The Unmaker

The Unmaker

Identity

The Unmaker is not a god or a mortal. It is a force shaped into a will. It ends bonds, objects, oaths, and stories. It does not create. It does not rule land. It erases connections that hold things together. In Year 0 Thal, a coalition summoned Thallus Fjord to stop the Unmaker. He did, at the Cradle of Undoing, and the modern calendar began from that day. The gods reaffirmed the Balance Compact after the Unmaker fell.

Place in History

Before Thallus, history is fragmented and ununified. After his victory, timekeeping became standard across Kavrix. The current year is 1138 Thal. That means more than a thousand years have passed since the first defeat and sealing of the Unmaker. The first millennium saw new institutions like the Adventurer’s Guild. The second millennium saw the rise of modern villains and a brief, dangerous “wild” Unmaker manifestation that had to be sealed by S-Rank heroes.

Nature of Power

The Unmaker does not destroy by force. It convinces a thing that it was never whole. Contracts lose meaning. Spells unwind. Weapons rust from the idea of being a weapon. This is why the gods set the Balance Compact. No great power should rise without a counter. When Thallus sealed the Unmaker, the Compact was reaffirmed to keep future threats balanced by their opposites.

Known Manifestations

  • Prime Era (0 Thal): Confronted and sealed at the Cradle of Undoing by Thallus Fjord working with a multi-kingdom alliance.

  • 1070 Thal: A brief “wild” Unmaker event destabilized The Deep. Three S-Rank heroes sealed it in an unrecorded operation. This proves the Unmaker can surface in small, dangerous ways even after the primary sealing.

Current Rumors and Pressure

The ten-year Summoning Accord still brings heroes, but between formal years, walls between worlds thin and “wild summons” arrive. Records of these are incomplete, and many arrivals hide their origin. Recent spike years cause fears that the Unmaker’s influence is rising again. Tensions between Aertos and Solara are at their highest in recorded time, which creates political risk around any new sealing or study effort.

Relationship to the Cradle of Undoing

The Cradle is the oldest site linked to the Unmaker. It resists sound, record-keeping, and stable magic. It is the only place where large-scale unmaking can be channeled and limited. The Thal Reckoning and the Balance Compact both anchor the policies used to keep the Cradle contained. The Academy of Heroes and the Adventurer’s Guild keep partial files, but many details degrade or are redacted. This secrecy and drift are part of the Unmaker’s domain.

From the last field entry on the Cradle, there are stable interior points that help define how the Unmaker works in practice: the Vanta Gate (summoning chamber), the Entropic Forge (object and vow erosion), the Throne of Refusal (decision without spectacle), the Lantern Hall (kept absences), and the Cell of the Bound (mooring by remorse). These places do not contradict the known record. They explain why the Cradle remains a precise tool rather than a loose disaster.

Opponents and Exploiters

  • Aertos: Sees the Unmaker as a threat to harmony and tradition. Prefers containment and old-law wards.

  • Solara: Splits between caution and study. Some want to model unmaking fields to stabilize machines; others call that reckless. Solara’s culture pushes hard toward innovation, even when risk is high.

  • Grimstone Hold: Offers craft for locks and vaults, but will not forge long-term inside the Cradle because tools fail often. (Guild practice aligns with their craft ethos.)

  • The Obsidian Order (Valerius): Would bind unmaking within rigid law to enforce total order. Their ideology treats summoned heroes as a disease of chaos. This creates a direct conflict with any free research on the Cradle.

  • The Infernal Syndicate (Xylos): Looks for ways to void debts and twist contracts using controlled unmaking. They already run a realm of predatory bargains and would weaponize the Forge’s effects.

  • The Silent Chorus (Aethelred): Seeks perfect stillness. Studies stasis and the end of motion. The Unmaker’s logic is a tool to them for freezing reality.

Theories of Origin

Recorded sources agree on what the Unmaker does and when it was sealed. They do not agree on where it came from. Three main theories exist:

  1. Entropy Given Name: Magic is a network of bonds. The Unmaker is the habit of endings made active. This aligns with how oaths and objects fail inside the Cradle and why the Balance Compact reacts to it.

  2. Collapsed Godwork: An abandoned divine project that kept balance by erasing excess. The gods then limited it through the Compact and later through Thallus’ seal. (This view is common in Aertosian theology.)

  3. Summoning Exhaust: A byproduct of repeated cross-world summoning that pooled into a will. The rising rate of wild summons would then explain the 1070 Thal flare.

No theory has decisive proof. Written tests degrade when carried out at the Cradle. External replications fail or give incomplete data. The best evidence remains the calendar change, the seal’s continuity, and the single recorded wild flare.

Limits and Laws

Over centuries of careful tests, a few practices hold:

  • Old-Law Grounding: Oaths under the Balance Compact resist unmaking longer than secular contracts.

  • Divine Marks: Items linked to Host-aligned rites keep function longer than items marked by lesser cults.

  • Pre-Thal Methods: Some pre-Thal inscriptions keep partial integrity in the Cradle, suggesting older binding systems are less legible to unmaking fields.

  • Witness Protocol: Records signed and countersigned by neutral authorities (Academy of Heroes or certain temples) degrade slower once removed from the Cradle.

Cults and Splinters

Across the second millennium, three groups consistently interact with Unmaker topics:

  • Order Absolutists: A subsection within the Obsidian Order who want “lawful unmaking” to erase unwanted variance across society.

  • Debt Burners: Infernal accountants who try to nullify ledgers inside controlled fields to seize leverage.

  • Stillfaith Cells: Chorus cells that preach a calm end of all motion. They collect stasis-fuel and attempt small stillness rites in remote places.

None of these splinters can replicate the core field of the Cradle. Their results are minor and unstable.

What the Unmaker Wants

There is no evidence the Unmaker wants dominion. It does not gather land or claim thrones. It wants to remove what binds. It is satisfied when a vow breaks, a weapon falls apart, a plan ends, or a tale stops. The Balance Compact exists to keep this goal from reaching everything. Thallus’ seal still holds at scale. The work now is to stop small failures from building into another crisis.