Primordial Otherthing

The Primordial Otherthings are creatures of the Mythos who dreamed themselves awake when the universe was young. Also known in more intellectual histories as Stellar Intelligences, an Otherthing is a vastness, more easily-understood as physical and spiritual astronomical phenomena than an individual, rooting their cosmic essence into the fundamental truth and myth of the young universe, and the Otherthings saw the galaxy as their rightful playground: the due inheritance of the firstborn children of Creation. The gods, of course, disagreed, and with the assistance of mortal races, began a systematic campaign of genocide. In the end, the gods and other powers proved successful, and the surviving Otherthings were imprisoned within their own names, never to emerge in Creation in fullness ever again.

Until things changed, of course, but that's another story entirely.

Origin and Nature

When time and space were young, fluid, and not as they are in the modern age, the Otherthings dreamed themselves awake; they were not born as the gods and mortals were, and share marginally little in common with the other powers that be. Spiritually, an Otherthing is a multitude like unto a pantheon. Each possesses at least twelve distinct, individual, and self-aware; these souls manifested both as sapient beings and as sapient geography -- the latter including anything and everything from fetid, stinking forests of brass and gold, glorious-burning green stars, rains of molten glass that formed into libraries housing all knowledge fit to know, twisted reflections of cities as viewed from the other side of a mirror, and more besides. These souls -- like the Otherthings themselves -- exist simultaneously in physical, spiritual, and weirder dimensions besides, and each soul expressed an Otherthing's nature in some particular way. As individuals, these souls have their own interests and designs, are capable of learning new ways of interacting with the world, and frequently came into conflict with other beings of similar power -- even their pwn 'siblings', if their desires were opposed to one another.

It is said that many of the tools now used to operate the galaxy were first forged by the Otherthings, whose collective creative brilliance is claimed to have spawned new forms of life, created worlds and stars and stranger things besides -- the artefact called Siahai's Cog being but one example of eldritch engineering. They used these tools -- and the worlds and lives they discovered and created -- to play at some unknown game or advance some unknowable design, to the distraction of all other things. Other beings were only as significant as their ability to participate in the game, whether as subjects, servants, or obstacles. The majority of Otherthing souls had little compassion or empathy for lesser creatures, and when they did think about them, used them as fodder for their own grand crusades and glories. This, above any other reason, was why the other Powers That Be were able to recruit many of the First Ones to war with them.

The Otherthings were oblivious to the coming campaign against them until it was too late. Until this campaign, no Otherthing had ever truly died -- driven into dormancy, perhaps, but never died as mortals do. That was soon to change.

The End of Histories

The Otherthings could not conceive of lesser beings ever being able to oppose them in any significant way, and were taken completely by surprise when they found their souls being systematically murdered by beings they had given no more thought to than a human farmer might pay an individual stalk of grass in a hay bale. Their surprise was compounded when the first of their number died -- well and truly died -- at the hands of mortals. Otherthings, as beings never born, were not capable of dying; subdued and forced dormant, perhaps, but never dying. When killing blows were struck nonetheless, their essence fragmented into countless agonized, still-screaming shards (some of which pollute the cosmos in subtle ways even today), and other soul-pantheons watched this with unthinkable horror, realizing that this fate could be theirs next. It could not be said that the other Powers That Be knew that this eternal dying-death would happen, but the Otherthings fought back with such fervor that their enemies could not help but continue their crusade.

Few other details exist regarding the genocide of the Otherthings, save that it ended in relative completion. In the end, a slight majority of Otherthings that had ever existed chose surrender rather than eternal agony in near-oblivion. The victors were not especially kind in victory, but the races of the First Ones had grown weary of war, and urged the Powers That Be to accept it. In the end, the Otherthings accepted collectively bounding within their own Names, and were exiled to the prison of the Void; as a concession to the Otherthings, their souls were granted limited chances to temporarily escape their prison, in addition to willingly serving as slaves and attendants whenever someone with the right knowledge summoned them. In this way, the Otherthings left the cosmic stage, they and their souls branded as Unholy, Wicked, and Unclean by the new order.

In the eons to come, the Otherthings were largely forgotten. As time passed and their origins were forgotten, many Otherthing souls eventually gained notoriety as powers of the Mythos, beings of tremendous power whose time had passed but would rise again when the stars were right. Some of these souls allowed or encouraged these cults to form in order that they could taste the pleasures of Creation for a time, but none of them speak in any intelligible way about the Time Before, for the memories of freedom are still too painful. They have spent far more time imprisoned than free, but they remember freedom, and those that are still sane would give anything to be free. This can never be, though, for their over-selves bindings' are complete, and no being who has the authority to release them would ever do so. The shards of dead Otherthings were largely cleaned up and put away, where they could no longer exert their degenerative influence over the world.

Few remember the war now, and later mortal histories were carefully edited to remove salient details that would tempt lesser hearts -- and, eventually, deliberately forgotten as trivia. The binding of the Otherthings was so complete that such knowledge was technically unnecessary to any healthy civilization. Summoning an Otherthing's souls was initially very popular as a shortcut to desired ends, but in time came to be seen as weakness and unwillingness to Do The Right Thing; in the end, such knowledge was inherited by less savory sorts who were denied access to conventional halls of power.

The Powers That Be closed the book on the Otherthings after their binding and exile. There were other horrors to confront, and they turned their attention to such threats that would endanger their new order. As the Otherthings had only dreamed themselves awake in the dawning days of the cosmos, they had no reason to believe that the Otherthings would ever be relevant to history again.

But then The Widening Gyre was born, and a handful of people in the know promptly began watching it with wary, wary eyes...