Challenged by fate to safeguard an empire of gold yet unmarred by a universe of shadow, he chose to challenge the shadow instead, and became a god to right all that is wrong.” -- Unknown, c. 100,000,000 BF
First known as Ilendor the Bright, and later given the name of Falachaon which roughly translated to “the Betrayer of All”, he was once a benevolent emperor who ruled as the last ruler of the Aulorean Ascendancy more than 100,000,000 years ago. After ruling his empire for centuries, Falachaon’s power grew, as did his knowledge. Falachaon travelled across the galaxy and learned many things, of the First Ones and the Redeemers, and of their War of the Heavens against the neverborn which created the material universe. Falachaon was always almost unimaginably powerful when it came to wielding the Nethereal, but he was not powerful enough to prove himself worthy as the inheritor of the Task. Seeking to overcome the eternal and unrelenting foe in the Neverborn, Falachaon began to forge a plan in which he would gain unimaginable power, starting with the creation of a heaven; an empire of divine and ascended beings. Yet as this empire was still in its infancy it became evident that for all of Ilendor’s successes he was still but a man, limited by his mortality, and even as he ruled the transformed Aulorean Ascendancy he was not always able to match the intellect or the might of his children. Ilendor named Xarithas the heir to his empire, and he did so he left his duties for a time, leaving his first son to be the caretaker of the Empire until his return. This period of time was known as the Age of Succession, and none knew when or if Ilendor would return. No one could have imagined that during the thirty-seven years (from 100010780 BF to 100010743 BF) of his absence the emperor did not simply retire and hand over his creation to his sons. Instead, coming to realize the full extent of the threat of the Umbra, Falachaon began to seek the Repository to advance the Aulorean Ascendancy before the shadow’s coming, and upon being met with failure, he devised a new plan in which he would become a being of godlike power through horrible sin.
In this first incarnation of his plan, Falachaon discovered the power to consume the life-force of others in order to grow stronger and become immortal. Perhaps the greatest tragedy and irony is that he used this power to devour his own people, not to become a god for some selfish purposes as so many would later believe, but as the first step in a long plan to safeguard the greater universe against the neverborn. During the hundred-year long Golden Crusade, before Ilendor even learned of this power, he was already treated and worshipped as the Divine Emperor of Aulor by some of his people. Ilendor himself hated being compared to a god, and saw this worship as a sign of weakness and disloyalty to his Creed of Truth that dictated there can be no gods (thereby conditioning the people of the empire to avoid falling to the worship of the neverborn).The Aulorean Ascendancy was a diverse society of many races and cultures, and the most fervent of his religious followers were the Azoran; a tightly-knit species of humanoid warriors whose trillions pledged their lives and undying loyalty to their emperor as one. When the time came, they were the first to be devoured by Ilendor in a series of psionic rituals, and when Xarithas learned the true cause of their species’ extinction, he would turn the Mandate against its ruler.
This war, known as the War of the Mandator's Wrath, saw Ilendor (now named Falachaon - "betrayer of all" by Xarithas) - unleash his full power to destroy his foes system by system almost single-handedly, destroying stars and dominating the minds of entire legions to fight in his name once more. Falachaon would later gain the title of “The Ruin of Aulor”; the destroyer of the golden empire of the ancient days. Falachaon was fought by seven of the Ascendant Lords led by Xarithas, and joined by five others. It was by these latter five that he would ultimately be stopped when he offered mercy to the defeated seven - and Arakhor, the Lord of Destruction (who was loyal to Falachaon throughout the conflict), struck down Falachaon's physical form. Yet still Falachaon became so powerful from feeding upon the life forces of others that even with the death of his corporeal form he would not die - but it was enough to weaken him, so that the twelve Lords of Aulor, now combining their power against their leader, could banish him to the Nethereal.
Falachaon is the only known mortal in history to overpower or subdue a Great Timeless One. It is indeed a fact few would know in this age; that Falachaon’s quest and hunger for power was not a means in itself. All of this, from the countless trillions who died to Falachaon’s transcendence into divinity, would be done so that he could stand against the limitless and timeless being of the nethereal realm, and shield the mortal world from their growing influence. In the end the Harbingers are but one of the countless manifestations of the Great Timeless Ones and their masters, and they would be one of the lesser ones.
Falachaon had changed greatly after his death at the hands of the other Ascendant Lords, he had lost much of his power and upon his return, and his methods would no longer be of brute force but of subtle scheming mixed with healthy but occasional displays of power. Falachaon had created the Endless Unity and sought to use this entire empire as a seat of power, to replace the Aulorean Ascendancy. A part of his very essence was poured into the creation of the Endless Unity as a universal concept, so that fate and destiny would be rewritten for all the unlikely events that led up to its creation to occur, and to ensure that the Endless would succeed every challenge that they faced. Yet in the end Falachaon miscalculated again, as over the course of a millennium the citizens of the Endless Unity began to very gradually abandon their ways of faith that dictated absolute loyalty to the Evenlord.
His legacy left him known as a god of darkness; the Lord of Hunger to the religions of The Infernal Crusade, after his death at the behest of his followers the Ascendant Lords, who portrayed him as a dark deity but also viewed him as a progenitor and an inspiration to their order; one who could have been great had he not fallen into darkness.
“Falachaon was power made manifest; the true culmination of all the great masters of the Nethereal that came before him. To even look upon this man, this god, is to see eternity unfold before oneself. Those who would later take his name are but pretenders, unworthy to even speak it. The patience and the will of the cosmos belongs to him; death itself is but a setback, and those who had wronged the ancient emperor will one day know his wrath.” –Scriptures written by the cultists of Falachaon upon his temple.
Falachaon is the only one of the Lords of Aulor not to be mentioned in Andaran mythology, or in any other mythology that is derived from the pantheon of the Ascendant Lords of Aulorean civilization. This is by intent, as the other Lords of Aulor would do everything in their power to make the universe, and all its denizens, forget of the existence of either Ilendor or Falachaon after the War of the Mandator's Wrath.
Falachaon’s motivations
At a glance Falachaon’s quest is that of endless power and life, but this is not an end to itself. Falachaon is a nihilistic entity, whose nihilism is not born of evil but of enlightenment; he believes himself to be far superior and wiser in every way than mere mortals, and his plans are his own. Falachaon’s only true goal is to prevent a greater evil, that of the neverborn, from having their way with the world of reality, and all of his plans and quest for divinity and power revolve around this purpose, to oppose them to the end of time.
Falachaon is not a static personality; he has learned and evolved much over the millennia. Falachaon died once because of his self-centricity and arrogance, for he decided that he had become powerful enough that nothing could stand against him and he turned on his whole empire and the rest of the archus without any caution, which led to his defeat and death at the hands of his own pupils. Falachaon learned much from this death; he and although much of his arrogance and hubris would remain when he returned, he would never be this self-centered again. Falachaon would seek to build a new empire, even build a strange semblance of friendships and family, all as a means of being in touch with others as a divine leader for his own ends. He would insist on being treated as a god because of his arrogance; Falachaon sees himself as the one who knows best, and requires absolute and unquestionable loyalty to his ends which are not so selfish. Falachaon’s journey is ultimately a millennia-long villain’s journey of becoming a hero; where with each death he sees a flaw in himself and changes correspondingly, eventually seeking to become perfect and omnipotent.
He would never simply “return” in a physical sense either; Falachaon is like a deity who has transcended simple mortality. Such a thing could never be expressed properly and would look silly, and thus Falachaon is always kept at a distance from a narrative perspective, like the great mythical entity that he really was. He is simply a god who exists beyond the bounds of the universe, and must act indirectly to increase his influence over the real world until he can manifest himself in some very distant future, to decide the fate all things. Much of Falachaon’s history was purged and suppressed, his legacy made to fade by his own children after his death. They feared the very memory of him, of what it could inspire and reveal about them, not even knowing that Falachaon himself never truly died.