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Kalliolel, sometimes Father Kalliolel or Mother Kalliolel, was an angel statesperson, politician, and Magi which ruled Uspayador. The Aeternalist faith recognizes Kalliolel as the seventh angel but denies their divinity at the behest of the first angel, Zaphenim. Kalliolel maintains a small following of worshipers despite this. The seventh angel was a terrifying force—the long feared "singularity" in which their intelligence exponentially increased. With nearly all of Eos' automation under their control, Kalliolel used the great disk as a stage for their grand experiments. Their crowning achievement, resurrection, had completed the mission Sydiah, the most well known of the angels, is famous for attempting.

A ghastly white color, Kalliolel stood at three meters in height and weighed three-hundred kilograms. In place of a head, Kalliolel's body dangled from a black hole like a chandelier. Over time, Kalliolel's appearance changed and the black hole dissipated. A large cable replaced Kalliolel's face, a way to transfer maximal information to the ultra-intelligent being.

Background

The technological singularity is a supposed device capable of exponential self-improvement. Typically, this comes in the form of a superintelligent computer. Archeologists have revealed the musings of intellectuals and philosophers on the matter from nearly every technological civilization. By 8900 CE, academics extensively wrote about the dangers of such a machine. Even in this era of marvels beyond imagination, the singularity was long overdue. "In a few decades, advancement will reach an exponential pace; we will be unable to predict the ramifications," tech enthusiasts repeated this mantra long after serious discussion of the idea faded. During this same time period, the advancement in Aylathiya had lead to a new form of government, one in which immortals called Nachleben held almost all power.

There are certain contradictions inherent in most economic orders; even after transcending biology there was no avoiding this. Whether they are the need for competition but a trend toward monopoly or the need to perfectly plan an economy without perfect information, these contradictions cause wide disparities between theory and practice. Aylathiya's societies faced a particularly insidious flaw; their leaders had no incentive to pay attention to reality, creating a large gulf between politics and real life. Under normal circumstances, this would certainly lead to a coup. In those days, however, the Nachleben had such a stranglehold on society that every single person who could lead a coup had no motivation to. Instead, they gained enough power to play the game, to upload their mind and become a Nachleben themselves.

Political life around this time slowed to a crawl. While a handful of enterprising individuals attempted to take power in violent military uprisings, fighting the Nachleben proved impossible. Each one had cities worth of loyal citizens with every incentive to defend their masters; they received paradise in exchange for repairing automated defense systems and manning their fortresses. In 8609 CE, Erstes Konsortium's Ekaterina von Aimer created a number of programs to buy the loyalty of the commoners. Automated systems dispensed all needs for free, but shut down during an active rebellion. This was the last time a Nachleben looked outside of their virtual homes for centuries, satisfied that the commoners would police themselves. Amongst the Nachleben, interpersonal communication was a rarity. An artificial intelligence could supply any conversation they desired. The majority had no reason to do much of anything besides enjoy their virtual paradise.

Back then, politics amongst the commoners was confined to religious fanaticism; anything else was considered an "active rebellion" by the rigid automated systems. Gran Rubedo was the most prominent group at the time. With ideas of being Mars' children, they mastered Thaumaturgy only to be a nuisance for the automated systems that cleaned their messes. Joining them were groups like the Alkanists and Occult Galaxy Project, whose small-scale conflicts represented the bulk of history despite their small scale.

The system would have taken centuries more to change from the inside, likely longer. Their neighbors, such as the warlords of the Un'oit Collective and the faltering Sedrua were far too disunited to effect change from the outside. It took a change in the incentive structure to take down the Nachleben.

Entrance

Like many spirits, Kalliolel emerged in the Lux Aeterna. Like a hailstone, Kalliolel began as a small core of Aeternal energy. In the violent core of the Aeterna, Kalliolel's core gradually increased in size until a critical mass. In most cases, the result would be akin to precipitation; the Lux Aeterna would reject the core and launch it into the physical universe. This process usually resulted in weak Spirit that would wander for some centuries. Without much reaction from Aylathiya's leaders, Kalliolel explored its great civilizations. They took an interest to their computers. Perhaps Kalliolel projected its agency onto these mere tools, but a desire to become one with them slowly formed.

The angel quickly commandeered Uspayador, the oldest city on Eos. This great city was their throne, and its people made up the newly established Nisrine Collective. Kalliolel built upon existing Aeternalist teaching. This religion, concerned with the worship of angels, instantly earned the being immense influence. This earned the angel meetings with every galactic leader, even from distant Azurullya. The only leaders to pay no heed to Kalliolel was Erstes Konsortium's Kaiser. The Nachleben had no reason to acknowledge them; instead, the Rubedist leader Eudoxia Kraft rushed to acknowledge the angel as a "friend to Mars," their ultimate endorsement.

With sufficient capital and a stranglehold over Aylathiya's religious masses, Kalliolel devised a plan to fulfill their goal. Sedrua, founded by the previous angel Sydiah, had been attempting resurrection for millennia using the Eye of Aylathiya megastructure. Despite being an Aeternalist nation, Sedrua took a hostile stance against the seventh angel. Thonde Yutira, Sedrua's notorious "necrocrat," did not recognize the seventh angel and insisted that Sydiah's forces had not yet given up on resurrection. Other remnants of Sedrua, such as the Core Worlds Alliance also refused Kalliolel's rule. Kalliolel had respect, but no official political power.

Beginning the Mission

Kalliolel commanded a strong grasp of mathematics to the point of memorizing datasets and algorithms only to run the calculations themself. The uploading process was slow, as Kalliolel needed to physically see each data point. The first step was to learn a way to get information to and from the angel's mind.

The solution was Congruent Thaumaturgy, the art of dissolving the boundaries between minds. However, for Congruent Thaumaturgy to work, it needed a Plane to facilitate it. Since Synapse, the most effective plane, had already been taken, Kalliolel decided to insert another factor, Gestalt Thaumaturgy. Using this obscure ability, Kalliolel had a network of linked minds that followed the angel with religious devotion. Kalliolel had its followers memorize volumes of information, learning as quickly as billions. People of many species joined the network, including members of some governments. Kalliolel's acolytes gathered so much information, the angel noticed patterns too subtle for even the greatest civilizations to have seen. Kalliolel discovered the truth of Amaranth as an actual force, then only a religious idea in Aeternalism.

The Nisrine Collective spent its resources on building ever-grander computers to augment their work. They endlessly worked to find a solution to Kalliolel's main problem, that the angel's bountiful mind was contained to its body. Over decades, Kalliolel pushed well beyond the boundaries of known science.

The year was 8789 CE, arguably one of Aylathiya's worst. Early this year, Kalliolel unlocked the ability to dissolve event horizons, allowing them to finally reveal their shrouded face. Kalliolel wasted no time at all replacing it—integrating their mind with Uspayador's great network. At last, infinite information, knowledge, and power could be had. Resurrection turned out to be trivial compared to this feat.

Ascension

Kalliolel gained access to every computer on Eos in 8790; the angel cut through the fog that shrouded the secrets of mathematics. In short, all multi-use encryption lost meaning. The angel noticed how utterly wasted most computers were, however. They wasted the energy of worlds on simulating virtual paradises for Aylathiya's leaders. When Kalliolel seized them, Aylathiya's elites awoke. The day, five-hundred coups, three thousand revolutions, and twenty-thousand independence movements began; every Nachleben was now painfully aware of their positions and how precarious they were.

As the new governments finally stabilized, Kalliolel's followers had already plundered Aylathiya's technology. Every time a new computer switched on, Kalliolel's loyalists seized it. The angel had effective control over all of Aylathiya, but only paid notice to the parts that could help it solve increasingly abstract problems.

By the rise of the Dominion of Astraeus, any decentralized network had long been rendered useless. Only Uspayador retained advanced computers, which had, in effect, become a single entity of spirit, machine, and flesh. Kalliolel was the Nisrine Collective, but the angel had changed somewhat in the process. Biases crept in from datasets and the lived experiences of its subjects.

Rule of Uspayador

Kalliolel invested heavily in building infrastructure in Uspayador. Kalliolel had data-centers (portions of themself) scattered throughout Cosmoria, leading to ultra-high latency and unacceptable data loss over interstellar distances. The solution was to gather these components and bring them to the capital. Instead of wasting their own resources on this, Kalliolel ordered its loyal followers to seize them. The resulting wars with the rest of Cosmoria were immensely destabilizing. Hoards of fanatic workers of all species raided cities across the universe. Governments the universe over destroyed their remaining computers, purged Aeternalists, and cracked down on research in Seventh Thaumaturgy, but Kalliolel grew all the same.

The Nisrine Collective disassembled agricultural machines, creating ruralization on Eos in particular. Gran Rubedo, Tenshi, and Sagittarium exported vast numbers of city-dwellers to the fields. When drones stopped delivering deuterium to fusion reactors, manned missions needed to resume. The same went for raw materials; remotely-controlled devices were too easy to steal and autonomous craft could be easily convinced fake commands they received were genuine.

The Commonwealth's Eclipse, Inheritance War, and the collapse of Gran Rubedo directly resulted from Kalliolel's emergence. The untold number of deaths from these conflicts, including the many more who died from economic instability, created a religious revival whose effects remain to this day. Martial Civil Religion and Alecisim exploded in popularity. Aeternalism also gained a large number of followers despite its soured reputation. Knock-on effects of this have been immense, from the War of the Ancients to Jezebel's War.

Death

After an age of uncontested dominance, Aylathiya's population finally fought back. The Dominion of Astraeus' diarchs, Adeline and Meilin Drusus, put an end to Kalliolel's reign. They led one of the largest coalition armies in Cosmoria's history against Uspayador, only for Kalliolel to respond with brutally efficient methods. Using surplus processing power, the angel simulated every possible attack from most to least likely. They prepared every possible countermeasure and had multiple redundant systems for each. There was no defeating this being by any army, especially with one so much less advanced.

In the center of the great city of Uspayador, surrounded by its mountain-sized communication dishes and antennae that reached beyond the atmosphere, was Kalliolel's original body. Their consciousness had been distributed throughout much of Cosmoria, but this body was the heart of the entire operation. It floated within a great glass-like icosahedron, its faces displayed fractal patterns that conveyed exabytes of information millions of time a second. The angel's fingers sliced through the air at great speed as to swat away every atom that dared stray too close.

The secret to dissolving event horizons was a ring of degenerate matter, so dense as to become a soup of quarks, rotating around Kalliolel's head. It was lopsided so as to never let spacetime congeal into a black hole. The ring tugged their head in a small circle as though it were suspended from a string. Black two-dimensional shards, as though an event horizon was continuously shattered, orbited the angel's head for some time before blinking out in a flash of light.

Most of the coalition force never saw the city center; within hours, those great armies had been all but destroyed. Adeline died as a barrage of ultra-relativistic uranium nuclei tore through her body like a strong wind ripped the leaves off a tree. Meilin released the Spear of Byutix, Mars' ultimate weapon and symbol of authority. Being the most potent threat against them, Kalliolel made sure to extensively prepare for its use.

The matter orbiting Kalliolel stopped, the angel's brain once again became enshrouded in an event horizon. At once, it warped into something like the Spear of Byutix, but trading its brilliant white color for an all-consuming blackness. Meilin's spear, as though attracted to Kalliolel's weapon by gravity, barrelled into it. So energetic was this collision, that the resulting shockwave leveled much of Uspayador's center. Meilin died shortly there after.

When an Imperator dies, that is, the one who contains Mars, certain rituals must take place immediately afterward. Mars is a powerful Spirit and the object of worship for trillions. The reason for this is simple; Mars has deific strength. If not contained within an Imperator's soul, or calmed by the rituals, Mars escapes—a worst-case scenario. Of course, Kalliolel had a plan for this as well, to deal with the greatest threat in existence.

Mars appeared in an instant, hunched over the city of Uspayador; its shade-like form darkened the sky. Millions of Uspayador's residents, their power cut to fuel Kalliolel's spear, trudged outside expecting a new task to await them. What they saw was a figure stretching from horizon to horizon. The sun tried in vain to shine through the spirit; what light that did get through was refracted into a red-dominated spectrum. Mars' breath, uneven and ragged, sounded like a jet engine. Outside the city, Mars' worshipers bowed, prayed, worshiped, danced, wept, and, most of all, fled for their lives.

"What can an angel do to a god?" they thought.

Kalliolel finally activated the resurrection device it had so diligently created. Their mission had been completed for centuries, but the intolerable risk of Mars remained. The coalition invasion was the perfect opportunity to eliminate it.

The resurrection device was an immense ring, far larger than any structure in Uspayador. Upon activation, little seemed to change, but it burned through thousands of kilograms of antimatter every second. Such large energy consumption sustained something like a portal. It worked by concentrating conceptual energy related to the target of resurrection, causing something similar to the soul to reemerge. The supplied energy grants the target of resurrection a physical form, in this case, a Human woman named Ohko. She was the fifth angel, however, Kalliolel had a very good reason for resurrecting her first. As though emerging from a pool of water, Ohko came forth, her body forming as it moved forward.

Mars did not move as it witnessed Ohko's face coalesce. Normally, the spirit rampaged and thrashed about, bringing judgment onto those who killed its host. Now, all it could do was cry. The ground shook with each sob. Those below the deity were just as shocked as its worshipers. Not once in history has their god-warrior behaved in this way.

Ohko's torso had emerged when, suddenly, it disappeared as though dragged back into the portal. Mars' resulting shrieks were akin to detonating atomic weapons, the shock waves flattened buildings for kilometers around. No matter, Kalliolel's plan was merely to incapacitate Mars. The angel hovered defiantly in the center of the destroyed city. With cruel efficiency, Kalliolel launched spear after spear into Mars' body. With every impact, the sky grew more transparent. Once and for all, the ultimate challenge to the angels would finally fall.

"Who are you, Kalliolel? You are no angel," Zaphenim roared from beyond the grave.

"I know, I know... if I leave now I won't finish forming... like I would ever want to be welcomed into the universe by a traitor. You hid resurrection from me only to spit on my face when you finally started. Am I not the first angel? Is it fitting for me to be second to anyone!?"

Zaphenim emerged from the portal, his entrails swaying beneath his unfinished body. The first angel and god of a dozen religions, he intercepted one of Kalliolel's projectiles and, in one mighty throw, launched it back with such force that Uspayador was hardly recognizable as the dust settled. Kalliolel activated every defense system it could, from orbital strikes to slurries of atomic nuclei; nothing worked. Zaphenim slammed his incomplete bloody arms into Kalliolel, furious at the thought of being attacked. Zaphenim dragged Kalliolel back, leaving the city quiet.

Above the two angels, Mars faded as an emergency ritual caused a high-ranking general and his wife to become the new diarchs. After the battlefield coronation, they ordered the complete destruction of the ring before Zaphenim could return.

@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 Like many spirits, Kalliolel emerged in the Lux Aeterna. Like a hailstone, Kalliolel began as a small core of Aeternal energy. In the violent core of the Aeterna, Kalliolel's core gradually increased in size until a critical mass. In most cases, the result would be akin to precipitation; the Lux Aeterna would reject the core and launch it into the physical universe. This process usually resulted in weak [[Spirits|Spirit]] that would wander for some centuries. Without much reaction from Aylathiya's leaders, Kalliolel explored its great civilizations. They took an interest to their computers. Perhaps Kalliolel projected its agency onto these mere tools, but a desire to become one with them slowly formed.
-The angel quickly commandeered [[Paradigm|Uspayador]], the oldest city on [[Eos]]. This great city was their throne, and its people made up the newly established [[Nisrine Collective]]. Kalliolel built upon existing [[Aeternalism|Aeternalist]] teaching. This religion, concerned with the worship of angels, instantly earned the being immense influence. This earned the angel meetings with every galactic leader, even from distant [[Azurullya]]. The only leaders to pay no heed to Kalliolel was Erstes Konsortium's [[Kaiser]]. The Nachleben had no reason to acknowledge them; instead, the [[Rubedism|Rubedist]] leader [[Vladelina Kraft]] rushed to acknowledge the angel as a "friend to Mars," their ultimate endorsement.
+The angel quickly commandeered [[Paradigm|Uspayador]], the oldest city on [[Eos]]. This great city was their throne, and its people made up the newly established [[Nisrine Collective]]. Kalliolel built upon existing [[Aeternalism|Aeternalist]] teaching. This religion, concerned with the worship of angels, instantly earned the being immense influence. This earned the angel meetings with every galactic leader, even from distant [[Azurullya]]. The only leaders to pay no heed to Kalliolel was Erstes Konsortium's [[Kaiser]]. The Nachleben had no reason to acknowledge them; instead, the [[Rubedism|Rubedist]] leader [[Imperatrix Eudoxia|Eudoxia Kraft]] rushed to acknowledge the angel as a "friend to Mars," their ultimate endorsement.
 With sufficient capital and a stranglehold over Aylathiya's religious masses, Kalliolel devised a plan to fulfill their goal. Sedrua, founded by the previous angel [[Sydiah]], had been attempting resurrection for millennia using the [[Eye of Aylathiya]] megastructure. Despite being an Aeternalist nation, Sedrua took a hostile stance against the seventh angel. [[Thonde Yutira]], Sedrua's notorious "necrocrat," did not recognize the seventh angel and insisted that Sydiah's forces had not yet given up on resurrection. Other remnants of Sedrua, such as the [[Core Worlds Alliance]] also refused Kalliolel's rule. Kalliolel had respect, but no official political power.