Iqqesh, The Force of Corruption, is an incomplete Outer God and a hidden, insidious catalyst behind much of Gnossienne’s downfall. Arriving shortly after Ram-Zet, it trailed him into the city unnoticed, its presence initially undetected even by other gods. It is largely responsible for The First Shift, its arrival destabilizing the nexus and beginning a slow, irreversible corruption of the city’s energies. For a long time, it remained hidden, observing and accumulating power from the nexus, silently assimilating organic matter into its growing biomass while attempting to complete its own existence. Its influence spread subtly at first, warping the surrounding environment and tainting the flow of energy within Gnossienne itself. Among those most affected were Uisce, Ancient One of Water, who became severely corrupted, and to some what of a lesser extent, Myrkviðr, Ancient One of the Forest, both altered by Iqqesh’s presence. As its power grew, its corruption spread like an infection, overtaking organic matter and transforming it, altering living things and landscapes into grotesque, nightmarish forms of pale, dead flesh, writhing growths and monstrous entities born from fused meat and plant matter. Iqqesh possesses no higher motive beyond this expansion; it exists solely to consume, assimilate and corrupt everything around it. It cannot be reasoned with, bargained with or understood in any conventional sense. Its form reflects this horrific evolution. Once, it appeared as a simple, incomplete being, a floating sphere of purple, orange and green light with a rudimentary face, but it has since grown into a mass of writhing tendrils composed of flesh, meat and liquefied plant matter. These tendrils extend from beneath a pale, distorted crown of faces that continuously circulate around its upper form. Each face shares eyes with the others, connected in unnatural ways, their mouths frozen in perpetual screams. Both their eyes and mouths glow with the same shifting purple, orange and green light that once defined its simpler state, now buried beneath layers of corruption. Iqqesh is not merely a being within Gnossienne, it is a spreading condition, a consuming force that reshapes reality into something unrecognizable, an ever-growing wound to the city.