The Forgotten Fourth

Basic Information

Anatomy

The Fourth Forgotten were aid to lack fixed form because no skeletons or bones have ever found. They’ve been described as parasitic beings, entering and corrupting other bodies or minds and nay not have been fully physical at all.

Biological Traits

Mutability: Could change form slightly to suit surroundings.

Psychic/Parasitic Influence: Survived by feeding on distrust and hatred.

Resilience: Legends say no weapon could kill them outright, only banish or scatter them.

Genetics and Reproduction

Unknown. Theories:

• Fed on the living, turning victims into new Foes.
• Spawned through corruption of thought, not birth.
• Some suggest they did not reproduce at all, but were immortal fragments of a greater whole.

Growth Rate & Stages

No growth stages are recorded. They seemed to appear fully formed.

Ecology and Habitats

They thrived in conflict zones and seemed to emerge wherever hatred or division deepened.

Dietary Needs and Habits

They fed not on flesh, but on emotions, specifically anger, mistrust, and despair. In this way, the Triad Wars were their feast.

Biological Cycle

May have been linked to celestial events — the eclipse when the Graven Pact was sworn is said to have been their moment of greatest power, and their downfall.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Unknown — some say they acted as a hive mind, others that they thrived in isolated agents.

Facial Characteristics

Often remembered as mask-like either because their faces were blank, or because survivors projected their fears onto them. Some stories describe only empty hollows where faces should be.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Never tied to a homeland. Considered outcasts of creation itself.

Average Intelligence

Immense, but alien. They excelled in manipulation and deception, less so in direct conflict.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

It appeared that they could sense hostility and seemed grow stronger in its presence. It is thought that they were blind in a physical sense but all-seeing in thought.

Symbiotic and Parasitic Organisms

They were parasitic. Myths describe them “nesting” in Triad leaders, driving them to paranoia.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

Unknown. Called only “Foe” by others.

Major Organizations

None known. Some believe they were all fragments of one entity rather than a society.

Beauty Ideals

Irrelevant as beauty and identity appeared to mean nothing to them.

Gender Ideals

None recorded. No distinction between genders is mentioned.

Courtship Ideals / Relationship Ideals

Fragments of legends described the Forgotten Fourth as lacking family and bonds.

Average Technological Level

None of their own, though some accuse them of corrupting Triad weapons or war-machines to terrible effect.

Major Language Groups and Dialects

Never recorded. Some claim they spoke in all tongues at once, others that they never spoke, only whispered in thought.

Common Etiquette Rules

None. They existed outside societal norms.

Common Dress Code

None. Some depictions show them in tattered remnants of stolen clothing, but this may be symbolic.

Culture and Cultural Heritage

If they had one, it is entirely lost.

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

None known. The act of parasitism and feeding on conflict was their ritual.

Common Taboos

For the Triad species, to name the Foe became taboo. Their names were struck from records, ensuring they remained “forgotten.”

History

In the age before the First Era, before the Triad species knew one another, the beings later called the Forgotten Fourth were already present, not as conquerors, but as whispers in the cracks of civilization. The Ta called them suth-kaar (“grief-echoes”), the Pecou named them Ash-Breaths, and the Kiwta feared them as those who unmake meaning. No single record describes their arrival; to some, they were always here, born from the first argument spoken by sentient tongues.

As the Triad Wars began, the Fourth did not march under banners or raise weapons. Instead, they lingered in counsel halls, trenches, and temples — feeding on resentment, mimicking allies, twisting trust into paranoia. Where negotiations failed, they flourished. Their strength was not in numbers, but in reflection: they became what their enemies feared, reshaping themselves from rumor and hatred. Entire campaigns were waged against “infiltrators” that may never have existed.

Near the war’s peak, scattered testimonies tell of the Defiler, a figure who may have united the Fourth, or may simply have been the culmination of their influence — a composite consciousness born from centuries of bloodshed. It is said the Defiler whispered the plans that doomed the Western Coalition, collapsing it from within and pushing the Triad to the brink of extinction.

When the survivors finally forged the Graven Pact, it was not only to end their wars with one another — but to seal away the Foe who had grown from their conflict. The Pit of the Foe became both prison and grave. The sealing ritual, carved into stone and blood, declared that no hatred shall feed them again.

After the sealing, the memory of the Fourth was systematically erased. The Ta carved over records, the Pecou burned their archives, and the Kiwta reworded their songs. To name the Foe was to risk calling them back. Only the vaguest mythic forms survived — faceless shadows, broken masks, and songs that end mid-verse.

In the centuries that followed, the Pact endured, but distrust never vanished entirely. Some say this lingering suspicion — the quiet, generational echo of the wars — was enough to sustain a faint trace of the Fourth. When the Triad races themselves fell to extinction, humans later wrote that perhaps the Foe never died at all; perhaps they simply became the silence that followed.

Historical Figures

The Defiler: Remembered either as one of them or their greatest thrall.

Common Myths and Legends

Said to whisper still from the Pit, promising power to those who listen.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Triad saw them as corruptors, not equals, while humans debate whether they existed at all, or whether they are allegories for the dangers of war.

We have found no bones. No tools. No carvings in their own hand. Only shadows in the records of others — the empty space between names.

Every ruin from the Triad period speaks of an unseen enemy, one that sowed division but left nothing behind but silence. Some tablets show patterns of erasure, as if the writers feared the very shape of the letters. Others, especially among the Ta, bear deep scoring lines, deliberate strikes through words I cannot translate.

If the ‘Fourth’ existed, they were not a people as we understand it. More likely, they were an idea made manifest… a fear that grew teeth. Still, I cannot dismiss the consistency of the records. Three species speaking of the same darkness by different names.

We call them myth, yet I wonder if myths are what remains when truth becomes unbearable.

~ Excerpt from the field notes of Dr. Ilen Rexword