Gathered information on the Masari
Long ago, an ancient and highly developed race favoured by the dragon gods called the Masari developed in a distant galaxy. They resembled humanity in the sense that we resemble apes.. They were lovers of beauty and spirituality; devout followers of the Dragon gods and the Primordials, and to them a Dragon was a creature far more sacred and precious than any other form of life, but despite these beliefs their technology, magic, and psychic prowess was developed to a great degree. They decided to share their gifts with the universe at large, and went from world to world, uplifting many races, but always reshaping them to resemble the Masari. The Novians for example; were originally a race of what humans would call "Sapient Terror birds" before the Masari altered them to resemble their mammalian forms.
One of the MasariThey visited the Earth some two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and they took the hairy, ugly bipedal apes that were humanity's ancestors and altered them to make them beautiful like they were. They gave a few select groups some of their technology in exchange for following their beliefs. One Masari ship stayed on the Earth, but the rest left the world in search of more to share the gift of civilization with. Eventually, the Masari would meet the species that would make up the core of the Hierarchy; a civilization already at a spacefaring level, but one threatening to self destruct as they were desperate for resources their part of the universe couldn't provide anymore due to their voracious industry.
The Masari gave them what they needed to survive, but when they tried to alter the forms of the many species; seeing their skinny, mouthless, large brained forms among other displeasing shapes as hideous; the Hierarchy rose up against the Masari who in retaliation closed off their entire observable universe off to them. But a hundred thousand years ago, after ten thousand years of war with something known as the thought sin, the Masari simply vanished. But their other uplifted races began to develop, though in the case of humanity, only certain enclaves of the species were given the full gifts, if inferior to the original, gifts of the Masari. The most prominent of these would be the Astartes, lead by one Gabriel Thule, who would lead his order to sheperd mankind throughout the ages, fighting menaces mankind was better off not knowing about as they spread across the stars to form the Starbourne Imperium.
Some more
Among many other species, humanity and the Novii have been touched by the Masari, an enigmatic forerunner race that seemed to rule over much of the universe after being given governance over it and the responsibility to watch over the development of sapient life in the universe by the True Dragons and the Primordials, as well as stewardship over the power of truenaming to go along with their advanced understanding of magic, powerful psionics, and incredible technology.
The Hierarchy was formed from a coalition formed by the Overseers, locked away by the Ecumene for it's rapacious and evil nature. Black hand records seem to indicate that even they never could defeat the Masari in a stand up conflict, and that they were one of the greatest players in the war in heaven that tore apart much of the cosmos throughout the billions of years of that ancient, primordial conflict before all conflicts.
The Masari Ecumene seemed to have largely vanished about a hundred thousand years ago following a massive die-off of sapient life and cultures, leaving only their massive artifacts and what artificial intelligences remained of them during what seemed to be a massive war. Records seem to indicate they fought a war with "the thoughts of the Icon of our sins given reality". And depictions show an all consuming parasite.
The prime cryptusDespite every trick they pulled, they couldn't stop this threat from nearly devouring the universe, and thus shielded what sapient life remained before they fired off massive pulse waves that destroyed the very concept of thought for all those who were not shielded from it's effects and the nonmechanical. Anything that could support "the thoughtsin" that was not protected perished immediately, disintegrated.
With the disappearance of the Masari, the Hierarchy's shell collapsed and the shields withdrew, leaving a great many treasures of their civilization left for the looting. But some remained, one of their greatest military leaders, the Prime-Cryptus was locked away in an artificial shielded galactic supercluster along with his supporters and pet projects after they had deemed his attempt to convert sapient life into tortured machines to better fight the Thoughtsin abhorrent and his grudge against the uplifted races following the loss of his sons to them a danger, they sealed the enormously powerful warrior away to let him stew on what he had done and hope he would come to terms with the decisions of the rest of the Ecumene, not counting on the fact that his exile would if anything, only further intensify his hatred and desire to restore the Masari to dominance..
New content
With the birth name of Primal Radiance Creates Breathing Music, the man who would become the Lifeshaper was born into the Lifeworker caste which was the caste entrusted with the biological, medicinal, and otherwise living being related and the third ranking caste in the Forerunner's caste system. Rising to the esteemed rate of Promethean, Primal would soon attain the highest sort of glory her caste could achieve, the rank of Lifeshaper, the highest ranking life scientist in the entire empire and it's greatest healer.
A lifeworker
The Lifeshaper was noted not only for her tremendous skill as a scientist and healer, but for her great motherly tendencies and caring nature. Seeking to uphold the Dragon Gods and Primordials entrustment of the mantle of responsibility to the Masari, she deplored war and violence and was far more interested in peacefully understanding the nature of all living things. She was a great friend of the Old Ones, who's technology was shaped around the molding of life into new shapes for a new purpose
Which made their eradication during the war in heaven with the Necrons a deeply upsetting moment in time for her, but at the very least, she hoped that the end of the War In Heaven would mark the end of further conflict and violence. She sincerely hoped that there would be no further need for war and conflict and gave many a prayer to the dragon gods to that effect. And yet, the Ecumene still continued internecine warfare, often with it's very own former allies.
It would be at this time that the Prime Cryptus would meet her after returning home from the war, disheartened by the Masari's inability to win a victory during the billions year long war in heaven. She found him to be charming and handsome, and while she'd rather not wage continued warfare, she found that his philosophy of peace through power was perhaps, ideal for what they needed. The two fell in love and were soon married, siring many children in their union, even if many saw reason to be alarmed in the union of the leaders of two castes, which made for a powerful political alliance that could not be ignored.
Primal Radiance Creates Breathing Music
The Masari, being an incredibly vain species, went around the cosmos, uplifting species or select groups from a species to watch how their civilizations would react to suddenly rising higher up on the scale of technological achievement before offering them a choice of whether or not they wished to allow the Masari to alter their forms, almost always making them more like them, and accounting for the vast number of human or near human species in the universe. She often had a hand in many of these "shapings" but always took care to make sure those offered a shaping were fully aware of just what it entailed.
Old One creations who resemble humans were even made as part of an alliance with the Masari, to secure their friendship, the scaley Old Ones would create a certain number of species that resembled the Masari form just to tickle their fancy. All the while the Masari proved to be quite standoffish, passive aggressive, or outright warlike to species they deemed to be "less than beautiful". Something which the Lifeshaper disapproved quite strongly of.
Roughly a million years ago, the Lifeshaper partook in the cordoning off of the Overseers and their nascent Hierarchy, agreeing that their aggressive, manipulative nature made them a danger to the rest of the universe should they achieve similar levels of technological achievement to the Masari. But also believing that had they some time to reflect, they would one day learn to lead a better life.
However, in time, the Masari found that their achievements came at a great cost though, as when the Thoughtsin came from beyond the universe, the Masari found that none would come to their aid. Any chance to quickly crush the outbreak was wasted when the Builder and Miner castes proved dismissive of the parasite and hampered the Life Worker and Warrior Servant caste's ability to perhaps stop the infection.
The Prime Cryptus proposed building a network of shield regions that could act as bases that would monitor for Thoughtsin outbreaks before marshalling out in force to provide military support, but the Grand Constructor, leader of the Builder Caste with the grandiose name of "Fabricator of all the winds and walks of life and existence", highest of all castes, instead proposed building superweapons in the MARATHON rings to do the job, and exiled Bearer for a time, stripping him of his rank for his "unbecoming conduct during political debate"..
Fabricator of all winds and walks of life and creation
This was a grave crime, but Fabricator was the most politically powerful Masari in the entire Ecumene as the highest ranking member of the highest ranking caste. But it did confirm the Lifeshaper's suspicions about him, that he was a deeply cruel and petty man who often destroyed people's lives for no other reason than that he could.
Then, out of spite for a mere warrior-servant daring to oppose him, the Grand Constructor sent the Cryptus' sons out to make a raid against the Humans in the Maw of Horror, dominated by the terrors of the warp that even the Thoughtsin was afraid to venture into, where they were killed by the forces of Chaos and their bodies turned into hideous spawn. This deeply grieved both the Prime Cryptus and the Lifeshaper, and the two carefully preserved their children's consciousness and imprinted them into combat skins and war sphinxes.
To add insult to injury, the Grand Constructor took a builder, barely out of his adolescence and having only entered the Promethean rate of the Warrior-Servant caste, named "Galactic winds bloom into everlasting peace" who had fallen out with his father and made him the new Cryptus, the Nova-Cryptus, and only because his family had great political power, noting he didn't even like Galactic winds terribly much, on the contrary, he hated his guts and told him "If not for your family's power, I would strip you down to a haze of burning brain cells and spread you out upon this field.”, but he wasn't Bearer.
The Nova-Cryptus himself had a deep crush on Primal Radiance, one that he made clear to her quite quickly. Masari society being a deeply polyamorous and polygamous one, she returned his affections, and the two were wedded soon. She found him to be a softer, gentler soul than the Prime Cryptus, but reminding her of him in many ways. Though she still loved the Prime Cryptus as well, whom she faithfully awaited and fought for the return of.
Galactic Winds and Primal Radiance
Galactic Winds Bloom Into Everlasting Peace
But rather annoyingly to Fabricator, Primal and Galactic Winds were both fond of Bearer, her still loving him deeply and he having looked up to him as an idol, and did their best to politically jockey for his return back to his former station. But before such a measure could be taken, the Malpsyche captured him, seeking revenge for when Bearer accelerated it's time stream to the heat death of the universe after capturing it's prime node at the start of the war, and inflicted deep and long lasting scars into his mind as it tortured him to make him suffer as he suffered.
Which warmed the cockles of Fabricator's petty, petty heart. but also served to make Bearer quite certifiably insane, and when he returned and was once again made didact (though sharing the position with Galactic Wind), he, with a now twisted worldview, sought a way to defeat the Thoughtsin once and for all, and combated their infection and logic plague by using the Composer, an abandoned method for immortality, to digitize the psyches of his soldiers after mutating himself in a failed attempt to gain immunity to the Thoughtsin to try and recreate the Me'traaid genome which the Jinkoro refused to give the Ecumene. His soldiers willingly became the Promethean machines, and proved to be a devastating lance into the parasite, but there weren't enough of them.
He not only had to fight the biomonstrosities of the Thoughtsin but also the machines of the A.I known as Vagabond Bias, which over the course of a forty three year conversation with the captured Malpsyche, betrayed the Masari after being convinced that compound minds such as the Thoughtsin and itself were the next stage of evolution, and that the Masari were going against the very mantle they sought to uphold by resisting it's attempts at assimilating all life.
The Prime Cryptus and his robotic Promethean army
Not because of attrition, but because he needed them in more places at once. Seeking revenge against mankind and other "child" races of the Masari and more soldiers, he mounted the composer into his personal flagship and used it to convert vast numbers of sapients into Promethean machines to fight for him and stripped entire worlds to become raw material for armies of sentinels, for a time beating back the Thoughtsin and reveling in his success.
But Primal, horrified by what he had done, knowing full well that the composer condemned those unwillingly drawed into it to eternal, never ending agony, betrayed him and ambushed him, knocking him out, withdrawing his machines and locking him and his loyal followers, including the relatively few members of his personal cadre of Promethean who had not been robotocized, in the Oubliette and sealed the rest off in a shielded region of space and made them undergo cryo-sleep, where hopefully the Domain, which served as a kind of internet for the Forerunners, would help him think on what he had done as the Ecumene secured what life they could and activated the rings.
But only too late did she realize that the Domain itself would be affected by the MARATHON rings, which meant that the Prometheans and Bearer were trapped in the Oubliette without it's potential guidance, and only deepening their intense hatred for humanity and her sister races. And if he ever returns from his Prison, there will be hell for man and all his kin to pay.
However, Primal and Galactic left a gift to their child races, giving them easy access to all Masari technology and instructions on how to reverse engineer it, as well as access to any installation save for Thoughtsin containment units should they want them. And given the massive number of Masari ruins and artifacts spread across the universe, this is quite the bounty that is awaiting the heirs to all the Forerunners have left behind. Primal and Galactic would then take the remaining Masari and leave the universe entirely, exiling themselves for having to go to such extreme measures to defeat the Parasite when they could have had the cure to it all had they not been so arrogant.
She watches from outside the universe, taking great interest in it's events, and is most interested in the emergence of the primalborn, and deeply concerned with the increasing activity of the Black Hand, which she believes could be a far greater threat than the Thoughtsin or Necron alliance could ever be. She's also mournful for every species the Hierarchy eradicates in it's genocidal quest.
Many call her the mother of all, for she shaped so many species and played such an important part in shaping prehistoric human interstellar civilization. She and her cadre of lifeworkers regards mankind and her sister species as a mother would regard her children. Mutant, Novii, Human, Symaarian, it doesn't matter, for she loves and cares for us all equally. Her affection for our kind was so great that she even betrayed her husband to save us all.
When the Builders were content to leave humanity to die when the MARATHON rings set up and hide in the shield regions, she was the one who fought for mankind to have shield regions built for the child races of the Masari first. She was the one who helped teach so many of the eldest of us the ways of civilization, helping us build and learn. And she still watches us from beyond the universe. Ready to help us again should we need it.
Powers
Most civilizations prayed to lesser cultures than the Masari. Even their children would be able to match the likes of your average god in their armor. The sentinels, their basic counter measures, would decimate armored battalions of today's world, Their warrior servants would be able to fight the likes of high end deities such as Thor or Ares level entities, the living Prometheans and other high ranking warriors would gleefully fight Skyfathers. Their greatest members would look down their noses at Elder gods.
The Lifeshaper, while primarily a scientist, is still formadible enough to crush entire pantheons of gods.
Beauty: Considered wondrously beautiful by nearly any of the Masari touched race's standards, her form suggests the ideal female, having imprinted upon many species the standard of female beauty. To the point that she exceeds the physical perfection of goddesses.
Strength: The Lifeshaper unarmored, would be able to shatter godly weapons like Gugnir with minimal force.. It's fair to say that she is stronger than anything the Earth has ever seen, even if she isn't quite as strong as the Crypti.
Durability: The Lifeshaper' skin is nearly impervious, generally requiring Divine steel or Anti-reality to pierce. Primary Adamantium blades simply break or bend against even the skin of her eyes.
Regeneration: Thanks to her rate mutations and innate Masari abilities, the Lifeshaper can regenerate from a single cell in short order. Nothing less than atomization will kill her.
Speed: When she wishes to, the Prime Cryptus can move and react at paces so great that light is entirely immobile to her in terms of perspective.
Mentality: Combined with a peerless intellect far beyond that of humanity is an immense psychic power of the likes that even the greatest human psion would never hope to compare to.
Magic: The Lifeshaper is an immensely powerful sorcerer and is a master of virtually any and all schools and forms of magic, easily surpassing the talents of gods of magic.
Truenaming: The Lifeshaper vocabulary with the true language of the cosmos is *extremely* impressive, and can easily alter the very fabric of reality with just her flowery, poetic speech.
Warp power and Cosmic might: Wielding both the power cosmic and the might of the warp, the Lifeshaper is capable of overpowering Daemons in their own realm or facing Celestials.
To see from beyond reality what your kind has wrought.
Unalterable powers: The Lifeshaper' powers cannot be taken away, reduced, or stolen, only added to. Although if one were to steal her body, such as by thoughtsin infection, one would technically have stolen his powers, though she has found the Jinkoro's me'traaid innoculation..
Fighting experience: She has been fairly extensively trained in combat, though she would like to stay as close to her pacifistic leanings as possible.
Equipment
Combat skin: A form of power armor made of Divine Steel, her Combat skin is some of the most advanced the universe ever has and ever will see. The technology involved in it is enough to make a futurist break down into tears, and not only involves normal defenses such as shielding and armor, but also more esoteric defenses such as magic runes, space warping to literally remove paths for a blow to strike at him, stasis fields, hard light generators, and suppressors that attack and shut down parts of the body or technology. The physical boost provided by the Combat Skin is also very impressive.
Weaponry: Via her hard light systems, the Prime Cryptus can generate just about any weapon she wants, to the point where she relies heavily on it as opposed to actually carrying any real weaponry in the rare occasion that she is forced to fight. Though she sometimes brings along divine steel versions of her usual hard light arsenal when faced with opponents who also utilize the glorious metal.
Ancilla: A series of extremely powerful A.Is, these act as sensors, command and control systems, second opinions, number crunchers, companions, and just about anything one could expect out of an A.I. They are far in excess in terms of sophistication to anything humanity has produced, and she has multiples of them in her armor.
Statistics
Height: 3.3 (11 feet tall)
Mass: One half of a ton
Eye color: Blue
Hair color: White
Species: Masari, Lifeworker caste, Bio-magus rate (Masari Vitamopificis Biomagus)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Associates: Masari exiles
Residence: In exile beyond the universe
Date of birth: October twenty fifth, ten billion years prior to present day.
An adolescent Lifeshaper.
Log in to comment