The Crimson

**The following article is in "Notes format", which means that it is disorganized, and pasted directly from the lore notes archive. This is not the final article.**

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The Crimson

This is a diminutive summary of around 2 years of worldbuilding.

Around 4 months ago, I had a hyper-realistic dream in which I was an African-American kid living on earth during an invasion by the crimson. Well, for half of it at least. Then I was a minimum wage working teenage girl that hailed from the realm of “insert name of supermarket here”, who went through the same thing after it was implied that he died.

I remember everything, including each scientific explanation as to what was happening, as I was grouped up with a scientist dude in the bunker I was staying in.

The giant tower of ionized pulsating meat that hailed from the stars. Spores. So many spores in the sky that it seemed to be perpetually night. The concealed sun only shining through as a vague, bleak red. Being locked in a bunker. Red roots manifesting in the veins, crawling into the flesh and taking over the body. Watching someone cut their arm open to pull the root out that was clinging to their bone. Having to do the same. Hiding behind hardly closed doors, trying my hardest and pushing all of my body weight to them shut against the clamoring, speech-slurring things that masqueraded as people. Failing.

With this knowledge, I concluded work on all of this.

Ronan knows all about this, but from storytelling. I have never compiled a concise summary of the content into one document, so here it is.

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“The Crimson” is the colloquial name for an ancient conglomerate of coordinated parasitic organisms, corrupted mortals, demons, super-organism colonies, viruses, diseases, and their commanders, the “bishops”, who share a goal of dominating and consuming galaxies, led by a powerful eldritch-energy wielder known furthermore colloquially as “The Crimson King”.

In summary, they are demonic, parasite/virus-weaponizing aliens.

Since opposition to the King’s forces dropped (post-events of the game’s singleplayer prequel which I haven’t started working on), it is now a universe-scale force. Combining the Eldritch Arts and simple brutality, the King and his forces have taken over 3 minor universes so far.

The main universes, however (Ours and Elysia), though infected, have not been consumed.

The Crimson adapts to foreign environments by sending out scouters, determining which method is best to attack the population, and assimilating life into its hivemind, which further bolsters its forces.

The “spores” of the crimson are emitted by all organisms under its influence. Through this, all living things with fear in their hearts that inhale even the most slightly contaminated air will begin the process of turning. Their body will mutate, and parts of the body will be replaced with foreign ones. You can remove these to slow the process, but if you have inhaled the spores, there’s nothing you can do to change your fate.

You then either become a zombified soldier, a tool for the crimson to manipulate others into a false sense of security, or are mutated into a limbless blob of meat. A sitting duck for a crimson organism to come across and consume for strength for its unholy journey.

The Crimson, though constituate of many forces; some with souls and others without, all share two similarities:

1.) A seemingly complete indifference to the pain and suffering of others

2.) Blackened skin and red adornments, which signify their bond to the king.

In contrast, the Crimson’s victims usually sprout red warts, roots and vines, occasionally gaining indescribable limbs.

The aforementioned viruses and diseases are sadistic genetic creations by the bishops themselves, to mutate their victims into either more optimal food or into involuntary soldiers.

The most threatening part about the Crimson, however, is that once it enters a universe, the universe is eternally vulnerable.

From the point in time when any being of the crimson enters a universe, forever on will the following apply:

Whenever negative karma (evil) is piled up in one place, the crimson shall manifest itself out of nothing. Not existing crimson lifeforms, but pure evil, taken form via the crimson rays; invisible particles which spread across an entire universe once the crimson has breached it.

On top of the fact that Crimson Lifeforms can feed off of suffering alone, it can truly be stated that there is no hope to put an end to it.

Not unless the king is destroyed.

Unless that is so, the Crimson will consume every galaxy, in every universe, and so on. Until there is nothing left, and it begins to eat itself. Into extinction. The end of all life.

The only thing stopping that from happening is the protection of the rift.

The rift is where the core of astrolium exploded and blew a hole in the fabric of spacetime.

Any creature that enters the rift is scattered across all universes. This wouldn’t be very good for you or I, of course, but for the King, this is the dream.

And if the Crimson gets to the rift, then all is lost.

### Abstract

Thus, in Astrolium:ONLINE, the plot is that the galactic federation is making thousands of clones using the recovered DNA of Erhald Farhoc (the main character of the prequel), in hopes that a dozen husks; of what was once the greatest soldier known to history albeit, could take down this threat, or at least prolong the inevitable.

You (and every player who downloads the game) are one of these clones.

Oh, and you have free will, so many of your clone brethren may prove to be a problem for you. It’s a multiplayer/online experience..

I don’t know yet if I want to allow the crimson to be “defeated” so easily, and therefore might make it actually impossible to truly do so (only to fight it off successfully) so that I can spend more time fleshing it out and displaying more features via a sequel game that goes in-depth and focuses pretty much exclusively on the crimson.

It couldn’t be multiplayer because it can only die once. If that happens in multiplayer, there would be no game left. Multiplayer games are intended to be playable regardless of time. That’s why Astrolium:ONLINE exists at a fixed point in history where each player’s actions can be cannon, simply because they don’t matter.

Depressing lol

Alternatively, I’ve been wanting to end the series with a final cataclysmic event that tragically destroys everything, mirroring the first cataclysm that was the explosion of the core of astrolium (which really kickstarts all of the future events of the series in terms of conflict)

Maybe the crimson gets into the rift, begins to destroy reality, but then the ultimate gods (those above reality) decide to wipe the universe clean and start over?

It’s a work in progress.

The good thing about that though is that there would be no programming required, as it would just be one big animated cutscene-ending sequence.