Archnadrakian Balaine

Balaine

  For many, his name was synonymous with God. Given life and form by the same Cosmic Will that created the universe, Balaine was himself the progenitor of the Nadrakian race. His name was praised in hymns within the homes and places of worship belonging to countless civilizations across 200 trillion galaxies spanning over 1300 Observable Volumes. So trusted, exalted and beloved, that the Nadrakians re-elected him to the position of Supreme Archnadrakian time and time again, and for nearly 10 billion years Balaine lead the Nadrakians with a never-ending compassion for the mortals under their care.   Such was his compassion and anxiety about the suffering of others that Balaine couldn't sit upon a throne, but instead felt compelled to be out there among the stars helping people. He'd arrive in a solar system and use his transcendent power to end material hardships, end disease, provide longevity and grant the wishes of those who asked of him. He could end wars by turning everyone’s guns into water, and making them feel the grief of the loved ones of those who'd fallen.   His appearance was almost identical to the standard Nadrakian bodyshape, with the exception of two great wings that allowed him to cut through space-time and coast between galaxies. The extrasensory perceptors extending from the base of his skull and the back of his neck also ended in facsimiles of Nadrakian heads, almost as though he were a hydra of some sort. There were eight heads in total, and each one took on the appearance of a different Nadrakian Caste. They were referred to as the Divine Audience, and each head was a compound intelligence composed from the collective consciousness of the trillions upon trillions of Nadrakians within that caste. They allowed Balaine to be intimately aware of all that occurred within the realm, allowed the Nadrakians to know of Balaine’s wishes and intent, and allowed Balaine to become aware of any challenges his Nadrakians may have been facing.   A crown of spiritual fire sat above his head, signifying the Nadrakians' consent for Balaine to rule them.     Life outside the Realm of Balaine was cold, oppressive, ruthless and often short. Life within the Realm was rich, diverse, co-operative and full of optimism.   Yet, Balaine’s closest adjutants sensed that something bothered him. A storm on the horizon, growing by the millennia. Many asked their lord if everything was okay. He always replied that yes, everything was fine.    

21 Days, the Galor Massacre, and the Terror

  Balaine’s presence could always be felt by other Nadrakians. No matter their location within the Realm, when they looked up into the night sky their Fifth Eye always perceived the location of their god as a bright white star that outshined all others.   One particular day this eternal star flickered out and vanished, and for the first time ever the Nadrakians were plunged into a numbing spiritual darkness. Cold emptiness crept into their Souls as Balaine’s warmth vanished. No one, not even the other Archnadrakians nor Balaine’s closest adjutants, knew what had happened to him. For 21 days this state of uneasy hand-wringing persisted throughout the Nadrakians as they anxiously continued with their duties, seemingly abandoned by their god.   On the 22^nd day Balaine returned. But despite coming back into their awareness on the Nadrakian telepathic field, no Nadrakian could yet feel Balaine's presence return to them in the form of open thoughts, nor see his light in the sky. He was a cold entity in the telepathic field, closed to outside inspection. Where he'd disappeared to, what his intentions were, and what his emotional state was, could not be ascertained. He summoned the other Archnadrakians back to the capital of the realm, Nadrak Galor, along with the senior leadership from every Nadrakian caste. When they arrived and looked upon their god, their unease turned to horror.   The Divine Audience was gone – the heads torn from the neck stalks that once supported them. Balaine’s face and throat were covered in freshly gouged scars and cuts, and three of his four standard eyes were bitten or carved out, leaving only one normal eye and his central Fifth Eye.   They rushed over to their god to help and console him. Instead of greeting them, Balaine ignited and ploughed his great spirit sword through Archnadrakian Kalazduma's chest and killed him instantly in cold blood. The second most chilling act was the face he wore as he did so – a void of emotion. Even if he'd done so in fury and rage then some sort of motive could've been fathomed, but there was nothing. He killed his best friend of 10 billion years with not a hint of passion of any sort.   No Archnadrakian had ever harmed another. Seldom did any Nadrakian in general murder like that. Those in attendance struggled to simply process what had immediately occurred in front of their eyes. Was it a trick? An illusion? A test of some kind? Was Balaine testing how they'd react to him breaking their own laws?   It was something that shouldn't have been possible, for the Archnadrakians weren't meant to be capable of harming one another. An unbreakable Oath-Seal prevented them from doing so, and this was central to the division of power the Creator established eons ago, so that none may become a tyrant. The omnipotence of the Creator was divided up among the Archnadrakians, and these power blocks couldn't be taken by another Archnadrakian, as they were bestowed by the Nadrakian masses upon Archnadrakians they appointed as a whole.   The other Archnadrakians, after uncertain moments filled only with Kalazduma's golden blood oozing out across the pristine marble tiles of the throne room, moved on Balaine as one. They tried to restrain him, but they were still bound by the Oath-Seal preventing them from harming one another. Balaine however was somehow no longer bound, and killed them all one by one, taking their powers in the process. This was the Galor Massacre.   It was later understood that Balaine had acquired the Iconoclastic ousia, allowing him to break the sacred Oath-Spell and kill the other Archnadrakians. It also transformed him into a trihypostatic soul, making him immensely more powerful than he was previously as a dihypostatic soul. His Psikinetics and other powers thusly became untouchable to the other Nadrakians, who were merely dihypostatic.   The fear, confusion and distress every Nadrakian felt was indescribable as they watched through the eyes of their Archnadrakians the brutal display of graphic violence. One by one, the eyes of their leaders closed forever as Balaine cut them all down, some throwing their hands up to protect themselves as Balaine's greatsword cleaved them in two, others begging their god for mercy, until none were left to provide the other Nadrakians with visibility of what Balaine would do next. Their fear uncontrollably radiated across their telepathic field such that even mortals under their care could sense the same dread they felt. This was called the Terror; a cosmos-spanning period of time lasting several days where fear, anxiety and psychological distress dominated the thoughts and feelings of sentient beings.   God had turned against them.   To this day, no one knows or understands why Balaine became a murderous monster. It’s the single greatest question facing every historian, philosopher and religious academic.    

The Blood Harvest, and the Ninth Caste

  Immediately following the deaths of the other Archnadrakians at Balaine’s hands, his crown of spiritual fire vanished as the Nadrakians recoiled in horror. With the crown gone, Balaine no longer commanded their confidence and respect, and the power block of Supreme Archnadrakian granted by the crown departed from Balaine.   But this only stripped Balaine of their own original powers. It didn't bereft them of the powers they reaped from the murdered Archnadrakians, which by virtue of being taken outwith the normal flows of spiritual energy between Nadrakians, couldn't be revoked by the Nadrakian masses, thereby dooming them.   Balaine's goal, as understood after the fact, was to create a new caste of Nadrakians ready and willing to execute his new bloody agenda. Anyone familiar with the history of what that entailed knew there'd be no way of coercing the current eight Nadrakian castes to obey his commands. They'd have sooner taken their own lives than commit genocide. And so, he needed a new caste.   Kalazduma’s power block could do that. As the leader of the Balancer caste charged with protecting mortals from the power of the Nadrakians, one of Kalazduma's powers was to control the numbers of Nadrakians in the cosmos, including what powers were divided among the different castes. When a new galaxy was to be annexed into the realm, he would grant fertility to some Nadrakians so they could create more of their kind to assist bringing the new galaxy into the realm. Their numbers were otherwise tightly controlled by the him and his Balancers due to their immortality and considerable power.   This would allow Balaine to create new Nadrakians willing to fulfil his new, ghastly objectives, but he needed a great source of spiritual power to create these new souls from. His own soul wasn't powerful enough to create the numbers he required without waiting for them to be born via normal Nadrakian reproduction, so instead he looked to another source he could exploit: the souls of current living Nadrakians.   The power block of Archnadrakian Saroth of the Enforcer caste provided a tool able to leverage this. Her power block was about maintaining order between Nadrakians, and dispensing justice on behalf of the Balancers. It modulated the strengths of Nadrakians and their powers, once the Balancers had divided those powers up. It included a spiritual act capable of stripping Nadrakians of their powers completely with consent from two other Archnadrakian power blocks. As Balaine had all power blocks except his own, he could do as he pleased.   Balaine used Saroth's power upon every Nadrakian he could sense within the reaches of his spiritual sight. This power was reserved for stripping Nadrakians of their powers when they either abused them, were insubordinate, or law breaking, but it was never meant to result in death. Merely disempowerment. The way Balaine wielded it however was barbaric, as it was infused with Iconoclastic spiritual power that was deadly to divine beings like Nadrakians. Almost every Nadrakian touched by it was killed.   This was the Blood Harvest, and due to the scale of it, one of the worst atrocities ever committed by a sentient being upon others. Almost the entirety of the Nadrakians were murdered in moments as Balaine used Saroth’s power to drain and harvest their souls. Those who witnessed it saw their Nadrakian protectors drop dead or go limp and lifeless in space. Only those outside Balaine’s spiritual sight were spared, and a very small handful powerful enough to survive the soul reaping directly.   This was the power source Balaine required to quickly fashion a new Nadrakian breed that would carry out his coming war. With all this spiritual material at his disposal, Balaine then used Kalazduma’s powers to weave new Nadrakian souls into existence, creating the New Breed Nadrakians, otherwise known as the Ninth Caste. These were unlike the real Nadrakians in any way; they were violent, sadistic, merciless, megalomaniacal, narcissistic, and a total inversion of the old Nadrakians in almost every way. They didn’t care about the goal of protecting life and fostering complexity and diversity, and in fact seemed hellbent on undoing it. They were a violation.    

"The birth of the Ninth Caste was an act of godly evil; its scale was cosmological, and its intent was to bring about a never-ending tsunami of slaughter. I blinked, and there it suddenly was, having spread faster than I could observe; a web of Congealed Malice infesting the heavens, metastasizing within the spaces between stars, blotting out their light. All who were touched by it died, screaming.   And then they emerged from it, the demons of the Ninth Caste. Those who survived the formation of the web were beset upon by trillions of them, born ready with everything needed to make war and take life. The carnage and bloodshed seemingly touched every corner of the Realm, all at once. In moments, everyone was fighting for their lives, and with our Nadrakian protectors dead, no one was coming to help. No one could."

— Emperor Barden

    The Ninth Caste emerged from the growing web of Congealed Malice spawned by Balaine, with all the knowledge, skills and cunning required to fight his war. The web itself disappeared as its spiritual dyne was eventually consumed by the birthing of the Ninth Caste. They went forth into the Realm and began annihilating civilizations. The tide of death and destruction was unstoppable, as they possessed all the power and invulnerability of the former Nadrakians, and more.   At first the killing was believed to be random, as some civilizations were ignored completely. It became evident however that the pattern linking these atrocities together was psikinetics – the ability of a species to manipulate the laws of physics once it became intelligent enough. It was the power utilized by Rodinians and other so-called ‘great civilizations” to become quasi-godlike beings almost on the same level as a Nadrakian. The Ninth Caste targeted and destroyed species that either used psikinetics or had the immediate potential to, but the reason why Balaine commanded this remains yet another mystery.   It was clear what was happening however, and it didn’t take much for the great civilizations to put aside their petty squabbles and form a resistance. Even the insubordinate and unruly Rodinia, now released from its confinement by the remnants of the Nadrakian Final Arbiters caste, pledged itself to this war effort.