Project CHARYBDIS/Aeras

Greetings to all, and welcome to Project CHARYBDIS.
In the times before the Great Rebirth, the god Aersanon created the universe, then a world to house its creations, and then humanity and the aelfir. The humans, who suffered in a universally brutal slavery under the aelfir yoke, rose up in a great rebellion that would consume the world for untold millennia, and in the end annihilating their cruel masters first and then their own god Aersanon, appointed by an ancient god of the same name.
Then, a great cataclysm took place in the aftermath of humanity's murder of their own god. Those alive to witness it saw a thousand-year or more rainstorms or winter and, to their horror, reality changing, twisting and bending, before it 'resets'. In the times during and after the chaos of the great collapse, the cultural heritage and history of the world, of Aersanon, and of the aelfir were lost as the struggle for survival sets in.
Stories become myths. Myths become legends. Legends become buried by the sands of time. And so it was, until in Eon-U 5SB141-2 when after Grand Marshal Borealis Norsoutha III launched a two-year crusade dubbed the Reformist War, or War of Reformation, did he organize a rapid expedition to save Aeras - his actions in sealing the rift and reawaken the past laid the foundations of the involvement of various factions, including the International Union Paranormal Forces Coalition and its Project CHARYBDIS to uncover the past.
So began the Paranormal Forces Coalition's involvement in researching and cataloguing the emergent entities, locations, artifacts and records from an age that was long lost. After the One Sith War and then the signing of the Tokyo Accords, at the behest of several gods and various Aerasian nation-states, Project CHARYBDIS organized the Oraispol Commission under the leadership of Dr. William Aguinaldo. Once the true scope of the commission's task had been fulfilled, the Commission was further bolstered with personnel, funding, equipment and supplies and reorganized under the authority of Project CHARYBDIS.
The very document you have read served to collect various reports by Coalition and affiliated researchers, task forces, agents and informants about the many things - both anomaly and record - of the past under the jurisdiction of Project CHARYBDIS. As is often the case with projects that follow ongoing or emergent phenomena, this document is subject to change as more information were made available.
The work we have been doing is critical - there are powerful forces from the ancient world lurking in the darkest corners of the world, with some moving in the Aerasians' once they have been either unsealed or revealed, and without the knowledge and effort needed to understand and prepare for them there is little doubt that whatever our friends would encounter will not end well. We have a duty - not only to protect our friends - but to preserve the past and defend what is now present.
Mark Johnson
Director of Project CHARYBDIS

## Background Information

### General Timeline of Events

General Timeline of Events

	+ The creation of Universe GODHERJA occur, although it is unknown how many years since its creation.
	+ The formation of the gods of Universe GODHERJA occur, likely somewhere after the creation of Universe GODHERJA.
		- Aersanon was born during this time.
* **Time Immemorial** - Aersanon created Aeras, which now spins around the sun itself.
* **21490 - 19872 BE** - Aersanon, who desire companionship, created humanity on Aeras. However, humanity would prove to be unable to understand Them.
* **19871 - 11167 BE** - Aersanon, seeing humanity a failure, created the aelfir. It was soon made clear to Aersanon that the aelfir's second flaw would even bother their own creator: vain, cruel and hateful. Ambition ran in the aelfir's mind as they commit atrocities against humanity. This led to Aersanon putting Their effort into a Third Project.
* **Between 19871 and 11167 BE** - Humanity toiled under the aelfir yoke in the millions and sometimes in the billions, their slavery endlessly and universally brutal. In their effort to create and guide new life or even match Aersanon's ability to create life, the aelfir built airships infused with the souls of humans. Some would focus on magic, building great flying citadels or developing rituals that allowed them to explore Aervalr and the cosmos or making new beings built from the fabric of magic itself. Lastly, some would go down a much horrific path, bastardizing and twisting Aersanon's creations. Many of these beings live on millions of years after, some even somehow reproducing, giving birth to many of Aeras’s most feared creatures. It was then that humanity discovered that, despite the complete annihilation of the human magi-kings, the blood of Aersanon still flows within them, and so began preparing for a great rebellion in secret, stealing arms and armors from the aelfir's forges and killing their own should the nature of their rebellion might be exposed.
* **11166 - 1???? BE** - The Godherja took place. The first aelfir emperors were dragged down from their thrones and slain by the human revolutionaries. The war proved to be futile for the aelfir, as humans (whether or not they were aided by a rogue aelfir) were capable of sustaining their losses and survive. Ultimately, humanity would prevail in the end as all but a few surviving aelfir were exterminated. Fearing retribution from Aersanon or whatever They have to say, humanity used a powerful ritual that destroyed Aersanon, and reality answered with a screech.
* **1???? - ???? BE** - **Second Age of Dust, Collapse and Rebirth**
	+ It is said that the resulting apocalypse saw humanity reduced in numbers, every single law that governed magic completely destroyed or altered. Those surviving spells became twisted and dark. Because of this, magic had become corrupted.
	+ It is said that entire continents shifted into the sea or rose from nothing, an entire hemisphere vanishing and separating from known reality. Magical wormholes and voids appeared and closed across the world. Colors changed, vanished, appeared. The very nature of how sound could travel, how gravity functioned, how life and death continued in its cycle and the fundamental laws and natures of existence were all reconstructed, changed, or vanished in moments. The entire world twisted and bent, cities and populations and countries and worlds appearing and vanishing and traveling across entire eons in an instant.
	+ After a century or millennia of rainstorms or winter, Aeras entered a new normal as humanity managed to survive. However, what had happened before the great collapse would be eventually lost until the coming of the Novayans in the First Reformist War in the 1260s.
* **???? BE** - **Age of Humanity**
* **0 IS** - **Formation of the Aversarinas Aautokrata**
* **37 IS** - Unification of the Shewigad people under the High King Bastione
* **67 IS** - Death of the wizard king Kathanouxa
* **85 IS** - Death of the GOod King Bastione, ascension of Vercigex to the Shewigad throne
* **111 IS** - The subjugation and enslavement of the Iyrossi by the Aversarinas Aautokrata under Aautokratir Phanagorax
* **114 IS** - The founding of the Aversarinas Aagiokratia

[DATA INCOMPLETE - AWAITING CATALOGUE AND REPORTS]

### Antediluvian Peoples

Antediluvian Peoples

[INCOMPLETE; AWAITING INVESTIGATORY REPORTS]

### Locations

Locations

[INCOMPLETE; AWAITING INVESTIGATORY REPORTS]

### Persons and Groups of Interest

Persons and Groups of Interest

[INCOMPLETE; AWAITING INVESTIGATORY REPORTS]

## Anomalies of Major Concern

Anomalies of Major Concern

Some of the more obscure and doubtless insane cults of the world claim the Rift to actually be a hole in the mind of an ancient god.

Nothing lives in the foglands, at least nothing natural. Those few who have visited its cold interior and lived to tell the tale describe an immense feeling of dread, of constantly being watched and surrounded by a relentless litany of panicked whispers and unnatural sounds. Whatever one fears can be manifested in the foglands, monsters of man's own creation taking corporeal form and attacking them as they wander, and living on to persist to another day. These fogbeasts, along with other strange creatures, wander the foglands and attack any trapped inside. And that is not to mention the Fogeaters.
Mixed Magic is claimed to draw its power from the Fog, and with sufficient skill, Mixed Magi may even create Fog themselves. Many cults and esoteric religions have been created in an attempt to rationalize where exactly it comes from, the most esoteric of which claim the Fog is somehow connected to the corpses of Ancient Gods.
Prior to the Reformist War, the Fog is slowly spreading, and will likely consume the entire world if not stopped. It was only during the Reformist War that the Fog would be stopped and ultimately ended by Novayan expeditionary forces operating under the personal auspices of Grand Marshal Borealis III, who personally ordered for the sealing of the Rift via thaumaturgical and paratechnological means.
However, because of the fact Mixed Magic allowed the creation of the Fog, the possibilities of the Fog reappearing in the world or other worlds forced the Paranormal Forces Coalition to negotiate with various Mixed Magic users on creating Fog. The Paranormal Forces Coalition would later coordinate Operation Blood of Life to hunt down those who would use Self-Replicating Blood Magic.

Due to the high risks they bring, the Paranormal Forces Coalition is leading a multilateral effort to find, contain and if possible eliminate these entities before they would ever become a potential threat.

## Events

Events

Geological, thaumaturgical, archaeological and chronological evidence suggests that as the aelfir had put humanity in an endless hell of torturous slavery, the humans observed their cruel masters and studied their ways and arts of magic. Though the human magi were sundered by the aelfir, the blood of magic flow within all humans and were surrounded by the powerful items of the aelfir's creation. Through this humanity watched and in secret whispered to one another about the art's use. They first learnt the powers to move around the world freely, and then the powers to speak to others without moving their mouth or being in the same land.
This coming rebellion took an unknown number of years, as humans secretly learned and spread the art of magic, the most powerful rituals and spells humanity had ever known written and memorized, and they stole and hid arms and weapons from the aelfir's forges for the use of man. Millions toiled in secret for centuries to prepare, humans even slaughtering their fellows in the thousands if there was even a chance for their fellow’s revealing the coming uprising. And then, either on the morning or evening, the great reckoning began as humanity dragged the first aelfir emperors from their thrones and slew them.
It is unconfirmed whether some individual aelfir aided humanity out of a genuine desire for redemption or a desire to avenge some slight from their comrades, but what is known was that millions and then billions of lives marched to war, both on the side of humanity and on the side of aelfirkind. While one human was know match for an aelfir's power, a hundred more would block and counter their foes' spells.
It is also unconfirmed how much time had passed, with the likely estimates being that the war lasted for several millennia. However, it was later confirmed that the war left the world nearly in ruins, with every major city depopulated or crumbled to the ground, entire oceans and land masses rearranged from magics. Cities had sunk to the sea, or raised above the world to keep them away from the battle.
However, an event that would end the Godherja but also brought forth the Great Collapse is the very event that humanity committed the impossible, an event that was pieced together from all oral traditions - the murder of Aersanon Themself. The event, which came after the aelfir had died, had brought forth the Great Collapse, forcing humanity into the struggle for survival.

The disaster left around 80% of the Imperium's population dead, virtually all of its major population centers reduced to rubble, and the Kartharaddi capital was consumed in a vortex of hellfire that still hangs over the area to this day. Greater Aversaria, once sprawling, cosmopolitan and urban, was effectively reset to a wild wasteland, but the effects reached as far as Malcois, which was left heavily hit and depopulated.
After the Reformist War and then the One Sith War, Project CHARYBDIS led a multilateral effort to investigate the causes of the event. Utilizing paratechnologies and thaumaturgical techniques the likes of which many an Aerasian had never seen before, it was revealed that the Night of the Bleeding Moon had been preceded by the Kartharaddi Imperium's attempt at a massive magical attack which was intended for the destruction of Etepezea. However, due to multiple factors involved the resulting cataclysm had instead been wrought upon Kartharaddia.

Overnight, the magical aristocracy of the Aautokrata had their worst traits radically heightened. The callous became sociopathic, the cruel became bloodthirsty, the spiteful turned to hateful. The results (besides several serial murders) were not immediate, but quickly became apparent within a decade. With the magimore destructive than ever, Aversaria began witnessing a rapid escalation in the number and scales of civil wars and internal conflict, with ten times the number of nobility being assassinated in 1178 than the entire decade preceding the Odrstund.
Aeschraes, leader of the Oraispol Aautokrata in the Imperial Civil War, was born on the Odrstund. Whether this led to his casting of Self-Replicating Blood Magic is hotly debated.

The war began after the mysterious death of Aautokratir Anesimasios, and the accusation that his wife, Axiaothea, poisoned him. In the Blood Senate following his death, Axiaothea destroyed the entire gathering and the assorted nobility with the few survivors quickly bending the knee to her. On her return to the cultural capital of Oraispol, however, a coup was launched by Legon Aeschraes and Legio XXI 'Aeschraes' (now 'Axiaothea'), who proclaimed her a false Aautokratia and declared himself the rightful ruler.
The proceeding war lasted almost twenty years, leaving most of the Empire wartorn as nobility constantly shifted sides or broke off to form their own factions. The war was most notable for the increasingly extreme power of Magic brought on by the rapid research and development of previously unused or underdeveloped spells. Entire cities were wiped out in massive magical blasts, southern Opakhasia was turn into a burnt out wasteland, and the war ended with a spell so large it brought forth Frodbrokna. While Axiaothea was killed in this spell, so was the Empire, and Aeschraes's own realm rapidly collapsed in the following years despite his 'victory'.
The **Frodbrokna** is the name of a massive magical attack used by Aeschraes to kill Axiaothea during the Imperial Civil War. Killed thousands of aversarians (nearly half of the population) and stripped most of the survivors of their control of magic. While Axiaothea and most of her followers were killed in Frodbrokna, it is unclear if that was because the spell worked or just a result of the mass devastation. The sheer magical power it introduced to the world, along with the great amount of human pain and suffering, caused Aersanon to gasp in death, bringing forth the fog, destroying Aervalr, and tearing reality.