The Abyss and the Occult

Worldbuilding
1

This thread is for discussing things related to the Abyss, the outermost layer of the Veiled Age cosmology. To start, here’s all the Veiled Age Primer says about it:

cosmology
cosmology1436×858 70.5 KB

The Abyss is the vast, possibly infinite realm of chaos and unfathomable nightmares beyond known reality, feared by gods and mortals alike. Its touch corrupts both the living and the
dead.

The Abyss is the source of Occult magic. Its essential feature is the corruption of mortal creatures: turning sound minds to madness, transmuting living flesh into strange abberations, and turning the dead into the Undead. Occult magic is outlawed in all the countries of the round table. It’s only practiced by secret heretical cults, who believe the Abyss should have never been separated from the rest of creation.

2

Inspirations

The Abyss has the general vibe of outer space as pictured by H.P. Lovecraft: utterly alien, unfathomable, the home of impossibly ancient creepy crawlies, the source of madness-inducing weird experiences, attractive to the types who seek forbidden knowledge.

(As an aside, I should refine the cosmology a little bit more later to explain the place of Genos and Nox in it)

There is a place called The Abyss in both the Forgotten Realms (D&D) and the Age of Lost Omens (Pathfinder). While ours shares the basic idea of an infinite chaotic plane, an even closer inspiration is The Far Realm from D&D. Not the mechanics of it necessarily, but the general feeling. Here’s a decent video on the subject:

So What Is It?

The Abyss is not actually outer space as we know it. The Veiled Age doesn’t necessarily have galaxies full of suns and planets, as least as far as anyone knows. This is a universe where the geocentric model is roughly correct. The stars are just the visual appearance of demiplanes scattered around Edil. The Abyss is the blackness beyond the sea of stars. I picture it not as empty space but as a diffuse, ever-churning fluid of some kind, with things living in its currents.

Let’s define some terms.

  • A Primordial is a being native to the Abyss. One mayor may not be ridiculously ancient, but as a whole they existed far before the planet Edil did. As a general rule, nobody has actually seen a Primordial since the Golden Veil was created.
  • An Aberration is what we call a natural, living creature from Edil that has been corrupted by the Abyss and turned into something more disturbing. The Faceless Stalkers in Secret of Gloam Lake are an example that’s appeared in a story already. As a general rule, Aberrations are evil, or at least have alien intentions at odds with humanoid life.
  • Occult is the general adjective describing all of the above and anything Abyss related. Note that people in the Veiled Age wouldn’t consider Modus to be Occult. A deal with the devil is at least something you can get in writing. The Abyss can be touched, but its corrupting influence cannot be reasoned with.
  • Undead is the result of the Abyss somehow interacting with a corpse. This is the one and only source of undead in the setting.

The Abyss Is Bad

Transmutation and chaos are the general themes here. Any attempt to interact with or use the Abyss is ill-advised, not to mention illegal. You will be changed, and probably not for the better, at least according to your friends. Physical change is possible. Madness is likely. In the worst case, it ends in death, followed by undeath or some other alien mockery of your former self. Just say no to touching the Abyss.

When you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you.

Part of the reason Occult magic is illegal is that the Abyssal influence tends to spread. Its formless energies seem to have a life of its own, and one with an infectious quality.

While the Veiled Age overall doesn’t have a bleak, Lovecraftian tone, the Abyss makes it a setting with significant cosmic horror elements, since Edil seems to be just a marble floating in a nightmare realm, protected by a thin Golden Veil.

There is some evidence the Abyss is not purely hostile and evil, however. Nox, many scholars agree, is or was a Primordial. That raises the question though: is Nox unique? Is Nox, a being capable of birthing gods, merely one of a species or class of beings native to The Abyss?

3

So one natural question to raise here is if Abyssal cultists hold any real power. Obviously they don’t have anything on the order of a kingdom or something that world powers would recognize. But a Lost Island where they hold sway might make an interesting setting, and would give a name of a place only spoken of murmurs, in asylums, and in the tales of the most experienced and far traveled sailors.

4

There could totally be a lost island with cultists. I also think of Razmiran in the Pathfinder setting, which is like a small place run by a cult leader who claims to be a god. The Thirteenth could have been something like that.

I’ve been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately, which is of course the definitive source of cosmic horror. And one of the strengths of these stories is the sense of being off the beaten path. In the Dunwich Horror, everything happens in a remote town outsiders mostly have no reason to visit. In The Whisperer in the Dark, we’re dealing with a farmhouse on a lonely mountain. The Mountains of Madness has researchers trudging through the arctic and finding frozen specimens. There are also stories that take place in ordinary cities, but the narrator is somehow disconnected from ordinary life, obsessed with the occult and meeting weirdos in back alleys and sketchy laboratories at night. There’s a sense that any first-hand knowledge of the aliens comes through lone mad researchers or else secret societies and cults. It’s not something you would see in a newspaper or discussed in polite company.

Of course, our setting is different in that the calamity caused by the Abyss is an accepted part of ancient history. But it’s ancient enough that I imagine most people don’t consider it relevant to everyday life or politics except as an analogy or a bedtime story. Sort of like how we view the black plague.

It could still, as you suggest, be the reason for the round table forming, catalyzed by one big Abyss-related disaster. It seems to me such an event would have to be scary to world leaders without being large in scope. E.g., perhaps a portal was almost opened or the Veil almost torn, rather than armies clashing. Sort of like the UN coming together to ban bioweapons. If the threat is scary enough, people won’t necessarily wait for opposing armies and body counts to unify against it.

I do think though, there could easily be conspirators in high and low places. One can easily imagine a story where the plot revolves around some royal family member or church official who is secretly an Abyss cultist.