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Written by: MelonHeadzzz
“You call it ‘foreign,’ and ‘other.’ It was once ‘other’ to us, yes, lying on the fringes of space and time. But to us, it served fine enough as a second home.”
The Borderworld ‘Xen’ | Since the Dawn of Time
The rocky crags of drifting asteroids and islands, with large-headed creatures floating through its desolate meteors.
“You call it ‘foreign,’ and ‘other.’ It was once ‘other’ to us, yes, lying on the fringes of space and time. But to us, it served fine enough as a second home.”
The Borderworld ‘Xen’ | Since the Dawn of Time
The rocky crags of drifting asteroids and islands, with large-headed creatures floating through its desolate meteors.
Between the fabric of dimensions, lying awkwardly where all portals meet as one, where no native beings grace its shores and the travelers of the multiverse enter only on happenstance, there exists a place where dying worlds go to be forgotten, sucked up by errant dimensional storms and captured by space-time’s ever-shifting curtains.
It is here, that for the past 16,000 years, what humanity calls Xenohominis hallucinacapris once lived on asteroids surrounding a massive, living spire that rose high into their nebulous sky. Though, they called themselves the Vortigaunts. They were not from here, nor would they remain here, but for those sixteen long millennia they lived under servitude, and died just the same.
It went by many names, disputed in the hearts and minds of the Slaves, The Slaver, and its children. While humans simply called it Xen – a colloquial term stemming from the Greek xenos, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", or "alien" – its residents referred to it as the Hideaway, the Second Home, or more commonly, Esh’morr: “The Borderworld.”
The air of Xen is not composed of any dominant gas molecule, it is instead formed of where gas molecules could potentially be. As a result, gas atoms are constantly being recycled with different elements at any given time. A region of Xen could be O2, or CH4, or N; there is never nothing there, and it tends to trend to compounds of breathable air rather than unbreathable air. The residents called this phenomenon “the Medium,” and it keeps physical structures suspended in gravitational orbits instead of falling into the gravity of their surroundings.
Time is tracked in Xen locally through “turnings” and “movements” of individual asteroids. A single turning on one asteroid is counted as a “day,” and an asteroid’s entire journey around Xen is counted as a “movement.” Thus, time is hard to track in an empirical sense and is mostly calculated by biomachines or slave-scholars who are meant to do nothing but track turnings and movements.
A massive asteroid lies in the center of the realm, serving as a nexus of gravity for the rest of the physical portions of Xen, who each revolve around this centerpiece. These lost isles drift in a strange dance, swirling in circles around what the vortigaunts called Turrvih: “The Great Spire.”
But travel beyond this “Great Spire,” to the fringes of Xen where even the manta-rays won’t fly, and you will find waves in the fabric between worlds, where this dimensional space rages, clawing against reality, birthing portal storms from this conflict of “something” and “the space between.” These portal storms mix together a cocktail of dimensions, throwing long-forgotten fragments of distant worlds into a single place, for the resident vortigaunts to scavenge for resources - worlds primitive, civilized, or somewhere inbetween.
The Captor’s Design
And so we toiled, our energies restricted and our bodies struck; devoid of agency, for the Captor’s Design.
The Captor and its Observers, ever-obsessed with stratification and organization, arranged the regions of Xen into easy-to-manage realms, each with their own designated areas designed to put the vortigaunts to good use.
The very collars that commanded the vortigaunts in these days were perhaps even more insidious than those the Darkness uses today – subconsciously they suppressed the voice of The Vortigaunt, the voice that commands our people, and replaced it with the Shadow’s command. Though, like most things buried within one’s subconscious, a strong mind may suppress it, and it often was. These collars were connected to our Observers, made so they could track our movements and ensure we could not travel far.
But perhaps it is the chains that were most perfidious in their crafts; unlike the Darkness’ chains who suppress the vortal energies entirely, the Defilers knew that our vortal energies could be of some use, and granted their use, but trapped our energies in a repetitive feedback loop. Use of our energies provided discomfort, and too much use burned through our bones and charred our flesh. This voice alone has seen many a vortigaunt, too consumed by hubris, fried by its own energies. A tragic way to perish, and a useful way to suppress rebellion.
Over the millennia, vortigaunts complied with the Supreme’s stratification as the culture within the Vortessence twisted to match it. Vortigaunts themselves found themselves segregating in multiple regional categories, each with their own danh, or duty. An important thing to note about Xenian society is that a vortigaunt’s danh is not permanent, due to The Nihilanth’s cyclical way of job assignment. While vortigaunt villages had a predisposition to a certain job, in times of crisis (especially late in The Nihilanth’s reign), villages cycle out danh constantly. One movement you could be working deep in the Great Spire, and the next you could be sent out into Morr’Hallam to scavenge for raw materials to refine into metal.
Slaves on Xen are granted their own enclosed housing, denied from leaving until their daily labor begins, while they are given the chance to work amongst themselves. Their houses are made from a combination of harvested iyah’jaa-ree – a tree-like plant with a bark similar to ash – pounded earth, and bricks made from baked mud. To pass the time between movements and turns, vortigaunts perform a number of activities, including pottery, cooking, storytelling, debate, and dancing. Xenian communities (except for the Turrvih’korr) herded at least one small colony of antlions for fresh food, while other Xenians would travel along the outskirts of their asteroid to pick berries that dangle from scaly vines and branches.
The Turrvih’korr (⏁⎍⍀⎐⟟⊑'☍⍜⍀): Those who remember the days before The Awakening will remember a time when the Turrvih’korr were one of the proudest and patriotic of The Supreme’s design. But, as The Shadow’s cravenness was unearthed and it emerged from its cocoon of cruelty, The Turrvih’korr became paradoxically the most rebellious and the most loyal, shaped into a nexus of stratification and tyranny by The Defiling Lords. From the factory workers deep within the Spire, sculptors of great monuments, to the scholars and servants answering to the Defilers themselves, the Turrvih is a place of refined industry, artisanry, and knowledge.
Despite the power of the Turrvih’korr, this region held the fewest permanent residents. Most were important members of Xenian society – as important as a vortigaunt could be – including designated quality assurance for factories, scholars, scientists, Spawning Priests, keepers of the Gargantuas, and personal slaves to important Controllers and Hulkabin.
The Ahl’Terrnox (⏁⟒⍀⊑-⏚⏃): Floating in the mid-rim of The Second Home, the Ahl’Terrnox – or Colonists – are the most numerous of the vortigaunts, and are where most can be found. Despite being considered a “colony,” the Ahl’Terrnox functioned more like a massive series of ‘neighborhoods.’ Floating asteroids and islands were carved out for habitation, while structures made from pounded earth, mudstone, and iyah’jaa-ree – the strange, spindly wood-producing trees that cling to some grass-dotted asteroids and provide the Colonists with places to live. Terrnox is also where most healing pools can be found – while these glittering, life-giving waters are common places to bathe in to heal wounds, these pools are also communal areas where Vortigaunts gather to rest, to commune, and often, to spawn more of their young. Here are where the most antlions reside, though they live in small, scattered communities kept to by vortigaunt shepherds and farmers.
While further from the Terrnox Hulkabin might hunt roving bands of antlions to extinction to ensure they cannot be captured by free-roaming Vortigaunts or form Extract, in Terrnox Hulkabin ensure that antlion populations stay down through collecting tithes of food, providing sustenance for them and their superiors, and ensuring the Vortigaunts will not use the antlions to rise against them. Life in Terrnox is simple; it is devoid of the politicking and backstabbing of Turrvih, and is safe from the pillaging Hulkabin who strike at shantytowns of Morr’Hallam.
The Morrgu’chackt (⏃⊑⌰'⋔⍜⍀): Despite the dangers of the Borderworld, in most cases Xen is relatively safe to live in - as long as one remains close to the Spire, under the watchful eye of The Observers and their Hulkabin minions, a vortigaunt slave will remain unscathed following The Nihilanth. But, there are some who are forced to live on the outer edges of society to do the jobs that no one dares; scavengers, scouts, and houndeye shepherds are found in the Morr’Hallam, or the Curtains of Chaos, where the fabric between worlds lashes and whips violently, dragging segments of distant worlds into the fold of Xen. These Morrgu’chackt, or “Curtainwalkers,” were instrumental to ensuring that The Nihilanth’s heavy industry remained fed with a constant stream of raw materials to refine and press into weapons for its eventual war.
It is Morr’Hallam where one can find the most sagely and elder vortigaunts, so disgusted by The Supreme that they live in far-flung villages forced to live off of the scraps they can find from parasites and houndeye flesh, while scavenging for the raw metal they use to build their hardscrabble shantytowns. By choosing to live so far from The Spire, they interact with the Defilers only when demanded by threat of violence, which seeds further dissent in their ranks.
The Ahl’Hallam (⏃⊑⌰'⊑⏃⌰⏃⋔):But, even further from The Supreme’s gaze, there lay the Ahl’Hallam (the Children of Chaos), who have wrenched themselves free from The Nihilanth and live either alone or in small nomadic groups. These vortigaunts are the fewest archetype of any, as few have ever dared to break their collars, fewer have been clever enough to succeed, and fewer still have survived. The Ahl’Hallam are espoused by The Great Spire as bandits and essence-reavers, who removed their collars and were overtaken by their savage natures to wreak havoc upon The Supreme – and yet, many vortigaunts instead look kindly upon the Ahl’Hallam, admiring their freedom and surpassing nigh-insurmountable odds – the life of an Ahl’Hallam is a hard, and fleeing Hulkabin patrols, Manta-Rays, and other forces of the Controllers leaves one always on their toes.
They became far more prevalent in the twilight years of Xen, riding wildly into battle on bullsquids, using their unbound and far superior vortal energies to unravel The Nihilanth’s collars and manacles, freeing vortigaunts from their binds and taking them to ill-fated, premature rebellion against The Nihilanth. Many were also present after The Nihilanth’s death as the portal storms collapsed around the Border World, helping carry vortigaunts into the unknown, consoling the traumatized, healing the sick, and protecting them from being torn apart by the Storms.
History
Our desperation was our downfall. Oh, how gullible we were. Oh, what fools…
The Grand Enslaver had arrived, and what vortikind remembers as the Age of Armageddon had already come to pass. The Homeworld, turned into a fortress world long before the Enslaver ever arrived, was not enough to suppress the Darkness Without Aim.
Our cannons, tucked in the forests, speared their ships from the azure. We leapt upon them from the hills and valleys, weapons both ancient and advanced sent against the Enslaver’s yoke. We struck them, and they struck us tenfold. The Darkness, in its frustration, did not seek to annex the Sanctuary. They sought to bring us to heel, by any means necessary, and focused on the very things we held dear. From the skies above, bolts of terrible force seared through our fields and cities, our forests and rivers.
In minutes, millions. In days, trillions, before a sword could be lifted against the stream of steel and white-hot energy.
Our temples were destroyed and our statues carved into cliff sides were torn from their once-eternal pedestals. Curtains of safety were closed and every option was exhausted, as the Darkness harnessed every tool at their arsenal, to dominate our species. In the twilight of the Darkness’ destruction, as the forests burned and the mountains were flattened, The Vortigaunt reached into the vortessence, begging for something, anything to listen to their call… and something answered.
Mysterious was it, it promised them a home and revenge in exchange for the future service of vortikind. Desperate, The Vortigaunt agreed, and all of vortikind was granted a path through rifts torn through the fabric of space and time; the first portal storms.
Reinvigorated by the promise of safety, and with all of their combined strength, the eldest among vortikind compressed the Sanctuary so intensely, that it collapsed. The Enslaver’s naval detachment collapsed into that dark portal of infinite compression, and all was lost. Thousands of generations of history, destroyed in a mere decade.
The Mystery, beneficent in actions but not intentions, brought the shepherds with their orm (antlions), and the parasitic surr’churr (headcrabs) who clung to them. Vortikind was safe, but met with a world not meant to be lived in, dominated by a barbed Spire orbited by countless asteroids. When we arrived, we were met by the words of strange, floating beings who each spoke in voices that echoed through the mind rather than the air. While small, the Vortessence could sense great power flowing within them, and we respected it.
“Greetings,” they declared, “we are the observers of The All-Giver; Our God-King, Lord Upon High.”
They spoke with kindness, understanding our plight and recognizing the horrors wrought by the Darkness - they offered safety, hospitality, and a place for vortikind to live. They worried for us, and worried too for The Vortigaunt. “This is a strange place, with even stranger laws,” they claimed, “and so The Vortigaunt may not respond well to the environment. Worry not, for we have prepared for you - and you, now, are here.” They presented vambraces and collars made from greenish steel, and insisted “wear this - to protect The Vortigaunt.” Scared and confused were they, they complied.
They allowed for us to live our own lives and to live where we wished. In the outer reaches of The All-Giver’s land, they granted us the space to begin our new communities. They connected us together by portal systems and gave us danh, or duties to our new tribes. But, as the elders began to notice cruelties beneath honeyed words, and as our kinsmen began to search for truth in all things, their vile natures emerged from the surface. For their villainy, these tyrannical shades soon became known as The Defilers.
The collars silenced The Vortigaunt. Instead, a voice not of our own replaced it; the voice of the Shadow. As the millennia dragged on, the Defilers and their Observer thralls forced more sins upon us. They stole our titles and captured our younglings, the Defilers recycled our husked brethren, reaping from us our antlions and hoarding the Extract for themselves. The Observers demanded tithes from us, and each time we failed, our bastardized Hulkabin cousins beat us into submission - our coils frayed within an inch of severance.
The Defilers claimed it was “for our well-being,” and yet as The Shadow in The Spire spoke, elders who saw deep beneath the Vortessence sensed the sameMystery who brought us here, guiding our enslavement from the very beginning… using us as pawns and breaking our paths. The elders of our tribes could not stand idly while The Vortessence was robbed from vortikind. In darkness, restrained by the very collars the Observers placed on our throats, some resisted. Few of us were freed, fewer escaped The Shadow’s gaze, and even fewer evaded until his severance.
Our determination waxed and waned over the many millennia - but each time we rose against the Observers, the battle was for naught. Our kinsmen were slaughtered in droves, and more were stolen and recycled into biomass. Our populations dwindled, and our struggles grew worse as the Defilers whittled our kinsmen from megaliths to mere pebbles. Some of our younger kin followed the word of the elders, and like the Yah’rai, who followed their leaders no matter where they tread, the younger followed the older into ill-fated slaughter. Deluded were the others, who claimed the All-Giver was a distant but kind-hearted being, and yet those Observers cursed by wickedness were simply “spoiled berries.”
Those deludes were proven incorrect, when The Shadow emerged from The Spire with a tremoring, maleficent voice. With a mind that shattered any who dared peer into its folds, it demanded to be worshiped openly as The Supreme. Thus began The Awakening, and for 6 centuries, until its end, The Shadow ruled with vicious megalomania.
The Shadow was not so any longer, as its title shifted into something more befitting of its state; The Mad God. With its Defilers at its back, weapons of war were churned from Turrvih’s womb, as our kinsmen were pushed to our brink. The few elders who remained had enough, and in one mad-dash to freedom, the largest contiguous rebellion in The Second Home’s history occurred. For the rest of The Mad God’s life, there was never once a time when the whole of Esh’morr was at peace. Ahl’Hallam from all throughout the Home came to free our kinsmen, and The Observers returned tenfold with forces designed not to suppress, but to slaughter. We called this time the Zuk’Ha-Tsah - the Blind Spring.
Villages all across Esh’morr were razed by the Hulkabin, our population was reduced even further. Our skirmishes with The Mad God did not stop until its end, but after these shocking displays of barbarity, many were without morale and without hope. Darkness hung on the horizon.
When The Mad God invoked the final stage of The Supreme Path, and the Vouch-Lih’chuaa (War of Tainted Spirits) began, we were forced into conflict against a young planet of rushing rivers, stunted trees, and powerful oceans. Our kinsmen objected, refusing to be conscripted into the Captor’s battle - but we were forced to fight, ensnared by The Observers through dimensional fabric and domineered in every synapse. We feasted upon flesh untasted, witnessed alien landscapes of cold steel and rocky deserts, and struggled against steel-spitting simians unprepared for our Slavers’ War, carving into this new world rapidly.
Our battle was intensified by the emergence of what The Nihilanth called the U’An’Mahn, the Emissary of Decay - a being who charged down steel corridors, leaping towards our kinsmen and striking them down without any means of reprisal. It reached its claws through space, channeling its own impossible powers and rendering our kinsmen into gristle particulates and chunks of atomized matter.
A furious force of nature, this being tore through the lines created by The Mad God in their world, tearing through the fabric of reality to pierce into The Second Home… but seeing our plight, this Emissary took pity on our kinsmen. Its wrath turned to The Captor and its children, and in its infinite mercy, spared us from the horrors of its wrath. We cannot forgive the chords cut by this being, but even so, this Emissary of Decay was given a new name by the very Captor who dubbed it.
“Free Man.”
Burned in the vortessence with fire and blood, this Free Man carved its way into our history, binding itself indefatigably with The Vortigaunt.
As it rose within the vile Turrvih, The Captor desperately threw all it had against the powers of The One, but it tore Its Children apart atom by atom, channeling its godlike powers against this Mad God. It was a hard-fought battle, but in the war in heaven, The One would reign supreme. In this moment, it became many things: The One Free Man, the Opener of The Way, The Emissary of Freedom, or simply The Saviour.
In the final death knells of The Nihilanth, that putrid being of lies and cowardice, that power-seeker and vile beast of burdensome weight upon the Vortessence, it channeled waves in the fabric of reality, sending The Second Home collapsing inward, whisking our kinsmen by force onto that plane of tiny trees, dubbed Ard’rheesh.
Thus ended the Era of Chains, and began the Era of Salvation - an era of life and rejuvenation of our species freely upon what the “humans” called “Earth.” Here, we lived free lives, founding tribes as we deftly avoided the intolerant humans and the swirling portal storms, watching helplessly as the scars of The Captor yawned ever-wider… scars that would fester until the Darkness Without Aim would tear through dimensional fabric again.
