Fantasy The Dead Zones LORE : The Terrible Truths of the Worlds

[Many Weapons Guy]

In time, you will know the tragic extent of my discoveries. ???

The peaceful and harmonious home world, as we all know it, is now in ruins. Forbidden knowledge of what lurks deep in the cosmos is never meant to be discovered, let alone understood by mortals even in the slightest. Yet, it was only a matter of time until someone stepped over the threshold. The truth spread like wildfire in a forest in dry season, ensuing chaos and madness everywhere. Family separated, international alliances ended, conflicts escalated, and eventually, world wars broke out. Lives were taken, deaths arose, and blood was spilled. Once a home planet for all, then a battlefield. Now, little short of a wasteland.
Some made their way to above the clouds and rebuilt their new lives there, in their own utopia, fitting their beliefs of being above all else. Some others, dominated the depths underground, seeing themselves as the true rulers of the world from the very foundations. However, there were also those that gathered together, albeit for uneasy companionship, and remained neutral towards all ideals, sticking to what's left of their crumbled houses to restart their own civilization from scratch.

• THE BEYOND
• THE METROPOLIS
• THE BARREN TOWN
• THE ENCLAVE
• THE BELOW

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  Behold, the infinite malignity of the stars !

  Even beauty is deadly. The stars, the nebula clouds, as alluring and sublime as they are, are the perfect curtains to cover the true captivating, beguiling and bewitching nature of this half of the cosmos.
  Most would religiously worship them as guidance and zealously revere them as signs for prophecies, but to those branded as heretics and unbelievers, executed on stakes for their blasphemy, these sky-gazing stars are more, much more than that.
  When a star reaches the end of its life cycle, and the light ray of a quasar pierces through the nebula clouds engulfed in the supernova, A malevolent, cosmic monstrosity emerges from within, freed from its rock prisons and released into the vast cosmos. A thing of pure, cosmic blinding radiance. A Star-Born from beyond.
  While these creatures come in various appearances and sizes, they share some common traits that make them easy to tell apart : constantly shifting formation of thousands of crystal shards surrounding a cracked-open rock, with strange glowing substance leaking out.
  While made of crystals and stones, these monsters in disguise hunger for flesh and blood, seeking to consume all living and nonliving things that they can reach to. The main threat is their evolved sentience and intelligence, enough to lure victims into willingly offer themselves with their hypnotizing reflective crystals and songs of desire, but even beneath such subtle approach to gather their hosts and food sources, the disguise is dropped and the monsters in their true nature arise if the victims prove to be too stubborn to fall for the charm, in which case these creatures lash out in an explosive manner. A single drop of such substance leaking from the core of the monster, or a shard of its crystal, when touching the skin, will be absorbed into the victim, mutating them from inside out and outside in as they begin to grow crystals on their body in a painful process. The Star-Born will have for itself a thrall at its disposal.
  It is impossible to tell if these nightmarish creatures can be destroyed, but even if they can, their twisted corruption is timeless…
  
• 
  

  Where angels fear to tread...

  A high-tech, non-magic city, a utopia of sort, founded and built among the clouds, and lead by absolute laws and orders of a cult of zealous priests that proclaim themselves the holy guidance of light. Possibly the closest one may have to the former glory of the world that was once so peaceful, but even then it's only appearance. The cult of extremists hold an unshakable and unbreakable belief that the Star-Born monsters are the true gods, the true creators of all lives in the universe. In turn, the fanatics would purge all and every slightest trace of magic from their sacred city, seeing magic as a sickness, a disease, an accursed damnation, the work of evil, to be contained and destroyed. They also host regular gatherings throughout the inhabitants' daily lives, where there are teachings and preaching dedicated and devoted to the supposed salvation of the Star-Born.
  
• 
  

  Welcome home, such as it is...

  After the massive war, what's left of the world is now home to all types of wild monsters to make their domain. The only sign of civilization left is a town near the edge of a forest and not too far from the shore of a sea. A mix of technology and magic, when people from all corners of this trashed world have no reason not to deny any aid and assistance they could have, in their difficult life. With the increased number of monsters in the wilderness, the people have learned the hard way to be resourceful with their tools and powers, now for both farming... and hunting. Despite the hardships, the hardworking people live on, grateful to see the sun rising in the horizon when a new day comes, hopeful for the days when the world would be restored back to how it once was.
  
• 
  

  The poisonous earth for those welcoming their merciful oblivion...

  The enclave is an underground city with everything built from the stones and rocks that make the foundations of the world. Magic thrives in this place, in its rawest and purest form, and is the central part of the degenerate society that rejects the advancement of technology in the surface. Lawless and lead by chaos, the rule of thumb here is that the strongest gets to make the rules. Mostly surrounded in darkness, with the only light source being from the lanterns and torches, there is no sense of time in this dreadful place, sometimes pitch-black as death. But, after all, the horrifying idols from the Below are timeless, forever worshipped by those on the brink of ruins to their body and madness to their mind.
  
• 
  

  Madness made flesh !

  Among the cosmos, the mere presence of black holes have always been a defiance against the nature of all things. They are not “something”, for they are neither living creature nor object. They are not “somewhere”, for they are not a place in and of itself. They are just “them”.
  To most people confident with their feeble five senses, limited knowledge and understanding, black holes are nothing more than simply regions of space-time where gravity is so strong that even light is swallowed in.
  To those that dare to brave through the madness and chaos, however, black holes are birthplaces of absolute dread and terror, gateways to revelation and destruction.
  It is from the black holes that the nightmarish abominations of tentacles and eyes, black as night itself, crawl out of.
  It is believed that when a black hole has swallowed enough matter from those unfortunate enough to be in its range, be it a star or planet, a Void-Born monstrosity emerges and reaches to the physical world, a manifestation and embodiment of an endless, restless, relentless gluttonous hunger to devour everything, now given a kind of “sentience” to be active on its wake, and given sight to hunt down and prey upon its victims.
  By all rights, these creatures should not exist, ever. At best they are alien, at worst they are hard proofs of how easily even the toughest minds can be torn down. Who knows when they will come crawling out of the darkness and unleash their unspeakable terror ?
  While these absolute abominations and monstrosities are too much to even be categorized in any shape or form, in a futile attempt to understand them any better, they share some similarities between one another, such so terrible and terrifying that one glance might be enough to tell them apart : colors so dark no light can reflect from them, with shades of green like corroding acid/poison, or pink/red like flesh itself ; countless tentacles from their mass to ensnare and seal the victims’ fate in their grasp ; numerous “eyes” to stare down and break the victims’ mind ; and myriad of gaping maws… to make them whole.
  They are beings of flesh and blood, hungry for it, and sentient enough to hunt for it. However, they are by no mean “living” creatures in any common sense.
  There is no telling if they can even die at all ; one can only hope it is a case, but none would throw away their short lives just to find out if it’s actually true.