Ginungagap

Ginungagap, born Zelashiel, was an ancient Anzat and practitioner of Dark Side of Sith magics. He embraced the new name, granted by superstitious primitives who thought him the embodiment of the primordial void, because he viewed himself as a black hole into which all the Force would one day drain.

Biography
Ginungagap is one of the most ancient Anzati on record, though he has never explicitly stated what year, century, or even millennium he was born in. He was born somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 years ago. He was gifted with a particularly powerful Force presence and was one of the few Anzati to become a Jedi..

Journey's Start
Zelashiel became a Jedi some time around 12,000 BBY / 8,347 ATC. Unlike most Anzati, he refused to feed on sentients, as his significant Force potential allowed him to empathize too much with the few victims he consumed. He joined the Jedi, feeding only on nonsentient livestock, and sought a way to satisfy his hunger more thoroughly through the Force.

After becoming a Jedi Master, Zelashiel began to scour the archives for means of rejuvenating oneself through the Force. After finding disappointingly little, he began his own explorations and experiments. The Jedi Council warned him not to tamper with the natural order, but he was determined to find a way to sate not just his own hunger, but that of his race. Anzati were thought of as creatures of the night, nightmares that hunted for living souls to the few who knew of them. Zelashiel believed that success in his journey would allow his species to leave that negative impression behind.

As he began to refine his approach, he dubbed the skills he was developing "Force Drain," and proudly presented his findings to the Council. They were horrified at his demonstration, where he used the force to shave an incremental amount of life force off of several volunteers. He was labeled a blasphemer against the sanctity of life and cast out of the Order entirely.

The Anzati are ancient to the point where "the Force" is just the new name for a natural phenomena that will exist far longer than the title; Zelashiel, newly exiled from his home for his deeds, embraced this philosophy and sought out knowledge of this phenomenon that the Jedi would not condone or understand. His search led him into the Outer Rim, then into Wild Space, then into the Unknown Regions. His ship, though increasingly ancient, was reliable for a millennium. After it could be repaired no longer, Zelashiel found new vehicles and means of traveling the stars.

One with the Void
As the centuries passed, Zelashiel became less and less picky about how he used the powers he had developed, refining his technique further with every use. After a time, he had consumed enough Force energy that his own Force presence collapsed in on itself, and just like the embers of stars blow life into black holes, this collapse birthed a void inside Zelashiel. His millennia of Force knowledge and experience allowed him not only to survive this change, but to thrive within it.

Zelashiel learned to utilize the void at his core to further expand his Force Drain abilities. It also became a nearly-impenetrable Force defense, devouring any energy sent at him through the Force.

Name Earned
He learned much and from many races along his travels, but they learned of him as well. Not long after he had become a void in the Force, Ginungagap happened across a village on a primitive planet led by a council of elders who could touch the Force. They were intrigued by his Force presence, or lack thereof, and attempted to touch Ginungagap’s mind - to pierce the void. The elders committed too much of their power to the effort and one by one lost their minds to the void at his core, devoured. Several died, and the rest went mad. They raved for days about this stranger, this personification of the primordial void before succumbing to exhaustion and death. Zelashiel was named after the primordial void by the surviving villagers - "Ginungagap." He lived there for some time, accepting the moniker and bending the villagers and the neighboring towns to his will until they worshiped him. He had them build a temple home for him which he named Ma'ehmaq, meaning both "abyss" and "great knowledge" in the native tongue. He renamed the planet this as well and uses it as a repository for his knowledge as well as a base from which to continue his explorations. In the known galaxy, only Ginungagap knows the location of Ma'ehmaq.

Along with his new name, those territories he wandered through began to build a legend of him that was as much retelling as it was a warning:

Empty was the heart of this,

though it seemed just a man.

Hungry were its thoughts.

Within it was an ember

that, though blackened,

still it burned.

To touch it was to risk

an unraveling of the soul -

consumption by the primordial void.

Only once did the people of Ma’ehmaq challenge Ginungagap. He had forced a population expansion to see if his experiments would be better served by having more servants. The growing population proved difficult to control as simply as a smaller population had been. The insurrection on Ma’ehmaq was brief, however, and Ginungagap quickly culled the population of his zealots back to a manageable number.

Joining the Sith Reform
Other rituals he learned allowed him to invoke powerful visions, showing him distant events in the past, present, and many possible futures. Through these visions, Ginungagap learned much of the galaxy's past and stayed in touch with its present. Eventually, intrigued by the new war between the Republic and Sith Empire, he allowed the Force to direct his path and dropped out of hyperspace almost on top of a massive capital ship.

Boarding with little trouble, given the many methods of cloaking with which he'd become familiar, Ginungagap made his way through the winding corridors by instinct alone, allowing the Force to guide him and incapacitating any who stood in his way. He eventually arrived in what appeared to be a throne room where two men were conversing - one on the throne, one before it. Ginungagap felt himself guided toward the man on the throne, and allowed the man, Justicar Ardedech, to question him. Proving that he had knowledge that Ardedech needed for a secret project, Ginungagap was accepted into the Reformation as a Lord.

With his knowledge and power, however, it was not long before Ginungagap proved worthy of a higher station. Raised to the rank of Councilor, Ginungagap took over operations pertaining to lorekeeping and the exploration of the Force. He used this station to rifle through Sith archives with immunity, learning what he could not through visions alone.

Disappearance
As the Sith Reform's goals were met, one by one, the political movement began to lose its distinct shape and form. It soon began to meld into the Sith Empire it had helped create, and in doing so, Ginungagap was soon called upon to serve other masters, some of whom were in opposition to one another.

Seeing the potential chaos and refusing to allow it to envelop him, Ginungagap vanished without a trace. It is rumored that he left behind a number of holocrons, hidden to any but those he deems able to understand how to wield the powers he came to know.

Personality and Traits
Ginungagap lived for longer than some civilizations have existed and as a result tended to skip to the end of conversations when he knew the outcome. One such instance of this was when he first met Archon Ardedech. When Ardedech asked him who he was, Ginungagap confirmed that Ardedech was in charge and simply told the man, "You require my assistance." While Ginungagap knew this, no one else present did and Ardedech had to painstakingly walk Ginungagap through the explanation.

Ginungagap cared little for individual lives. He watched so many beings die, and was the cause of such a large number of those deaths, that sentient life often appeared no more important to him than that of the grass he walked upon in the temple he called home.

Having consumed and destroyed so many Force-presences, and having his Force presence become a void, caused Ginungagap to believe that he had become the living embodiment of the void for which he was named. As he said to Councilor Igrackeng in his first meeting with the Reformation:

Notable Traits
Ginungagap was not physically intimidating to those who didn't know him, aside from the variety of threatening and death-themed robes he often affected. He was short and thin to the point where one might describe him as frail-looking. When he wore no mask, his face seemed to confirm this with his lanky white hair and scruffy white beard. His eyes were white with blindness, and visually he seemed to just be a very old man.

However, anyone who stood near him was able to feel something wrong with him. The air around him was cold, and grew colder the closer one was to him. With his ruined eyes he rarely looked directly at those around him, even when speaking to them, but many said that they could feel when his focus was on them - like a weight on their mind. If he chose to look directly at someone he was speaking to, this effect multiplied considerably.

Force-sensitives could generally pick up his Force presence quickly and easily. As a void in the Force, he felt unnatural and dangerous to anyone who could sense him. Those who tried to peruse his thoughts or pierce the void risked losing themselves to it, as the village elders he once met in Wild Space had done. Even if they were more cautious, there was generally a consistent tugging at the Force presence of anyone in close proximity to Ginungagap.

Powers and Abilities
Ginungagap collected many obscure powers during his travels, though much of the knowledge he obtained was ritualistic and more complex than could be performed during a battle.

Altered Perception
Ginungagap was an expert in subverting perception and thought. He was talented at creating illusions of two kinds - inward illusions, forcing a target to experience something that wasn’t there (usually their greatest fears), and outward illusions, conjuring objects and beings where there were none that were realistic enough to fool even computer systems.

Ginungagap was also adept at Memory Rubs, which allowed him to erase either specific memories or a target’s entire memory, and Concealment, allowing him to hide himself and select objects both in the Force and from the five mundane senses. If he so chose, he could also alter his Force presence to make it appear like that of a Light Sider or more typical Dark Side, hiding the void at his core.

One of his more esoteric abilities was Waves of Darkness, a spell that created an almost tangible sphere around him of pure Dark Side energy. Any caught within the radius of this effect experience extreme pain, fear, and confusion. Similarly, Ginungagap often used Shadow of Uneasiness, a comparable ability that encouraged non-sentient creatures to avoid him at all costs, to travel the wilderness of many worlds.

Perhaps greatest among these abilities, however, was Qâzoi Kyantuska, known also as Suppress Mind and Mind Control. This ability allowed him to dominate the minds of others and impose his will on them. Using Qâzoi Kyantuska aided Ginungagap in subduing and conquering the people of Ma’ehmaq.

Subverting Nature
Ginungagap’s long life also led to many skills that involved bending or even breaking the laws of nature. By necessity of his age, he’s become an expert at Dark Healing, allowing him to survive most any wound, and Willfull Preservation, the elongation of his physical lifespan by pure force of willl.

Perhaps better known among his self-preservation techniques, however, was Ginungagap’s Consumption ability. With his Anzac biology, he was born capable of absorbing the life fore of another living being. His experiments and explorations have expanded on that ability, allowing him to consume the life force of multiple beings at once and from a distance. He has also developed the ability to consume the Force from plant life and even barren areas, though this is less efficient than sentients.

Power Base
Ginungagap was rarely concerned with the things that Sith culture relied upon - power, fame, wealth, glory, etc. His primary pursuits were to learn all there was to know of the Force and to live forever, though the latter was merely to enable the former. Nevertheless, he acquired a not-inconsiderable amount of wealth and followers to support these goals.

Followers
Ginungagap had many followers, even before joining the Reform movement. On the world he made his own, Ma’ehmaq, he had conquered and enslaved the native peoples and they began to worship him as a god. He encouraged this, allowing their devotion to transform from forced to zealous.

Having servants such as these allowed him to pursue knowledge more fully, given that his needs were almost always met as soon as they arose. For a millennium or so he experimented with forcing a population boom, ordering his servants to have children as often as possible. However, this led to a more unruly populace and the beginnings of rebellion. Ginungagap shut this down and went about re-instilling fear and reverence in his followers by culling thousands.

Since that time, he’s had around 5,000 devotees in various positions, though the planet had an approximate population of 240 million sentients (most of whom knew of him and his cult and gave them a wide berth). Approximately one-fourth of his devotees were warriors and guards, another fourth were priests and assistants, and the rest were farmers and workers. Of his approximately 1,250 warriors, maybe 100 were Force-users. Most others with Force sensitivity were placed in the priesthood.

Wealth
Though Ginungagap rarely concerned himself with material wealth, he understood its value to others in the galaxy. Throughout his explorations, he discovered many untapped resources throughout the Unknown Regions. He would occasionally sell the location of these places, rich in either fertile land, minerals, metals, or workers, or would simply sell the items he found, such as gems and exotic plants and animals.

He always had enough credits for him to travel comfortably and safely, between 4,000 and 10,000 at any one time, but most of his actual wealth was in the vast libraries and reliquaries of the Temple Ma’ehmaq. He also knew of various mineral deposits across his planet which he left untapped until and unless they were needed.