Essays Index
Pantheon series: Part 1 - Elder Gods and Outer Gods | Part 2 - Greater Deities - Eternals | Part 3 - Greater Deities - The Great Wyrms of Time | Part 4 - Lesser Deities - Earth Gods | Part 5 - Lesser Deities - Alien Gods

A guide to the greater pantheon of the Borderworld.

Elder Gods:
Elder gods are beings that survived the end of the previous universe either through their own power or by an oddity of the laws of physics that the pre-universe operated by. They are changed beings for their experiences, only vestigial remnants of true gods, but still dangerous entities in their own right.

The Orphaned Starchild:
The Orphaned Starchild is a merged consciousness that was once many beings, the singular embodiment of an entire pantheon of gods from the pre-universe. This pantheon, bound together by their common use of the same power, were merged into the Orphaned Starchild when the pre-universe died and was reborn into this one, an event which they themselves inadvertantly caused. They became an entity that could neither live nor die, instead merely having to subsist.

The old pantheon derived their power, which they called the Lordforce, from an unknown, non-magical source. Their overuse of this power was what led to the destruction of the pre-universe, and to their current fate. In the pre-universe, Lordforce was an effectively infinite power source, and the gods who used it were said to be divine beings who could reshape reality with only a thought, but this is no longer the case. The Lordforce now is little more than a mass of magic-resistant green sludge known as smooze, and the Orphaned Starchild has been reduced to only a giant, living lump of smooze floating in space.

The Orphaned Starchild was born with a deep hatred and jealousy of its fellow gods, and indeed, against all life. It wishes only destruction upon the universe around it, and whenever it can, the Starchild will reach out with its many intangible limbs, and use whatever strength it can muster to wipe out any budding civilization it finds, and kill any god it comes across.

While the Starchild is weak and slow, its immunity to magic and lack of a solid form makes it nigh-impossible to kill. The Starchild is directly responsible for the destruction of over one hundred and fifty thousand inhabited worlds, has killed two thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four gods, and is frequently blamed as the main reason why a united pantheon of gods never formed in the early days of the universe.

The Orphaned Starchild was last seen in the Andromeda galaxy.

The Skeleton King:
The Skeleton King was part of the same pantheon as the beings that became the Orphaned Starchild. Like them, he was a user of Lordforce in the pre-universe, and was involved in the wars that brought the pre-universe to its end. However, the Skeleton King did not come from the same timeline as the Orphaned Starchild. In his timeline, the universe lasted for much longer. Long enough, at least, for the Skeleton King to lose the war. He was burned alive in magical fire, the flesh seared from his bones, and his ashes were cast adrift through the infinite dimensions, his very soul still bound to them, so that not even death could be his escape.

Over untold billions of years, the Skeleton King gradually reconstituted himself from these ashes, using only the magic of his own soul, the residual power remaining in the Lordforce, and his own sheer force of will. His skin was forever burned away, cursed by magic to never return, but still he persisted in a skeletal form, becoming the being he is today.

By sheer happenstance, it was this universe that the Skeleton King fell to, and this universe where he reconstituted himself. Upon finally reawakening and regaining mobility after spending eons as ashes, the Skeleton King immediately entered into the Eternal War. Strangely, he did not ally with any side, instead choosing to fight all three factions, but because the Forces of Chaos frequently fight each other anyway, he is nominally considered to be aligned with them.

With each victory, the Skeleton King killed many foes, and those he considered most worthy were magically reanimated to be his undead minions. Said minions were resurrected with their souls, and so retain their memories and personality, but are also slaves to the Skeleton King's will. They also ritualistically remove all their flesh after death, so as to become completely skeletal, just like their master. The cleverest of the Skeleton King's minions would go on to form his Court of Bones, the commanding body of his forces, while the rest became part of his Skeletal Legion.

Though the Skeleton King's intentions and true allegiances, if any, remain unclear, he is still a figure of major significance, being one of the only remaining elder gods that is still active in the cosmos at large, as well as the only one to directly fight in the Eternal War.

The Skeleton King and his forces are currently active in Jotunheim.

The Volorox Engine:
There were many gods in the previous universe, and although their forms are no longer known to us, we do know that they were not all users of Lordforce. Some were magical gods, like in the current universe, and many of them were still alive even to the end of their reality. What happened to many of them is unknown, but in the case of at least one, their physical form was destroyed while their soul survived into the new universe.

This soul spent billions of years drifting aimlessly in space, and it grew bitter and hateful because of its fate. This soul would meet other gods that would refuse to help it, and it would meet organic lifeforms that would ignore it, or else treat it as dangerous. And many would not even see it as a living thing, but as a mere mass of wild magic, and they would try to harvest it, causing the lost soul great pain.

This soul of a deceased god would not put up with this torment forever, and would eventually possess a lost space station built by an extinct race. Haunting the machinery and powering it with its own being, the entity attempted to destroy all life in the Andromeda galaxy in vengeance for its mistreatment. This being, now called the Volorox Engine, would have succeeded were it not for the interference of the Galactic Alliance starship Archangel, pulled into the sector by Discord, the Spirit of Chaos. Despite their attempts to plead with it and show it mercy, the Volorox Engine was determined to carry out its vengeful plan, and it was because of this that it was ultimately destroyed.

During its final attempts to activate its ancient weapon systems, the Volorox Engine was boarded by the crew of the Archangel, who forced its core to overload, go critical, and self-destruct, despite the Engine's attempts to neutralise the crew with its internal security systems and robots. This explosion would destroy much of the being's soul and intelligence, effectively lobotomising it, as well as destroying the space station itself. The drifting remnants of the Volorox Engine's soul would later be found and consumed by the First Corpse.

Reality's Traitor:
The being known only as Reality's Traitor was another magical god that survived the end of the previous universe, and much like the Orphaned Starchild, is thought to have been born from a merging of several tortured souls. It is likely that Reality's Traitor was was once the collective ruling pantheon of the previous universe, somewhat equivalent to the greater deities of this one.

Reality's Traitor is so named due to its actions during the early days of the universe. Confronted with a new existence that was much like its old one but with differing laws of physics, the newly merged being found itself in terrible pain, and responded by lashing out with its power and trying to unmake the world, attempting to revert the newborn universe into the familiar one which had just died.

While the being at the time lived in a lifeless and empty universe, and so was not actually ending any lives in its attempt to do this, its power threatened to destroy the many potential futures where life did exist. In an effort to preserve their own existence, alien time-travelers from these possible futures sent back whole battle-fleets to the early days of the universe to combat the entity. It was they that named it Reality's Traitor, calling it so due to their mistaken belief that the being had actually originated in this universe, and was attempting to jump to a foreign one at their expense.

The time-travelers were ultimately unable to kill Reality's Traitor, but they did wound it significantly enough that it was forced to cease its attempts to end the universe. A stable time loop formed from this, and the possible futures were saved, while the Traitor itself fled the universe altogether as soon as it had recuperated enough power to do so. To this day, it is uncertain where exactly the Traitor ended up, but most theorise that it only ever made a short hop to one of the closer parallel realities.

Outer Gods:
Outer gods are gods from other universes that have passed into this one. Being that they often come from universes or dimensions with entirely different laws of physics, they can be either severely weakened or greatly empowered by being in this universe, and for those that choose to stay in this world, it's usually the latter. Some of them are magical, but not all of them. Outer gods are typically less powerful than elder gods, but are often more mobile and are always more alien and horrifying.

Orsim Desmenee:
Known as the Plague of Kings, Orsim Desmenee is a being that came into this universe eons ago and has devoured whole populations for as long as he has existed. Thought to have once been a mortal who ascended to a horrific form of godhood, Orsim eternally wanders the stars in search of planets to consume, traveling as he does in a body made of the ooze that his victims revert to after he has consumed them.

Orsim seeks constant challenge and stimulation, and so takes pleasure in battling for the worlds he selects for consumption. He encourages his chosen worlds to send champions to match him in battles of brains or brawn, agreeing to leave the planets alone only if they are able to defeat him, and it's rare that they do. If the planet does not agree to his terms, Orsim often responds by unleashing a virulent plague upon the planet in question that indiscriminately kills most of its population, hence his name.

Because Orsim so greatly appreciates champions who provide a worthy challenge, he considers them to be his friends, and always spares their lives after he defeats them and destroys their planets. Though a tiny minority (usually from more warlike worlds) have come to consider this bizarre friendship mutual, the majority of all surviving champions make it their mission in life to destroy Orsim in vengeance for their lost homes. Orsim, for his part, considers it a sign of how strong their friendships are that they continue to seek him out and provide him with additional challenge and amusement, the very things he liked them for in the first place.

Due to his destructive yet affable nature, Orsim Desmenee is one of the few gods who gets along well with malevolent entities such as the Orphaned Starchild, the Hated Galaxy, and the First Corpse, and he also has had friendly encounters with several less malevolent gods. While Orsim does not value mortal life except for those champions he faces, he views his fellow gods with a measure of respect, and thinks of them as the only lives truly worth preserving.

Orsim and Discord share a special history together, as Discord is one of the few gods who Orsim has made a direct and personal enemy of. In one of his previous lives, Orsim came to consume his home planet, and Discord, well-known as the Spirit of Chaos and beloved by many on his homeworld, was selected to be its champion. This was the first and only time Orsim ever faced a greater deity as the champion of a planet, and was also one of the few times Discord ever faced an enemy stronger than himself.

Discord fought Orsim for the Equestrian equivalent of three months in an exceedingly complex game somewhat akin to chess, which played towards Discord's talent for keeping track of minor elements in uncertain chaos and running multiple strategies. However, the extreme boredom of the game worked against him, and unfortunately, Orsim was just too intelligent to be tricked by these strategies. Discord ultimately lost the game, and his planet died screaming, an event for which he has resented Orsim ever since.

The two of them would replay this game on four further occasions, with Discord often stepping up to act as champion for planets which he believed were not capable of defending themselves (usually because these were worlds that Discord himself had brought to ruin with his chaos, and which he felt personally responsible for). Though his skills improved with each time he played, Discord has yet to defeat Orsim in this game, and has consistently lost when challenged.

Orsim, however, greatly likes Discord, as he has fought him more than any other champion he has faced, and so he respects his wishes more than most, on one occasion even being dissuaded from consuming the Borderworld because of Discord's insistence that he not.

The Nameless One:
The Nameless One was an eldritch entity of unknown origin, which could not speak the mortal tongues, and did not use magic to exercise its will. Its body was a twisting mass of eyes, tentacles, and screaming mouths with no apparent centre, which only looked like a single entity because it twisted and tangled around itself to such an extent that its many limbs formed into a clump. It came to the universe relatively recently, one hundred thousand years ago, and spent the time since its arrival finding great sources of magic and consuming them.

Its usual method after landing on a planet was to take refuge in some remote location, such as a desert or a forest, and use its strange power to attract weak-minded natives to itself. It would dominate their minds, make them into its slaves and worshippers, and would then use them to gradually bring the rest of the planet into line, while devouring the souls of any it could find no use for. Eventually, after the whole planet was enslaved to its will, it would eat all of its followers at once. Using the souls it consumed, the Nameless One birthed millions of infant children, each of them weak and frail, and none of them surviving more than a year.

Eventually, the Nameless One would attempt to do this to Earth, an act that it tried sometime during the original reign of Celestia and Luna. It landed in what is today the San Palomino Desert, and there began building a cult to carry out its bidding. The formation of this cult was soon noticed by the princesses, as ponies began leaving their cities in droves to head out to the desert (ponies being a relatively easy species for the Nameless One to dominate). Upon discovering the presence and nature of the Nameless One, Celestia and Luna devised spells to protect their own minds from its influence, and then took the fight to it directly.

The battle between the sisters and the Nameless One lasted two weeks, with the entity repeatedly repelling their attacks and shrugging off all but the most devastating damage, not even bothering to defend itself most of the time, so confident it seemingly was that they could not harm it. In the end, the Nameless One was defeated after Luna dropped a comet on it, which she had spent the previous several days pulling close enough to Earth for her to use. The Nameless One was killed, and not being magical in nature, it had no soul within it to persist past its body's death.

The crater where Luna dropped the comet is today known as Nameless, after the creature that was felled there, and is the site of Nameless Correctional Facility, a high-security prison reserved for the very worst criminals to be processed through the Equestrian justice system.

I'm still waiting for an explanation of what the First Corpse is.

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Well, only took four years to answer. Pretty fast for me.

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Better late than never