Æon

The information displayed in this article pertains to the continuity of Moonsong. As such, the wording may seem more flowery than normal. This is intentional.

Æons are impersonal forces of nature. They are emotionless, opinionless, mindless things, simplified down to their most basic essences. They are not gods in the classical sense, and they can't strictly be defined as living things either. Instead, they are closer to fundamental rules of the All, as natural as the rain and the winds. They do not heed prayers, or grant wishes, they have no capability of loving or hating. They do what they do through no intention of their own, but simply because it is in their nature to.

Dissolution

The most powerful Æons are nameless and ancestral, older than Álm and possibly the All itself, beyond knowledge or form. The more powerful an Æon is, the more solute it is in its ætheric stratum, moving through it as a boat down a river. They are everywhere and seemingly nowhere at the same time, both ever present and imperceptible. Lesser Æons are, therefore, defined by their locality. Their presence at all signifies a lesser power, an incomplete dissolution with the ætheric flow. Even still they are formidable, and an even more tangible danger, because lesser Æons have something greater ones do not possess: behaviour. Their incomplete dissolution signifies an attachment to the world of action. However, their very æonic nature means that they still have no intention beyond following the rules of the All.

An Æon that loses power (and therefore begins taking physical shape) is defined to be dying, or rather cystifying. This is not a proper death process like that of living beings, instead it represents the collapsing of their infinite potential into a single definable point, like skin necrosing. The worst of these æonic deaths was recorded in the Ruins of Filfuro, sometime around the II Cycle, where a withering Æon took the form of a green, shining, glass-like human woman. Various horrors were documented: it looked at a man, and a fiery cancer overtook his body and killed him immediately; it pointed at a hill, and it turned to water and flooded the entire settlement; it screamed, as if terrified of its own mortality, and all the vegetation and livestock around the settlement died. And then, when it all was over, it began walking toward the Night, and was never seen again. It is thought that it died beyond the Dark Earth.

Thaumaturgical practice

In the practice of thaumaturgy, to collaborate with an Æon is not to commune with it, as again, Æons are not personable deities or beings with intention. Practitioners do not pray to them, as prayer implies a listener, and Æons do not have that ability. Instead, it is closer to redirecting a river, or collecting rainwater. It requires deep knowledge of its power and nature, and the ways in which it affects the world and the ætheric flow.

The Moon

The Moon is a lesser kind of Æon, not because it is cystifying, but because it is stillborn. Where greater Æons have completely dissolved and lesser ones mostly dissolved, the Moon failed to do so in the first place. During its formation, something caused it to cease this process, and it remained a hazy sphere of æther, navigating its flow through no intention of its own. When the Tower formed, its sheer thaumaturgical power caused the moon to be pulled towards it. As its power ebbs and flows, it becomes more or less luminous, being an almost cloud-like haze at its most powerful, and a dim floating disc at its least.