a mortal might cloth and silk.

#### The City that Wheezes

At first glance, it might be assumed that the City that Wheezes is an old bastion of a space-faring race, akin to the fortresses maintained by the githzerai in Limbo, or the bastions of the Astral Sea. However, the City possesses architecture more similar to that of those found within the Elemental Sphere, specifically that of the City of Brass in the lands of Elemental Fire, but does not seem to be its source, but instead its inspiration.

Likewise, the city is still, seemingly devoid of life when examined by sight from afar, and yet feels alive, as if populated by hundreds of thousands of minds without form. The city, likewise, is not silent, for as it drifts through the Beyond, for the very buildings seem to pant and wheeze, giving it its name, its seemingly destinationless journey erratic and hasty, as if trying to cast aside something impossibly vast in pursuit just out of sight.