Thread:LucidPigeons/@comment-2175012-20160323030814/@comment-26205772-20160413202840

Right. I suppose I’ll go a little bit into the context of the universe first. My apologies for the wall of text; there’s a lot to talk about and you’re free to read this at your own pace.

Earth Negative is an alternate version of Earth created as an experiment by the malicious god Ix Nagoth. It originated as a planet beholden to several races that existed without any form of strife or conflict. The most prominent of these races was the Seers, a race of genderless, chalk-white humanoids defined by their ability to cast avatars of themselves into mind-space (the mental plane) from real-space (the physical space) by connecting their minds to the Remeditary (which is a sort of semi-plane that exists as a link between real-space and mind-space). Earth Negative was protected by the god-like Daydreamers, until one of them decided to create a series of artificial Seers to better harness the powers of the Remeditary. One of the artificial Seers ended up too powerful, and as a result created an imbalance in the Remeditary which spread a wave of destruction through both real-space and mind-space, wiping out everything on Earth Negative. Devastated, the Daydreamers left and regressed the catastrophic artificial Seer to their weakest form.

Eventually, from that Seer’s proto-form, life essentially started anew from microscopic cells that birthed from the Seer and evolved into life as we know it today. Humans are the imperfect descendants of the Seers in that sense; they’re physically alike and have the requisite intelligence but they lack their connection with the Remeditary and they know conflict that was otherwise strange to the Seers. Some humans, however, have small parts of the Seer within them. If that part is awakened (either by another Seer or a remaining artifact of the Seers) they’ll be able to tap into the Remeditary and essentially become half-Seers. Earth Negative is different from Earth in many small but noticeable ways; some events in history turned out much differently (the events surrounding Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination were much, much different, for starters), some places that don’t exist in reality exist there (Onolo and St. Howard’s, respectively a Mexican island village and a small Canadian town), and some individuals were never born to begin with. The most prominent difference is that, as it was created by outerworldly forces and is influenced by the Remeditary (probably one of the strongest forces in my extended canon), Earth Negative is compatible with outer-dimensional energies and other worlds entirely. The most prominent of these other worlds is the City, an eldritch world of beings of which the world has never seen before, but it also draws something far, far worse; the Dark Divinities, a race of incomprehensible and often malicious gods who take interest in Earth Negative due to the odd energies there. Think the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods, respectively.

For the two villains… the main antagonist of the universe at large is Ix Nagoth, but the most recurring threat is a woman known as Lucia. Lucia’s an ex-Daydreamer who fell from her divine status before life was wiped out on Earth Negative the first time around, and following that, she converted to the worship of a sealed Dark Divinity known as Draynak (whom I’ve been bouncing back and forth on whether or not it’s a CM itself) and sought to free it so that it would be capable of enslaving all existence – known in-universe as the Cosma (and as the Teraverse in the extended canon) – to its will. Lucia’s been active in both the City and Earth Negative for thousands of years, forming the beings of the City into a cult by introducing them to human ideals and having them draw a vast outer-dimensional being known simply as “It” to them by convincing them that if they do so, they’ll reach nirvana. On Earth Negative, she uses various avatars (another parallel to the Cthulhu Mythos; she’s the stand-in for Nyarlathotep) to manipulate humans and find a host for Draynak, taking potential candidates and putting them through horrendous physical, mental, and sexual torture to prepare their bodies. Until The City of Never, none of this works and Lucia’s left with hundreds of candidates who die due to what she does to them. Her ultimate goal is to have Draynak freed, entered into a host body, and allow it to assimilate “It” so it can start devouring even stronger beings until it eventually becomes the strongest being in reality.

Lucia gets up to a lot of nasty stuff in the first two stories (Nevermore and The City of Never) alone. For most of her role, she’s disguised as “the Shadows’ Consultant.” She convinces the City to invade Earth and gruesomely butcher the residents of St. Howard’s and later Onolo to provide opportunities for her to search those villages for candidates, then has the identity of any of those who survived completely erased; convinces a man named Hansel Brighterson to willingly go into the City, then stranding him in there for seven years and nearly driving him insane as a result; torments the Vade family for hundreds of years, forcing them to pay tribute to her via a book known as the Memorycatcher, before she takes the granddaughter of the current holder of the Memorycatcher (Christian Vade) into the City as a candidate; and has full knowledge that drawing It into the City means drawing it through Earth first, which will obliterate both the City and Earth’s dimension and all within.

In the plot proper, she goes on a killing spree to amuse herself, willingly attempts to kill (and in the case of Zyra Nyson, the thirteen-year old protagonist of Nevermore and in actuality the artificial Seer that wiped out the world so long ago, mentally traumatize and attempt to rape) children several times over, and kills a lot of named characters in the series (and not in pretty ways, either; she prefers simply jamming knives into people but she scores two characters by ripping them in half). Probably her worst atrocity is when she actually gets her hands on a working candidate (Crystal Hopper, who’s the daughter of The City of Never’s protagonist Daniel) and her infant brother Mark. Lucia puts them both through horrible, horrible torture in the form of their father to break them, mutates and abominates their bodies, and eventually has a series of eldritch leeches sexually penetrate Crystal, burrow into her, and impregnate her with something that will leave her as compatible for Draynak. When Mark turns out to be a failure, Lucia abominates him into a twisted, hulking monstrosity that endures ungodly pain every moment of its existence. Daniel is later forced to put Mark down with a shotgun blast, and Lucia proceeds to stoically mock Daniel about what she’s done to his children before forcing him to painfully link to the Remeditary under the threat of his other daughter's life, completely breaking him as a result. She’s an absolute bitch, to put things mildly.

The other main Monster in Earth Negative is a man known as Welter Faye. Now, while Lucia’s a cold-hearted bitch with zero likable traits whatsoever, Faye’s the character I like to have a lot of fun with. He’s a despicable bastard, but he’s more or less the Joker in this regard. He’s the former pupil of crime lord Malcolm Graves, who’s the head of the Order of Inverse, which is a criminal empire spreading countries that’s responsible for just about every crime in the book, a lot of which Faye oversees.

On his own time, Faye mutated a disease into a flesh-eating virus which he then released onto an African village; was responsible for shooting up the wedding of gay activist Theodore Andrews, and then resurrecting him as an undead wight; leading the Cold Hive experiment, which was taking an Engineer (which isn’t a TF2 class, despite the name, but rather a member of a race of docile, ape-like beings which live in seclusion, away from humanity’s eyes) and led torturous experiments on it until it broke and went savage; and permitted what became known as the Izowa Disaster in his youth, which was the four-day massacre of over 3,000 African-Americans in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. In The City of Never, Faye was one of many people who ultimately had their identity erased following the attack on St. Howard’s, leading him to become obsessed with the City. He spends most of his time as a research assistant to Christian Vade, but when the City attacks, Faye’s quick to desert and try to take advantage of the situation, tying up a dozen or so people and trying to have them killed by the City’s creatures. That fails, and Faye ultimately ends up in a circumstance where he’s beholding the unsealing of Draynak. Faye instantly pledges himself to it and humbly suggests that it not merely conquer existence, but shape the whole of the Cosma into a singularity of chaos and anarchy while leaving him alive to carry it out.

Faye’s nasty, but he’s also a very energetic man. Most of what he does he does with a constant smile, giggles, and a temperament about as excitable as that of a kid on Christmas. He’s personable with everyone he meets and he holds no resent for anyone, always remaining friendly, beaming, and giddy no matter what the circumstance. The problem is that Faye doesn’t actually care about anyone. He’d give a lollipop to a child, then jam a knife into their neck to see the transition from joy to pain. He’s a man of obsession and random whims who seeks nothing less than “the ultimate chaos.” But he’s a right loony bastard, and he’s a lot of fun to write because more often than not his dialogue’s exuberant and comical.