In a time before time, before the Dark welled up to meet the scribings of the grand grimoire of being- before the Silence- beyond the zero- there was/was not. Of those who were/n't, there were infinitely none and beyond all description in their sameness. And so on in that manner for a nullity stretching on for eternity.
Much later and only a shortest fraction of a breath after, there was the Grandparent. The Primal Being. Monadoentité, darhudane, ymiric, product of the freewheeling gulps taken of the void and extended out into existence by the protector arachnid world spirit. All was being placed into order, but Grandparent was not yet fitted in. Offers had been made and extended and declined.
Beneath, the power waited and its guardian had accepted the first offer made never looking upon the thing they guarded, can-we-fuck-the-flag/buddy-they-don't-even-let-me-fuck-it, paced back and forth. In the middle, the hare bounded along the ground. You know the rest, yeah? Grandparent and bunnyboy go down where they weren't supposed to go, just as people were doing all the time in those days, separating heavens and earth, upsetting the order of stasis, and they found the guardian, peeked inside the vault, and they found the power. Death. The sword. The first weapon.
'Knives-' A tool first. A spear was for hunting before it was for war, and so too the bow and the sling. The club was once simply a stick. A very simple tool. Versatile. The sword was the first means for killing other people. The first weapon. That was one shape they took out of the vault, but yeah, there was a girl who was a knife and a bat and a sakkar and other things. A balance. A door. But the sword cuts and the sword pricks.
Grandparent demanded the power of Death and stabbed themself, but they couldn't take all of it. Some of that split their children, their autofertilized children, into pieces- most of ‘em into two bigger ones and a lot of smaller ones, some a bit differently, and a couple escaped the touch altogether- and some of that went flying off into the distance. But Grandparent took a big part and became Judge of the Dead, the first Emperor. The One who had to interact with the Many.
The guardian tried to scoop it up, but the sword twisted in their hand and said, and I quote, “You dared only to dream, but not to act, and the incompleteness of your defiance means you will never be able to truly hold me.” And the sword stabbed them, bad, and I know some of what happened after that but that's not important right now.
The hare? The hare scooped it up, but the hare was staying silly, and the wind ripped it right out of his little paws.
And I? I was there. The Judge of the Dead needed someone to judge, the First Emperor needed an empire, and the One-to-Many fulcrum point needed a Many-to-One to balance the scales. At least, as a temp, until people started dying in earnest.
Maybe I was around before that. Maybe I was filling in the crowds of people before there ought to be people. Maybe I've been around since the shit I started this story off with. But I told you this story for a reason, so go write it down like a good little boy.
Maybe I tell lies, yeah. You see the horns, don't you? Your third eye is mostly open, I know you can see ‘em. You want to know why, though. I can taste that in the thoughts that come flowing from that opening eye. But then again, if a Cretan tells you that all Cretans are liars, can you believe them? Why am I saying this? You don't know where Crete is and I'm not supposed to admit I know.
-The Multilexia demonstrates her conversational prowess.
Not true. Post-canonical. Didn't happen. That was someone else. It happened in Glorontha, your clan venerated Barbeester Gor and Lanhkor Mhy.
-The Multilexia responds to an accusation of being the ancestral enemy of an entire clan in the province of Vanch.
I'm like Great Sister, you say? Well… in some ways I am Great Sister, in some ways I'm a close relative of Great Sister, and in some ways I've never met Great Sister, who doesn't know what a phalanx is by the way, you should ask her that sometime-
-The Multilexia at a state dinner, moments before the hand of Great Sister fastened upon her.
Oh these? My bodies? My multiplying fucking terminalies? My super stuffed up materialities? My honker donker doinky legioinkies? My fucking fabric-of-reality stretching winds-of-limbo flapping gravity welling flesh mounds? You mean these super duper ultra hyper god damn mother fucking-
-Seriously, what is wrong with the Multilexia?
Nice triumph, bitchless.
-The Multilexia's traditional words of praise for the Red Emperor when he returns from a successful campaign.
'Do I believe that the power of Rufelza can accept and incorporate the chaotic powers into the world?' No. My belief in that is unnecessary, because the damn thing works regardless of whether I have faith in it or not! You see this middle finger upraised? It would be a terrible curse, the sign of a dread blast of hexery, the wrath of a ferocious demon of the void- but you just sit and stare in puzzlement as I wave them about- stop laughing, Valare- and that's the power of Rufelza at work.
-The Multilexia volunteers for Lunar Examination. Recorded via oneiric selenograph.
I met her at the edge of annihilation but also nowhere in particular. Her eyes were red and her hair was blue and she laughed at me as I dispatched some trivial foes, spirits of law and of slood and of motion I believe. She wasn't really there, of course. By that point she had been shot out of the sky. Twice, if you read it closely. Dying red sun, laughing at me. But not at me, really. I think she picked up one of my bodies like it was a lock of hair and stroked it, and asked if I was truly happy turning in circles forever, and- well, I was taken into her service as she vanished.
And then when I met her again it was much later. I was trudging, bodies reduced yet again, finding another hole to go to, when she came down from the sky on a horse with red wings and said, “Get in the car, loser!” I fought with her then, and I won, and she smiled, and I recognized her, and she released me from service and said she would appreciate my aid any time it was offered and I followed after that because what else was I going to do?
You don't get it, do you? It started as a joke, referentiality, intertext, a playful way of carrying out what cruder discourses had already defined. But I will tell you quite seriously, freedom is a more profound bondage than anything else, because in being free to do whatever you want and whatever you please, you have to make decisions, you have to think, and because you have made those decisions, you have thought those thoughts, they are yours and they are part of you and thus much harder to argue against even before the harness of reasoning puts your legs and arms together behind your back, and your eyes-
No, you're not doing anything wrong, I just don't think this discourse of mysticism is one you should start with. I think you should probably start with a more exoteric school. Anyways, I lied several times in that narrative, so if you want a problem to wrap your head around, deconstruct it and think through it.
-The Multilexia sermonizes.
I am in Lunar service for the following reasons:
Firstly, I am a Chaos demon that is capable of speech and charming manner- hey! Etyries, stop fucking laughing!
Anyways, being capable of speech and not particularly focused on a more conventional diabolicality, I am of course in the Lunar orbit. Fill in the stuff about antinomianism, Babalon and Babylon the Great, Mother of Whores and of Abominations of the Earth, the beast with seven heads and seven crowns and one of the heads having suffered a mortal wound, the serpent, the accusing angel, the combat myth, the divine rebel, the end of time, Loki, Kalki, discount store chakravarti, counterfeit Maitreyas, all of that goes in on your own time and in your own manner. And be playful with it, for Sedenya's sake!
Secondly, of course, when you look upon the Lunars, a fractious and dissonant lot who plainly would seem to argue over the most basic tenets of their religion in good faith and bad, you see a flattened division of homogeneity. And so it is necessary I exist and be in the Lunar camp in order for the thing you see to be tangible enough to touch in play. It's a rough job, but those are emergent shells I can cast off and let people play with.
Indeed, this extends even to the defined people of import in the Lunar Empire. You see puppets, that implies a puppeteer, and none of you dweebs do anything with the Troupe.
Thirdly… thirdly, it is out of foolishness. I saw the power of chaos and of change and of turning, the flowing heart of life as I knew it, and I thought this was there in all of this lozenge, that all that was needed was to bring something, and possibilities would unspool. But surely it is the case that it is only the Lunars who defy the order laid down from on high, who persist in wriggling against the predetermination of events, because why else would the holders of the yip say so?
If indeed there is any worry on your part that my contamination might spread to Orlanthi, Sartarites or Esrolians or any other options that might hypothetically exist, to Prax and Praxians, to the Malkioni of Seshnela, Ralios, Loskalm, Arolanit, Brithos, Vadeli, Junora, that I might have infiltrated the Arkati court, that trolls, elves, dwarves, dragonewts, even merfolk might be vulnerable, that I might e'en stick my courage to the screwing place and walk into Teshnos, Kralorela, Chen Durel, Pent, Vormain, Teleos, Vithela, Pamaltela and spread there- rest assured, all of those places are locked down, in the mouth of the cannon, foreordained, and there is no bounciness to be had there. Believe it.
Fourthly, this bitch is hot, I mean one scorching mama, and she just- okay, okay. I stand by what I said.
-The Multilexia the Multilexia the Multilexia talking to whom to whom to whom
I actually began with two Jar-eels, but I don't end at a million.
-The Multilexia's on her bullshit again.
The fun part about the vague incoherent conlanging is that I can assert that my personal pronouns are inflected in a way that exists in no Earthly language I know of and you can't prove it otherwise, or even argue against it.
-The Multilexia discourses on linguistics.
Any religion that accepts personalization and plurality in its panoply of spirituality will make or find demons eventually. Beings of spiritual nature but not cultic or devotional, things you aren't to worship, benevolent or malevolent or otherwise, big and small. Even limiting to fierce or vicious entities, this is still just as true. The Lunar Way has its own. Some come from the spiritual courts of Natha and Gerra and Orogeria that were well-known, while others were remnants of the Verithurusic and Lesillan and Zayteneran courts rescued from the depths of the Otherside. Still others were adopted with Gorgorma and Mahaquata and local nymphs. Some were creatures of Chaos that were defeated by previous incarnations of Sedenya, and now have been brought to heel to some degree. Some were once mortals. Some came from the Void to offer service of their own will or whim. Yet others were made.
The Multilexia is somewhere within these categories. Various stories exist, some told by her and others not. What is verifiable is that she was among the beings summoned by the awakened Teelo Imara into her service, and she ascended to the new Rufelza, and then eventually she returned to “aid the people of the world”, she said, but holding up a little card saying she was doing so sarcastically.
The Multilexia exists in multiple bodies, or is multiple bodies. (Not “has”. A previous draft used “has” incautiously and received a 400-page dissertation in response.) The bodies are all feminine in appearance, and the Multilexia takes feminine pronouns like she, her, hers. They have a wide range of characteristics other than that, with the primary commonality being a green tinge to their eyes, which heightens to a green glow when the Multilexia is using her abilities or otherwise straining a given body, and the presence of brass marks on all known or observed bodies, which seem to replace parts of the flesh and spread over time. It is said that she also exists on the Moon and in other Otherworlds, her bodies almost fully of brass except in the hair and eyes, but she officially refuses to confirm or deny this extremely verifiable fact.
The first and most relevant ability the Multilexia possesses is that the bodies share thoughts and perceptions among one another, even at a distance. As such, individual bodies allow for nearly instantaneous communication over great distances, and bodies are known to be positioned to create a kind of network throughout the Lunar Empire and somewhat beyond. In addition, prior to the spread of block and press printing, important messages that needed to be written out in duplicate would be copied by multiple Multilexia bodies at the same time. Clear limits to this ability seem to exist, and the network is not so simple as just strewing bodies one by one.
The second ability the Multilexia possesses is that as a Chaotic entity she is somewhat resistant to the more arcane efforts of the Church of Immortality and some of the effects of chronomantic rituals. This in turn means others among her bodies are assigned to monitor those situations and aid in recovery where necessary. She does not typically take the lead in these scenarios, claiming that “It's more enjoyable when mortals involve themselves”.
The third ability the Multilexia possesses is that she is able to and seems to need to “incorporate", which is to say, devour, people or their bodies. When she incorporates a dead body, it becomes one of hers, though one that begins heavily brassy. When she incorporates a living person, their body also becomes one of her bodies but their personality and memories seem added to hers, although careful experiments suggest the soul is only partially devoured and the remainder enters the cycle of rebirth. The Multilexia claims that she only benefits from incorporating living people when they do so voluntarily.
The Multilexia has her own lesser demons that obey her, which she calls her gens or her “neon demons”. When manifested fully, they look like feminine figures made out of glass, flexible enough to move, and filled with a source of a colorful light veiled by clouds. They serve her mostly as messengers, occasionally as attack dogs, and sometimes as secretarial support. They devour people to a lesser degree than their mistress, feeding only off of their skills and abilities, nibbling away and leaving them incapable for a time but without permanently severing that part from them.
When seen through a source of spiritual vision, all bodies of the Multilexia can be identified by having an uncountable number of horns, which curl around one another in complicated shapes that seem to multiply and contract if you focus on them.
You want stats for those bodies? What are you gonna do with those stats? Gonna hit the Multilexia with attack rolls? Better make it count. Better get an impale. Better critical her to death in one round.
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