Of The Eternals

Sometimes unexplainably cold winds sweep across a region, even indoors and in places which have no source of ventilation. In these regions a strange chill can be felt down the spine and when priests call upon their Gods, their call remains unanswered. In those places the hens lay black eggs, the cows yield sour milk, and the cats bark at the moon. Accursed these places have been called, and many an exorcism has been attempted to drive the evil influence away. Yet, when the source of the trouble is the presence of an Eternal, the exorcisms nearly always fail.

The Eternals are one of the few races who survived the awakening of the Gods and the fall of Prime Creation. They were solitary, but powerful, weavers of essence and were locked in a bloody war with the Other Ones, another race which survived the Gods. Few remember the reasons for this ancient war, but it is waged still by the remaining Other Ones, maddened warriors which search Creation for the elusive Eternals. When the Gods shattered the Heavenly Pillar, known as the Dreamer in modern texts, they set upon the races of Prime Creation too, as they had no place within the new order. One after another the Gods exterminated the races of Prime Creation until finally they encountered the endless hordes of the Other Ones, and for the first time the Gods were stumped in their efforts. The first encounter with the Other Ones was an outright disaster and several Gods, now all but forgotten, were slain by the vast, unyielding horde of Other Ones. This allowed the remaining Eternals to flee and they departed for the one place the Gods and the Other Ones were unlikely to look: Within new Creation, the world the Gods were reforging.

Here they wove cocoons of dimensional matter, bent and twisted reality, and step by step they distorted it until small locations had been created, wherein the Gods had no power and where the warm blooded Other Ones would feel uncomfortable. These godless, drafty and cold places became the entryways to the Eternals' extra-dimensional mausoleums, cocoons in which they have erected magnificent halls and wonderful landscapes. Here they slumber eternally in an attempt to avoid the detection of the Gods and the Other Ones.

The Eternals are so powerful, so closely tied to essence that their memories and emotions can affect people and animals in the area surrounding the entryway. Within the presence of an Eternal, men may dream of events before creation, may witness the spidery armed humanoid shapes of the Other Ones as they assault the Citadels of the Eternals. The entryway itself is usually, but not always, nigh undetectable, and might be found by accident, for instance as a peasant leans against the left side of an old rock and simply falls through it, arriving inside the Eternal's mausoleum.

Eternals are always alone, unable to reproduce, except once a millenium, and only socializing with other Eternals to exchange information and knowledge. The few remaining Eternals have always existed; before the war there was little need for reproduction as the Eternals cannot get sick, old or die from anything but violence, and even that is hard. Yet they hate the presence of others, again excepting the once per millenium mating year, and considering the less than hospitable conditions of the entryway regions, they are usually left alone. The Monks of Ketange-Ishatal have the only known records of Eternals and according to these ancient texts, the Eternals minds are so delicate they suffer from migraine whenever they hear speech or other loud noises. Whatever the reason for their solitary existence may be, the fact remains that the Eternals have never been seen, at least not by anyone who lived to talk about it or recognized them as such.