How powerful are the Kings of Edom? And their primeval opponents

[xenoz]

The Kings' invasion of the Multiverse billions of years ago saw them destroying/consuming many dimensions, which lead to an interdimensional alliance of Great Powers banding together to destroy many of the Kings and sealing away those that could not be destroyed. Aside from a few esoteric names like the Fire-Bearer, the Lords of the Jeweled Spider, the Angel of Cold Shadow, etc., we don't get much information on the Great Powers.

 

What I'm wondering is, were the Kings only a threat to the material worlds of Assiah or to the entirety of existence? The Great Powers could have been powerful beings from worlds like Earth, entities from the Outer Planes of Yetzirah or even from Briah (at least as emissaries, if not in full force). Maybe it was a combined effort involving Powers from across the three planes below Atziluth. The lowest estimate would be that they were equivalent to the greatest superheroes of our time.

 

In Arcane Adversaries, we get writeups for a weakened Vulshoth and the Hands of Deizzhorath. The exact magnitudes of their full power forms are only hinted at. I've been under the impression that, if they successfully carried out their whims, the Kings would destroy the Sephiroth as we know it, reducing it to one of the many dead/decaying cosmoses of the Qliphoth. That means everything below Atziluth would perish. Since Kether is the ultimate source of creation and presumably indestructible by any means, a new cosmos would naturally arise from it, continuing the cycle of cosmoses rising and eventually falling to the Qliphoth.

 

On the other hand, another CO player thinks they're a threat to just the material and, maybe, astral worlds. That seems like a lowball to me, since the only greater Qliphothic forces appear to be Quemetiel and the Solipsist. If a weakened Vulshoth is a formidable menace built on 2000 points, at full power he should be even more threatening than the likes of Tyrannon and Xarriel. As cosmic horror monsters, the greatest Qliphothic beings like the Kings and Presences Beyond should be able to attack the very concepts that comprise the Multiverse's positive energy-based existence. An attack by the Kings on Briah could leave the rest of reality reeling from the loss of fundamental concepts that make the cosmos function as it does.

 

I think the status of the Kings really depends on how much of a threat to the Multiverse they are meant to be. Did their rampage draw the attention of Cosmics like the Four Zoas and Mortalus or were the mightiest of Assiah (and Yetzirah?) sufficiently powerful enough to halt their incursion?

 

It appears to be one of those vague areas of the lore that GM's have the freedom to shape in whichever way works for their campaigns. But maybe there's more information on the Kings of Edom and the Great Powers I'm not aware of. I think some estimations, like that of my fellow CO player, are understating the threat they pose. Maybe @DShomshak or @Lord Liaden could enlighten us?

[Lord Liaden]

Well, all I can do is provide an opinion based on available precedents. Dean Shomshak created these concepts, so would be the person to offer a definitive opinion.

 

But I will say that what you're describing sounds like what I call the "crisis creep" that's become so prevalent in comics. Conquering/destroying the Earth used to be a big deal in terms of stories. Then it became destroying the Universe. Then destroying multiple universes. Nowadays it seems like a threat can't be called "major" unless it threatens to destroy Everything! Within the CU that's clearly the goal and effort of the Solipsist, literally the anti-God.

 

I recall the story of the Ghost and the Darkness, the pair of lions that terrorized the Savo region of what's now Uganda around the end of the 19th Century. Individually they killed one, maybe a few people at a time. But they kept coming back, taking victims again and again, until they'd slaughtered well over a hundred. It was the fact they wouldn't stop that made them such a terrible menace.

 

The Kings of Edom collectively can be a threat to everything that exists, but not necessarily all at once. They and their Edomite servants may be analogous to swarms of locusts or army ants, consuming everything in their path, then moving on to another place. Personally I would consider devastating one universe at a time, even piecemeal, to be more than enough to qualify as a big threat.

 

Now, regarding the "great powers," and the Kings of Edom specifically, there are a few sources of info that may be considered supplementary to what's been published for Champions. A great deal of what appeared in Dean Shomshak's "mystic" Champions books, The Mystic World and Arcane Adversaries, as well as the cross-genre supplement The Ultimate Mystic, was reprinted from a book he wrote for Fourth Edition Hero System, The Ultimate Super Mage. (But definitely not all of it.) The companion book to that, The Super Mage Bestiary, writes up many examples of a wide range of supernatural creatures, from multiple categories, which were not reprinted in later books. One such category is creatures from the Qliphoth, sapient and non, including the Harab Serapel, or "Ravens of Dispersion," and their home dimension, the Pale Cathedral. This is the only one of the ancient enemies of the Kings of Edom to actually be detailed.

 

There's also a Fifth Edition supplement from Hero Games' sci-fi line, "Star Hero," for one of the official Hero Universe's future settings, the Terran Empire. Scourges Of The Galaxy is a large collection of enemies suitable for a "space opera" science-fiction game, based in Terran Empire continuity by default, but with broad utility. One organization written up in it, the Church of the Infinite Dark, are interstellar worshipers of the Kings of Edom who are devoted to freeing them from their prisons and loosing them into the universe. The Church's leaders are called Void Messiahs, each of them having been warped both mentally and physically into insane superhuman disciples of the Kings. They each travel with their minions in an enormous starship known as a Darkhold, equipped with a unique super-weapon designed to devastatingly reshape whole planets, gradually writing mystic symbols upon the fabric of the Milky Way which will unlock the jail of a King of Edom.

 

Each Void Messiah came into contact with and is devoted to one specific King of Edom mentioned but not statted in Arcane Adversaries, i.e. Orogtha, Esleggua, and Mgatrraor. While Scourges Of The Galaxy doesn't give stats for those Kings, it does describe their influence beyond the Earth, and gives insights into how they can be contacted, and how their presence and plots may impact those unfortunate enough to do so. It's all very much Lovecraftian horror in space.

 

(Dean, if you read this, and haven't seen Scourges Of The Galaxy, I think this part of it would be of particular interest to you, given how your personal recent gaming has emphasized magic in space.)

Edited June 19 by Lord Liaden

[DShomshak]

40 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Well, all I can do is provide an opinion based on available precedents. Dean Shomshak created these concepts, so would be the person to offer a definitive opinion.

 

Nope! Everything I wrote about the Kings of Edom, their minions, and the Qliphoth was meant as a starting point, not the last word. What follows is advice on developing the Kings of Edom in your own campaign, not dictates on What You Must Do.

 

One thing that I think doesn't get emphasized enough is that one of the defining aspects of the Kings is that they defy definition. Are they powerful qliphothic entities? Some of them, maybe, kinda. The category "qliphoth" does not encompass them. Even the category "supernatural" does not encompass them, except in the broad sense that they fall outside the boundaries of the conventionally natural. If you make the Kings an important part of your campaign, try to break players' expectations. If they think Edomites appear only as Black Magic Horrors, have some monsters released by an accident at a particle accelerator, by freaky math, or by investigation of supposed "junk" DNA in the human genome. (See Doktor Pandemonium in DEMON: Seervants of Darkness for an example.)

 

Tidy categories make things seem more under control, and therefore less scary.

 

Since there are no definite limits to the Kings, there are no definite limits to where they can act or what they can threaten. If the GM decides a particular King can extend its influence into a Brialic dimension, then it can. You just have to work out the effects of an incomprehensible force of madness disrupting a fundamental concept of reality. (And then, what PCs can do about it.)

 

All this goes for the ancient enemies of the Kings, too. They can range from conceptual entities from the Upper Planes, to powerful alien civilizations, and even -- like the Harab Serapel -- qliphothic entities nearly as fearsome as the Kings themselves.

 

But I do agree with LL about "crisis creep." This also brings up a key aspect of horror: Making the threat bigger doesn't necessarily make it more horrific. Horrors can be intimate as well as cosmic. For instance, one of the most effective scenarios I ran that involved the Kings centered on a horror writer who didn't realize that his weird and nightmarish images came from seeing a manifestation of Vulshoth when he was young. (Event in another adventure, in another campaign.) The connection strengthened until his dreams began materializing and committing grisly murders at locations that would eventually create a Gate to let greater entities into the world. The PCs traced the murders to him and his dreams. They faced the problem of breaking the connection. Then one of the PCs failed a control roll and the writer became a living Gate, spilling horrors into the world constantly. The PCs were left with no choice but to kill him. The situation had escalated beyond their power to stop it any other way. And that need to kill an innocent man messed them up. That was the horror, greater than any monster.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

23 hours ago, DShomshak said:

 

One thing that I think doesn't get emphasized enough is that one of the defining aspects of the Kings is that they defy definition. Are they powerful qliphothic entities? Some of them, maybe, kinda. The category "qliphoth" does not encompass them. Even the category "supernatural" does not encompass them, except in the broad sense that they fall outside the boundaries of the conventionally natural. If you make the Kings an important part of your campaign, try to break players' expectations. If they think Edomites appear only as Black Magic Horrors, have some monsters released by an accident at a particle accelerator, by freaky math, or by investigation of supposed "junk" DNA in the human genome. (See Doktor Pandemonium in DEMON: Seervants of Darkness for an example.)

 

Tidy categories make things seem more under control, and therefore less scary.

 

Since there are no definite limits to the Kings, there are no definite limits to where they can act or what they can threaten. If the GM decides a particular King can extend its influence into a Brialic dimension, then it can. You just have to work out the effects of an incomprehensible force of madness disrupting a fundamental concept of reality. (And then, what PCs can do about it.)

 

 

The Church of the Infinite Dark, which I mentioned earlier, is interesting in that it isn't based on magic. In the Terran Empire era magic is practically nonexistent in the Milky Way, but the Church deliberately and explicitly eschews mysticism, which has failed to free the Kings of Edom over all the aeons of their imprisonment, in favor of science. Each of the Void Messiahs' super-weapons is technological, inspired by insights into pan-dimensional physics granted them by their patron Kings. Their lethal alterations to worlds are mathematically calculated to alter the vectors of gravity, electromagnetism, and/or the psionic energy from living things, to create cosmic "keys" that will resonate with the Kings' prisons.

Edited June 19 by Lord Liaden

[Opale]

Since years now, I'm leading a Vibora Bay campaign, so quite mystically developed, with DEMON as a very hidden, and very horrific arch enemy behind the scene. 

 

What I learnt is the less your players know about the threat, the most horrific and dangerous it is.

At some moment though, I had to create an alternate future reality, where the plans of Luther Black came to fruition, and Earth( the galaxy ?) was invaded and destroyed by said Kings of Edom, making it a wasteland filled with Slug-like mutated humans, enslaved by the Slug, its minions, and what's left from DEMON. And Characters escaped from this future to warn them on the choices they did that led to that outcome.

 

As for what Dean and LL wrote, I can only vouch for it.

My campaign started using Cloaca character, and an horrific mass death of students in an art class in VB university. Behind that, was Tappan Arkwright, pulling the strings, who I turned by the way into a psychopathic brain eater. Very early the players realized the dual nature of Vibora Bay between Good and Evil, but even Evil characters who were aware of DEMON wanted to help them against threats. 

I will stop here, no need to tell you the whole plot.

 

But The Kings of Edom would need a 6th refresh update, as would DEMON depending on the fate of Luther Black plans and his trinity.

[Stanley Teriaca]

Not all Kings of Edom actually want to destroy the multiversus. Why destroy when you can change it, universe by universe, into an environment which suits the Kings better.

 

Unforcently the environment will twist every living thing which is NOT ITSELF in mind and body in order to survive, but hey, the universe is still there. Beings still live there. Life still exist. And the sky is purple, the grass will eat you, and I wouldn't drink the water.