Eponimus the Starseer

TW: Suicide

"No. No, I'm not crazy, and I'm not a heretic, or a blasphemer, or whatever other trite titles you may have for me. I'm a scholar. If I were weak-minded like you, I would say sorry. I would apologize for the fact that I am brave enough to peer where no one else will -- to stare into the void and not even flinch when it stares back. There are evils out there, as ancient as the Obsidian Lords and perhaps more vile, and if it weren't for people like me, we wouldn't even have an inkling of a concept of their existence. So, think of this conversation the next time you read one of my compendiums and call me in for questioning." - Eponimus, recorded during a questioning she received from Silverguard interrogators, 202 AT.

Eponimus was a scholar in the first three centuries of the Age of Extant who began the modern study of Xeccamund (now called Xeccamology). Though from the scantly-known Winter Court of Sylthereth, the satyr Eponimus would come to be (in)famous on Emaxus for her studies -- which were heralded as everything from ground-breaking to heretical. To some, Eponimus was a genius who started a field of study that could, one day, save all of Yophas. To others, she is deluded and insane, driven mad by attempting to understand that which could not, should not, be understood.

A Magnificent Scholar

Eponimus was one of the earliest "great" scholars of the Age of Extant. In fact, it was her willingness to pursue any lead and put her own life on the line to reclaim and at times push forward the bounds of mortal knowledge that has inspired such titans of science as Ilthinaluvar Aramoira and Arbane Elendiir.
Being from the secretive Winter Court of Sylthereth, Eponimus had the lack of boundaries many fey exhibit but pushed to an extreme. To her, it wasn't that lines should be crossed; to her, they didn't exist in the first place. Every unknown was a mystery to be solved, and what greater mystery than Xeccamund, that cosmological medium given the apt name of The Tears Beyond Reality?
Eponimus chronicled over a dozen compendiums of research on the planes. Eleven of them were about Xeccamund. Ten of those eleven were about entities and minds that she believed inhabited Xeccamund. Eponimus was the first researcher of the Age of Extant to take an Ipacian Navigator out into the Tears Beyond Reality and try and chronicle what she saw. It is because of her that modern scholars have even a grasp of what lay beyond the silver threads of Ipacia, of the infinite space of dead worlds, alien leviathans, and antistars.
Her most (in)famous work was a compendium entitled That Which Lurks in the Dark: The Elder Evils of Xeccamund. More on that can be found in its related article, seen below.

A Doomed Doomsayer

Though some don't want to admit it, or believe that it is true, it is widely thought that Eponimus was actually driven insane by her research. Many use this to discredit her, but modern xeccamologists doubt that this insanity influenced any of her canonized works, instead coming later from the cumulative mental stress of her studies.
Either way, after her twelfth canonized compendium was published (which was her career-defining work, That Which Lurks in the Dark), Eponimus began work on a significantly different work. Knowledge about it has largely been buried, and even the majority of those few who know of its existence doubt that it's real. It was a book called A True Reckoning: When the Stars Die. Rumored to be a collection of ill omens which will herald the true end of Yophas, any truth regarding this tome has been scrubbed from the annals of history. Now, there is only whisper half-truths and circumstantial legends.
A decade after That Which Lurks in the Dark was completed, Eponimus killed herself. Why and how is unknown, as the Winter Court retrieved her body nearly immediately.

To Stare into the Dark

"Yes, stars can die. Those immortal bastions of light we peer out at every night are not immortal, nor are they bastions. They are pinpricks of light in an infinite multiverse of darkness. Those things out in Xeccamund have gotten used to the darkness. Maybe, one day, we'll become like them; when Yacrena dims and finally blacks out, we'll have to adapt. It's either that, or death." - Eponimus, in the intro to A True Reckoning: When the Stars Die (which may or may not actually exist)

In the wake of the Reckoning, Eponimus did what no other scholar would dare to do: think past the now and peer out past the planes, thinking "what happens now? The gods are dead. What else is out there?" She found some potential answers, but not all of them. To this day, other arcanists, scholars, and wizened doomsayers peer into the stars for omens and answers. Xeccamologists push the boundaries of the Emaxian understanding of Xeccamund, pushing deeper and further into the dark. Maybe, one day, they will find a definitive answer to Eponimus' questions.
And maybe she did find that answer. Maybe that's why she killed herself.