Leechany - Avatar of Chaos

Look at you, gods of the new age. Worshipped by millions, yet like humans you are mortal. Bound by flesh and time.
That may be true creature, but in the end, so are you.
A tale to protect your sanity, comforting but ultimately false. Born before time, I will remain long after your feeble sun has died.
Before time? What does that mean? Do not try and lie to me, creature!
Before time and light and space and matter. Before the cataclysm that gave birth to your kind. Before this existence was created.
That is impossible! No life could have existed back then.
Is that your religion?

— Leechany to Epimetheus

Aediratae. Creators and protectors of existence. Invincible beings far beyond mortal comprehension. Many even believe them to be perfect. Something all humans should strive toward, but can never reach. But if we are truly created in their image, wouldn't that mean that they too have failings, grow envious and feel fear? What even would the gods fear? A laughable thought that could get you killed when spoken to the more fanatical adherents of Vardania's various cults.
But there is truth to it. There is something the gods fear. Something only whispered of in the oldest of texts. A shadow out of time. A spectre haunting gods and man alike. The Mistress of Shadows. The Ever-Changing. The Embodiment of Chaos. Leechany.

In the Beginning...

by Joelle Blot

There was a time before time. There was no sky and no earth, no mountains and no oceans. It was a time without man and beast. An age without gods. There was only Chaos. And Chaos was everything and nothing. A swirling endless mass and empty void, far beyond anything mere mortals could comprehend.
And from Chaos an inferno rose, from which the first beings emerged. Promegire, the firstborn or as man would eventually call them Aediratae, the gods. Imbued with great power, they set about bringing order to chaos. And they called it Genesis. But as they worked for countless years, creating earth and moon and planets and stars, something else moved in the darkness.
Beyond the ring of pale stars, Oberon had created to mark the border between Chaos and Genesis something had awoken. Shadow took form. Thoughts echoed in the Void. In the shade of the newly created moon, it grew and observed. Observed as Oberon first lit the sun ablaze. Observed as Nykara and Gaia grew to become enemies, starting the Great Calamity. And observed as the victorious gods established their order, turning everything they deemed undesirable to ash.
Something changed, within the shape and it fully manifested itself. Skin pale as the star's light. Eyes, blazing like the sun and of an eldritch colour. Hair as dark as the void itself. A woman of unholy beauty, surrounded by a dark aura of all-consuming power. Chaos had entered Genesis. And we call her Leechany, the Voidborn.

For even Gods shall fall...

by Caelan Stokkermans

With a scream that shook all of creation, Leechany began her assault on the gods. Within the blink of an eye, a dozen weaker gods had fallen, their names lost to darkness. But even Oberon, the Invincible Sun and Nykara, the Endless Sky struggled to stall her onslaught. And it would only get worse.
For chaos began to flood into Genesis and descended upon the virgin earth. The skies turned scarlet, the oceans black as ink, the land an ashen waste.
And they all gave birth to terrible things. Most horrible of Leechany's children, Tython, a titanic mass of writhing tentacles. It devoured many a god before being stalled by Bellona, the God of War and Argedas, the Storm God.
Leechany meanwhile was locked in titanic struggle against Oberon. Her shadow, covered the entire sun and all of creation shook as they exchanged blows of unimaginable power. Finally, in a blinding flash of ethereal light, Oberon cast her from the sun and his storm of solar fire burned everything bar the gods. And peace returned, or so they thought.

A shadow across the World

But Leechany was not dead, nor was she really beaten. For Chaos is eternal. It cannot be destroyed. Leechany, however, did not continue her assault. She sunk back into the shadow of the moon. And there she has remained ever since. Her goal had been achieved, after all.
The gods had survived barely. Alive but sapped of most of their powers. While they could still create and would eventually create Humanity, they would never again influence the space around them as they had previously. And the shadows of the world seemed darker than before.

Embodiment of Chaos

The following is taken from "On the Cosmic Hierarchy" by Sacerdos Gordius Hemaris
Oberon throwing Leechany from the sun. A deed hailed as the greatest victory of all time. A story told by the adherents of his cult as the tale of virtue triumphing over depravity, of good beating evil. They see Leechany as a force of evil and destruction. They list all the dark creatures she spawned. They count all the afflictions she has brought into the world. And all they do is show how ignorant they truly are.
Chaos is not separate from Genesis. It is Genesis. Everything around us, the earth and sky and oceans and stars, all of it was carved and moulded from Chaos by the Aediratae. And as its Avatar, Leechany is, in essence, an embodiment of all creation. An idea only further reinforced when looking at the original meaning of her name. In the oldest known texts, written over 8000 years ago, both Chaos and Leechany appear in very different contexts. They translate to "Origin" and "Eternal".

A thousand Faces

Excerpt taken from the Forbidden Tome of Acheron

by Sandrine Malus

She is not a purely malevolent force. Not one bent on humanities destruction. She does not care for mankind, for what does the giant care for the ant? We may call her a Primordial but only due to our ignorance. She isn't a god. Not a Titan. Or a monster. She is beyond our understanding. Beyond any mortal comprehension.
When we discovered fire and drove back the night, she send her children, to re-instil fear into our hearts. As we push the boundaries of medicine and fight death at every turn, her plagues remind us of our mortality. As we build spires into the sky, her calamities show us our hubris.

Those who worship her are insane. That is what they say. And I have to agree. For there is no way, our feeble mind could handle the weight of truth in any other way. I only caught a glimpse of it and even now can feel my mind pushed to the brink. She is everywhere. In every shadow. In every dark corner. Always around. Always watching. A thousand faces. A thousand eyes. Always there to remind us that we are only a temporary anomaly upon existence.

Neither Light nor Dark

In Vardanian culture, Leechany is seen as neither good nor bad. A grey force that acts against the designs of the gods and their last creation, humanity. Large scale worship of her had ceased in the 2nd Millennium DA but to this day rebels, thieves and anyone wishing to upset the status quo, invokes her. The only exception here is the followers of Oberon. They see her as the great enemy, together with the Fallen Titan Chronos. They will burn any scripture even, mentioning her.

Agent of Abadon

Leechany does appear in other faiths as well, many of them having taken influences from the ancient Vardanian Cults. The most prominent and strange example has to be the Vodarian Church. Strange in that it not only portrays her as pure evil but also as male. While Leechany is known to have thousands of forms across hundreds of mythologies, none of them are male. The reason is simple, as her original concept heavily clashes with established Feran cultural and religious beliefs.

Now, one might question why she does not simply destroy all that exists. After all, balance is her goal and it did exist before the creation of Genesis. It would be rather easy, as well. A single Avatar had managed to push the gods to the brink after all. The answer is simple. She doesn't need to.
Time is relentless, grinding everything to dust. Man dies, nations fall, rivers dry up and mountains crumble to dust. Even the gods weaken and like their children will meet their demise in one way or another. And silence will reign on empty earth as one by one the stars wither and disappear. Finally, even the sun, this infernal fireball will fade. Only darkness will remain in the end. And within it, Leechany.

Let me make one thing clear. We aren't talking about some demon or devil. We are talking about something we humans cannot truly perceive or even hope to understand. Leechany isn't a goddess. She is something much more terrifying.

— Vates Gordius Hemaris, Sacerdos of the Vardanian Cults

Above: Leechany, as imagined by artist Aelia Gevera. Part 4 in her series on the members of the Cosmic Hierarchy.

Domain
Chaos, Disorder, Darkness, Shadows, Silence
Divine Classification
Primordial
Realm
Chaos
Church/Cult
Voces Inaura
Symbol
An assortment of flowing yellow lines. Her symbol cannot be accurately described as it will look different to anyone viewing it and change shape should one look away/blink.

by John Wick

The Many Forms of Chaos
The amount of forms Leechany is known to have taken is limitless. To attempt to count them a fruitless endeavour. Even the most common among them, the pale, dark-haired woman, present across thousands of different cultures, is never portrayed in the same way.
For chaos is ever-changing. And so is Leechany, who will appear as a formless dark shape or an unreal creature made of shadow depending.
The one exception in all of this is her depiction in Feran Mythology. They call her Lekan, first agent of Abadon. Only form of Chaos that is depicted as male, or at least what could be called male.
Why they do it is pretty simple. Ferans believe the female, embodied by the Mother to be a force of order, comfort, care and so on. Chaos is a facet of the male and embodied by the Father. Having a female demon or evil deity would therefor directly contradict established Vodarian Canon.

Nobody has truly seen Leechany ever since she sunk back into the shadows. Except one. Epimetheus, in his endless quest for knowledge, met her. What she told him is not known. But whatever it was, destroyed his mind. And turned him into the manic beast he is today.

— Gordius Hemaris

Children of Leechany
Like their mother, the various creature spawned by Leechany are made of chaos and can never truly die. Destroyed by Oberon's last attack, they too vanished back beyond the pale stars. Over the millennia, they slowly made their way back into Genesis.
The Idrin with a thousand voices. The Shadow with his long, long arms. Tython the beast whose roar shook heaven itself. Rodras the mad maelstrom. Manyface. Smiler. Skinscratcher. Afflictions that torment humanity.
Her ways are manyfold. With a silent touch or cataclysmic rage, she knows how to bring us feeble creatures down. In the end, for all our bravery and ingenuity, we are but ants under the sky.

by WG情报姬

On Chaos Cultists
Voces Inaura, the voices in the air. Cult of Leechany and worshippers of chaos. They are as old as the most ancient of nations, first mentioned in rhomeian chronicles over 5000 years ago.
They have been at war with the other cults worshipping the Rhomeian/Vardanian Pantheon ever since. The gods are heretics, attempting to shape reality in a way it was not supposed to be.
Believing that the various cults and religions of the world were only created to keep her influence limited, they set about destroying every other religion in existence. The end goal: to resummon Leechany herself from the shadows, so that she may do away with reality and return existence to the rightful path.

by Richard Luong