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Zodiark

Primal

Like Hydaelyn, Zodiark is one of the eldest and most powerful of primals. To define what exactly He is, one must first define Light and Darkness — polar opposites whose core components differ from the six main elements of which the star is composed.

The ancients classified Light as that which governs tranquility and stasis. It is a pure white energy bereft of color or movement, and in modern terminology, an element of this nature would be defined as “umbral.” In contrast, Darkness was classified as that which spurs growth. It is an energy of deepest black — a cacophony of life’s myriad colors — and contemporary scholars would define elements of this active nature as “astral.” As such, Zodiark is Darkness and activity given form, while Hydaelyn, who would be His undoing, was conceived as the embodiment of peace and Light everlasting. In the world unsundered, these concepts lacked any associations with good and evil; Light and Darkness were simply fundamental energies that coexisted in all things.

Approximately twelve thousand years ago, a vast quantity of Darkness was required to forestall the coming of the Final Days, that its dynamic nature might ensure that the celestial currents of Etheirys did not stagnate. So it was that the ancients devised a plan to create a god who would embody Darkness itself, and at the order of the Convocation of Fourteen, half of the star’s surviving population gave their lives to bring Zodiark into being.

Serving as the primal’s heart was the emissary Elidibus. Though countless ancients sacrificed their physical aether and tethered their very souls to Zodiark, Elidibus, having judged his duties unfinished, created a reflection of himself to keep vigil over his allies. Zodiark’s untold power averted disaster for a time...yet those who survived and had come to worship Him sought to perpetuate the cycle of sacrifice. They vowed to reap the new life they had sown in His name to resurrect those who had rendered up their essence to fuel the primal’s summoning.

Venat and her followers stood in opposition to Zodiark’s faithful. Believing that a new generation should inherit Etheirys, they summoned forth Hydaelyn, a second primal born of collective sacrifice, with Venat to serve as Her heart. And so Hydaelyn brought Her tranquil Light to bear against Zodiark’s relentless Darkness in a terrible battle. Hydaelyn narrowly emerged the victor, and with Her final strike sundered Zodiark and the star itself into fourteen shards. With Her enemy fragmented and too weak to resist, Hydaelyn created a moon for each shard — a series of gaols in which the divided Zodiark would be sealed for all eternity.

Outraged by the sundering of their world and their god, the Ascians — those who had belonged to the Convocation of Fourteen — resolved to revive Zodiark and restore the broken world to the paradise it once was. For millennia they plotted against Hydaelyn and Her followers, orchestrating events to achieve their ultimate goal, until one of their own chose to forsake this solemn charge.

The Ascian Fandaniel, upon regaining his memories and understanding his true nature, rejected his role in his brethren’s machinations. After learning of Elidibus’s defeat on the First, he resolved instead to destroy Zodiark. Using Garlemald as his base of operations, the rogue Ascian orchestrated the summoning of the primal Anima, who would siphon aether from across the star and direct it into the Tower of Babil. Utilizing the tower as an aetheric cannon, Fandaniel crippled the mechanisms on the moon which kept Zodiark imprisoned, and subsequently traveled there to seize control of the elder primal by offering himself as His new heart.

Though the Ascian was laid low by the Warrior of Light, Fandaniel reveled in Zodiark’s defeat, as his ultimate goal was the return of the Final Days. In a final act of defiance, Zodiark reached into His chest and shattered His own heart, consigning the elder primal to a permanent death.

With His demise on the Source, it is presumed that the reflections of Zodiark in other shards were destroyed as well, and the once-fettered souls of the ancients are finally free to return to the Lifestream.