Unbeing

The Unbeing, also known as the Other and the God Who is Not, is an ancient entity typically associated with luck, chaos, shadows, reflections, and other uncertain and nebulous aspects of existence. Although most are familiar with the idea of the Unbeing, vanishingly little is truly known about it, and few give it any further thought. Even the proper mode of referring to it is uncertain, and people tend to use its various names without preference or discrimination.

It is assumed by many that the entity known by these names exists solely as part of the Elestaarian worldview, as representative of the cosmic forces of darkness and disorder against which followers of the God of Good Thought strive. But in truth the Unbeing has existed -- in the minds of mortals if nowhere else -- for far longer than its supposed nemesis. Ancient oral traditions from millennia past speak of the Unbeing or the Other, and the earliest known written references to this strange and mysterious being go back as far as ancient Amunat. All this being so, it is uncertain how many people have ever actually worshipped this god or considered themselves its followers, despite occasional mention of propitiatory rituals and invocations of the god in matters of luck.

Despite its Elestaarian associations with evil, very little in the scanty traditions associated with the Unbeing can in fact be classified as such. Shadows, reflections, delusions, and hallucinations all have been said to belong to the nebulous realm of the Unbeing; so too it has been said of the hours of evening and morning twilight, the moments that lie between waking and dreaming, and sometimes the world of dreams itself. Perhaps more than anything, the Unbeing embodies uncertainty and the unknown: chance, chaos, unformed matter, thoughts and ideas not quite realized, possibility and potential -- for good or ill. The Unbeing is, in short, not so much the God That is Not, as the God That is Not (Yet).

Altogether there is very, very little information on the Unbeing, and most of it is as vague and nebulous as the Unbeing itself. Written records about it are limited to simple mention of the Unbeing's name or the hieroglyphic standing for it, and widely scattered references to performing a ritual or making a prayer. No details of what these might have involved have ever been discovered, and there is no evidence that the strange god was ever in fact worshiped, just occasionally propitiated or beseeched. There is in fact so little concrete material pertaining the God That is Not, either written or oral, that its persistence in cultural memory seems to be mostly a reflection of mortalkind's need to assign some supernatural force to fortune and uncertainty, and, far more recently, to evil.