Elders

The Old Ones and Outsiders – The Eldritch Abominations

“It is significant, I sometimes think, that the facets of nature which quicken my pulse with that awareness of both life and death are inextricably associated with the loneliness of man’s mote-like existence in the cosmos―and acceptance of man’s essential solitude on earth, or by love, or both together, for they are only different aspects of the same face.”

August Derleth, Walden West

The Elders are the greatest denizens of the Shadowlands, beyond everything else in the Shadowlands. The Elders have many forms, although none of them are able to fully approximate human form with any skill. They are sympathetic to humans in the Shadowlands, but think in such alien ways that they are very dangerous to deal with directly or from whom to seek aid. The Elders are the personification of concepts, and only Man of Void and Lady of Fire might ever have a connection to some actual human. 

Mother of Discord

Life is the waste produced as entropy creeps across the observable universe. Mother of Discord is source of all life and cause of the creeping Heat Death that slowly approaches.

Mother of Discord is the contrast of the flame, the creation of life and the inevitability of entropy. Possibly the only entity as powerful as the Firebird, Mother of Discord is the counterpart to Mystery in many ways. Both embody hope and exploration of new things, while also being embodiments of the unknown and ending of things.

The Mother of Discord is loving, but mischievous. She is caring, but cannibalistic. She brings creativity and disorder, but embodies the inevitable order of heat death and entropy. And so Mother of Discord is sometimes called the Devouring Mother.

She is opposed by the secretive order of Wizards known as the Darkened Ones, or the Tenebrati. The Darkened Ones are actually disciples of Mother of Discord, but seek to delay her inevitable heat death and prolong the life of the flame.

Mother of Discord is symbolically associated with stars and eyes and apples. The wheel galaxy is a favored symbol of Mother of Discord. The Milky Way is described as the Witch Road, but also as Mother’s Arm. Mother of Discord supports and encourages the expenditure of energy. She loves nothing more than elaborate plans and creations, but just as much she loves when elaborate Rub Goldberg plans fail spectacularly. It is the expenditure of energy she appreciates. She champions quixotic individuals and organizations, and is said to have personally protected Emperor Norton I of America during his lifetime. She is also the guardian of the insane and the neurodivergent.

The Three

The Three Unknowable are the three of the Elders most sympathetic to the Free Peoples. Among the most powerful of the Others, the Three Unknowable are the Firebird, the Great Serpent, and the Weaver. They represent fundamental forces within the Human Mind. They are the glue which holds Shadowlands form together.

The Three Unknowable, like all of the Others, are anthropomorphic manifestations of concepts too big for the fragile human mind to easily process.

The Firebird is the oldest of the Three Unknowable, representing mystery and the edge of knowledge. The Weaver and the Serpent are younger, representing story and ambition respectively. The Firebird is the unknown. The Weaver is the crafting of stories to control the Mystery. And the Serpent is the ambition and drive that enact the Story and push back the edge of Mystery. The Three Unknowable embody the process by which intelligent minds craft the Shadowlands in order to cope with the unmanageable and infinite nature of the Bonelands.

The Firebird is associated with the phoenix and birds generally and peacocks and cormorants more frequently. The Weaver is associated with spiders generally, but typically not fishing spiders (which are associated with the Broken known as Contagion). The Great Serpent is associated with snakes and mythic dragons generally, and with constrictors and anacondas more specifically.

The Firebird is the patron of the Archetype of the Storyteller and the Dreamwalker in particular. The Weaver is the patron of the Archetype of First Mother. The Great Serpent is associated with the Archetype of First Hero.

The Four

The Living Four: the four ‘younger’ elders- no older than life itself. Incredibly powerful compared to the Fair Folk or the Gods, The Living Four are among the weaker Elders. They are the Survivor, The Primal One, the Shepherd, and the Sleeper.

The Survivor is the eldest of the Living Four and embodies the earliest life on Earth. The Primal One embodies the advent of sexual reproduction. The Shepherd (or the Pale Shepherd) embodies natural selection and evolution. The Sleeper embodies the development of higher cognition in life, and is the most sympathetic to humanity of the Living Four. Each of the four teaches the Free Tribes a lesson in addition to teaches deep history of life on earth.

The Survivor teaches the story of the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. It is associated with endurance and winter and perseverance. The Primal One teaches the story of the Cambrian Explosion. She is associated with autumn and abundance and harvest. She is associated with blood and birth and celebration. The Pale Shepherd is teaches the stories of the various great extinction events. He is associated with Spring and and creativity and painful change. The Sleeper teaches the story of hominid evolution and development of culture. They are associated with language and secrets and culture. They are associated with Summer and and the externalizing of knowledge through writing and art and other new technologies.

The Fear Touched

Pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of danger are the two primary drivers of living beings: desire and fear. The Fear Touched are powerful beings driven by facets of these primal emotions. The Fear Touched are a strange collection of hostile and helpful. The Grey is one of the Fear Touched.

Fear is useful. Fear tells us when to run, and keeps us aware of danger. Some of the Fear Touched control the fear they embody, and others are controlled by that fear themselves. The Fear Touched are not evil. Not even the Grey is evil. The Fear Touched are those Elders whose essence and power is tied in some way to fear. They are often threatening: As the Hound and the Grey both are. But threatening is not evil. And many are great allies if the fear can be mastered.

The Whisperer

The Elders are alien creatures. Any of the Elders are difficult to properly describe. Possibly the most difficult to describe of the Elders is the one known as the Whisperer. Simply put, the Whisperer is the essence of place. This place. Every place. The Whisperer serves as the voice of the ecosystem, the quiet voice that tells the Free Tribes how to live. The Whisperer is the voice the Hungry Empire must silence in order to build its cities. The Whisperer is a plural being with a voice of legion. The Whisperer is not a he or a she, and not an it. The Whisperer is they. The Whisperer is we. Because the whole of the ecosystem forms the body of the Whisperer. And that includes the Free Tribes. That includes the Hungry Empre as well, no matter how they deny it.

The Hungry Empire and its cities may be the cancerous tumors on the Whisperer’s back, but they are still a part of the Whisperer. And when the Whisperer chooses to move, all move with it.

The Whisperer is the embodiment of the First Song. To be indigenous is to belong to a place. The Hungry Empire believes that place belongs to you. The spirit of place say otherwise, too vast to be owned, it is its own thing. And we belong to it… if we let it. The Whisperer is the voice of the land and sea and air. The voice of the world would be more accurate.

The Guides of the Fallen

The concept of death to the Free Peoples would sound very foreign to the Civilized folk of the Glass City. The City of Mirrors sees death as a reaper, personified in various guises by the Broken, from Falsenight to Starheart and on. To the Free Peoples, death splits along two lines, neither of them an end but a beginning.

The Psychopomp, the Guide of the Fallen is a feature of practically human cultures. Fear of death and fear of the unknown combine in human mind and causes storytellers to allay the fears of their brethren by conjuring guides and protectors of the dead. In the Shadowlands, the Guides of the Fallen oversee travel between the Realms of the Shadowlands, and it only through their intervention that psychonauts may reach the Realms of Light and endeavor to reclaim a soul they may have foolishly lost to some avaricious god.

As these are broad abstract concepts, they have been personified as a married couple: the Masculine Little Green Man and the Hermaphroditic Rainbow Moth.

The Elders of the Wheels

The Fair Folk would claim exclusive affiliation of the Crescent Sun. But the Fair Folk lie. The Elders of the Wheels are also affiliated with the Crescent Sun. The Master of Cycles guides the Elders of the Wheels, and the Elders of the Wheels are divided into the Solar Elders and the Sexagenary Elders.

These Elders align with the zodiac cycle, and they keep the larger time frames not watched by the Fair Folk. They are also teachers of skills and strategies to the Free Tribes. The Elders of the Wheel are highly respected by the Ancient Tribes in particular.