The precise origin of the Eyes is not known. What is generally accepted or at least widely believed, is the apocryphal story of the trimming of the Eye Tree
A Demon Trims the Tree
In this tale, it is said a demon (most accounts agree it was Tamarah the Conquerer), having overcome many challenges came, weary, to a great cold waste under a dying sun. In this frozen wasteland of death’s quiet, she found but a single living organism; an immense tree, more of an immense ribbed stalk actually, of exceptionally pink and alien hue, pulsing with subdued life. Hanging, limply, from the immense stalk, were a multitude of dull blue sacs, each also of immense, though irregular size. The shape themselves suggested tears, and it was this more than anything else that is said to have drawn the nascent demon lord’s attention.
Growing to appropriately macroscopic size (for even then she was filled with power, in those days fresh from her early wars with many rivals for her future queendom) Tamarah caressed each rotting orb gently as if to listen inside for a noise or movement.
What she found instead was this - out of 112 of these sacs, she dallied to open 39 of them. Of those, thirty contained …. Dross. Cancer and worse. Rot, in it’s most malignant and fell form.
But nothing she had not already purged and so was not afraid.
The other 9 however still bore some trace of exotic and sequestered life; they were, though not of regular size but each otherwise identical, immense alien … eyes. Milky yellow whites with double irises, suggesting the shape of an hourglass and a knife, overlaid, and glowing from within with some lost green hell energy.
So delighted was she in finding them, that she ….charmed the strange, taffy textured lifeform. IN doing so she learned of it’s immense age, and it’s distinct and affected...unconcern for the affairs of souled beings or those who would use them as toys and pets. Primordial in it’s age, itself a lost spoor of some older, more exotic thing, lost when it’s world was consumed in the death of sunlight, as is the way of the Most Ancient Worlds. .
And having done so, continued to wander along on her way, carving her scarlet path. She was given care over five of them, and she absconded with the other four. There were nearly five score of those pods remaining, unopened. She did not see the care, for she knew in knowing this creature that it would not demean itself to communicate with her in this, or indeed any other manner, ever again.
And it was as she set about walking her road of vendetta murder and hell glory, she fed these..eyes..precious nectars, and the souls of the innocent, and especially of the sanguine sacrament of her scarlet activities.
And they grew.
Regardless of the literal truth of the above, nine of these throbbing green hell orbs now wander the many hidden pathways of the omniverse, seeing in all spectra, across all planes and dimensional barriers, seeking only the novel, the secret, and the powerful. Forever curious and wandering, never blinking.
And always feeding back to their mistress. Who or whatever that being may actually be.
While legend easily traces it’s origin point to a member of a now extinct species of cerebral-coral it is unknown at what point the mother organism was visited by Hell. Perhaps it is likely some arrangement was made to ensure it’s survival in the cold vacuum of space before rooting on whatever world in which the future Red Queen of Doom found it.
The Eyes’ mother “tree” was the Buddling of the Once Dread but Lost Kreb-Coral, last of a now extinct species of cerebral coral once known to grow in large tree-like formations in the low gravity environment of Khorlath Queltyrflax, moon of Ribbosil IX, before that world’s atomization by supernova some 45,000 years ago.
Presumably hell assisted in transplanting the mother buddling to the world on which Tamarah found it, prior to (once again) turning Hell’s tools to her benefit.
Great Green EYE OF Wandering : Init +7; Atk +11 Hell Beams (9d12, 5100’); AC 30; HD 9d12+3; hp 93; MV 150’; Act 1d30; SP Lots; SV Fort +7, Ref +3, Will +7; AL Neutral.
Unblinking Hell Eyes - sees in all spectra of light and energy; with perfect clarity and precision. Sees into the aetherial and all of the sub-ether dimensions; can (and does) peer into hyperspace and the local superspace medium. Can see across dimensional and planar barriers. Probably watching you like ceiling cat.
Hell Beams - if sufficiently aroused to such irritation as to do violence upon one interfering in its purposes, the eyes can unleash an infernally charged mithrylorganic pumped laser +11 to hit inflicting 9d12 light/heat damage and creating microjets of supercharged plasma on contact with air creating a dangerous burst bubble of 40” which inflicts 6d8 (Star) damage on ...everything. IT is noteworthy that the Eyes themselves do not take damage from this.
Nosy and Desperately sEeking Interesting - The Eyes are drawn to things that have not been seen before and their memory is the memory of a dead race, millions of years old at ti’s demise. They are, by nature, drawn to multiversal intersections of novelty and complexity (most often occurring in primary material universes in the present age).
This often brings them into conflict with the sentinels of the Clockwork Hell, however many centuries ago, Cognition changed the order to Watch, Follow, Observe, before the standard Obey All Protocols that the sentinels are punched with on departing the Outer Gearsprings.
Buddling of the Dread Lost Kreb-Coral Stalk the creature at heart is, much like it’s parent colony, made of tightly packed, super interactive memory cells. Even though it is constantly bleeding the excess back to its Mistress, the Eye at any given time knows...tremendous things. Not that it is talking. Functionally this gives it a +4 init. (simply because it can anticipate so much) and the ability to absorb spell energy 1/day (up to 5 levels worth) if the caster fails to overcome a Will save. DC 30 (the spell will likely still take effect but the Eye will ‘memorize’ it, frozen in a single moment of time. It may repeat that spell, precisely as rolled, a second time without fail, though not at the original caster.
LotFP
Great Green EYE OF Wandering Armour 32 Move 150’, 14 HD 93 hp, many abilities, Morale 12
Unblinking Hell Eyes - sees in all spectra of light and energy; with perfect clarity and precision. Sees into the aetherial and all of the sub-ether dimensions; can (and does) peer into hyperspace and the local superspace medium. Can see across dimensional and planar barriers. Probably watching you like ceiling cat.
Hell Beams - if sufficiently aroused to such irritation as to do violence upon one interfering in its purposes, the eyes can unleash an infernally charged mithrylorganic pumped laser +11 to hit inflicting 9d12 light/heat damage and creating microjets of supercharged plasma on contact with air creating a dangerous burst bubble of 40” which inflicts 6d8 (Star) damage on ...everything. IT is noteworthy that the Eyes themselves do not take damage from this.
Nosy and Desperately sEeking Interesting - The Eyes are drawn to things that have not been seen before and their memory is the memory of a dead race, millions of years old at ti’s demise. They are, by nature, drawn to multiversal intersections of novelty and complexity (most often occurring in primary material universes in the present age).
This often brings them into conflict with the sentinels of the Clockwork Hell, however many centuries ago, Cognition changed the order to Watch, Follow, Observe, before the standard Obey All Protocols that the sentinels are punched with on departing the Outer Gearsprings.
Buddling of the Dread Lost Kreb-Coral Stalk the creature at heart is, much like it’s parent colony, made of tightly packed, super interactive memory cells. Even though it is constantly bleeding the excess back to its Mistress, the Eye at any given time knows...tremendous things. Not that it is talking. Functionally this gives it a +4 init. (simply because it can anticipate so much) and the ability to absorb spell energy 1/day (up to 10 levels worth) if the caster fails to overcome a saving throw v. Magic the spell will likely still take effect but the Eye will ‘memorize’ it, frozen in a single moment of time. It may repeat that spell, precisely as rolled, a second time without fail, though not at the original caster.
“This
article is reproduced in Apocrypha Obscura – Transmissions from the Dreaming
Gynoid, available (drive thru link)
and (itch.io link)
