Kthulhutu

## Overview

Kthulhutu is the mysterious "Father of Alchemy" with unparalled intellect and ambition. He is of indeterminate, believed, extra-real origin and considered a genetic match with Homo Sapiens. He also possesses a very strong anima. After learning about humanity, he immediately adopted the label for himself.

He is the Founder of the Dominion and was its Leader throughout the Old Dominion Era prior to disappearing. Before the formation of the Dominion he lived alone for an unknown time on an undiscovered planet before travelling to the territory of a sub-faction of the Milky-Way Fabrication company via the usage of an arcanotech device he dubbed the 'Celestial Corridor'.

## Early Life

Not much is known about Kthulhutu's early life. All that has been documented is word of mouth from Kthulhutu himself and he has deliberately not revealed or verified all of his past. In addition, he claims to not know of his true origins himself, chalking this up to amnesia.

Kthulhutu claims to have found himself conscious one day on a habital terrestial planet. He had zero memories of any past but the linguistic and reasoning skills of an adult. After venturing long enough he determined he was completely alone.

After months of living off the land, exploring and foraging, Kthulhutu found himself in some ancient ruins. It was in these ruins that he would learn about Alchemy by copying various patterns and traces found within.

Eventually Kthulhutu would stumble across the most basic type of transmutation, that involving the usage of a living creature's anima as a fuel source. He was nearly killed by this mishap but soon learned from the ruins how to control a transmutation properly.

Skipping forward years, Kthulhutu found that not just his alchemy, but all of his cognitive skills were improving at a rapid rate. He had reverse-engineered the entire language of the ruins, collected all of the artifacts and began using alchemy in a practical manner to construct a comfortable abode for himself.

He would use this strange, malleable power to eventually reshape the entire planet. Patiently over the course of decades Kthulhutu turned the planet into his city of alchemy, filling it with machinery, cellular automata and mines. Kthulhutu invented his own basic language and used it to document his life in extensive writings.

Kthulhutu as part of his alchemy research discovered the foundations of Homunculi and used this to make himself immortal. He also developed arcanomaterials, analog based intelligences and many more powerful arcanotech constructs.

Eventually his research delved deeper into traditional physics, metaphysics and spatial alchemy. This culminated in the Celestial Corridor, a device that was supposed to open a two way link between worlds. However Kthulhutu made a mistake and the transit was ultimately one-way, dumping him in our reality forever.

## Disappearance

In 101789 AD Kthulhutu would suddenly vanish from the Dominion, abandoning his position in the Quartet as Leader.

A large scale search still continued to the present day by interested parties was started and large parts of Internal Affairs and the Sentinel Orders joined forces in a manhunt of unprecedented scale. Alas not a single trace of Kthulhutu's existence was found. The last person to see him was the Former Knight Commander of the time whom had met him for a private meeting the day earlier.

Kthulhutu left no hints or notes of any kind behind in any of his personal properties and the possibility of his security being compromised was considered ludicrous when his last known location was in one of the secret fortresses of the Quartet.

Many suspected the Former Knight Commander of knowing something, referring to the secret meeting, the existence of which was leaked by the Head of Internal Affairs. Despite this he fervently denied any knowledge of where Kthulhutu had went and dismissed the meeting as irrelevant. This explanation was accepted by most of those in positions of power but he was eventually 'forced' to step down due to the controversy including a terror campaign from emboldened radicals of the rapidly growing Church.

## Legacy

Kthulhutu's legacy is the Dominion and its unprecedented influence over reality. But not just the Dominion itself, but the radical ideas and new paths of knowledge that sprung from it.

Many would argue his legacy has been trampled on by the advent of the 'Neo Dominion' the highly decentralized, exponentially growing swarm that arose due to fear of the Vacuity.

The Neo Dominion system is a significant departure from Kthulhutu's original design and embodies one of the eventualities he warned of "The Hegemonising Swarm". Staunch supporters of Kthulhutu believe it to be a failure already and are certain it will collapse spectacularly, perhaps plunging humanity into a new Lost Era.

## Personality and Philosophies

Kthulhutu is for the most part, a cold and calculating individualist due to his lonesome life.

Despite his schizoid type behaviour, Kthulhutu is highly ambitious and has a strongly held set of values. Despite seeming amoral and apathetic on the surface, he is in fact highly idealistic individual that seeks to maximize his particular ideas of utility for humanity. While ruthless and pragmatic when achieving his goals, Kthulhutu is also moralistic and seeks to minimize the undue suffering of sapient beings. However his goals and belief systems are highly anthrocentric and self-centered which can cause some to view him as tyrannical, egotistic or downright evil.

In addition his values can be convoluted and beyond flexible in specific contexts which may cause him to appear inconsistent or morally uneven. However Kthulhutu likes to stay assured that his mental frameworks remain within a tight tolerance.

Kthulhutu is independent by nature and works highly effectively on his own, but he is also capable of getting along with likeminded individuals as necessary, especially when work is involved. He has formed a few relations he would consider friendships but is too focused on his work and ambitions to spend any excessive amount of time on them. In addition his near reverent status in the Dominion made him feel even more alienated from most individuals while he was leader.

Kthulhutu can be more talkative than one would expect and is known for his sardonic wit and painfully blunt jabs. He can be charismatic and 'larger than life' when the time calls but is generally not like this otherwise.

Kthulhutu is a moral relativist and used this philosophy when designing the Dominion. He believes morals to be externally projected values whose goal is to regulate behaviour towards achieving a more desired state. To him, universalist and objective systems of morality do not exist unless a creator divinity is to believably prove that this is the case. In this sense, he views morals as being relative to the highest authority which would be an entity with the most raw power and legitimacy.

Kthulhutu is highly anthrocentric and arguably a human supremacist. He endeavours to elevate humanity to a state of maximum utility (aka godhood). This unapologetically extremist stance is greatly popular in the Dominion as a result.

## Abilities and Powers

Kthulhutu was not only the leader of the Dominion but also regarded as its strongest combatant with good reason. Even without relying on his most powerful artifacts he could easily dominate even groups of Knights and surpassed the Knight Commander in martial skill. While this has been never done, it has been suggested he could hold his own against Dominion spacecraft.

When first emerging from the Celestial Corridor dazed and confused, Kthulhutu was attacked as an intruder by theseveral thousand strong crew of a Milky-Way Fabrication combat vessel. After causing hundreds of casaulties and barely being scratched the crew surrendered.

Kthulhutu personally led several of the bloody battles in the Pre-Dominion era. He was known as a force of nature on the battlefield, whether it be close or long-ranged, on a planet, inside a spacecraft or leading a naval engagement. He was feared and respected by all of the commanders who came to know of him.

Post Dominion, Kthulhutu would not have any particular reason to fight anything personally. However with his development of new techniques, training and creation of weapons and artifacts it's safe to say he only grew ever more capable. He never lost any real or simulated spars against any Homunculi.

### Physical Abilities

* **Beyond superhuman strength** granted by an advanced Homunculus body and further augmented hundreds of times by the muscles, actuators and alchemic sigils of his personal armour. Strength scales with the amount of alchemic energy he releases. Psychic powers can further enhance this strength to be easily more than any Knight.
* **Beyond superhuman speed**