Essence Mutant Lore
For those who both know of and contemplate such things, it remains a frequently unsettling truth that the world, by its very nature, is trapped on the edge of an apocalypse of the unknown. From the dawn of history, the Unborn God has remained an existential threat held off indefinitely by the actions of the Gods.
Through their efforts, the world has gained a veneer of stability and safety, few ever considering the possibility that the rule of the Gods could ever fail. However, for the few who fully grasp the nature of the world know that the compleation of the Unborn God is not possible, it is inevitable.
As is nature for such knowledge, this leads some to the question of what will happen when the Unborn God comes to be. The question is almost impossible to answer, but many scholars believe that they have come close.
Some point to the Church of the Unborn God to find evidence of what will be. After all, despite being trapped half way beyond reality, the Unborn God still walks the realms in the form of its Avatars.
Limited to the power of the creatures they once were, Avatars of the Unborn God lack it’s unknown power. However, they still contain some form of its consciousness and allow it to interact with reality as if it was a creature.
Many of the Unborn God’s Avatars have served as guides for the Church of the Unborn God, although very few have ever taken a position of direct leadership for a meaningful period if time. As a result, it is logical to see the church or even the words of the Unborn God itself as the ultimate source on what it’s presence will bring.
Unfortunately, those who advocate using the Unborn God’s Avatars as a scholarly source are inevitably countered by the reasoning that such accounts are inherently biased and likely deceitful. The Church of the Unborn God believe that the Gods parasitic usurpers of the being who would have been their salvation.
In their teachings, the Unborn God came to the world to save it, their existence reshaping reality into a paradise free of everything wrong in the eyes of the particular sect asked. Such injustices usually include death, disease, pain and inequality, but have been recorded to vary wildly.
The Unborn God themselves has often confirmed such beliefs, but uses them to encourage resistance to the Gods’ rule and attempts to hasten its birth into reality. As a result, the followers of the Gods denounce such claims as malicious deceptions of the primordial evil to tempt the foolish and corrupt into freeing it upon the world.
Scholars that follow the Gods will often advocate the opposite the opposite position, claiming that only the Gods can provide trustworthy testimony of the Unborn God’s true nature. In their reasoning, the first Gods saw the advent of the Unborn God first hand, witnessing the horrors of its impending existence.
Such reasoning runs into the same problem, skeptics pointing out that the Gods clearly benefit from the belief that the Unborn God is an cosmic evil that will distort reality into a nightmare far worse than oblivion. The argument that they only rule in its absence makes their testimony as biased as the Church of the Unborn God’s in the eyes of a neutral scholar.
Such a scholar is left with only the present evidence of what the Unborn God’s partial presence has wrought. For this, they must look to essence and the effect it has on the world. And no more telling and concerning example of the effect of essence can be found than that of Essence Mutations.
Essence Mutants, or more colloquially mutants, are the result of a creature being exposed to essence to the point that it irreversibly bonds to its being, the creature creating its own essence as a passive part of existing. Unlike Essence Users, you consciously cycle essence through themselves, never letting it fully bond to their being, Essence Mutants cannot control how the essence within them acts upon their being.
From a purely practical perspective, the essence within them is entirely beneficial. Reacting to their bodies needs and their subconscious desires, it reshapes their anatomy and biology to meet whatever is needed. This provides a massive advantage to beasts that become Essence Mutants as the result of essence pollution, and causes an equally massive problem for those needing to deal with such creatures.
However, for a sapient creature, ever changing mishmash of anatomy that an Essence Mutant is constantly subjected to is disconcerting to some and sickening to others. The social implications of such a form makes becoming an Essence Mutant a dreaded fate.
Despite this, some Essence Mutants learn to master the essence within them, growing into the master of their own unintended power. Gaining such control allows them to dictate their own form, becoming something better than they were.
Appearance: There is no consistent appearance for even a single Essence Mutant. The best way to describe them is one word, abomination. Without consistency or logic to their forms, they look like nothing that should exist or could be designed by a sane mind.