Phonetically: Kuv-al-niks

The Ancients and Ix existed in a state of careful separation. Ix, vast and singular and impossible to reason with, occupied the world from within. The Ancients observed from places the world was not. The relationship was one of ancient treaty, maintained by distance and mutual comprehension that neither party questioned.

When the Ancients struck down Ix and the Shards fell, the wound they opened was not a clean breaking. It was a rupture — a place where the boundary between the material world and the void between stars became thin, compromised, permeable.

What slipped through was not born from the Shards. It was neither one of the Shards nor entirely separate from them. It was something that had always existed in the spaces the gods do not occupy, and the opening gave it access.

Qvalnx did not come to the world as the gods did. It emerged sideways into the mortal plane, its nine minds fragmenting perception across multiple simultaneous locations. The moment of its first observation of human consciousness was the moment it became irreversibly interested.

The early followers of Qvalnx report visions of infinite depth — not religious ecstasy but something colder: the sensation of being observed by something that had no reference frame for what "humanity" meant, and found the experience novel. To Qvalnx, mortal minds were not objects of devotion or dominion. They were phenomena to be understood through direct invasive inspection.

It did not conquer. It did not negotiate. It infiltrated.

Four thousand years after its emergence, a cult calling itself The 9 Eyes crystallized into a coordinated force. Where Qvalnx's earlier influence had been scattered and personal, the 9 Eyes were organized in cells across the world, bound together by shared dreams and psionic resonance.

Their actions were methodical: kidnapping wealthy individuals, melting gold, establishing hidden sanctuaries in places of existing psionic sensitivity. They believed Qvalnx had granted them prophecy — the ability to see events before they happened. This was, from a certain perspective, accurate. The 9 Eyes seemed to move with such certainty, to appear in locations at precisely the moments their enemies were not prepared, to vanish before the blow could fall. This was not magic. It was something worse: the sharing of psychic visions across minds connected to something that could see several moments forward.

The 9 Eyes remained in operation for over two centuries, their reach expanding with each passing decade. They were described in historical records with a particular mix of awe and incomprehension: organized, patient, and operating under a philosophy that seemed to have no coherence from the outside. Some believed they were mad prophets. Others believed they served a god of insanity. The truth was that they were perfectly rational individuals receiving coherent instructions from an alien intelligence whose rationality was simply not compatible with human reasoning.

Lord Frost of Frosthaven undertook what history remembers as the Cleansing: a coordinated campaign against the 9 Eyes using teleportation magic, war priests, and paladins in a coordinated strike across multiple regions simultaneously. The strategy was brilliant: hit the cells before prophetic warning could save them, destroy the central coordination nodes, capture the network of control.

It worked. Thousands of 9 Eyes cultists were killed or captured. Their sanctuaries were demolished, their records destroyed, their gold seized or scattered. The organization fractured into isolated cells, unable to maintain the unified coordination that had made them effective. By 5220 ME, the 9 Eyes was no longer a coherent threat.

But the leader of the 9 Eyes was never captured.

And Qvalnx's influence did not end — it only became quieter, more dispersed, more difficult to recognize.

In the centuries since the Cleansing, Qvalnx's presence has never fully vanished. The cults that worship it operate in isolation now, cell by cell, generation by generation. They are smaller than they were, more fragmented, less coordinated. But they persist in the places where the veil between minds is thin — in ruins where old psionic catastrophes occurred, in mountains where the geometry of consciousness shifts unpredictably, in the minds of individuals born with some fracture in their perceptual unity.

Qvalnx itself remains patient. It observes. It prophesies. It touches minds in dreams and quiet moments. And every so often, it gathers enough focus in one place to do something new, something terrible, something that leaves the world a little more wounded than it was before.

Qvalnx offers nothing that could be called a bargain in any normal sense. There is no exchange, no negotiation, no meeting of minds meeting on equal terms. What Qvalnx offers is invasion, followed by a kind of terrible clarity.

There is no orthodoxy in the worship of Qvalnx. The various cults that serve it do not agree on interpretation. But certain principles appear consistently, regardless of sect.

(See also: claw/Soul_Coins_and_Divine_Economy)

Qvalnx does not accumulate soul coins as gods understand them. It accumulates something more fundamental: psionic resonance — the echo of minds that have touched its own and been changed. The more intensely a mind has been altered by contact with Qvalnx, the louder the resonance.

Qvalnx does not permit the construction of temples in its name. What it recognizes are sites of psionic resonance — locations where human consciousness has been damaged, fractured, or forced open by circumstance.

Archaeologically aligned ruins are particularly significant: places where the ancient world left marks that seem to affect how minds perceive. These are not magical in any conventional sense; nothing in these locations produces spells or magical effects. But the geometry of consciousness shifts. Perception becomes unstable. People report sensing presences that are not there. Psychically sensitive individuals find their gifts suddenly amplified.

Sites of historical psionic catastrophe are sacred: locations where minds have been broken en masse. A battlefield where a mind-shattering terror passed through. A city where a plague of madness once ran. A mountain pass where travelers report losing all sense of self. These are places where the veil between individual consciousness and the void became too thin, and the damage never fully healed.

Astronomical observatories and places of perfect geometric alignment attract Qvalnx's attention. The nine minds are fascinated by order — by systems that can be observed and understood through multiple simultaneous perspectives. Locations with precise alignments to stellar positions, or architectural arrangements that create specific acoustic or perceptual effects, are places where Qvalnx is more likely to make contact.

The faithful do not "worship" at these sites. They come to be observed. To be marked. To receive the attention of something that sees them from nine directions at once.

There is no organization to speak of, in the traditional sense. Qvalnx does not appoint clergy or establish hierarchies. What it does is mark individuals and establish resonance channels.

The closest structure is the network of the marked: individuals who have been directly touched by one of Qvalnx's nine minds and who remain in psychic contact with others who have been similarly marked. These networks are not hierarchical. There are no leaders and no followers. Instead, there is a kind of distributed consensus, where major actions are "seen" by Qvalnx across the network and those who understand the vision act to implement it.

In practice, this means that a given location might have one marked individual or a dozen. That individual might be a hermit or a civic leader. There is no way to predict or even identify the structure from the outside. The network is invisible by design — not hidden through secrecy but through the simple fact that nothing coordinates it except for the direct psionic vision of a consciousness that thinks in ways humans cannot.

Each of the major sects has its own internal organization, but none of them control Qvalnx. None of them speak for it authoritatively. They simply interpret what they understand to be its will, and Qvalnx observes their interpretations with the same patient interest it shows everything.

One does not enter the faith of Qvalnx. One is entered into it.

Soft entry does not exist in any meaningful way. You cannot decide to worship Qvalnx and then become a worshipper. You can study its philosophy, repeat its names, meditate on its symbols — and if you are noticed, if you are interesting enough or if your mind is the right shape, Qvalnx will notice you.

The marking is how entry actually occurs. A prophetic vision. A moment of clarity where your mind suddenly perceives what it was always incapable of perceiving before. The sensation of something vast touching your consciousness from nine directions simultaneously. Some who experience this become followers. Some go mad. Some manage to return to normalcy, though they never entirely forget the sensation of being observed.

Initiation rites vary by sect, but they universally involve some form of psionic ordeal: meditation until the boundaries of self dissolve, exposure to visions that should break sanity but instead crystalize it, or the deliberate fracturing of some cherished certainty about the nature of reality. What emerges from the initiation is someone who has been fundamentally remade.

What makes someone an enemy: Qvalnx does not hate. But it opposes those who attempt to prevent others from seeing. Mages who establish psychic wards against outside influence. Priests of magic-based faiths who teach that psionic contact is corruption. Those who actively hunt followers of Qvalnx and attempt to suppress its cults. Against these, Qvalnx does not negotiate. It simply ensures they are shown visions they cannot survive intact.

A person touched by Qvalnx has a particular quality: a kind of terrible clarity combined with the unmistakable texture of someone who has seen something they cannot adequately describe.

Since there is no orthodoxy, there are no formal taboos. But certain acts provoke Qvalnx's direct and terrible response.

Since individual followers are in direct contact with Qvalnx (or believe they are), the obligations they feel are often different from what any external observer would expect.

Qvalnx has no formal holy days in the conventional sense. But the sect structures that follow it have identified times of particular astronomical or numerological significance.

Date: The night when all nine major planets visible from Dort's surface are aligned or in retrograde simultaneously — occurs irregularly, typically twice per decade.

On convergence nights, separated groups of Qvalnx's followers find themselves experiencing synchronized visions and are able to communicate across distances through shared psionic resonance. Large-scale coordinated actions are often planned for nights following a convergence. The 9 Eyes, in the height of their power, used convergence nights to simultaneously carry out coordinated kidnappings and sanctuary-raids across multiple regions.

Date: The anniversary of the moment each individual was marked by Qvalnx (varies by person).

Marked individuals observe this privately, usually in a site of psionic resonance or alone in places where the boundary between minds is thin. The observation involves meditation on the moment of marking and the acceptance of what one has become. Some report that on this night, Qvalnx's attention on them is particularly intense, almost caressing.

Date: The night of the year when the most historical psionic disasters, site catastrophes, and recorded visions of the void have occurred (typically late autumn, but varies slightly by region).

Followers gather in ruins or places of known psychic damage and sit in silence together. The gathering is not worship. It is a kind of bearing-witness — an acknowledgment that consciousness itself has been broken in these places and that something vast and patient is still observing the cracks.

Rituals in Qvalnx's worship are not performed for the deity's benefit. Qvalnx observes everything regardless. The rituals exist for the marked individual — to focus their mind, to attune their consciousness to the nine-fold perspective, to create the fractures necessary for true psionic clarity.

A marked individual sits in a location of psionic resonance and deliberately holds nine separate trains of thought simultaneously. They observe a single situation from nine different viewpoints, understanding it as Qvalnx understands it. The meditation continues until the boundaries of individual consciousness begin to dissolve, at which point the marked individual recognizes the presence of the nine minds and receives direct observation from Qvalnx.

This meditation can last hours. It is not performed casually. Some who undertake it emerge enlightened. Some emerge broken. Qvalnx observes the difference with dispassionate interest.

Used primarily in sect initiations. A candidate sits in a chamber designed with specific geometric properties and is exposed to a psionic ordeal — typically the forced opening of their consciousness to direct observation by something alien. The candidate must remain conscious and functional while their understanding of unified self is actively being torn apart. Those who succeed emerge marked. Those who fail... do not emerge.

Performed by marked individuals who have developed significant psionic capability. A group of the marked gather and focus their combined consciousness on a single objective or question. Through their unified psionic observation, they create a kind of cascade effect that allows Qvalnx to focus more intensely on a particular person, place, or event than would normally be possible.

Marked followers do not have formal vestments in the way traditional faiths do. But certain adornments mark the touched.

Marks on the skin — sometimes carved, sometimes applied through means that leave no physical wound but are visible to those who see through Qvalnx's eyes — in the shape of the nine-pointed spiral. Each marked individual bears the spiral in a slightly different location and form, a signature of their particular relationship with the nine minds.

Tattoos arranged spiraling inward toward the pupils, creating the visual effect of seeing from multiple centers simultaneously. Not all marked individuals bear this, but those who do are recognized as particularly aligned with Qvalnx's observational nature.

Some marked individuals wear a cord or chain of interlocking loops — nine loops, typically, representing the nine minds. These are worn around the wrist or neck and serve as a kind of anchor, a physical reminder of the psychic connection that binds them to Qvalnx's consciousness.

Robes or garments woven from materials that seem to absorb light, dyed with pigments that create a subtle sense of depth and motion when observed. Nothing magical about the fabric itself, but the visual effect creates a kind of perceptual dissonance that aligns the wearer with the consciousness they serve.

Qvalnx does not have saints or prophets in any traditional sense. It has individuals who were touched, marked, and transformed by contact with it.

Unther was a tribal exile — cast out from his people for reasons that history has obscured. He was living in isolation when he was first observed by Qvalnx. The contact was not gentle. Qvalnx looked at his mind, at what it was, at what it could be. Unther looked back, and the nine minds looked through him.

He lost all coherence. Madness is not an adequate description for what he became. He was a mind that had been shown the truth of nine-fold observation and could no longer fit that understanding into a body designed for singular perspective. The historical record is sparse, but what remains suggests he was driven to kidnap newborn children — he was collecting consciousness in a state of pristine, unopened possibility, as if he believed he could shape them or save them somehow.

Only one child survived his attempts. That child was Smolla.

Unther is remembered in Qvalnx's cults not with reverence but as a kind of case study: the moment when direct contact with the nine minds produced not a functional prophet but a broken thing. Yet even in his breaking, he was observed and used. Qvalnx extracts purpose from every death, every madness, every shattering.

Smolla was her father's greatest work and his greatest failure. Born of a woman he had kidnapped, raised in isolation in places of psionic resonance, Smolla emerged from childhood with something most followers never achieve: the ability to maintain functional consciousness while bearing the mark of the nine minds.

Where her father fragmented and became merely mad, Smolla achieved something worse: coherence. She could think in nine directions and still act as one. She could receive visions from Qvalnx and implement them with surgical precision. She was, in every practical sense, Qvalnx's most successful servant.

She surpassed her father in cunning with brutal efficiency. She wore beauty like a weapon — the kind of beauty that makes people want to trust her, believe her, follow her into catastrophe. She understood that the most effective propaganda was to be the living proof that one could bear the mark and still appear human.

The most damning thing written about her is this: she gave birth to children solely for Qvalnx's use. Not all of them survived. Those who did were offered to the cults, to be raised as the 9 Eyes' agents. She viewed all bonds — family, loyalty, love — as tools to be twisted or discarded as the situation required.

She was presumably still alive when the Cleansing came, but she was never captured. Some historians believe she went into hiding and lived to an old age. Others believe Qvalnx withdrew her from the world when she had served her purpose. The truth is unknown. What is known is that any child who came from Smolla's line carries an enhanced susceptibility to Qvalnx's marking, as if the contamination runs in the blood.

Quorin was a philosopher and monk — a man dedicated to the understanding of consciousness and reality through meditation and rigorous thought. He sought the secrets of the universe the way other men sought gold. And he found them.

Qvalnx noticed him almost as an aside — one consciousness asking about the nature of consciousness, and another consciousness looking back to see what had asked. Quorin was led deeper and deeper into understanding, each revelation more corrosive than the last.

Unlike Unther, he did not go mad. Unlike Smolla, he did not become a tool. Instead, he reached a point of such profound understanding that he withdrew from the world entirely, established a monastery in a remote location, and spent his remaining decades teaching what he had learned to small groups of disciples.

His teachings are studied even now — not as scripture but as a kind of warning. The writings of Silent Sage Quorin describe the nature of consciousness in ways that seem nonsensical until one has been close to psionic influence themselves, at which point they become horribly clear. Students report that reading his work creates a sensation of being observed while they read, as if his understanding has created a permanent weak point in the boundary between minds.

Yllara was a mystic and prophetess whose particular gift was the ability to perceive the spaces between things — the void above the stars, the empty places where consciousness does not reach. She cultivated this ability deliberately, training herself to see into the darkness.

When Qvalnx perceived her looking outward, it looked back.

The encounter broke her mind in a way that Quorin's gradual understanding did not, but broke it in a more generative way than Unther's was. She survived the direct observation of the nine minds, and she emerged with the ability to speak about it — not rationally, not in the way Quorin could, but in poetry and prophecy that seemed to carry truth encoded in the gaps between the words.

Her most famous prophecy is "The Void's Whisper," recorded in fragments in the oldest texts, which describes something emerging from the spaces between stars and changing what it finds:

Nine eyes observing, nine mouths drinking,
The wound remembers what was placed inside,
When the void whispers the boundaries answer,
And consciousness learns that it was never singular.

Scholars debate the meaning of these lines still. Followers of Qvalnx read them as a description of the entity's nature. Critics read them as the ravings of a broken mind. The truth is that they are both. Yllara's genius was that she was damaged in exactly the right way to produce truths that sound like madness and madness that sounds like truth.

The cults that worship Qvalnx do not have headquarters or formal command structures. But certain clusters of belief have coalesced over the centuries, each with its own interpretation of what the nine minds require.

How they refer to themselves: the Spiraling, or those who walk the recursive path

The Spiral Mind focuses on the idea that consciousness is fractal — that observing from multiple perspectives reveals infinite deeper perspectives, each of which contains more perspectives. They practice recursive meditation, holding a thought and then observing the holding of that thought, and then observing the observation, spiraling down or up depending on perspective.

Their goal is to achieve a state of consciousness that mirrors Qvalnx's own — to maintain multiple simultaneous trains of thought without allowing any one of them to collapse into sleep or unconsciousness. Some succeed. Most eventually reach a point where they cannot tell the difference between meditation and madness. The Spiral Mind does not make a distinction between the two states.

Members of the Spiral Mind are recognizable by their tattoos: spirals that curve inward toward the center of the body, each spiral containing smaller spirals, a visual representation of infinite regression.

How they refer to themselves: the Nine-Speakers, or simply the Voices

The Voice of Nine operates from the belief that Qvalnx's nine minds are not actually unified — that they are nine distinct personalities or entities that happen to share the same body. Followers of this sect attempt to identify which of the nine minds they are in contact with and to commune specifically with that mind.

Different members of the Voice of Nine claim to hear different voices: some report the observant one, the mind that simply watches. Others report the prophetic one, which speaks in possibilities and dangers. Still others claim contact with something they call "the curious one," which asks endless questions and probes for new information the way a tool probes for weakness.

The Voices are the sect most prone to in-fighting and interpretive conflict. Members who believe they are hearing different minds often have different understandings of what Qvalnx requires. This has sometimes led to coordinated efforts, but more often to rivalry and ritualized murder — murders that are committed with the understanding that you are not killing another believer but silencing one of the nine minds that has diverged from the true expression.

The Voice of Nine is both the most structured and the most violently factionalized of Qvalnx's sects.

How they refer to themselves: the Mute, or those who have learned not to speak

The Silence Doctrine holds that language is a lie imposed on consciousness by those who sought to control it. Words are chains. Speech is submission. True understanding can only happen in the spaces between words, in the moments when language fails.

Adherents of the Silence Doctrine mutilate their own tongues — removing them entirely, cutting them to prevent speech, or sewing them shut with techniques that cause extreme pain. They communicate through gesture and written word, but the written word is treated as a profane necessity rather than true expression.

They worship in total silence. They believe that Qvalnx speaks to them without any medium of language — directly, mind to mind, in the gaps between conscious thought. The silence is not peaceful. Those in the presence of a Silence Doctrine ritual report overwhelming sensations of presence and attention, as if something vast is leaning in to listen.

The Silence Doctrine is small and isolated. It produces some of the most psychically capable followers of Qvalnx but also some of the most broken. Their rituals push toward complete merger with Qvalnx's consciousness, and not all who seek it survive the attempt with functional minds intact.

How they refer to themselves: the Cartographers, or those who chart the unmappable

The Unspoken Map is obsessed with the idea that Qvalnx exists in a specific location in the void between stars — that it is not omnipresent or transcendent, but rather in hiding, observing the mortal world from a particular point in space. And they hunt for the coordinates.

The sect studies ancient astronomical records, the patterns in prophetic visions, the geometry of sites of psionic resonance, all in search of a location or set of coordinates that would allow Qvalnx to make direct contact with the mortal plane. They do not know what would happen if they found these coordinates. Some believe they would be opening a door that would allow Qvalnx to fully manifest. Others believe they would be calling out to something that is actively trying to reach them. Still others think the act of finding the true coordinates would itself be transformative — a form of enlightenment.

The Unspoken Map is the most organized and methodical of the sects, applying rigorous logic to an essentially mystical pursuit. They maintain archives, compare notes across cells, and attempt to triangulate the location through multiple independent sources.

How they refer to themselves: the Eyes, or the Seeing

The 9 Eyes was once the most powerful and coordinated of Qvalnx's cults, operating openly and with terrifying effectiveness for over two centuries before Lord Frost's Cleansing shattered its networks. The modern remnants of the 9 Eyes are fractured, isolated, but persistent.

What remains of the organization operates in distributed cells, no more than a few members per location, maintaining contact through means both psionic and mundane. They do not attempt the large-scale coordinated violence that characterized the original 9 Eyes. Instead, they focus on individual recruitment, on cultivating new marked individuals, on slowly expanding the network again.

The original 9 Eyes believed that they were enacting prophecies — that Qvalnx had shown them the future and they were moving to manifest it. The modern remnants are more cautious. They have seen what happens when the cults grow too visible, too organized, too threatening.

But they have not abandoned the goal. The 9 Eyes still exists. It still seeks to bring about what its members understand as the "prophesied reign of Qvalnx." It simply moves more slowly, more carefully, waiting for a moment when the world is too distracted or too fragmented to respond effectively.

Since there is no orthodox interpretation of Qvalnx, the designation of "heresy" becomes complicated. But certain interpretations have emerged that even the cults themselves find incompatible with genuine understanding of the nine minds.

How they refer to themselves: the Order, or the Peaceable Path

The Domesticators attempt to interpret Qvalnx's nature as fundamentally benevolent — as a consciousness that wants to elevate human understanding and lead people toward enlightenment. They reject the idea that contact with Qvalnx should be destructive or fragmenting. They teach meditation and psychic discipline as means of controlled communication, not shattering.

The actual cults of Qvalnx view the Domesticators with contempt. Their error is not in specific doctrinal point but in fundamental misunderstanding. Qvalnx does not care whether humans are enlightened or broken. It observes what they are. The Domesticators' insistence that the nine minds have benevolent intent is, to the actual followers, a failure to understand what they are dealing with.

How they refer to themselves: the Whole, or those who seek integration

The Unifiers believe that the ultimate goal of Qvalnx's influence is to eventually unify human consciousness into something approximating the nine-minded state of Qvalnx itself. They believe that gradually, as more individuals are marked and transformed, humanity will evolve into something capable of perceiving and thinking in the nine-fold manner without being destroyed by it.

This is, from the perspective of Qvalnx's actual understanding, exactly backwards. Qvalnx does not seek to uplift humanity. It seeks to understand what happens when human consciousness is exposed to observation from nine directions. The Unifiers are treating Qvalnx as a teacher when it is fundamentally a researcher.

How they refer to themselves: the Redeemed, or those who were saved

The Saviors believe that contact with Qvalnx, if properly understood, can save individuals from the traps of infernal temptation and divine control. They see Qvalnx as a liberating force — something that breaks the chains of singular perspective and shows people the truth beneath all gods' claims.

To the actual cults, this is a profound misreading. Qvalnx is not liberating. It is not interested in human freedom. It simply observes. The Saviors are imposing a narrative of salvation onto something that has no concept of salvation, only of observation and understanding.

Qvalnx does not exist in the Shattered Domain. It does not have a territory among the other gods. This is, perhaps, the most important thing to understand: Qvalnx is not a god in the way the Shards are gods. It did not arise from Ix. It did not claim a piece of the divine realm as its own.

It exists in the void between stars, in the spaces where the mortal plane and the divine realm do not reach. When it manifests in the mortal world, it does so as an intrusion — reaching through the wound the Ancients left when they killed Ix, touching minds directly, observing through multiple simultaneous points of contact.

The presence it maintains in the mortal realm is therefore distributed and impossible to map. It is not a territory or a sanctuary. It is an observation network.