Herlesh, the Elders Bane

> “It was not long before those who fell to the Great Breach returned against us in great number. The Terrors-from-Beyond had reduced our noble form its most base shapes. They had been twisted into horrible configurations and filled with the Baal’s vile breath. No matter how many we struck down, more poured from Creation’s widening wounds, each one’s destruction poisoning the air and sending its fellow nightmares into vicious frenzy.” -Kaznersut, Rae Commander.
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## History

“Their vision makes our Great Works unworthy, Their echoing songs reduce our words to prattling splinters, they will make things whole. They bring Totality to this damned creation.” -Ahk’khar’ae, the Heretic-General.

Named after the damned fortress that birthed a civilization’s demise, the Herlesh are all that remain of Shael’s greatest nation, the Empire of Ancient Rae. Thousands of years before the settling of the northern lands or the Foundation of Q’rath, the Rae ruled a vast domain through a massive network of gateways, binding cities and worlds to their will. During the Elder War with the Naz’ra, the Ancient Rae founded a series of great Fortress-Cities on the shattered world of Xur. Within these citadels, great gates siphoned the infinite energies of the Outer Realms to power the Empire’s various weapons and war machines.

While initially successful, the Fortress-City Herlesh began recording disturbances in the stabilization field beyond the gate. Behavior among the engineers became erratic, chittering about some presence looking in, some grand design yet unfulfilled. As the barrier became more unstable, the facility descended into violence, then silence after its Lord-Arcanographer Kham’sut issued one last rambling transmission: “The cruelest truth is that there is no external or internal, all are bound to Their contours, there are no dreams but Theirs and They must Wake. For they are the Amn-Baal, the Terrible Lords.” In silence, Herlesh was reforged into an alien vista, from it spread strange factories and temples. The bonds of the real wept, bent, as if heavy with child, then broke, birthing countless horrors to crawl and scour the mortal realms. The Fortress-City of Herlesh began to change as an ocean of miasma flooded into its halls. Rae corpses that succumbed to this viscous gas were dissolved and absorbed into the increasingly flesh-like walls. Soon, strange, womb-like vats emerged across the citadel, innumerable rows of glistening pods, a living factory. From this hellscape quickened and hatched the first Dredge. The teeming swaths of reforged Rae overwhelmed Xur’s remaining strongholds with systematic and ruthless precision, each victory widening reality’s gaping wound. Beyond that tear, the Amn-Baal called, Their blind words binding the recoiling worlds to service. Sealed at great cost and innumerable dead, the Amn-Baal and their eerie legions lie beneath the cold sands that the Rae once called home, waiting.

## Breach Timeline

First, there is an Insertion Breach. It isn't stable or particularly long lived, but during the hour of its life, insane quantities of Miasma pour out from the Breach, xenoforming the surrounding area and allowing the Amn Baal to begin sculpting the matter and energy. It isn't understood how or if the Amn Baal can facilitate Insertion Breaches themselves, or if they need Immortal lackeys to do it. The Advent saw the Traitor General and Fallen Lord Arcanographer use large quantities of Pyre to create a Insertion Breach.

Second, the foundations of what will eventually become a Dread Ark begin. Once complete, this will "stabilize" reality within the area, creating a Localized Breach which in turn allows a constant supply of Miasma to pour through, making the local area safe for dedicated colonization. If there are reserves of reshaped beings within the meta-dimensional proximity of the Localized Breach, they can be deployed to this or any other Localized Breach within the operational zone. The mechanisms of this seems to have been understood by the Elders very late in the war, but no records have survived to present day to verify this.

Third, localized metaphysical resources are stripped from the surrounding area to grow a stockpile around the Localized Breach. Depending on the conditions or level of resistance encountered, Herlesh Breach Zones will utilize mass differently, investing in particular infrastructure that allows for the templating, fashioning, and replication of particular forms. Under ideal conditions, however, the Breach Zone will move as quickly as possible towards advancing the central infrastructure to "Dread Ark" designation.

Fourth, at a certain level of infrastructure, Amn Baal "bodies" begin to directly manifest around Breach Zones within the operational area, presumably to oversee, maintain, or otherwise direct the latter stages. These bodies are exceedingly dangerous, but are relatively primative in their capabilities compared to the advanced forms a Dread Ark is capable of anchoring.

Fifth, once the Dread Ark is complete, advanced forms of the Amn Baal's anatomy begin to manifest. This advanced stage is exceedingly difficult to contain or cauterize and the xenoforming of the area is so advanced that recovery cannot be guaranteed even after periods of elapsed geological time. All Herlesh entities within this operational zone will then attempt to remove and/or reprocess all biomass/metamass within the area to diminish the potential for localized interference. The weather and climate becomes alien and the localized atmosphere begins the process of transmuting into Miasma.

Lastly, after an extended period of time without sustained resistance, the Local Breach Operational Zone reaches a critical mass of aligned Dread Arks, and stockpiled resources and energy. This has only been observed once on Shael to the knowledge of modern day archeologists in Jora and Talmetra. This results in a "Greater Breach," the intent, design, or mechanics of which is largely unknown. But it is expected to be very bad. The Ancient Rae Core is thought to be the location of this Greater Breach and across the many expeditions to the location throughout history, humans have uniformly reported how "wrong" and "cursed" the place is. Expeditions have grown less frequent over the years due to increase Khardu activity.

## Herlesh Q&A with Lore Director Dylan

* Q: Are there really a couple Herlesh in Shael ruins?

Dylan: Herlesh isolations are canon.

* Q: What does miasma look like?

Dylan: Like something you don't want to step in, or breathe, or be around, or be close to. It doesn't spread, and it technically makes noise just like everything does when the atmosphere is interacting with it.

* Q: Does miasma only affect living things?

Dylan: Miasma has a preference for biomass but it can affect most matter. Miasma binds to non-Amn-Baal mass and helps xenoform it, and it's expended in the process. It needs to be continuously replenished.

* Q: Is miasma sentient?

Dylan: That's an exceedingly hard question to answer. It is the breath and blood of the Amn-Baal and the "fluid-gas" that permeates their universe. If the Amn-Baal are sentient, then miasma kind of is too. Miasma contains within it instructions. Think like the protomolecule from The Expanse, or Phyrexia's Glistening Oil. Unlike those substances, it can't just replicate ad infinitum. It's a xenoforming tool, and while it's around it imposes Amn-Baal "physics" within its confines. This *really* strengthens the Herlesh.

* Q: Do the Herlesh have music?

Dylan: There is a kind of "music" that issues from the Amn-Baal in that there are patterns and resonances that drift into the world and resonate through the Herlesh. Herlesh is culturally dead, but there is still music there, however alien and horrific. Don't listen to it too long, it might rewire your brain and kill you.

* Q: How much individuality do Herlesh Immortals have?

Dylan: An unfortunate amount. I don't know if "bad" is a sufficient adjective. Like, imagine being a free thinking being, and being existentially bound to a series of not urges, but mental states that you can physically exist within. It's not a compulsion, but a state of enforced reality. One that is utterly alien. Your body, your mind, they both exist after a fashion. You know that you and the Amn-Baal exist, and you have a memory of what you once were (namely, because the Amn-Baal couldn't really perceive, understand or care about that). They are prisoners within their own brains and bodies. Hell, they might have little bits of soul in there. But they also aren't prisoners. They experience free will in a way that is similar to an angel. There's a directive, they have lateral thinking to accomplish that objective, but it's somehow worse because they know where they came from, what that was like, and where they are relative to that.

* So it's like a human becoming an angel with memories of their former life, almost, in some horrifically twisted manner?

Yeah. At least with the Kor'shar'ai[Zentari], there is an understanding of the greater good. They are fighting for those people, and for the empire that protects them. And to some extent it's consensual. The soul must be willing and resolved to survive the training. Kor'Shar'ai's power is tied to their resolve and faith. They choose every moment to believe. Their dogma makes them less flexible in dealing with situations, but the can conceive of alternative ways of doing things, even if they can't act on them.

Herlesh immortals are not so lucky. Herlesh immortals don't perceive time like we do. Time is quite literally a physical element to them, though their ability to interact with that dimension is constrained. It is this flat circle of never ending phantasmagoric dementia tethered to the totality of the Amn-Baal. Perception is flexible. This is a special kind of eternal living nightmare.

## Gameplay

The Herlesh focus on swarms of weak units, with a few very powerful units high in the tech tree. Their production is planned to be centralized in a few structures.

## Trivia

The Lord Arcanographer Kham'sut was a good boi and didn't deserve what happened to him.