Cerulean Kings

A strange thing, isn't it, to wake dreaming gods? This was my calling all along, the reason I was given the time I had. I was simply meant to save my Silver. The others? Collateral against Azurade for taking him from me.
—Moonmoon

The Cerulean Kings are a truly ancient collective of seven complex and artificial beings. Planes, spirits, nebulae, and now people, their presence has long afflicted their home region in much less controlled ways. Currently, by the order of Moonmoon's faith and government, they act as overseers of the systems of Azurullya and as minor gods in the increasingly popular religion Alecisism.

The Cerulean Kings are the direct children, experiments, and creations of Azurade, created for the purposes of finding or creating tools to hold off the death of everything in the universe for eternity. The timeframes on which these experiments operate, however, is astronomical. The eldest of the seven, Enveil Dreamhaze Azurade, was created from his relevant plane 3.3 billion years ago, with the youngest, Silverstar Ravenfogg Azurade, being created 2.1 billion years ago.

The Cerulean Kings have a specific pattern to their names. Each one has three names. The first name of a Cerulean King is one they choose themselves, to prove their life and will to all. Second is the name of their plane, to remind them of their origins, no matter how long they live. Third, the name of Azurade, to bind them all together and to evoke the image of their creator's power. Together, the Cerulean Kings are a family, united under common birth and form and name.

Forms

The Cerulean Kings are well known for their chosen appearances, themselves the result of dense energetic lattices connected to one of the planes within the Raqia. Currently, their fluid bodies are arranged into a variety of mimicries of species, object, or other arcane symbolism depending on their mood and agenda.

The form that the Cerulean Kings have spent the vast majority of their time in is their dormant diffuse nebula form. Stretching hundreds of AU across, these diffuse forms experienced time on vastly different scales and had nowhere near the level of autonomy the Kings have now. These nebulae, immense Aberrations that altered the systems of Azurullya as they passed through them, were foundational to many of the star systems within the galaxy, particularly Sperxai and Rhen. These nebulae, once known as the Deagami Nebulis, are where the planes of the Cerulean Kings, the Deagami, derive their name from.

Since their freeing via condensation, the Cerulean Kings have no longer been a passive threat to the stars of Azurullya, but their new bodies still contain the same power. Fluid and able to be reconstructed almost instantly without the same sorcery the Azure Herald used to seal Silverstar away, a Cerulean King is at the absolute pinnacle of a spirit's regenerative ability.

Abilities

Where an Esoteric magus of one of their planes might become powerful, the Cerulean Kings themselves are truly unmatched. Having had billions of years immersed in their internal selves, being spirits of their own planes, they have a connection to the concept of their plane that goes beyond what one could call Thaumaturgy.

Inflicting their plane is not nearly as simple as their subordinate magi would believe it is. The Cerulean Kings have a much finer touch on the concepts they represent, able to twist and interpret it to some degree, enough to turn even the most inert-seeming into a continent-shattering weapon.

Dysharmonics

Cerulean Kings have a unique position of power over Esoteric magi, particularly the Azurulleyan population who are most likely to form a connection to their planes. As self-aware beings, the Kings can simply shut off a magus' connection to their plane and ability to manipulate it, or otherwise embolden their strength. All Deagami-wielding esomagi are subordinate to their Cerulean King by this manner.

Communication with magi that wield them is another facet of their Harmonic-adjacent abilities. While countless magi exist, the few thousand who utilize a Deagami plane are able to be contacted by their presiding King at any time. This is politically the most dangerous ability they have, as untraceable spiritual communication could allow any Cerulean King to gather an uprising.

Ichoric Infusions

The Cerulean Kings each have a "blessing" that they can bestow upon followers, infusing them with an aspect of themselves at a biological and spiritual level. These transmutative infusions, given the moniker "ichoric" for being blood-altering and from Alecicist gods, have only been done a handful of times, most of which are from Haranae Auramest Azurade. The first and best known example is Ichoric Immortality, a form of agelessness and limited chemical immunity able to by granted by Silverstar. Its only recipient is Moonmoon.

Thaumaturgy

The spirits themselves have minds of the Deagami planes, and are thus unable to utilize most forms of normal Thaumaturgy. They have no pylons, invocative or otherwise, to utilize Classical or Invocative Thaumaturgy. Esoteric Thaumaturgy is beyond them, as moving their planes beyond their orbits in the Raqia takes exponentially more energy than it does for a mortal mind and has cascading consequences for magi of their planes and of the plane they would temporarily intersect.

Harmonic Thaumaturgy seems to be the only widely-accepted clade they are capable of, acting as the spirit. But even this is tainted by their fundamental status as Esoteria, disturbances manifested from planes. Every interaction they take carries an arcane fusion of Esoteric practices.

Communication

The seven Kings drifted through Azurullya in their nebulaform dormant states for a long time. Through light, they spoke without needing to move. Aythraani, they called it. Their language of light, though quick to the dormant Kings, was seen as the slow ebbing in the light of the Deagami Nebulis. The Kings can occasionally be witnessed speaking through Aythraani even now, locking eyes as they flash their thoughts between each other.

History

Creation

Azurade, distraught by the inevitability of death and decay for all things in the universe, had taken a space high above the plane of Cosmoria proper to create something of a laboratory for Herself. Azurullya had only Her direct creations at the time, something of a blank slate to begin experimentation. After thoroughly altering the physical properties of one of the mythrides, She turned Her attention to the planes as a reference. Unthinking and yet yielding immense power, She believed them to be capable of prolonging the universe's lifespan. Modifying and enhancing one of them, She created a spirit out of its entirety, the first of them, from the plane Dreamhaze, carrying the concept of memory. From there, the others were made over billions of years, remembered in this forgotten childrens' rhyme.

"First of them, the Dreamhaze, whose opal thoughts ignite.
Second, the Viritacloud, glowing with amber-green might.
Third was the Nullheart, dimming hearts too bright.
Fourth, Nightmarelunen, plunged Heaven into wrathful night.
Next and fifth, Wondertsuki, fighting for its place as 'right'.
Sixth was the Auramest, seeking secrets from eternal light.
And seventh, at last, the Ravenfogg, lamenting through its dull white."

This creation took place over a billion years, slow and meticulous, and resulted in the dormant forms of the Cerulean Kings. As Azurullya spun around Aurumios, its stars passed through many of these and had their worlds ravaged or blessed by the effects of the Esoteria. They were akin to gashes in reality, like a magus of their planes was forcing them to leak into the world for hundreds of AU.

The creation stopped with Silverstar of the Ravenfogg, plane of preservation and inertia. Azurade took great pride in Silverstar, apparently seeing him as the success to Her experiments on planes and one of the tools She would need to prevent Cosmoria from total collapse.

Silverstar's Escape

For a brief century and a half, Silverstar managed to free himself from the dormant stasis of a Deagami Nebula, some internal application of self-governance not repeated by the others. Making way towards Aylathiya, the newly liberated Silverstar had a brief period of presence as a legendary spiritual monster, descending first upon Tryvya's planets before moving onwards to Eos. Throughout the 5800s, Silverstar evaded the tracking and containment of the Administrator and presented an existential threat to small subsections of local populations.

Azurade, acting for the first time in millions of years, desperately seeded a plan to return Silverstar to his rightful place in Her celestial territory. Utilizing the Womb of Chaos to create an aberration that would call back the Cerulean King and disperse his body once more, She hurled the merger-device in the general direction of Lacrimosa in the only recorded physical manifestation in history. Ski'pec and Xherari documentation from the time notes a star-sized apparition of a woman of indeterminable species lifting a small point of light brighter then Rhen and throwing it into Aylathiya with such speed that it appeared to be needle-shaped. Six years later, the Ravenfogg returned to Azurullya.

Libera Caeruleya

In the 8900s, Moonmoon utilized a combination of his legendary prowess in Esoteric Thaumaturgy and fleets of Aberration-carrying ships to force the nebulaic expanse of the Ravenfogg to collapse in on itself, compressing it until the thoughts that idly lingered took hold and drew it in further to become Silverstar again. This event, called the Liberation of God in Alecisist histories, was swiftly followed by proof-of-concept cleanup of the other Deagami Nebulis. Not for any particular interest in the individuals trapped in those forms, but primarily to eliminate a threat to all systems as ancient as the galaxy itself.

The newly freed Cerulean Kings were detained with comforts and entertainment whilst the scholars and priests directly under Moonmoon scrambled to rectify their theology to fit the expanded pantheon. The capabilities of each of the Kings was on par with Silverstar's own, and their significance in the suppressed pagan religions that kept popping up concerned the clergy. If these abtract figures of worship were now given faces, the state of the church—and the nation, given the titular theocratic nature thereof—would be at risk of religious revolt.

Moonmoon's solution was to bind the Cerulean Kings in a contract of goodwill. In exchange for giving them the autonomy they now had and the same comforts and privileges Silverstar enjoyed, they would work to govern on a more local scale than Moonmoon, keeping order for one or two star systems each. The six new additions to the council of Kings begrudgingly accepted, still mostly baffled by their new freedom and forms. Only Enveil called the contract out as being a leash on all of them, though he was eventually bribed with first choice of two stars and an increase to governmental autonomy.