Nephandi

The Eater of Dimensions & the Teacher

By Anders Sandberg

Here are some weird and frightening beings allied with the Nephandi.

The Eater of Dimensions

This is a very strange and threatening being allied with some Nephandi. It isn't exactly a being, more like a whole realm, filled with one single being. When it manifests in the Umbra or on Earth it will use Correspondence 4 to create openings between its target and its own realm. At first they will look like areas of blackish, rotten air, and then holes open up into a space filled with endless writhing tentacles. The tentacles are very thin, grey threads which whip around and seems to dissolve and reform into air all the time.

The Eater seems to want space. It literally eats places, by enlarging the holes and dragging the place into itself, where it is dissolved. The place just disappears from reality. It isn't really interested in matter or humans, so it just crushes them and discards the refuse. Often it opens up a hole beside its victim, grips it with its tentacles and squeezes him through the small opening, and then spits out the gore (often into another realm).

The Eater seems to lack any personality and greater intelligence. It's just a realm which wants to expand forever by devouring all other realms. However, it is quite useful for the Nephandi. They just make sure it is summoned to a place they want destroyed, and then they can lean back and watch. The most common way of making the Eater become interested in a place is to place objects (like stones, bottles, cars or people) around it in a certain angular pattern, something most Nephandi intuitively understand. People with Correspondence will notice that the pattern looks strange in some way.

STR 5, DEX 5, STA 5
Brawl 5
Arete 5, Correspondence 4
all other traits are zero.

The tentacles of each opening have wound levels like an ordinary human and if the tentacles are damaged enough, they will withdraw and the opening will close. However, damage to the opening itself will make it larger, making new tentacles emerge. Each wound to the opening itself will heal a wound level to the tentacles. To close an opening with magick, Correspondence must overcome the Eater's countermagick.

Roleplaying Tips: You want more space!

The Teacher

The being known as the Teacher has been with mankind as long as history. It has been called Lucifer, Nyarlathotep, the Black Man and many other things. Its purpose seems to be to seduce mages into becoming barabbi, and leading Nephandi deeper into alien damnation. It seems to appear as a guide to Nephandi who have undergone an Epiphany, and helps (?) them in becoming even more alien and inhuman.

Normally the Teacher will appear in human form. It is recognized by its intense aura of might and subtle wrongness. From the corner of one's eye people might imagine it is surrounded by a gray mist, or feel that there is some kind of disharmonious sound in the air, just below the threshold of hearing or perhaps as ultrasound. The Teacher normally behaves politely, with an air of subtle irony and well hidden arrogance. It seldom speaks unless asked, and answers in a low, well modulated voice.

However, the Teacher will change completely if attacked. It never attacks first but as it is hurt, its body changes. It's almost like its human form was a projection on a screen, which now is tilted. The Teacher's body seems to turn in some unknown direction, losing its perspective and becoming a distorted, frightening parody of human. Its perspective is all wrong, limbs change shape and angle depending on movement and its voice becomes somehow "angled", it becomes utterly disconcerting and induces headaches. In this state, the Teacher will become a horrible enemy, ignoring any laws of space or distance, striking people from across the room while bullets miss by miles.

The Teacher seems never to get angered, it just seems that its humanity is a facade. Its body a three dimensional projection from something far away. While it still behaves and talks like a perfect gentleman, it will distort the shape of people and objects, bending space into knots and causing enormous Paradox backlashes. Then it disappears, leaving the survivors to sort things out. The Teacher seems to never get permanently hurt (since its body is probably just a three dimensional extension of a higher dimensional being), and will reappear whenever it feels like it. It doesn't have any human motivations, and won't seek revenge or reprisal against attackers. However, it might become interested if someone seemed to be recruitable.

The Teacher teaches secrets beyond man's ken. It knows profound truths about the universe and how reality works, but these are extremely alien. In order to learn them, the student has to become more and more alien himself. At first it's just mind-bending riddles and weird ideas, but later they become more and more drastic and the exercises practical. The student has to see reality from more and more alien points of view, becoming less and less human. The Teacher is especially good at teaching the Spheres, especially Correspondence and Spirit and also Cosmology, Enigmas and Occult.

Essence: Unknown
Nature: Jester
Demeanor: Conformist
Traits are for human form.
STR 2, DEX 2, STA 2
CHA 4, MAN 4, APP 2
PER 2, INT 4, WIT 3
Arete 5, Correspondence 5, Time 3

Roleplaying Tips: Humans are amusing, even if they don't understand it themselves. Play along with their little games and see how many foolish things they will do for you just to learn a few, simple facts about the universe. If they become irritating, you scare them a bit and walk away.

Rotes (Using Nephandi Correspondence)

Bend Space (Corr. 5)

The Teacher can bend the shape of an object (like a human arm) into a new shape, and it will remain in that condition for a while (or permanently). It is not the object itself that is bent, but the space it takes up. A gun with a bent barrel will still function perfectly, but the bullets will fly quite unpredictably. A bent arm can still be used, but it becomes extremely hard to use since it doesn't move in any reasonable way.

To use an object (like a gun or a sword), the user must succeed with Intelligence + Enigmas against a difficulty of 8 (more or less depending on circumstances). To use a limb, the user must succeed with Dexterity + Enigmas.

Angle (Corr. 5)

The Teacher hits someone and makes him rotate a bit out of synch with ordinary space. The effect is direct and frightening. Everything is still there, but somehow angled into new and unexpected shapes. A ball will look like an ellipsoid, humans appear as distorted shadows of themselves and just walking through a room is a difficult task. It is quite simple to get lost, and many victims wander off completely from normal reality. From the perspective of others, the victim appears warped and angled strangely. The Teacher sometimes uses this against its students, forcing them to see the universe in a completely new way.

Four Dimensional Kill (Corr. 5)

The Teacher simply makes the space around the victim four dimensional. Blood, organs and skeleton start to leak out through the fourth dimension, causing a slow and grisly death.

Four Dimensional Grip (Corr. 3)

The Teacher can reach into enclosed spaces and remove items. It is, for example, quite simple for it to reach into someone's stomach and knot their guts, or rip out their heart without damaging anything else. But by using the Bend Space effect, it can even remove inner organs while they still are doing their work. A removed heart will still pump the blood of the victim, a removed brain will still think while lying in the hands of the Teacher. This is sometimes used by it for some truly weird teachings, where the student is more or less disassembled and sent on strange journeys in many directions at once.