A Phoviverse MOC Article – Part 2

In yesterday’s article, I went through the two teams of beings that survived the death of the old MK4 Phoviverse. The Phoviverse is my long-running fictional universe, filled with a myriad of different beings which I swear are not all related to Bohrok. It just so happens that Allmaker Kinisis, the in-fiction creator of the universe, had an obsession with the species her son was taken from, and reused a lot of species blueprints to create the races of her universe. She also shared these blueprints with her fellow Life Goddesses, who ended up making very similar beings.

Anyway, here is part 2 of this series, where we look at some of the other major characters that survived the death of the MK4 universe, as well as the new heroes of the MK5 universe.

Now, before I continue, a small explanation is needed. Alongside MK4, I developed something called the Space Between Universes (also known as the Periuniversal Void), which acts as a constant continuity no matter what happens inside the main universe. With this comes several catch-all terms and species. The main rulers of this space are Life Goddesses, which have the power to create universes. Alongside them are Time Drakes, gods of time; Voidborns, deity-like beings that were never born inside universes and hold tremendous power and authority; Decay Lords, gods which no longer have universes to live in; and Divine Guardians, deities that exist only to protect Life Goddesses.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the last of the MK4 characters, before moving onto MK5

Okay, yes, I know, that’s just Tahnok-Kal there on the right. And I’ll explain him first, because he’s not just there for scale. Now, the Bohrok-Kal are long, long dead Bionicle characters that lasted for about five minutes and everyone hated. However, I am completely obsessed with them. So I came up with an alternate Bionicle universe where the Bohrok-Kal weren’t brutally murdered. And I can pretend it’s canon because Bionicle has multiple universes and timelines and Takanuva visits some of them.

Anyway, in this alternate universe, everything has different names. The Bohrok are called Cleansers, the Toa are called Imperators and Makuta are called Apocalyptics. In this timeline/alternate universe/whatever, the Cleansers are supposed to periodically wake up, cleanse every planet they are stationed on, then go back to sleep, in order to refresh the universe’s resources. Already-living beings can avoid the Cleansers by going to predetermined bunkers, but for some reason, one time, the Cleaners woke up but were put back to sleep before they could start their job, by the Imperators. The Cleanser Kal were then woken up in order to reawaken the Cleanser Hordes, but were repeatedly beaten back by the Imperators, to the point that they were nearly destroyed and were frozen in time. By the time the Cleanser Kal managed to break free and reawaken the hordes, the universe was essentially dead and empty, and the Imperators had destroyed themselves in ancient wars. So the Cleanser Kal’s backup programming was activated, and they awoke the hordes to destroy what remained of the universe, at the request of beings known only as the Vast Ones. However, rather than going back to sleep once their duty was done, the Vast Ones cursed the Cleanser Kal to drift aimlessly through the Periuniversal Void, because they had failed their duties.

Cold, alone and having six minds stuck sharing one and a half bodies, they were eventually picked up by a Decay Lord sect, where they worked as Decaylings. Most of the time, they just used the body of Cleanser Kal Wehl-Tah, which was the least damaged, since Cleanser Kal Wehl-Leh’s body lacked functional legs, and they would switch their brain-masks depending on what task they needed to do. Most of the Decay Lords were unable to decipher which Cleanser was which, so they just referred to them as Kal. Kal did eventually become Decay Lords themselves, and turned to the job of purification, the duty of removing Corruption, a godly cancer, from infected beings, mostly as they believed this to be a way to repent for their failures. They became so good at this that Kal were given their own ship and acted as freelancers, before eventually associating themselves with the Justar, Phantai and Thantir Decay Lord factions.

The other two characters, Seimeni and Galyn, they are members of the same Decay Lord sect. Galyn is an Elder Decay Lord, having been a Decay Lord for over one million years, and he is the current leader of the Thantir Decay Lords, although he has also been joint leader of the Thantir for the past 100 years, alongside his former colleagues and blood-bound companions Vikalos and Itaviir. While he rarely talks about his pre-Decay Lord days, Galyn claims to have once been mortal, a military leader, who had his family killed by a Time Drake so a Life Goddess by the name of Zay could her way with him. When Zay got tired, she handed Galyn back to the Time Drake, who made him into a god of death. Galyn eventually escaped his universe and immediately ran into the Phantai Decay Lords, where he ran into a fellow Decayling by the name of Itaviir and the two quickly became friends. During a meetup of various Decay Lord sects, the two of them met Vikalos, who was later transferred to the Phantai himself. Together, the three of them worked hard to become Decay Lords in record time, proving their strength and knowledge. The leader of the Phantai made the now blood-bound trio an offer, to create their own Decay Lord sect, and together, they founded the Thantir. The Thantir worked similarly to the Phantai, tracking down Decaylings, beings that were abruptly universe-less, and rehoming them before they were harmed by the nastier entities of the Periuniversal Void, as well as creating navigational charts for the surrounding sectors for other Decay Lords to use. Unfortunately, after a series of attacks by Voidborns, the Thantir were forced to downsize and the majority of the Decay Lords went to Deathven. While Galyn tried to keep things together, the three of them fell apart and went their separate ways, while Galyn remained as the sole leader of the Thantir, promising to continue his duties.

Seimeni on the other hand is a Life Goddess, and a relative of Kinisis, the Allmaker from the MK4 universe. She’s Kinisis’s niece, the daughter of Kinisis’s sister Athanasia. Seimeni started off as a death god, but after her universe ended via natural means, Seimeni briefly tried to make universes of her own, before deciding she didn’t enjoy it. Instead, she joined the Thantir Decay Lords, hoping to put her abilities to better use. Because of her sheer power, Seimeni was immediately accepted as a Decay Lord (sometimes gendered as a Lady of Decay) and her duties were mostly to help freshly caught Decaylings get orientated and onto the path of becoming Decay Lords themselves. She’d also occasionally teach Decaylings with Life Goddess potential the first early steps into Life Goddess magic. When the Thantir were forced to downsize, Seimeni stayed with Itaviir, Vikalos and Galyn, but was forced to leave after they caught her manipulating the Decaylings they had on board. After that, Seimeni bummed around the Periuniversal Void for a bit, before settling down with a nice Time Drake by the name of Kairos. Seimeni remained at a nearby Life Oasis, visiting Kairos regularly, until he one day disappeared within a young universe. Cold and alone, Seimeni rejoined the Thantir, looking for a new place to call home.

So what happened to the MK4 universe?

Well, this guy happened to it.

Arkidetelos, better known as Arkadin or just Arkay, is a death god made by the Life Goddess Kinisis and her partner, Kenon, God of the Void. He was once a mortal being, but Kinisis turned him into a deity for her new universe, making him work alongside Kairos, Dragon God of Time, Epani, Goddess of Space and Yisini, Goddess of Life. However, Arkay was never treated well and was often harassed by his sibling deities, but he very rarely lashed out. He knew that, if he did lash out, he’d be punished for it, cruelly, by Kinisis herself. That was until Kenon broke a promise to Arkay, and caused Arkay to temporarily steal Kenon’s immortality. Kinisis responded by robbing Arkay of his consciousness.

When the Golden Armies attacked the MK4 universe, Kinisis was unprepared, and sent Kairos, the Whenvern, to create an army of deities for her, while Epani and Yisini started hiding as many stars and planets as they could inside a small pocket dimension. When the battle was going badly, Kinisis decided to use Arkay’s unconscious body as a fission reactor, causing an explosion that wiped out both the Golden Army and the majority of the universe. Not wanting to lose what they had saved, Epani refused Kinisis entry back into the now miniaturized universe. Arkay was considered dead at first, but randomly appeared within the Thantir’s headquarters, where he slowly healed and decided he wanted to become a Decay Lord himself. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be too easy, because Arkay turned out to be somewhat unique, and a lot of beings wanted him dead or enslaved. Still, with the help of fellow Decaylings Retvik and Litvir, the three of them worked hard under the watchful gaze of Galyn, all of them narrowly avoiding death multiple times before becoming Decay Lords.

However, one day, a mission went wrong, and Arkay lost control, both physically and mentally. While Retvik and Litvir did manage to knock him out and contain him, Galyn deemed Arkay to be too much of a threat and sends him to a secure facility to be treated. Arkay accepted his fate and was slowly rehabilitated, but remained off-radar for a while, trying to live a normal, mortal-like life of his own. Until he got a message from his old fellow deity, Epani.

Epani begged Arkay for help, claiming that Kinisis was trying to forcibly take Epani and Yisini’s universe from them. She had a plan on how to stop Kinisis, she just needed Arkay, the death god that he was, to fulfill the final task, of destroying Kinisis’s true heart. Epani promised that Arkay would be able to leave once Epani and Yisini reclaimed full control of their universe, but this however was a ruse. Instead, as Arkay killed Kinisis, Kinisis managed to land a fatal blow on Arkay as well. The universe started to shift, and Epani and Yisini, with some help from Kairos, the Whenvern, started to reshape the universe in their own image, stealing the last of Kinisis’s power to resurrect Arkay and bind him to the new universe, wiping his memories and forcing him to be their death god, as neither of them wanted to deal with the fundamental forces of decay and entropy.

The new protagonists of MK5

In this new universe, things kinda seemed to skip ahead, with history fast-forwarding back to the present day. And the present day started on December 12th 2023, with four catastrophes that killed a LOT of beings. In each of these catastrophes though, there were four unlikely survivors, all of whom discovered they could no longer conventionally die.

While yes, these names seem familiar, these guys are not the same beings as the ones from the MK4 universe. Epani and Sini, being the children of Kinisis, used her blueprints to create life in their new universe, which caused quite a few repetitions. On top of that, any god-touched beings from the MK4 universe weren’t killed, but were instead remade into new individuals, and missing beings were created to fill in gaps.

Currently dubbed Xeno Dessaron One, Tenuk, Kayel, Nyssi and Retvik all gained extraordinary healing powers, the ability to survive in the depths of space for short periods of time and the inability to be killed by conventional means. After learning that they had these weird powers, they tracked down the Thantophor, who they had seen in a pharmacy in a nearby hospital, who had saved them from a fifth terrorist attack. They later befriended Arkay and helped him save a collection of beings from the wrath of Sini, before assisting the gods in stopping a corruption that threatened the freshly reformed universe.

These days, the Lunatics, as they are often known as, work as a gladiator team in the Great Dessaron Battle Arena, while also trying to adjust to their new powers.

Anyway, the MK5 Phoviverse is still in development, and there are lots of new stories coming soon. You can read all my stories on the Phoviverse website.