Hikari found some books! Here's what she finds in them. # *Devils and Their Whereabouts* Here's what Hikari gathers from this book, which is written in a mythological tone and is at least a hundred years old (at least the text is, this book might be a reprint). The book is a collection of stories that are used to illustrate principles about devils: the book is very informatively written, if a little old-fashioned and long-winded. ## Main Points Devils are spirits that arise because of strong emotion or an intense event, whether good or bad. - They can form out of powerful group events or individual life events, and they can attach to an individual person. - They can grow in intelligence and end up influencing or even possessing or empowering an individual. - Very often the more intelligent ones will choose to enter a deal with an individual, offering power in return for some sacrifice. These sacrifices can be extremely demanding, but the deal can also grant the individual great power - The more mortals sacrifice or attach to them to them the stronger they get, so the more their believed in and the more stock is put into them the more they can influence the physical world - Devils can be pure evil, with pure evil motives, but more often than not they're more neutral (or neutral-ish), with goals that are formed by the event or emotion that formed them. - Devils can also create their own physical form based on the events or emotions that formed them, and can even gain a massive amount of power over time by absorbing the emotions from whatever thing they're manifesting from (for example, a guardian arises from the desire to protect an important monument in a small village, but as the village gets bigger and the monument gets more important the guardian gets stronger) - Wraiths are devils that have attached to a specific person. Devils can look humanoid or can look like really anything; they can even disguise themselves as an animal or object. ## Types of Devils Generally demons will manifest of a certain emotion, though sometimes they're just tied to a specific place, historical event, or, more rarely, person. The more popular emotions for devils to feed on are as follows: - Fear: very, very common for a devil to be made of fear - Anger: these can be dangerous - Grief - Lust - Protectiveness: these are the guardians and guardian angels, but they can become evil - Joy: these sometimes just form around a strong event and then bless someone and disappear or stick around to try to continue to bless the place or people who formed them ## People's Relationships with Devils The book features several stories with people who have made pacts with devils, and it mentions that there are organizations that have dealings with devils but doesn't name them explicitly. # *Tales of the Ancient Ones* In this book is a bunch of stories about the Ancient Ones. Hikari gathers that the Ancient Ones were an ancient species of people who were extremely powerful and had colonies all around the supercluster, implying that they were able to make and use portals. They had a special type of stone technology that used runes, and there's a passing mention of how that technology has inspired modern ways of interacting with the xeon. As Hikari reads through this tome she gets the impression that many of the stories within have been gathered from a crazy variety of sources, some more reputable than others. Some say that the Ancient Ones were civilized and organized, some say that they were constantly fractured and infighting. Some say that they were monsters, others say that they were gods. The book mentions several key Ancient One artifacts that have been found in ruins! It has drawings of staves, swords, and partial sets of armor made of stone and covered in runes. There are several pages that print out some of the Ancient One runes, even though no one has figured out what Ancient One runes say. The book outlines three distinct eras of Ancient One architecture, each of which lasted thousands of years: - Dark Era: more crude structures, more symbolic placement of structures, structures placed on xenic lay lines; ritualistic temples - High Era: spaceports, vast cavern cities, plane-oriented gravity, arches and columns - Late Era: brutalist, hard lines, sharp corners, more complex gravity structures, more war-focused spaceports and city structure # *Various and Sundry Locations of Ancient One Architecture* This is a very, very old, thinner book of reference and maps, and it mentions the following places that are said to have Ancient One ruins in them: - Many ruins in Ydilik - Many ruins in Valda - Some ruins on Voroki (moon in the same system as Valda and Ydilik) - Lots of ruins on Exozina (exozinik homeworld) - A massive space station called Carnithanth that exists in exozinik space, still has atmosphere from when the Ancient Ones lived there This book is referencing sources that are hundreds of years old, so there's no guarantee any of these places still have ruins or that you will be able to find them. It includes drawings of a lot of the architecture and artifacts found in each place, along with anthropological explanations for different objects and buildings. # *Ye Olde Myths* This is maybe the oldest book in the collection, with flowery pictures and language that's honestly pretty hard to understand. - The Aith - There are myths of an ancient species of people called the Aith. They were created by the god Ai, they are tall, with pale white or light blue skin and white antlers. They glow softly and have angular features, with blue or white markings on their skin. They are said to have a language that can control the xeon and every single species have tales of Aith Crossings, where they see them far off, just watching them. Sometimes they will approach and speak to the people in a language they can understand, and they're said to have healed the maimed and diseased. They are said to live much longer than normal people - Kaldi Creation Myth (direct quote from the book; the book assumed you already knew all the names, so it doesn't explain any of them) > Vaiana always loved the beautiful things of the universe, and so she went to Eos's three daughters to help her make a beautiful world. First Reina and Vaiana made the three stars of the Opreyon system, one bright blue, one a deep red, and the last a vibrant green. Next Ethina and Vaiana created Kaldi, a planet with deep red and purple earth and crystal blue oceans. Last, Uthala and Vaiana created a great variety of beautiful and colorful plants and animals to make the planet complete. > > After this was done, however, Vaiana felt her work was still not done. "After making all this, I still am not satisfied," she said. "Maybe there is something more beautiful that I must make." She then gathered her immortal children, Boffm, Coreli, Estrid, Frode, Otho, and Nytr, and asked them what she should do. They told her that there was no animal on the planet that could make music, art, or beautiful things, no animal to tell stories, enact plays, or dance. She said, "I will make people, like us, so that they can be happy in beauty." And so she made the kaldi: she colored their skin many different colors so that when they danced it would flow like the xenon during a storm; she gave them beautiful voices for music and stories and theater; she gave them an eye for color so that they could create art and beauty themselves. She created a band of ten, men and women, so that they could have a family on this planet she had created. > > After it was all done, Vaiana, her immortal children, and the kaldi, her mortal children, celebrated with music, art, stories, theater, and dance, and created such beauty that the other Archons came and watched, and marvelled at what she had created. > > Every year on Kaldi they throw the Vanaki in commemoration of that first celebration. - Xenic Plane - The spirit world, spirit plane. - There are natural portals that spring up that will take you into the xenic plane - The xenic plane is often just a representation of the natural plane, shaped by the minds of those inside and the state of the xeon in the area - All spirits, devils, demons, and other spiritual beings are visible in the xenic plane - Mortal powers are not usable in the xenic plane! - It is easy to get lost in the xenic plane, especially if you go deeper and deeper - Some beings are powerful enough to make pocket planes in the xenic plane that they can shape as they see fit - There are stories of people being inflicted with a xenic disease and having to enter the xenic plane and go to a powerful spiritual location to be healed - There are also stories of people going in and forming friendships with spirits or even immortals who are navigating through the xenic plane # *The Darkest of Gods and Their Intentions* This is a burned and ripped-up tome that contains several stories about the dark gods. There are only several that Hikari can still make out: - A story of Qzoth, God of War, inciting a rebellion that ends up killing three fourths of a pbosh nation - A story of Xotl, God of Madness, capturing and torturing a human king and forcing him to torture and eat his subjects - A story of Zvithwa, Goddess of Chaos, manipulating an exozinik government into imploding and cannibalizing itself