RYHASSHARAUCH, the Stillborn
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Twenty-second of the Demiurges, otherwise known as ‘the Stillborn’, ‘the Sleeper in Chaos’, and ‘the Unknowable One’.
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Appearance: though it exists only within the Sea of Chaos, there are shapers and otherworlders who have sojourned to this primordial space and claim to have looked up its inert body.
Ryhassharauch takes the form of a gigantic fossilised foetus with a distended stone-like head, three arms, and an endless umbilical cord that stretches into nothingness. Its head is covered in multiple, skull-like faces, each of which share eye-sockets with its neighbour, possibly representing the potential different aspects that lie unfulfilled by a life unlived.
A plume of dust trails from its head, in which is a ball of glowing energy, which is said to be the Demiurge’s divine spark.
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Characteristics: what is known of Ryhassharauch is likely apocryphal, and is from ancient second-hand accounts. The Demiurge lies in a torpid state, similar to that experienced by other ‘dead’ Demiurges, though its mind is very much active. Its thoughts and dreams are have played a role in the shaping of Elyden, with some unexplained features and structure attributed to it.
Considered a dreamer by those who have studied its history, Ryhassharauch is thought by some to be responsible for the influence of Demiurge’s dreams upon the Material realm, as well as the ability of oneiromancers to perceive and manipulate. As such, those few who know of it consider Ryhassharauch a patron of dreamers and oneiromancers alike.
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Other Forms: it is not believed that Ryhassharauch can change its form, and if it can, there are no accounts of such forms.
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Children: the children of Ryhassharauch are the rarevas, who were cursed before their conception through their association with the Demiurge, and they are the main theological argument for the existence of a Twenty-Second Demiurge. Only seven rarevas exist, each in a fugue state between life and death, unable to die or reproduce, much like their parent.
Said to dwell in the mountains of Kharkharadontis, far from mortal meddling, they are morose beings of bony grey forms. They keep their umbilicals as necklaces in memory of their unknown god.
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Known Scions: none.
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Relationships: Ryhassharauch is alone amongst its siblings, in that it was never given the choice in forging relationships. Some scholars postulate that it may have had contact thourhg dreams, with Dopellanis, though there is little proof to this.
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History: In the tale of Elyden’s cosmogony, Two-and-Twenty Demiurges are mentioned, though most contemporary sources only name Twenty-One.
Named Ryhassharauch in an ancient mortal tongue, its meaning is now lost, though it is remembered in apocryphal sources that reference destroyed passages from the eldest sources in the Mythologia Elyden. It is these fragmentary remnants and the scholars who know of it that serve to keep Ryhassharauch from true death.
Largely ignored in the Mythologia Elyden, Ryhassharauch was an abomination from the onset, stillborn and shunned by its siblings, whose cognizance served to distance them from their misshapen sibling.
Ryhassharauch slumbered as its siblings shaped the Firmament and the Atramenta into the Material realm, and Elyden into the perfect realm, as deemed by The Shaper.
Though Ryhassharauch did not shape the world in the same manner as its siblings, it too had an influence on the Material realm. Its dreams and nightmares were potent, far more-so than those of its siblings would be when they would eventually fall into torpor, and they would influence parts of Elyden that were close to the Sea of Chaos.
In these places did appear maddening monuments and landforms shaped by the dreams and thoughts of Ryhassharauch. Most are buried and unknowable today, though some extant creations of the Demiurge do exist, such as shunned Inatta Horhau, in the wilderness of Gnoth. Ancient examples, now lost, are the unending labyrinth of Allaikonsaggo, where miscreants and degenerates were imprisoned; Ctughoth-emmanith, a place of utter horror and chaos that had to be destroyed by a choir of archshapers in the Fourth Age; and the Tower of Nacath-hithoth, where the earth spirals upwards in the form of a triple helix tower, hiding living things that grow from its walls.
It was, in part, the thoughtless creation of these structures and features across Elyden that were responsible for the Demiurge’s fall from grace. Where the other Demiurges supposedly had a choice in stopping their actions, Ryhassharauch did not, as its creations were spontaneous, the products of its fever dreams and nightmares.
Ryhassharauch was not however punished like its siblings, and remained in Sea of Chaos, its thoughts continuing to distress the Mortal realm, possibly to this day.
Like its siblings, Ryhassharauch was gifted seven seeds, which would, following the hubris of the Deimurges, burgeon into life, becoming the twenty-second mortal tribe, known as the rarevas.
But without a Demiurge to guard and shepherd them, the rarevas withered. Infertile, they would never spread or expand from their birthing grounds like their cousins. They were hollow beings, haunted by the unfulfilled potential of their sire, who they came to worship as a representation of the inequity of fate.
It is their silent observances that keep Ryhassharauch from truly dying, making the stillborn Demiurge one of the few to persevere into the Fifth Age of Mortal Life.
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Sigil: none.
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