Provenance

Our part of the cavern was dark and well away from the group as a whole. The firelight was lost in the darkness that reached down from the ceiling. I could only see the slight glint in her eyes that let me know she was looking at me. They drew me in as her confident voice, soft and absorbed by the cave, asked me for a tale of my homeworld.

“Xaoc was the first thing. There was nothing before him. He was a raging chasm churning with all of the energy of the cosmos. Within the folds and rents in time and space, he seethed like a terrifying but powerful child. Xaoc was angry, hungry, frightened, and alone. He was a mere shade of what he was to become.”

“As an unshaped mass, jumbled beyond recognition, Xaoc could not ascertain what was right or wrong within the new voidspace he occupied. There was nothing he could observe beyond the yawning gap that was his great self. His was an energy and body born of pure cosmic power. The wont and scope of Xaoc could not be contained.”

“The unstoppable Xaoc spilled over out of the chasm of his self and roiled into and out of voidspace. He was sheer might manifested in the jumble of all elements. He was the shapeless taking form. His birth from the nothingness of all could only be reflected in the great rage that he was feeling.”

“It was here that the wilds of warpspace were born. They still storm and writhe with that remembered pain of birth. They still heave with that unhappiness and solitude. They still scream in Xaoc’s great name.”

“In the void, Epeboc was spat out of the mass that was Xaoc. Epeboc’s darkness soothed the great beast and cooled his temperament. The tears he cried pooled within voidspace and Nus was born from the coagulation and freezing of this primordial liquid.”

“Bits of power were scattered from Xaoc and this thrashing fit of being born. These too cooled and coalesced into what would be known as Taia, Taptapoc, and Epuuc or the Land, the Abyss, and Love.”

“This is how my homeworld started. This is how everything started. We all exist in a fine line between what is voidspace and what is warpspace. Without Xaoc, we would be nothing more than an insignificant burp of soulless energy moving within the cosmos. Without Epeboc and Nus, we would know only the boiling of the stars.”

“Without Taia, we would not know the lands of planets orbiting the stars. We wouldn’t understand her gifts that she brought. We wouldn’t understand the soul of voidspace.”

“Without Taptapoc, we would not understand our own journeys through the void to get to the warp. We wouldn’t know what to fear in either the light or the darkness. We wouldn’t know that we were safe as he held the keys and chains of the beasts set to destroy us.”

“And, without Epuuc, I wouldn’t know you.”

2. The Touch of Epuuc