Pendulum paused as the ground shook, curious. Tectonic activity in the area had been standard for the several consecutive weeks that he had been on this plane. Earthquakes were highly unusual. Another tremor occurred, and Pendulum slowed time around him briefly so he had more time to investigate, his pendulum hovering above his head. The rumbling faded to the background, muted by the slow passage of time, as he crouched low and placed all of his hands on the ground.

"Fascinating." He whispered. "Tremors originating from source... parallel to ground. Highly unusual. Likely cause: Outside disturbance. Must investigate."

Time returned to a normal pace around him, and he retrieved the pendulum from suspension. He slithered swiftly through the caves that he had called home, navigating them more by memory than familiarity. He had no attachment to this place, more from necessity than anything else.

It was always likely he would be driven from any place he stayed for an extended period of time.

He had taken up residence here because there was a nearby town that - unknowingly - had settled near a source of questionable magical energies. The source - an enormous, round stone - seemed normal at first glance, and the townspeople seemed to pay it little mind. Pendulum had immediately noticed that it radiated a mildly malign aura that caused... deficiencies after a certain amount of time. Catatonia, psychosis, paranoia, and even physical deformities manifested in the people. When Pendulum had arrived, there had been dozens of cases. Since he had begun working, however, he had removed all such deficiencies from the populace, and had been in the process of researching ways to negate the effects of the stone.

The people, it seemed, were happier. The town had been considered cursed until he came along.

Although, as Pendulum exited the cave network, it appeared as though negating the stones effects were now the least of his worries.

"...Troublesome." He muttered, as an enormous tentacle burst from the top of the stone, which he could see even from here. The ground shook again, and Pendulum raised a hand to shield himself from falling debris. He heard screaming in the distance - no doubt the townspeople were distressed. He considered his options, aloud. "Stone perhaps an incubator for large creature. Creature... perhaps the cause of local mutations. Newly born: confused, undoubtedly. May lash out at bystanders. Intervention by local militia..." The explosive sound of shattering stone rang through the valley, and Pendulum took cover in the cave to avoid more falling shrapnel. The creature gave out a mighty cry, and Pendulum could make out some gigantic, misshapen silhouette in the distance. "...Unlikely. Must intervene." He concluded, and began sliding through the rubble-strewn grass.

As he approached the creature, the shaking of the ground became more insistent and the screams more terrified. He absently hardened his flesh, growing scales and claws, even as he strengthened his mind to resist the sudden intensified effects of the malignant aura. His arms doubled in width, his second pair of eyes receded into his skull as he enhanced his vision, and finally, chitinous mouth parts covered his maw. He was ill-suited for combat, normally - now, he was marginally more prepared.

The creature, of course, did not noticed him as he slid beneath it's large, trunk-like feet and up on of it's three legs. Pendulum noted that it had not one, but three beaks located evenly across the enormous mass that was it's body. He noticed no eyes, and the only other appendages were the dozen of thick tentacles that protrude from the top of it's... head. Albeit, a very strange creature.

Pendulum knew the feeling.

The creature appeared to take notice of Pendulum as he reached the area where the legs met the rest of it's amorphous body. Several tentacles lashed towards him at once, but he dodged them deftly why developing glands that would coat his body in slick oil. The tentacles, if they did catch him, would hopefully slide off ineffectively. Pendulum needed a way to make contact with this creature's nervous system - he needed to see within it, to understand it, so he could stop it. The creature screeched as he scrambled over it's body, and pendulum felt a pulse of magic wash over both him and the rest of the valley.

This needed to end, quickly.

Pendulum dodged another probing tentacle, and then paused his climb over the creature. If it was truly amorphous, any part of it's body would have to do. He swiftly fused his two left arms together, and with the sound of cracking bone, he was in possession of a crude, thick needle. He briefly spat a swiftly concocted anesthetic onto his new limb, and shoved it as deeply as he could into the grey body. Given the lack of horrid screaming, he assumed it worked. Removing his arm, he opened his mouth and shot his tongue into the wound - which was now secreting a purplish, foul tasting liquid. He did not dwell on it, and probed. There had to be something to connect him to - something -

He nearly lost himself in the roar of this creature's existence. It was not newly born, he discovered immediately. Just born again. Eternal, enigmatic, entropic... hungry. Not frightened, but willful, knowing it's purpose, and driven to fulfill it. Feed. Subjugate. Destroy. Die. Live. Again. Again.

This was not a living thing - it was a cosmic force. It was the turn of an hourglass. It was the herald of all things - and it heralded them now.

Pendulum was caught up in the tide of it's alien mind, and for a brief moment, they were one. Feed. Consume. Die. Live. Again. Again. Again.

But Pendulum had experience with such things, and he had already spent to long not being himself.

"Cease." Pendulum murmured into the creatures mind, into it's existence, into it's soul. A counter mantra to the creature's own. "Stop. End. Still. Sate."

Vaguely, Pendulum was aware of the creature becoming sluggish around him, fighting against the words, against the ideas, against the concepts. They were as foreign to it as it was to Pendulum. Foreign, and similar. It new these things because it was not these things, and so, when Pendulum poured in his magic to enforce the imperative he had spoken into the creature's mind, the creature fell.

Pendulum extracted himself just in time to avoid being crushed by it's massive bulk.

He was gone by the time any of the townsfolk came by to investigate. Some were injured, others were... changed. He observed from a distance, but noticed that the malignant aura was gone. He slowly returned to his original form, and tented his fingers.

"...Malign magic, stopped. Creature, interesting, but ultimately only harmful to those around it. Methods: necessary." He paused his whispering as he observed the townsfolk regard the dead creature with disgust and fear. "...Much more work to do."

He returned to his cave, trying to forget the sense of eternity that he had felt, if only briefly.

This is interesting. I like the story, but I think I need to re-read the previous Pendulum stuff. I never realized he was so...powerful. I didn't realize he was essentially a shapeshifter.

Appearance: Renn stands about 5’10”. He wears his reddish brown hair short and parted to one side. He has the spectral shimmer of a ghost. He wears a suit with a small psi processor strapped to the chest.

Renn uses his psi processor to maintain his form. In dire straights he may let go of some of this psi, dispersing some of his form in the process. He can gain it back by adjusting the processor. If he supercharges it, and has access to high levels of psi, he can become corporeal, and more directly interact with his surroundings.

History: Renn was born to a noble family. He was the youngest in his family, and his mother had died of a strange illness that even the greatest crystal scientists couldn’t cure when he was merely a child. One summer, when he was home from boarding school he, his father, and his brother, were attacked by a group of mecha marauders during a hunting trip. While his family was quickly killed, Renn jumped to their vehicle's spacefold manipulator, trying to teleport himself away. However, just as he was about complete the journey, the manipulator was struck by a marauder's energy bolt, and Renn's essence was scattered into another layer of the spacefold.

For most people, such a mishap would mean death, but Renn was both resourceful and stubborn, and by pure willpower he maintained a form of disembodied consciousness. Realizing that he had been put out of phase with the rest of the world, and desperate to stay alive, his mind drifted to the school where he had been studying the cryo and pyre sciences. He found the lab of his favorite professor and managed to get his attention by moving through his equipment, using disturbances to spell out a message. The professor managed to build a psi manipulator which he also could put into counter-phase with the world, giving Renn access to it. Renn then used the manipulator to partially phase himself back into the world.

However, when the professor gathered the rest of the faculty to observe the miracle which had happened, and begin further studies on the phenomenon, Renn realized that the school no longer saw him as a student but an experiment. Terrified at the idea of spending the rest of his life in a lab, he adjusted the manipulator to make himself incorporeal, and simply slipped out of the school.

He returned home, preferring the company of his father's household droids and equipment. He reprogrammed the house to keep trespassers out. As the entire family was officially declared dead, the suddenly aggressive security system gave the Winmoore estate a reputation as a haunted house.

However, his school had not given up on the idea of studying Renn's condition. The had contacted a local warlord, hoping to use Renn to secure additional funding for the school. Together with a troop of the warlord's soldiers, some scientists broke into the estate to bring him back. Renn had been expecting them, and had spent some time developing a spacefold module for his psi manipulator. However, the scientists had brought a spacefold module of their own, with a tracker. Renn realized that they would easily find him at any of the nearby teleport stations, and decided to take a chance. Blindly turning his spacefold module to a blank address, he punched the button and hoped for the best. He found himself standing safe and sound in a wasteland of an unknown planet. Staring at him spacefold module, he realized without knowing how that he knew exactly how to bring himself back home. He adjusted the settings, and pressed the button again. When he reappeared in his house, the intruders had been run off by his security droids.

He had learned much while at school, and built himself a telekinesis module to interact with his environment even when out of phase with it. Renn uses such modules, and knowledge, to frustrate those whom he sees deserving.

Personality: Renn is a trickster by nature, or so he would have you believe. He mourns the loss of his family, and hides this behind his light-hearted nature. It isn’t a hard ruse, as he was a famous prankster in life. He is well educated, and seeks to continue his studies, particularly of psi manipulation. Renn maintains a certain refinement of nobility. He likes to explore the spacefold, filling his curiosity and need to finish the education he was denied. He will always return home to relax and gather himself.

Appearance: Vasilias' body is attached to a medical contraption, constantly pumping a mixture of necroleum oil and lux powder straight through his veins. The process has slowly fossilized his body, and any who see him would question if he was alive at all.
Deep within the abandoned space station of Ariva, he sits upon his throne, never moving, never speaking. He is little more than a skeleton now, only kept alive by the contraption which also connects his mind directly to Ariva's control systems.

History: Vasilias was once a skilled Navigator and powerful Warlord. He ruled an empire that covered multiple star systems. He was a tyrant, commanding his domain with an Iron Fist. Any acts of resistance were met with necrocrystal Mechs teleported from Ariva, the large space station he used as his base of operations.

Although he kept court far from the Galactic Core, his reign was not unaffected by the Alignment*. With both mech construction and spacefold manipulation becoming more difficult, he found he could no longer control such a vast empire. He also found his personal strength waning. So, reluctantly, he abandoned his planets, one by one, until only Ariva itself remained under his control, in constant orbit of the planet Ikass.

It's not certain when or how, but at some point, faced with his own mortality, he designed a terrifying machine meant to prolong his life. Using pure psi minerals, he connected his whole body and mind to the systems of Ariva itself, for nothing else was as precious to him.

One fateful day, his command station was threatened. Knowing that the station could not defeat the marauders surrounding it, Vasilias made desperately attempted to activate the teleports to move the entire station through the spacefold. Whether he was successful is subject to debate. It turns out that he had vastly underestimated the amount of psi required for the teleport. As it was, the spacefold claimed the lives of his entire crew, and left Ariva adrift in the void between stars, far out of reach of any planet. When Vasilias tried to rectify his error, he found that the strain had completely burned out Ariva’s spacefold manipulators.

Now he sits, alone in his little world, unable to teleport or even to move from his throne. But Vasilias still lives, and even in his broken state he is powerful. The psi that would have otherwise maintained the life support of a crew of three thousand is now entirely at Vasilias’ disposal, and between Ariva’s defense systems and the experimental psychomanipulation weapons he has spent his days designing, Vasilias is well prepared for anyone who would dare approach, either by spacecraft or teleport.

And so the Lord of Ariva sits on his throne, planning his inevitable resurrection, and waiting for the perfect tool to come and set his plans in motion.

*For those unaware: The Alignment was a cataclysmic event where a group of Navigators had to forcibly move the psi origin planets in the core system to reignite the dying Core Star. This change to the core planets affected the psi of the entire galaxy, weakening the innate powers of Navigators. The most important change was that Navigators lost the ability to rejuvenate themselves by traveling through the spacefold, forcing them to now age like everyone else.