Timekeeper
Timekeepers are the enforcers of Dolora, the Primordial Darkness, a being too abstract to even remotely liaise with mortals otherwise. They exist to ensure the timeline is properly functioning, and thus primarily serve as tormentors and hunters of those that impede or disrupt time's inevitable onslaught. Mortals could attract their attention by adopting an immortal, overly orderly form (ie ascension), or through adopting/being born with chronomantic powers. Usually incorporeal, the only time one will see a timekeeper is when theirs is up.
Intent does not matter to a timekeeper as it might to a harvester. Once a timekeeper sniffs out a temporal aberration, it will broadcast its relentless pursuit in the form of unnerving imagery involving numerous forms of endings, individualised to the timekeeper, sifted from cultural imagery and memories from its previous victims. As these broadcasts continue, their quarry are likely to grow anxious, depressed, or outright mad, becoming an ineffectual, pitiful being before inevitably, the timekeeper arrives, physically manifesting for but a moment, inducing a heart attack.
Naturally, no mortal has ever recorded what this instant looks like, but it is likely that timekeepers are nothing but featureless, unending absence, much like their creator, Dolora. Theologists have, however, documented the symptoms of 'chronomancer's madness' and have a set of consistent symptoms associated with a timekeeper's pursuit, as well as signs of individual variation.
Incapable of sadism, pity, remorse or doubt, these utterly alien beings are only around to iron out the kinks of the timeline. And they will succeed, their only cure being killing oneself/getting murdered before they get a chance to.
Additional Information
Facial characteristics
Timekeepers have no face of any sort, and are physically indistinguishable from each other.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Timekeepers are rarely physically manifested at all, instead using the time-agnostic realm of Dolora and then, upon sniffing out a problematic individual to the flow of time, sniffing them out, manifesting, and mentally tormenting them. This results in senior insanity in chronomancers and extreme depression in ascendants, the intent being to darken their target's life enough that their very will to live is sapped, followed by an extremely brief, precise appearance that finishes them off. Unless thread-infested, no individual is safe from the timekeepers.
Average Intelligence
Timekeepers aren't particularly intelligent except for in their purpose's field; sniffing out temporal abhorrence and tormenting the mortal cause. They instinctively send visions of horrifying futures, screams they've remembered from previous victims, and make their approach very well known by their standards, but from the victim's perspective it starts as existential dread and ends with madness. However, they cannot be negotiated with or treated like people; they are decidedly alien.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Timekeepers do not have names within their culture, even if they do adopt certain quirks. Theologists have pinpointed at least three distinct timekeepers and given them names accordingly; these names are It That Ticks, named after its adoption of mortal clock sounds to torment their victim, It That Swallows, a timekeeper whose tormenting imagery is consistently a spreading black liquid void, and It That Wavers, who torments victims by representing their lives as a flickering flame, ready to die out any moment.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
There is only one relation, if any, timekeepers have with mortals; a purely predatory one. Mortals have naught but unending dread and madness once a timekeeper begins its pursuit, which cannot be bargained with or made sense of.
Scientific Name
Deus horologis
Origin/Ancestry
Dolora
Average Physique
Timekeepers are only fleetingly physically manifest; usually they are an extra-realm, disembodied existential dread, but when they finally arrive, they tend to be looming black shadows and little else. Their only goal in manifesting is to induce a heart attack for the most part, so they take on life's most primordial fear; the absence of everything.
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Timekeepers, on the rare occasion that they manifest, have a distinct colour; a black darker than black, the colour of pure, unadulterated absence of everything, light included.
Comments