Formless
Shambling, dottering, erratic creatures. The Formless were once a small but proud species at the center of a supermassive imperial ethnostate. Defining an era, their hermetic society kept the world at an arms length while their constructs and subjects toiled away at creating goods to consume. Consumed themselves by a need to dissect the multiverse, they learned many great arts that reside entirely in darkness now. It was in their ability, at one point, to construct shards and stellar bodies, to destroy hex plots and weaving different strands of the Aether together.
Their passage from history into absense was utterly unmarked. A single date, or single event or condition could not demarkate the complete annihilation of the Formless Polity only the lingering unconfirmed suspicion that the bony spires of Barrowchalx, the lonely capitol where they lived, were barren. Since the end of this era, there has never been a Formless polity. The Formless haunt the multiverse still, in the ruins of their ancient towers or roaming the streets of Barrowchalx. Solitary folk, they rarely work well with others and by nature they drive bargains too hard to accept. Hundreds of years from the prime of their Empire, there are few Formless that have retained their people's traditions, arcanery and laws.
Physiology
Of Form and Formlessness
The Formless are a people whose most exemplary feature is the lack of cohesive physiology. With mercurial flesh, their skin shimmers and mottles like liquid metals. Their entire form moves on pseudo-appendages that grasp, slap and roll to amubulate them across water or land. Even this, however, is not a cohesive characteristic and is meerly an ephemeral, native, or transititive form they passively revert to, as, done as reflexively or unconciously as breathing. Their mercurial flesh can change into furs, bones, organs and skin in a matter of minutes. Adopted every color beneath the earth and sky, they are more prone to improvising entities to transform into rather than personation. As much as they have control over their forms, they also cannot control their forms- although rarely does a metamorphosis result in a form that cannot survive. Unfortunately too, do the Formless undulate in mind as they do in body. As their forms shift as they ambulate, their personalities, memories and learned behaviors alter as they think. It is a chaotic, untamed way to live and at times self control can become an impossibility to them.
As the Formless interacted with their early neighbors they became renown for having great minds growing and then waning in the span of weeks or months. To foreign anthropologists they appeared to be a shortlived species- as people would introduce themselves one day, and disappear the next. Studying their populations and structures, it became distressingly apparent to visits that the Formless did not have any known burial rites. In self preservation, many scholars left in frustration fearing they had encountered an ancient curse or a cannibalistic tribe. To the determined the truth rang out: There were no bodies to bury.
To the Formless identities are as easily donned and doffed as clothing. Formless society was a reflection of their nature, uncontrollable- unpredictable- anarchic to be certain. In those early days, the Formless did not have the biological pretenses to understand and practice identity. Individualism and collectivism clashed into interminable conflict daily as a war without borders. Perceptions and attitudes shifted every day and projects were founded, adopted, sabotaged and abandoned with little to no consistency. In these early days, the Formless tribes lived as primeval beings donning not identities- but visages with the semblences of mothers, kings, beasts and architects. Philosophy as it was, developed slowly out of the mire, developed out of their unifying perspective where no thing could consolidate from the chaos of their existance, the Amalgam of Forms.
Societal Paraphenelia
To Form is to Function
"The Formless", is what this name translates to in our human mouths. Formless: A sobriquet and also a derrogative reference to the "Natural Form" of this species. As the Formless reiterated forms, and their variations particular things remained unchanging in the stone around them. Stone, unchanging and unmoving, provided a solid form that persisted the days and iterations. It collected thoughtforms for the Formless. It created a substrate for civilization to cling to.
That first monolith of stone, scribbled in depictions and words from stolen tongues, would give way to the first Work of the Masquerade- truly translating the Formless experience into hard but malleable stone. Five-hundred thousand depictions, stanzas and sentiments cover the stone face of the rock formation that is now known as the Amalgam of Forms. A rock structure cleaves two ways, left four large jagged hewn monoliths bordering a smoothed tub-sized basin in the outskirts of the Formless homeland. Standing in the center of the formation, an individual can hear the winds whistling across the inscriptions in the stones, and with the greater canyon formation around them become easily overwhelmed by the sound of the circling gusts. It was with this first great work, that the Formless condition had reached it's first convolenscence.
In the decades before Antiquities end, the Formless tribes would fight back many great beasts. Bound together in a cooperative spirit, stirred from communion with their past Forms, defended their homeland from creatures that would unmake their Great Works of Stone. Revered as the Inmutable Form, they defended their stoneworks fiercely. Inevitable still, was the attack from XXXXrax the Great Basilisk. Spawned from the darkest reaches of the Nebula, it feasted upon lithoforms that swelled in psychic significance. Drawn to the Amalgam of Forms, this terrible beast fought for a feast. Insurmountable, the tribes fended off the Basilisk from the Amalgam at great cost. The bites of the great beast were powerful but insidious was it's venom, capable of petrifying living beings the tribal defenders faced maiming and a few faced complete petrification. Affixed in perpetual hate, fear, fury and pain these immortalized would become The First and The Memory of Forms.
It is in this crucible, that The First provided unifying context for the rest of the Formless and for many their first Real Forms. Powerful, and perpetual, communing with the stone was a simple act and yet provided a universal experience to the Formless. Frozen forever, The First Forms and Last Without Names rest outside the Amalgam of Forms. At first their visages were considered terrifying. Trophies of a terrible creature that they would eventually return to-- to devour and annihilate entirely from Form and ultimately from Memory. It was only when the Formless touched the remnants of The First and joined with them that they understood truly what the Shape of that Form entailed. Permanently affixed in that Shape before death the Formless physiology met the Shaped physiognomy. Shape, changed Form and Form Shaped Memory. This became the basis for the tool that would drive the Formless into Shape and disparate tribes into a Nebula spanning Empire. It is known as The Masque of Forms, the Shape of Virtue or to modern adventurers simply "The Masque".
The Shape of Virtue
From Formlessness into Civilization
Identity evolved from it's naiive upbringings through a short infancy and through the trauma of antiquity became the cornerstone of life among the Formless. Through the use of Masques, and the quirks of their physiology the Formless were given Forms. Early Masques were crude, yet effective prosthetics that frequently provided Forms and permanent identities for the Formless. The Second to Form were made from the spilled venom of the Basilisk, and unlike The First they volunteered their bodies to the Form. Virulent and persistent, only the strongest Forms made it through this trial and formed permanent Masques. The Second to Form lead through the strength to overcome. With identity, strength and singularity came all of its vulnerabilities. Ego brought the tribes to clash with one another. Identity brought with it responsibility and unknown pains that the Formless could never anticipate when they became The Second to Form. The Shape of conflict changed, and with it the future The Second to Form had for their people. This painful fifty years is marked by historians as The Shape of Sacrifice and it is memorialized at the Amalgam of Forms with "The Form of What Remains", a stone structure that contains Masque remains of those that were The Second to Form.
As the war settled, the last of The Second to Form sought out a means to create more of their kind. They sought a gentler method of creating Masques and achieving the perfect petrification. By traveling far and wide, The Form that Survived and their Formless ventured from their home shard and found a petrifying spring in a neighboring world in the Nebula. Unforgiving and red, not many would have ventured and had it not been for their infinite insistence to shift forms many Formless would have died. A deep and petrifying spring, was erupting with the bounty issued from the acidic core of the red shard. Petrifying other surviving creatures that fell into it, the faith of the Formless was tested. A gentler, and twisted Form was found in The Form of the Red Faith. Painful and suffocating, this Masque too was permanent and the price of virtue was steep. Every Formless that joined survived albeit eeriely wearing the same visage of suffocating pain from the spring.
The first Formed society, The Form of the Red Faith dedicated their time to spreading their gift to other Formless. A hunt and inquisition, the members of the Red Faith created a settlement on the barren shard and lived in isolation. Living on a diet of lizards and caustic water they toiled in the red rock researching the Formless condition in earnest and how petrification could Shape their people. With many acolytes, the The Form that Survived created heirarchy within the order to lighten the burden of leadership. After hundreds changed, all it took was one neophyte to charge epiphany. A neophyte, whose Masque did not form rigidly onto it's face discovered that he could remove it with relative ease. To the utter surprise of everyone attending, He Was Lost. Reverting back to his Formless shape, his mind was steadily and completely ecclipsed by change.
The Masque was abandoned, and later came into the possession of The Form that Survived. Investigating the broken thing, it delegated the mask to one of the new Formless, an animals that remained prowling around the abbey. Captured with great force, the mask was placed upon it's face. It was with that singular action that He Was Lost returned, his Shape erupting from the Formless Deer. It was Different, but same, with all the propensity for wanderlust as it's predecessor.
The Form of the Red Faith was the last permanent form of the Masquerade. A unwritten settlement was mete in blood and word, after a hundred years of forceful consolidation the Formless to become the new Masquerade- a civilization where the identity of who you were wearing superceded your personal identity. From a small shard was birthed a sprawling economic empire that forged ahead with their alien morality and ruthless determinism. Their laws seemed arbitrary and byzantine to outsiders as did their sense of morality. With no innate sense of inequitable exchange and no common basic needs, they had no innate sense of empathy when selling shelter, food, water and arms to customers. The need for specialists arose to suit the needs of getting an upper hand on Masquerade society. Their first Unmasked citizens rose to the occaison, earning their own mask and identity and bypassing the discrimination that their alien morality wrought up, failing to relate to outsiders.
Masquerade Morality
The Legacy of the Formless
The Masquerade left the Formless with a new series of identities, each shape forming a role while individually their biology was still ever shifting. When this interacted with the greater nebular community the result was explosive. Very quickly, the individuals who perferred a Formless identity were ostracized from the Masquerade and the Mask became a symbol of refinement and perfection. This lack of control, of form and of shape became anathemic to the Masquerade and it's people. Formless citizens kept to the outskirts of society and in the dark places of their home in Barrowchalx- posses often set out to hunt them, to ultimately leash or mask their breathren. As time advanced, this behavior evolved into a more malicious behavior and the Formless were forced into exile or slain in the sewers where they hid. As the Masquerade grew larger and wealthier the stratification of power placed the Masked at top and placed the Unmasked into positions with subtle economic plateaus. Inequity held dominion in Masquerade society, and as the presence of Formless disappeared, the Unmasked had began pay the costs of the Masquerade. The Unmasked, without clear indication of their station and role served as clerks, laborers and porters.
As the Masquerade reached it's apex, with the creation of great trade routes and Nebular infrastructure projects the Unmasked recieved recognition and protective status in Barrowchalx until the uncertain fall of the Empire. Today many of the Masquerade and the Formless that remain hostile to the Unmasked in the streets of Barrowchalx. Between Byzantine social structure and mercurial physiology, it is very difficult to negotiate with a member of this species and it is generally recommended to travelers to avoid The City of Masques despite the allure of treasure and lost riches.
by Shubham Dhag (Unsplash)
Glossary of Terms
This species has an existence that does not resemble ours in many ways, this glossary of terms can help sort out what these terms are trying to convey in their native dialect.Form- a revered term to reference a permanent fixture (proper nouns and things such as Tomas, Leshrenia, the Red Knight and falafel)
Shape (Shaped)- a term that references an intangible or imprecise idea or abstract concept (such as love, gender, wealth, sincerity)
Formless- the innate state of being for the species, could assume Shapes, but never Forms.
Amalgam of Forms- One of the first landmark structures for the Formless, the remains of The First are immortalized with their final moments defending their ancestral standing stones from a Basilisk demigod.
The First- The petrified remains of the Formless warriors who fought a Basilisk interloper long ago. Due to their physiology, their final moments can be conveyed psychically by making prolonged contact with them.
Mask (Masque)- identity actualizing paraphernalia. When donned and attuned by a member of the Formless, they will assume the Form and Identity associated with the Mask. For the Unmasked, it operates as a cognitive tool that can transfer lifetime skills and abilities to it's bearer. Each mask has an individualized name and the Masquerade has a particular fondness for titles.
Unmasked- a member of another species that hasn't acquired a Mask through merit or plunder (also merit). Notably, Masked members of other species are valued as peers because they are indistinguishable from other members of the Masquerade. In modernity, to the Masquerade and Formless alike they are treated as non-persons in the homeland of Barrowchalx.
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