I always suspected Asphyxious to be the culprit behind the Aeternus Continuum. And Arcane Synthesis’ most recent blog post appears to have relevant information to this. So let’s discuss the hints we have seen!
Arcand Synthesis is translating the runic sentences we are seeing throughout publication. Some appear to be relevant to this topic:
“The key to immortality lies within the vault of the arch lich.”
“The hellbringer will unlock immortality.”
Aeternus’ motto: “Immortality / Life Augmented / Death Defied”
My interpretation: “Immortality” in the first two is clearly a reference to Aeternus’ motto. The “Hellbringer” may be a reference to “Asphyxious the Hellbringer” (Asphyxious 3). And “iron lich” could be another reference to him.
So I see two possibilities:
Asphyxious is actually behind the Aeternus Continuum, his vault is located in a temple and he is one of the high priests of the sect.
Asphyxious is not behind the Aeternus Continuum, but they are searching for his soul vessel that has been put in a vault in the hopes of learning from him or freeing him.
Actually there were two stories in the book about what may be soul vessels or cages. In the AC story, they find two vessels, one of which sucks in a vassal. In the ISA story, lieutenant Nerro finds what may be the vassal vessel and gets close to be sucked in himself before being rescued by his Mother.
The cylinders bear “strange writing and pictographs”:
One pictograph stood out from the others, large, bolder, and repeated numerous times. It looked like a fragmented circle, pierced with thick lines or spikes, with a twisted curl or tail jutting from the main symbol.
Could this be a description of the Cryx logo?
One must wonder, though, how a Cryxian soul vessel would end up in the Cyriss galaxy…
The mysterious alien figures of the 6th faction (?) though are also always depicted with green lights coming from them. Maybe this is just one of their artifacts and the stories have nothing to do with Cryx or Asphyxious?
Haley was pulling a lot of time shenanigans at Henge Hold, manifesting sky ships from slightly parallel timelines to allow refugees to escape the infernals. It’s a simple matter of “somebody brought it aboard during all the confusion” or “it was already aboard when it came out of the alternate timeline.”
The what now? I wasn’t aware of anything being teased beyond the Lost Legion.
Agreed. In my earlier comment I was referring to the image on pp. 184-185 of the Thousand Worlds book (headlined “Omens”). I always thought of it depicting “Faction 6”, but this is just speculation and has never been officially confirmed as far as I am aware.
Hey, love all the speculation here and agree with pretty much all of it. The main runes that mention the arc lich are from earlier books and could be dismissed as non canon Easter eggs, but there are some even more explicit references in thousand worlds
the references to the arc lich really sound like Asphyxious for the reasons you mentioned
both the ISA and AC story in Thousand worlds sound like they are about old lich soul vessels
the runes also reference The Prime (likely Nemo, though Haley also held the rank) and the time Witch (probably Haley)
I too really want Omens to be about faction 6. Those Exiled will return I could probably write a whole thread or AS article about Omens and speculation on it
Other quotes about the founding and development of the Aeternus continuum on the timeline also hint at cryx involvement: including that the Aeternus were founded around a Phylactery (potentially gaspy given he was reduced to his Phylactery at hengehold), and that a keeper (one of the iron kingdoms warcasters) is in the senior leadership.
The first recorded references to the Aeternus Continuum are found in The Malefications of Metacyphylyx, a tome exploring the death and loss of the Old Gods believed to have been penned around Crd 393. The heretical Malefications references the foundation of the sect some thousand years earlier when the “phylactery of the undying passed into the hands of the true aeternal initiates, and it did speak to them with a voice most ancient and commanding. Having heard these words and knowing their meaning, the true initiates set upon their path.”
It is said that at least one Keeper was among those initiated into the Consilio Mortuorum at the time of its founding.
The Aeternus Continuum’s agenda sounds unlikely for Asphyxious… unless he is one of the “Old Gods” they’re trying to bring back. Apotheosis has been his goal since time immemorial (or at least since Warmachine: Escalation).
It has been some time since I last read the Henge Hold Scrolls, but I think Asphyxious and Deneghra were plotting their escape through the StargÅte. I’ve always had a feeling, based on AC lore, that there is a Cryxian influence behind all that.
I didn’t know AC had anything to do with old gods: more about preservation of history and mortality-defying technology
My feeling is the whole point (unknown to most) is to preserve gaspy. Whether he exists as a soul cage being sought, or as a full reconstituted body of some sort is less clear.
The whole cult is one big pyramid scheme. The lower ranks have no clue what’s going one, they just get vague promises of not getting ill. Those on a somewhat higher rank get vague promises of immortality. Only those on the very top know what they’re really all about.
Well the Aeternus Continuum wants to bring forth “the Eschaton”:
The true and secret purpose of the Aeternus Continuum is to bring about the Eschaton, when the undying Theois will rise from the ashes of humanity and restore “true” divinity to the galaxy.
This appears to be aligned with Apotheosis. However, whom they are trying to make gods is left uncertain. It may be Asphyxious (pure speculation, it could be anybody else) or the whole Consilio Mortuorum (maybe he is in this group?) or maybe a broader circle?
Another thing is, the Empyrean are especially vary and afraid of Aeternus. This could mean, they perceive them as direct rivals. So is Aeternus trying to take over Cyriss Prime, get rid of the Empyreans and “rule” the galaxy in their stead? It could be argued, that this would make them effectively gods.
Hey, love the discussion, and just wanted to add my latest thoughts on the lore behind the 2 alphabets we’ve seen for Cyriss, and speculation on how they are used. This is all pretty bleeding edge speculation, would love to hear anyone else’s theories of language.
I assume AC was trying to bring about some kind of rapture. To become immortal by becoming free souls and merged into some kind of single entity to “become” the galaxy itself. This differs from Emps who want immortality through removing a decaying body. Emps may know exactly how this could be done, and AC is the closest to accomplishing this.
A commendable effort, but as a linguist, I’d like to point out an inaccuracy: what we see in the books is an alphabet (or two alphabets), but the language in all instances, as far as I remember, is English. You could write English in Cyrillic or Arabic alphabets, but it’d still be English.
Hey, great point. Collecting a few edits for the article and will look at fixing that.
Can I mine your expertise for any other thoughts or speculation on Cyriss alphabet or language? this was a rabbit hole I fell into without even thinking about it, so would love anyone else to bring me back to Earth
There’s little material to go with. As you said, the “glyph” script is basically just a weird scifi font based on the Latin alphabet, whereas the “rune” script seems to have drawn some inspiration from Iron Kingdoms magic runes.
I don’t think PP has the resources, or really any need, to start creating new actual languages for the Hyperuranion. Creating actual languages is a serious, time-consuming effort, even if it’s only for a limited context.
I remember Jason Soles saying, in one of his presentations on world-creating, that if you want a made-up language, you just pick an existing language and “bastardize” it. As we see in Khadoran (has elements from Russian, Polish and some other Slavic languages) or Iosan (which seems to have drawn inspiration from Welsh), one can easily pull some names of people, places and ranks from real world languages (e.g. the Khadoran Greylord rank of Koldun is “witch” in Russian, and Karchev is a variation of the name Koschei, known in Slavic folklore as “the Deathless”).
