In the Act III Prologue, the party experienced a series of visions from the impossibly long lifespan of Xhamen-Dor as they slept overnight on the 11th of Neth:
When you are an immortal sentient cancer that shares the dreams and memories of everyone that knows your name, when you knew what everyone dreams, you know what everyone feels, hopes for, fears, and remembers. Everything they’ve ever felt. All at once.
When you’ve lived for billions of years, and you’ve seen all you’d seen, how can you not marvel at the inevitability of it all?
PRAISE.
There are no setbacks, just links in a chain of Time, stretching back farther than a mortal could even imagine.
If you were such a being, you wouldn’t think in terms of fault, you’d simply think in terms of Purpose and Inevitability. Who cares what Dora wants? Who cares what Vik thinks? Who cares what Grip hopes for?
Hastur is imprisoned AND Hastur is made free.
It is inevitable.
And in the quiet, transition moments, those moments between breaths, Xhamen-Dor can trace a neat line of cause and effect from any point in the past directly to its most recent victory: Dabwick joins the Inmost Blot.
It’s all happening right now, inside the mind of Xhamen-Dor. And it is beautiful.
Everything is Now.
Now is untold eons ago. Billions of years. Though it has never been built and it has not yet been discovered, Carcosa is already old and in ruins, existing mostly as a mirage which appears when the twin black suns of its nameless planet dip below the horizon. Hastur takes his first journey through its deepest sewers. The filth scraped loose by the folds of his yellow cloak brushing the walls as he passes… that filth—those malignant scabs—they settle into the city’s cracks and crevices, where they fester and refuse to lay silent.
Now is untold eons ago, still. Carcosa consumes its first victim: Alar is damned. As the victims’ souls are absorbed into the dregs below, the cancer awakens.
Now, the Yellow Sign is carried through the streets of Yhtill. Carcosa is cannibalizing it. Cassilda, however, stands defiant, and the power of her sacrifice gives Hastur pause. He needs other ways. More paths. The cancer stirs.
Now, the latest city has just been absorbed. Its creators somehow survive the transition, and the Flying Polyps whisper in the filth of beacons and signals. The propagation of star stelae across the universe begins.
Now is 10,011 years ago. The Aboleths have called down the heavens to destroy the Azlanti. One of their goddesses has pulled Golarion’s moon from its orbit in order to intercept the meteoric barrage, hoping to save some small fragment of the planet’s life from the coming apocalypse. Amidst the chaos and destruction, a lone comet falls into the heart of the Nameless City, where the Flying Polyps left their stones tens of thousands of years earlier.
Now is 9,000 years ago. The planet is still. And so is the Husk.
Now is 5,700 years ago. There is movement. The pods are being destroyed. The Husk stirs.
Now is 5,352 years ago. The scholars have come to the Cradle of Heaven. Soon, they leave. To spread the word. PRAISE.
Now is 5,350 ago. The Tarrasque lays waste to Ninshabur, unknowingly destroying every last written record of Xhamen-Dor’s name. The Husk knows.
Now is 2,000 years ago. Darkness.
Now is 1,200 years ago. On a distant planet, the scholar Abdul Alhazred learns that which humanity is not meant to know. The cancer stirs.
1,185 years ago. The Mad Poet arrives in the Dreamlands.
1,000 years ago. Someone dreams the idea of the Tatterman, and so the Tatterman in born.
673 years ago, the Tatterman tells Ariadne all he knows.
670 years ago, she whispers the name in council.
148 years ago, the Sincomakti School of Sciences is founded. One of the new deans can’t help himself: he scribbles a name on a lone page in a lone book on lonely shelf in the library of history. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. But he will. Students will find it. The cancer will spread.
49 years ago, Clymes Prett, in the throes of passion, grunts the name in Nemira Caligar’s ear.
47 years ago, Nemira Lowls whispers it to Weiralai.
And four days ago, Weiralai speaks the name aloud and the cancer spreads. Dabwick of Cassomir is seeded.
And the latest sheep is herded into place for the inevitable ascension of the Great Shepherd.
It is inevitable.
Everything that has ever happened, has happened on the road to the ultimate end of Hastur’s ascension.
And if the passage of eons couldn’t prevent it…
if a planetary apocalypse couldn’t stop it…
if the Tarrasque couldn’t put an end to it…
What possibly could?
Certainly not four mere mortals, right? What hope could they possibly have against the Inevitable?
What could they possibly do?
First Reference: Act III Prologue
Other Notable References: —