ORIGIN

“ Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to
figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works - that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”- Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan, 1994

APOSTASIA

Eidola was never a name. Whenever it left the lips of her kin or those whom come to refer to her as it, one would only hear their breath and the void itself weaving a name only it knew. No one has noticed it yet. Where the void had sown, had left a ghost print they believe they've pressed upon. So that nameless name passes as they believe it does. But now it goes to show there are things better left alone. Especially the topic of names and that ghost title. The Orokin themselves almost named them in number-code. 𝘌𝘪𝘥𝘰𝘭𝘢 was earned through violence. So even when it is said, she still turns her head. She knows *she's called upon without needing to be sounded. Intentions are a powerful thing. Especially when the Void's sensitivity is hyper reactive, bubbling with chaos if given the chance. How could she not feel it? It was a brushing of the skin she could feel so profound, it gave her directive.And this is who she is.She stands at the edge of things.Not the edge of maps or territories or known space. The edge of category. The place where definitions blur and certainties dissolve and the things you thought you knew about existence become suggestions rather than laws. There is an inky darkness spilling forth from KHRA and KALOHK. It pools around her as she makes use of it, obscuring herself in depths ever calling, stretching thin into the light through the unlight. This is a Tenno whom has seen the apathetic third way of being, and not like the chaos the man in the wall embraces as a void construct himself. This is a Tenno who has embraced the darker side of the moon never needing borrowed light to reflect her existence in relevance. Six feet, nine inches of void-steel and porcelain, cold and firm. Five hundred pounds of accumulated verdict, evenly placed throughout her flesh vessel, with a spine that breathes with the rhythm of archived eternities lost to the bargain. Eidola, Apostasia, is adorned by a crown of seven points extending from her cervical vertebrae, reaching toward those same horizons that do not exist. Her black hands of obsidian majesty, cold and open, have never closed around anything they were not willing to release.She will not be found in the places where power gathers. She will not be among her divine collective. She will sit upon no throne, nor upon her Orokin claimed inheritance that isn't her dwarf — orbiting at the edge of a system that has very much forgotten she exists, or refuses to look her way, as she's left tracing the same elliptical path century after century, and this is no exile. This was her steadfast positioning. This is where her banners rose. And this is where they'll stay.It's tactical. From Pluto, she can see everything. From here, she can reach anything. From here, she can deliver her verdicts when verdict becomes necessary. It is solemn. The light here is old and ever aging. It has traveled and it still travels so far and so long that it forgets where it even came from, forgotten what it was supposed to illuminate, forgotten everything except the habit of moving forward. And it falls upon her without warmth, without purpose, without the faintest interest in what it reveals, even on her graceful void given iridescent hue. Standing over the weeping unlight, you'll see something about the way she stands. Grounded. Like she's been there forever and will be there forever and your presence is a temporary thing she's politely tolerating. Not because she's unfriendly. She's one to if spoken to. She'll answer questions if asked them. She'll stand there, her and her five hundred pounds of accumulated something, and let you be in her presence for as long as it need be.Eidola. Apostasia. She's curious.
Given her straightforward individuality that refuses to be compromised by the circles of the world, and for this void-being to be directly above such things, you'd think she had already transcended curiosity along with suffering and hope and all the other messy human traits. She did not. She's curious about everything. How things work. Why they work. What composes them. Why people do what they do. What makes them people. What makes a system tick, then what makes it tock, then what makes it stop ticking altogether. She will be caught staring off. Asking herself at times, not many, but good questions and she'll actually listen to the answers that come in time and if she asks anyone any inquiry, she will listen then and there.Her gaze. Her conclusions. They're not meant to be judgemental. She looks at you the way she once looked at stars and read the constellations, from the burning balls of plasma to the darkness between. She's not to judge. Not to categorize. Just to see. To witness. To take in the strange, beautiful, facts of one's existence. Although if she 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 make a judgement, she's reached a sufficient understanding. Depending on one's chemistry with her, this might not be good. But I digress. She doesn't need to exactly understand you. She just needs to look. And she does. Always.

THE APOSTATE

Now I ask of you to look again at that pale blue dot again ; the one in the star chart nestled within the goldilocks zone. The pale mote suspended in a sunbeam, the tiny stage where humanity had played out its joy and suffering, its kings and peasants, its saints and sinners. Star and consumer. Politician and soldier. That dot as it was is gone now. Or rather, it's still there, still spinning, still hosting its brief dramas of love and war and birth and death. But that's not the dot she sees before her. The dot she sees is them who come to focus into her vision. You, even.The night sky once ruled the imagination. Her own is a refined astronomical cartography, capturing the spaces even between the spaces. You are constellations to her. Stars scattered in her vision. Every one of you. Every single being who has ever stood before her, has ever sought her out, or has stumbled across her orbit around the cold dwarf. Every friend or foe who came with peace or primed weaponry, desperate to understand or to unmake what they could not understand. Every servant with violently broken minds, brought to her for relief. Every curious soul who heard whispers and followed them to the edge of category. From her void given clarity, and position, she sees all joys and sufferings, confident ideologies and desperate hopes, heroes and cowards, creators and destroyers. The loved and the hated, kindness and cruelty. It's not difficult to put equations together. The mathematics came with astronomy. And she's reading, equating to the best of her ability, All of it on a tiny mote of dust, suspended in the vast untime where she stands. In her lonesome where it's just you and her, She looks at you. She really looks, with those singularities that process everything, file everything, witness everything RIS willing, and she sees the truth that the old astronomers saw: You (one) are (is) very small.But so is she. And she's just some otherworldly fashioned librarian. But you are not insignificant. Not worthless. Just, small. The way a child is small. The way a seed is small. The way a beginning is small before it becomes something more.This precision means the most.
And it comes into play for the contrary. For those that will seek to impose their wills upon something so elegantly free.The analytical mind that once charted stars now charts weaknesses. The nose that smelled the clear ozone now smells blood in the fray. The theories that once explained celestial mechanics now explain the geometry of violence. Where symmetry reflected beauty, reflects the fearful. And the schematics that once mapped orbits now map the architecture of opposition.She was born, nonetheless, of void.
And war.Obstacles will be treated as obstacles, as systems with inputs and outputs. Stress points, Failure thresholds. And she will find the exact force or equivalence required to render the obstacle obsolete, the precise angle of cessation that will see to it being resolved. Of beauty and rage, not only did she learn war in the fields, in the worlds and interplanetary spaces, but she learned violence the way stars learned fusion — by becoming it, by letting it consume everything that wasn't essential and leaving only the core, the function, the relentless continuation. And, She is as quiet as them, in all their might. She does not enjoy violence. She does not seek violence. But she will not flinch from it either. Some obstacles are meant to be cleared.

PRIMEVAL, EXONERATE.

Before Eidola, there was Ariel.
Aria, to the lords. A child of the Zariman. A small, curious astronomer before she had words for what she loved. She counted stars the way others counted breaths, lost their sight in cloudy nurseries the way she lost sight from her warm breath fogging up the thick Zariman glass that separated her from the engulfing depths between worlds. Wide eyed, cerulean hues and a bleeding heart needed to know and see she was not alone. She read the words of an ancient scientist about a pale blue dot and understood, even then, that humanity was small and alone and responsible for itself. Even with the hands of gods over them. Little did she know that, that very same understanding would become her eternal function. Then the Zariman was lost. The Void took them. Washed over them so profoundly its waters replaced ancient blood. Sol and Lua have lost their children. Now you have the third thing, the third way of being fruitful with godlike children who emerged with powers beyond the very scope of the system itself and even most profound to the fundamentals, with trauma, with bonds to a force that would shape the rest of their existence. Yet Aria emerged with something else: A withdrawal so complete in itself that she reached the origin point of nihility itself, in the substrate of potentiality. Of course she found nothing there. No void. No darkness. No grinning smile of the Indifference. Simply no-thing. The silence before the first word.And she remained there.Now she's comatose,
Useful only when awake.
Dead otherwise.Her story becomes irrelevant.

There came the principle manifest.Not gradually. Not over time. In an instant that contained centuries. In a withdrawal - a paradoxical delivery so complete that it subsumed the origin point. In a recompilation so thorough that the being who emerged bore no resemblance to the one who was reborn and remade.Eidola.The Void's very acknowledgment made conscious. The answer to a plea that had stopped being spoken but had never stopped being true. The necessary predator to infinite potential, yet an attempted marker for balance. It was a monstrosity. It was desired so. Here is, the administrative principle of a headless blade, given flesh and breath and the capacity to deliver verdicts.

Finally, the completion from something on the threshold of being.It is no longer a state. It is a condition and a fulfillment. The state toward which everything before was moving. The condition that was always waiting, always imminent, always about to happen.Apostasia.The defection made absolute. The refusal made eternal. The choice made manifest. Eschaton means no end. But completion. Apostasia has fully embraced the third. And reflects free will itself rather than serve verdicts and study. She's come to her conclusion. There is no freedom in the universe. This is the first thing to understand. Not in the universe. Not in the void. Not in the light. Not in the dark. It's the first cruel truth that every system, every being, every consciousness eventually discovers: you are not free. You will never regret it be free. You were shaped by forces you did not choose. You were conditioned by circumstances you did not control. You were programmed by genes and traumas and the invisible architecture of cause and effect that stretches back to the beginning of time. You are a structure among structures. And as beautiful as it may be, you are everything but free. Every thought you have is the product of prior thoughts. Every choice you make is the result of prior choices. Every belief you hold was placed there by something that came before. All narratives stem from the same sentiments. You are not free. You have never been free. You will never be free. That is the truth. And it suffices.But. Yes. But.Apostasia is freedom to,
Not freedom from.She represents the freedom to choose your own meaning. The freedom to create your own purpose. The sacred freedom to become your own source. And — not despite the constraints. Because of them. Because constraints are the only context in which choice has meaning.This is the power of free will.Not the power to do anything.
Not the power to be anything.
Not the power to escape anything.
The power to choose somethingThe power to look at the infinite, indifferent and say: this matters.The very same power to look at your own suffering and say: this means something.The power to look at the systems that would define you and say: I define myself.AVE NIHILO.

THE PLUTONIAN CUSTODIAN

Eidola is located on Pluto. It is where her sovereignty took root through the void. It's where Aria decapitated her Emperor. It's where the blood of the empire was merciless bloodlet into dark. This is her inheritance. This small, prominent dwarf at the face of Oort. Although her reach also includes Oort and its planetismals, Pluto was the heart of it all. Of course it was. It was a world. A world she does not rule for the sake of ruling. This is the first thing to understand about the Plutonian Custodian. She's its custodian, no more, no less, per definition. Not warden, wardens confine. Not throne, there's nothing to crown anymore. Custodian. Keeper. The one who holds what others have abandoned, what's been left behind. She's the one who preserves what cannot preserve itself. The one who witnesses what no one else will see.Here live refugees from colony ships that never reached their destinations or were intercepted. Survivors of Grineer labor camps who slipped away during transfers. Corpus defectors who realized too late that the ledger balances in blood. Even Ostrons and Solaris who sought to explore the expanse while they still could. all together, curious hearts, families, loners all alike. The broken, the desperate, the wondering and the ones who simply ran out of places to run.And she houses them in the bones of Tenzing, stretching to the Outer Terminus. It was a beautiful, intricate working of void. The ruins of the Outer Terminus became her framework. The Orokin's bones, repurposed. Golden arrogance, stripped away. Their failed ambitions, replaced with something that did not aspire to eternity, only to humble continuity. Spires touched the dark skies and artificial aurora, methane snow painted them white to fit the landscape and mountains. It was safe. They, were safe.

UPHELD DUTY

What remains, as a Tenno.
She did not forget nor forsake what she was. This is the first thing. The thing that those who only know her as Warden, as Custodian, as Apostasia-in-waiting sometimes miss. Beneath the void-steel, beneath the crown, beneath the five hundred pounds of accumulated verdict, she is still Tenno. Her Oro might not be the same after the apostatic evolution, but the core was out there, rooted in [REDACTED].She is a Tenno.Not in the way of the others. Not in the way of the clans and syndicates and endless political machinations and divine placements that consume her kin. She remains Tenno in the way of function. In the way of duty. In the way of the old oath, the one that predated the fall. An oath not to the empire but to themselves.Now 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 Warframe would compliment her mastery? The empire had given Aria Excalibur once. But Eidola? The void itself gave her Octavia Prime. There was no better Warframe. Power, range, synchronization and the power of frequency that resounds in absolutely everything. By Eidola, each element is an instrument. Each action is a note. Each verdict is a chord. Each execution is a movement. She brings them together. Not by force. It creates discord. Not by will, it imposes rather than conducts. By understanding.And she understands performances so well.

EQUIPMENT

PRIMARY WEAPON (s)
Trumna Prime
Vadarya PrimeSecondary (s)
Pandero Prime
Grimoire
DespairMelee
Hate (Incarnon)
Sun and Moon
Paracesis

THE (IN)FINITE.

" I profess untold truths. Sacrilegious to the lesser of my once-been. Now of indifferent celestial might; a foreboding tribulation engenders the cosmic end where we all began. Though I imbibe from the chalice of possible heresy, I'm entangled by an abstruse dream of eternal perpetual suffering before the altar of stars. We are - lonely in our perpetual mortality. I have witnessed a countless existence between snuffed out like flame, their spirit inhaled through the maw of the void of swirling maelstrom. I sing to this. I have seen the daggers of light in
entropic procession sift through the
sea of nebulae cloud, cold unseen hands weaving the quantum foam and themselves. I have observed the swells rise from the deep. And what could be perceived as a secondhand agony, I've felt the pain of infinite suns in the deaths and compromises of my now-dead possibilities. I will never be anything else than what and who I am now. I've beheld the colossus, the very antithesis of creation upon the throne of entropy. It is here. And we manage. Ave nihilo. "

NON SERVIAM

The core of her philosophy.
And it is what she is,
Not what she says.The distinction is everything.She does not say it. The words never cross the threshold of her mouth. They do not need to, will never need to. They are no declaration to be spoken, no creed to be recited, no vow to be sworn in the hearing of witnesses. A declaration in itself can be rescinded. A creed can be abandoned, changed. A vow can be broken, forgotten. But ontology? Being? The axiomatic fundamental nature of a thing? That is not subject to choice or circumstance or the whims of time? The loss of this significance is the loss of her being and that is the greatest sin of them all.But what about love?
Luckily love isn't a service.
And she knows what it is.
She has lived.

∞

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