Cacoethes & Custodium

Cacoethes & Custodium is a book uncovered through use of Study-related Inquiries.

## Description

After experiencing increasingly vivid dreams of falling chains amidst a vast thunderous storm of red lightning, the Wild Magic Sorcerer Moxzi Bluhedd commissioned Andrius to look into the potential origins of her powers, specifically the possibility of their relation to the Elder Elemental Eye, a member of the Malign associated with chaos and insanity.

Treatises of the Temperamental: Wild Magic Analysed and Cacoethes & Custodium are the results of said inquiry.

## Reading

### Completed by Andrius (on behalf of Moxzi Bluhedd)

To discuss the Elder Elemental Eye, known also as Tharizdun and the Chained God to those unblessed enough to know of their existence, is to find oneself's scholarly efforts hampered by inconsistency at every available turn. Fitting for a God said to be born of, or something birthing of chaos and insanity, trying to establish a straight truth is a trialsome process. First and foremost, this is demonstrated by the details of the Elder's Elemental Eye's domain, or possibly domains. The priests of the Ahlusian Sixteen teach that the Elder Elemental Eye first found custody within the swirling ever-changing chaos of the Plane of Limbo, and was said to be old by even the measure of the gods in doing so. Highly morphic and malleable, and ignoring the initial dispute of whether the Chained God was spawned by Limbo's innate nature, or whether its innate nature comes from their influence, it is then said that their lingering being warped such a vast quantity of the Plane to his design that the roiling and Infinite Planes of the Abyss came to be. Further details are included into this tale, that it was the Lantern Lord Yaldin that first cast the Elder Elemental Eye into Limbo initially, casting abhorrent chaos into a world of it, hoping its like would see it consumed and overshadowed, and that from this foundation Primordial entities and demons alike came to be. After the Wandering World that would come to be known as the Abyss budded off from Limbo, it is also remarked that it may have collided with that of the Nine Hells, one theory to the origin of bringing about eternal war with the infernal beings that called such Realms home.

As before stated, fittingly, this makes little sense on closer examination. To call the Elder Elemental Eye old when compared to other deities stands in direct dispute of this tale, for Yaldin's presence coming to form during the act of Aita's First Gift means that said banishment to Limbo must have occurred after this fact, but by then LImbo had already seemingly repeatedly collided with the Elemental Sphere eight times, sending the Archomentals Prime-bound, and the Abyss had already festered and spewed a thousand types of demon beneath demon lord and prince, ready for them to deliver havoc on the same lands and further beyond. By Ahlusian understanding, such a timeline does not match convention, but this can be easily, if not without exacerbation to the consummate philosopher just dismissed as inconsistencies caused by the poeticising and aggrandisation of the mythos of the Sixteen in their battles with the Malign. In time, things are forgotten, understandings change and are changed, and with it legends may grow. Suffice it to say though, the Elder Elemental Eye is undeniably associated with the creation of at least two of the great outsider threats to the Prime and the other Planes as a whole, as already mentioned - that of the Archomentals and the denizens of the Abyss. Many of the Wandering Worlds are reported to possess orbits around the Prime, spiralling round at arms length, but Limbo springs back and forth, colliding with as much vigour and pace as a marble cast down several flights of stairs. The Elemental Sphere, made up of the Inner Planes of Elemental and Paraelemental, ripple with tumult, and are thrown into great waves of purled disruption when one or more of the Outer Planes collide with it. The Wandering World of Limbo is said to do more so than any other (with the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus supposedly mirroring its motion and repairing the crackle left in its wake), and from these earliest collisions, when the momentum was greatest, shards of the chaos of Limbo combined with the Elemental energies of the sphere, seeding the creation of entities representative of elemental and natural might - the Archomentals or Primordial Elemental Princes - casting each towards the Prime. Capable of delivering great destruction, the Archomentals have been most commonly equated to a reminder of the power and chaos of nature incarnate.

By contrast, the demons of the Abyss are still that of chaos, but it can hardly be remarked that they represent anything truly natural. Capable of the same terrible destruction, demons are motivated fundamentally by their own arrogance and ambition, rending, tearing and destroying the world and those beyond to shape to their own self-centred imaginations of perfection. A demon would consider itself no more affiliated or indebted in its creation to Limbo, or even to the Elder Elemental Eye, than a Primordial Elemental Prince would do, although the histories would suggest that by trace origin they would do. By contrast, races such as the Slaadi embrace Limbo as their home, but likewise offer up no fealty to the Elder Elemental Eye. In truth, it would seem outwardly that the Elder Elemental Eye offers up no forethought or scheme as can perceived by mortal minds, casting off creations, ploys and warped connections freely from its domain without further thought. Actions are put into motion without seemed follow-up, lots cast wide and far without thought of the result achieved. In the days after Aita's First Gift, it was said that demons revelled in the valleys carved by the passage of the Archomentals, delighting in the continuation of destruction of what had been created and shaped by Caihrnn, but it was far from a coordinated effort. Ultimately, it seems that the Chained God is an entity akin to that of a individual suffering immeasurably with maddening paranoia, responding to perceived threats with nonsensical and disproportionate measures cast wildly without sense of direction, and that maybe from time to time, things fall in place far better than could be initially assumed, whether by an arcane researcher watching from afar, or as comprehended by a mind held to cacoethes by its own insanity. Whether intended or not, does that truly make the threat posed any less so harrowing? If you remain uncertain, it may be prudent to seek out the heirs of Landol Silverward, or any others that experienced chaos first hand when they instead sought festivities.