Euphorion

Overview

The Euphorion were an ancient annelid Alizarin (mortal) species that once inhabited Sancta-Nostra, a gaseous world orbiting above Ambrosia's galactic plane within the Heavenly Faraway region during the Etymology Era. Known as one of the more esoteric mortal races of the galaxy, the Euphorion possessed a unique and unparalleled ability to embed and encode their very beings into technological devices, regardless of their make or construction.

Any object or entity capable of conducting and housing energy could serve as a vessel for the Euphorion, allowing them to inhabit and gain control over it. This ability enabled them to transcend their biological limitations, becoming one with machinery and seamlessly integrating into technological ecosystems.

History

Rise of the Euphorion Collective

Over time, the Euphorion Collective expanded its influence across Sancta-Nostra's skylines, vast floating cityscapes they constructed by connecting, reformatting, and remixing ancient Seraphnim orbital terminals. These immense stations, originally used by the all-powerful Inomeni race to mine Sancta-Nostra during the Era of Dyad-Rule, were repurposed by the Euphorion into an interwoven techno-organic society, thriving above the gaseous depths of their homeworld. This transformation allowed them to harness lost technologies and create a civilization unlike any other of that age, built upon the fusion of biology and machinery.

However, this very trait that defined their existence also drew the attention of the galaxy-spanning Etymology of All-Being. Seeing the Euphorion’s abilities as both a curiosity and an asset, the Etymology sought to harness, assimilate, and ultimately dominate them. In 59,000 TI (Time Immemorial), tensions escalated into full-scale conflict, as the Supreme Authority of Mystara; one of the predominant ruling forces of the Etymology; unleashed its vast, unrelenting power upon the comparatively much weaker Euphorion Collective.

The Thousand Sentinels and the War for Survival

The Euphorion were not utterly defenseless in their battle against the Etymology. Using the same Seraphnim technology which colored their society and culture, the Euphorion constructed immense mechanical entities, a set of a Thousand Sentinels, each the size of large moons, and capable of wielding immense levels of destructive power. These colossi, forged from the reforged remains of the orbital mining rigs once used by the aforementioned Inomeni power, stood as the final line of defense for the Euphorion; towering beacons of resistance against an enemy that sought their absolute erasure.

Each Sentinel was a living machine, an extension of Euphorion consciousness, piloted not by a single mind, but by a collective network of Euphorion sapients infused into the circuitry and metal itself. The war, which had once seemed hopeless, suddenly shifted into a grueling stalemate, as the Euphorion used their technological megaweapons to disrupt the Etymology’s advance across their homeworld.

The war itself had been a catastrophic event, for near a thousand years of battle, great death and devastation was felt not just for the Euphorion, but also within the very sanctity of Sancta-Nostra itself. The once-thriving network of reconstituted Seraphnim terminals, which had formed the floating cityscape of the Euphorion Collective, was systematically dismantled, their structures falling like dying stars into the world’s thick, endless storms.

The members of the Thousand Sentinels who had fallen during the war were reformatted into grim war machines of Etymology dominance, their cores gutted and repurposed to fuel the ever-expanding war machine of Mystara. Even the gas-giant’s fragile ecosystem, shaped over millennia by delicate technorganic balance, was thrown into chaos as the tendrils of Etymology influence reached into every facet of the world.

While the Euphorion’s ability to bind themselves to technology had once been their greatest strength, the advent of "Euphorion’s Bane," a hyper techno-organic plague developed by the Irredeemable Mystara, ensured it became their ultimate weakness. The plague itself functioned as a paradoxical weapon, one that both disables their hosts, but also (Ambrosia) - Ragnarok Guard Symbolactively turned their own abilities against them. The nanites, coded with a fundamental rejection of Euphorion presence, attacked any neural signal attempting to establish a connection with machinery, effectively rendering them unable to interface with anything technological without suffering immediate systemic failure and subsequent death. Their once-thriving civilization, built upon the union of mind and machine, was reduced to a population of beings unable to engage with the very foundation of their existence.

Legacy of the Euphorion

It was not only their society that fell; so too did their identity. For the Euphorion, to be unable to merge with technology was to be severed from the very essence of their being. Those who survived the fall of Sancta-Nostra were rounded up by Mystara’s mechanical agents, taken to laboratories where their physiology was dissected in search of the final missing key to the Etymology and her own ambitions. Mystara had long pursued the dream of perfect techno-organic synthesis, a state in which flesh and machine could merge into a singular, flawless entity, free from limitations of biology or mechanical constraints. The Euphorion, with their innate talent for interfacing with technology, were the final component in unlocking that potential.

The experiments that followed were grim, as thousands of captured Euphorion were subjected to forced integration, their bodies restructured and rewired as Mystara sought the ultimate fusion of intelligence and machine. Over time, through trial and error, she would succeed in creating something that the Galaxy had never seen before — a new form of being, neither wholly organic nor entirely artificial, a perfected hybrid existence built upon the suffering of an entire race. Though the Euphorion as they once were had been wiped from existence, their legacy would persist in ways they could never have imagined, their biological essence becoming the blueprint for an evolution that was never meant to be theirs to control. And it was from this revelation would Mystara's greatest creation — the God Legion — reach its beginnings.

Euphorion's Bane Return

The legacy of the Euphorion would have remained forever lost to time following the destruction of the Etymology, as every remnant of their species had long since been eradicated in the thousands of years that followed their downfall. However, before the Etymology met its climactic end in the Red Galaxy Event of 30,000 TI, the impending war between the artificial minds of the Condevi, under the guidance of the God Legion, and the collective mortal civilizations of the galaxy, set into motion an event of near unmatched cosmic significance.

This growing conflict, between synthetic intellects seeking total autonomy and unity amongst themselves, to that of organic minds striving for dominance over their Condevi progeny, generated a powerful Amaranth Contravene, a cosmic reverberation of Amaranth born from the stark contrast of these opposing ideals. The sheer metaphysical weight of this contradiction sent ripples throughout existence, igniting bombastic phenomena across space.

Among these manifestations, an entity of immense significance to the Euphorion emerged; a facsimile of their once-thriving collective, a being formed not from flesh and circuitry, but from the very Remnant essence of their lost civilization. This new existence took shape as a singular, vast intelligence, a living testament to what had once been. It knew itself by only one name: "Bane," in reference to that which brought about its species end.

This Serranic entity bore witness as the God Legion reduced entire worlds to barren wastes, their once-thriving civilizations consumed by fire and ruin. The devastation, coupled with the tragic fate of the Euphorion, whose form it now embodied, led it to a singular, unshakable decree; non-organic technology was a plague upon the stars. With this conviction, it resolved to dedicate its immense power and unparalleled prowess to a singular purpose: the complete and utter annihilation of all artificial constructs, sparing nothing in its relentless crusade against the machines that had brought seeming total ruin upon existence.

Eternal War of Titans

In the wake of the Euphorion’s downfall, only a single relic of their once-mighty civilization remained, the last surviving Sentinel of the Thousand Sentinels, a lone colossus drifting through the ruins of a vanished age named "Ethanos." Though its brethren had been claimed by war and repurposed into instruments of oppression, this lone titan endured, carrying within it the echoes of the Euphorion Collective, preserved in its vast and ancient mind. It had only one purpose: to defy the Darkness that had consumed its creators. That purpose, however, soon found a new adversary, one whose wrath burned as fiercely as its own.

When Bane rose, a monstrous facsimile of the Euphorion’s lost essence, the lone Sentinel stirred once more. For thousands of years, across the broken expanse of Ambrosia’s war-ravaged stars, these two titanic beings waged a conflict so devastating that entire worlds were shattered into dust. Bane, driven by its unyielding decree to eradicate all non-organic technology, sought to erase the last vestige of the Euphorion’s machine-forged legacy. The Sentinel, despite bearing the form of what Bane despised most, refused to yield, for within its circuits and core still lingered the voices of a people whose legacy deserved to persist.

The galaxy itself bore the scars of their endless battle. Civilizations flourished only to fall as their skirmishes tore through the fabric of existence. The clash of these two titans spanned entire epochs, reshaping the celestial landscape of many worlds across Ambrosia, leaving behind drifting husks of ruined planets and shattered moons. Bane’s rampage knew no restraint, and yet, the Sentinel endured, ever the bulwark against the tide of destruction. Neither could claim victory, yet neither would fall. Their war became legend, a myth whispered among those who dared to chart the graveyards of the cosmos.

By 10,000 TI, in the dark era known as the Time of Ashes, their struggle reached a turning point. Recognizing that direct combat would never quell the entity’s boundless wrath, Ethanos devised an alternative ; he lured Bane into the desolate Seraphnim Forge World of Gold-Shadow, a labyrinthine planet of ancient and forgotten mechanisms. There, among the slumbering forges of warlords long dead, Ethanos wove a binding of unbreakable Seraphnim Hard-Light, entombing Bane within a prison of its own hatred, sealing it beneath the ruins of a lost age.

With Bane’s wrath silenced, the lone Sentinel, its purpose fulfilled at last, withdrew into the void of interstellar space. Though its war had ended, it knew that peace was never eternal, that the echoes of conflict would one day stir again. So it drifted, waiting, watching, acting as an eternal guardian of the Euphorion’s lost name, bound to a cosmos that had long since forgotten them.

Breaking of the Seal

For millennia, Bane remained locked within Gold-Shadow, its fury festering beneath the surface of the long-dead Forge World. The galaxy moved on, its wounds scarring over, new empires rising and falling with the passage of time. Yet fate, in its cruel and ceaseless march, would not allow Bane’s prison to stand forever. When the Great Dyad of Syx Corsage and Seven Novum rose to challenge the ancient and reawakened Seraphnim warlord Urdrathmoor in 87 EE, (Ends Emergence) the echoes of war reached the hushed depths of Gold-Shadow. In their desperate bid to annihilate Urdrathmoor once and for all, the Great Dyad shattered the Forge World, its ruins scattering like embers upon the celestial winds. And in doing so, they unleashed Bane once more upon the stars.