Lit Cult Encounters and Supernatural Encounters (even more new Legends material!)

Wow, all that stuff is amazing. I wonder if the Marvel series was going to actually do something with all that had it continued longer. The Fourth Precept resemblance is uncanny, too.

The Unknown Regions also has a brief but oh-so-tantalizing mention that it wasn't just the war that drove the Taungs from Notron - there was also a period of massive, inexplicable volcano activity, with ash plumes kilometers long.

 

Cosmic War just sounds the coolest and is also suitably "epic".Han's statement that "everybody knows that Seoul V was destroyed in a Cosmic War eons ago" can also be read as it being the in-Universe name, and that the event itself is something a lot of the Galactic population might have some vague, general notion of.

 

Hopefully it would still be possible to get in contact with somebody from the Marvel days and ask them more about the Cosmic War that all those stories mentioned. There might actually be old documents somewhere that could shed light on any plans they might have had. For now, all we can be sure of is that those mentions are not coincidental.

I had forgotten about that reference to volcanic activity from The Unknown Regions, but yeah, you're right- that must be "Onrai" up to her usual no good. It's unmistakable. This is when it was still called Notron, too, and that would also suggest that the statue on Seoul V would have to have been erected before the name Notron fell out of use. #84 goes a bit further into the Cosmic War backstory and indicates that while Seoul V's outpost worlds were all "slagged" and glassed, it was always just assumed that Seoul V also was. It wasn't- and it's cities were kept intact. Han even theorizes that a "germ warfare" attack was used. In light of all the newer Abeloth/Onrai/Notron hints, perhaps the destruction of Seoul V's outposts and the precise targeting of Seoul V itself were part of an ancient attempt to contain a previous Abeloth/Onrai outbreak.

 

Well, with Kalgrath having been retconned into a Kun creation, perhaps the knowledge Kun used to create him had older origins. Who knows how old some of what he learned from the Sith Holocron (which contained histories going back over 100,000 years) and whatever he pillaged from Ossus really was.

Same here, though how Abeloth fits in to that one from 100,000 BBY, particularly in light of the hint from The Unknown Regions of inexplicable volcanic activity on Notron circa 200,000 BBY all but confirming that she was active during an earlier cycle.

That could explain the very similar Dark Side pyramids seen in TotJ and the similar one from Dromund Kaas. And the Alashan structures are interesting in another way, as the end of the story has multiple evil voices laughing at the end- which would seem to imply that whoever created Forever and its Guardian were still there in some form...

Other than distance, nothing serves to rule out any connection between the Knell of Muspilli and Darkknell. And we know that distance is meaningless when dealing with these ancients.

I was just re-reading this one to see if there was anything that fits in with the other Cosmic War references from Marvel. The Darker and the ancient buried city on Arbra are a fifth Marvel reference to some long-vanished ancient civilization, but one that isn't as closely linked as the others mentioned above. No Cosmic War connection, and the city has decayed in a way the other civilizations never did. They still fled the planet, though, as did the "Massassi" inhabitants and those from Keeper's World. What struck me was that the original inhabitants of Keeper's World are described as nonviolent- and it made me wonder if they were one and the same as the former inhabitants of Arbra! The Arbrans could have perfected themselves and moved to Keeper's World (which is very much like Arbra), only to have to leave that world in turn when the War threatened it. The text says that they fled to another part of the Universe- indicating that they actually left the Galaxy itself and went to another.

 

So if I have this right...

* Onrai was the original goddess of the Zhell.
* Onrai is implied to be Abeloth.
* The Zhell fought the Taungs.
* The Taungs were driven from Notron by massive volcanic activity (could this be what the Fourth Precept panel depicts?).
* Abeloth is associated with volcanoes.

So it definitely seems like that Abeloth took the initiative to drive the Taungs away from her worshippers. This also implies she's much older than we thought she was, unless that's just an error.

 

Flawless analysis!
And yeah, it would indeed seem that Abeloth/Onrai was active circa 200,000 BBY- another earlier cycle of destruction.
Good to hear that I'm not the only one who saw what the panel from 4th Precept seems to actually depict, or at the very least can be interpreted as depicting. Volcanic activity and propulsion-based ships fleeing what sure looks like a slightly less developed Coruscant can very easily be explained by all this.

 

I wish they hired Bongiorno to write FOTJ instead of Denning.

 

I wonder how the Rakatan Mother entity would fit in. Was she created in response, or was her development a separate issue?

 

And you know I just remembered another super-ancient creepy thing from the old Marvel series: the Shawken Device from #87. A superweapon-to-end-all-superweapons that was supposedly capable of collapsing the entire universe and remaking it from scratch. It's said that its designer for some reason saw this as a comparative mercy, and that the new universe would likely be far better. Mercy from... what, exactly?

 

I think the creator was just mad.

 

So, how do you all think the so called "World Razer." imprisoned on Belsavis fits into this. If what the Rakatan writings left behind are true, (That it took the entire might of the infinite empire to subdue, it was the first prisoner entombed on Belsavis, could devour worlds, potential galaxy dooming consequences of it release.), there are definitely interesting implications.

 

Zeta Magnus appears to have ties with the Sorcerers of Rhand, Wookieepedia saying this: "Traveling the Unknown Regions, Magnus interacted with a schizophrenic bio-ship, the Vagaari, N'Gai, and Ebruchi species, as well as the Chiss Ascendancy and the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium before establishing a kingdom of Dark Worlds which would come to be blessed by the Sorcerers of Rhand." The Sorcerers were formed by three sects including the Knell of Muspilli who apparently seek to summon "apocalyptic deities from beyond shadow" and I think have already been mentioned in this thread.

Zeta Magnus is planned as a major villain in my campaign as the "architect of the Clone Wars". These Clone Wars are not the canonical ones, but will be more similar to pre-Prequel Trilogy conceptions of the Clone Wars.

 

There's also the Cthulhu-like being the Dreadmasters were attempting to summon - Lotek'k, Terror from Beyond!

 

We also know that the Zhell became humans. Maybe Abeloth created humans because she figured that a species with free will would create chaos? Abeloth could be the Prometheus of the GFFA.

 

On the age of these beings, one line in Cult Encounters insinuates that the Celestials and Old Ones appeared in the Galaxy as it was still forming. This would of course make them billions of years old, and even 100,000 is a drop in the bucket next to that. So 99.99% of the Galaxy's history went by before they went to war...

 

Actually... the Galactic Architecture article on the official blog detailing Centerpoint's history says that the Son and Daughter of Mortis were already known by those names as Centerpoint was being constructed. So I guess the Abeloth dates aren't that much of an inconsistency at all?

 

Do we know for sure that the Abeloth backstory given in FOTJ: Apocalypse is accurate? Might Abeloth actually be the creator of
the Font of Power and Pool of Knowledge?

 

The Killiks' memories have been known to be less than completely accurate, so it's possible that they may have given their own spin on things re: Abeloth, even unintentionally.

 

Ooh, found another possible Abeloth guise in another RPG fluff book. The Legacy Era Campaign Guide mentions Vahl, a "goddess of destructive fire" worshipped by the Dark Side cult called the Ember of Vahl, who appears as a woman with eyes burning like brimstone.

 

Thinking about it, I reckon 100,000 BBY was actually in all likelihood the end of the Cosmic War. The retreats of the Columi and Sharu, the Muurshantre Extinction wiping out the Gunninga Gap cultists, the binding of Abeloth... these don't really sound like things that would happen at the beginning of a conflict to me.

 

Definitely with you on this. Also, if the Abeloth backstory given in FOTJ: Apocalypse is accurate (as I said above, I have my doubts), Abeloth would be among the youngest Old Ones.

Also interesting is all the references to the Sith species and 100,000 years...

 

Also interesting to explore would be which side the Son chose in the Cosmic War, as he's not an Old One but an evil Celestial.