Energon, Xig-Yao
| TRAITS: | Energon | Incorporeal |
| PLANE / LAYER: | Far Realm, Vacuum |
| ACTIVITY CYCLE: | Any |
| DIET: | Spacetime |
| INTELLIGENCE: | High |
| ALIGNMENT: | Neutral |
| SIZE: | Large |
| CHALLENGE RATING: | 15 |
DESCRIPTION: The xig-yao are eldritch, shadowy entities that distorts the fabric of space around themselves. There are three known xig-yao so far, each of them thought to be a unique entity. They appear as formless, intangible spheres of black energy that stretch and ripple like mirages, stretching and warping their surroundings. They make any environment they are in feel larger, merely by their presence—but they have the bizarre ability to be able to literally expand space. They absorb any ambient illumination, creating pockets of anti-magical and silent darkness where the normal laws of reality wane and falter. Their presence pulls at the edges of perception, making time and distance seem slippery and unreliable, and the air around them crackles as if reality itself is fighting to remain coherent.
PREFERRED HABITAT: Graybeards claim that xig-yao originate from places where reality wears thin and aberrant laws of physics from the Far Realm seep through into our Multiverse. They are thought to dwell now in Wildspace and the Sparkling Vast of Vacuum.
PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: The xig-yao embody the mysterious force behind cosmic expansion: an inexorable drive that pushes all things apart, making the infinite grow ever larger. They are entities of subtle but immense power, patient and unimaginably ancient, and the reason that mortals look upon something infinite and feel an inescapable uneasiness. There are three known xig-yao, each of whom have philosophies of expansion and separation. They are the guardians of distance and void, and they seek to ensure there is room in the multiverse for everything by stretching reality ever thinner. If xig-yao ever meet, they never interact with each other.
ECOLOGY: The xig-yao “feed” on the rarefaction of space, absorbing all kinds of matter and energy and converting them into an invisible force that widens distances and attenuates magical energies. Creatures caught within an xig-yao’s expansion field find their spells faltering and find movement challenging as reality elongates around them. It is not known how these creatures can reproduce, or even if they are able to. It is also not known if they can be destroyed, for the chant goes that the rare occasions that a xig-yao has been defeated it explodes in a pulse of dark energy, only to reform again in the Far Realm. It seems the new being has only the faintest recollection of its former existence, but divination magic suggests that is it the same creature.
The three xig-yao have never revealed their own names, but the working monikers that have been assigned to them by graybeards of the Mathematicians sect are as follows:
- Xig-Phant — the Ruptured Reality
- Xig-Quant — the Quintescent Dynamic, coming soon!
- Xig-Vant — the Repulsive Constant, coming soon!
Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. These energons are a homebrew idea based on some of the theories about the nature of dark energy.
