Nous

In the Unfinished Universe, (PROSE: Coalfire ^[+]Loading...["Coalfire (short story)"]) Nous was the Founder of the Dukes of Time, the local Terran-descended equivalents of the Archons of Time. (PROSE: Architects of a Failed World ^[+]Loading...["Architects of a Failed World (short story)"])

History

The Terrans who would become the Dukes discovered the "gift of eternal life" in 1560 after something "fell from the sky" on an island in 1545. Subsequently, the whole world became united under one government in 1599. A man called Nous, having taken the title of "the Founder", discovered a way of rewriting reality in 1743 and began to lay plans for the construction of a Coulomb Collapse Initiator through which they could rewrite the very laws of physics to their advantage, ensuring their eternal domination over the lesser species. In 1996, the Temple of Temporality, and the Binding was finally enacted in 2028 with "approval from the Council of Dukes Most High": using the Initiator, the core of the sun would be "instantaneously transmuted into diprotons and burnt off in a flash", producing energy the Initiator would channel to reshape reality itself.

However, as critics whom Nous ignored had pointed out in advance, the new laws of physics which deleted the weak nuclear force would not allow the sun itself to continue to exist; thus, instead of only its core being transmuted, "Nous's Star" ceased to exist the moment the Binding was activated. Although failsafes relocated the Earth — now renamed Vesperos — to a different star system in the Sagittarius Nebula, the un-space left behind by the sun allowed creatures similar to the Second Universe's Star Vampires to stream out into the universe, sparking a protracted war between the Dukes of Time and these beings. After 404 years of fighting, Nous, having become paranoid about parts of the population becoming infected with vampirism, ravaged the surface of his own planet with temporal scarring and finally used the Coulomb Collapse Initiator to outright delete all Dukes of Time save himself from existence, remaining holed up in a time bubble the Temple of Temporality for aeons.

Eventually, he was discovered by multiversal travellers Abraytha Janus Colefia and Xiantio, and local Ales-Vos explorers Zhei and Reth. He welcomed them in a luxurious dining room, acting affable and claiming he wished to pass on the extinct Dukes' technology to the Ales-Vos. However, perceiving that Abraytha was part-vampire, he lured him away from the others, intending to use Abraytha's vampiric regeneration as fuel for the Initiator so as to use it to create a rift back to Abraytha's universe of origin, assuming it was the vampires' reality. He intended to then use the Initiator to alter the vampire universe's laws of physics to cause the vampires' complete annihilation. Abraytha was rescued by Xiantio, who lethally wounded Nous in the process.

However, this simply triggered the first of Nous's 350 regenerations, with Nous soon returning in a female form with long black hair. Before she could get her revenge, Abraytha wound up sacrificing her to the machine instead, using her three hundred and forty-nine subsequent deaths to power the creation of a rift to a random dimension. Zhei and Reth remained in control of the Temple and its technology, pledging to figure out how to use it to correct the mistakes in the Dukes of Time's laws. (PROSE: Architects of a Failed World ^[+]Loading...["Architects of a Failed World (short story)"])

Physical appearance

In his original body, Nous appeared as a tall, dark-haired man wearing green robes with large sleeves and stripes of red and white along the edges, adorned with elaborate, embroidered patterns. On his head, he wore a ceremonial headdress that "curved outwards and downwards, with a golden seal impressing itself upon the wearer's forehead".

In her short-lived second incarnation, Nous appeared as a woman with "long raven hair", and was somewhat taller than before. (PROSE: Architects of a Failed World ^[+]Loading...["Architects of a Failed World (short story)"])