Presence

The Eye of the Storm is absolute negation, a zero point according to his many followers, from which all else shrinks and nothing can touch, surrounded by the eternal vortex through which the shreds of fate whirl.

Those who claim to have gone so far beyond themselves as to have glimpsed him say that they have seen the maelstrom of creation and time blazing around him in every dimension, impossible angles spiral as snatches of every moment in history burns in their eyes forever.

And at the center, there is stillness. Not an empty stillness, not a dead singularity, but an impossibly intricate branching of colours and music, folds of song mingled in static life with eyes forever blinking, a bird made of galaxies frozen at the moment of leaping, going on forever and ever and ever, at every instant infinite skeins of light new and old at once joyously dancing and cheering while never moving even an iota, constrained within the eye of the greatest of storms. The Eye is not a representation of anything, or a simple form made to mock the shapes of living things, but is instead simply a part of everything, and even the best efforts of his devoted writers find him impossible to truly encapsulate, no matter how florid their prose.

Of course, as he has no physical presence in the universe it is impossible to determine the truth of this matter, and as such his form must remain as a series of anecdotal descriptions of which a consistent narrative is constructed. Some say that his core is not a riot of colour and shapes, but rather austere white serenity, or that the glimpses that have been seen of him are just as unrepresentative of his true nature that is a facsimile designed for us to be able to comprehend, while others even claim to glimpse in their visions of him coherent tales of events past, present, and yet to be. In composing this article we have done our best to portray the most widely followed narratives surrounding this god.

Disposition

The Eye does not, per se, have a disposition towards the teeming creatures that inhabit reality, because it is not aware of them. As he meditates in his own moment, that awareness encompasses himself and all that he is, but strays no further as he contemplates matters unknowable. This could be mistaken for the callousness and uncaringness of many gods of the Limbo, but is fundamentally different. The Eye is not refusing to deign to notice his adherents and opponents and all the struggles and ills of the universe that many cast scorn on gods for failing to address, he is fundamentally unaware that they exist, trapped forever in the brief contemplation of his own moment. He is unaware that mortal life exists at all.

The Eye may not even know that the universe exists.

"Even though it twists and roars around him at every instant, it is not sure if he knows of creation, for space and time have not even a shadow of meaning to his singular existence.

However, were he aware of us he would love and treasure us, revering us each and all as masterpieces of infinite complexity sprung from nothing. Life must be the greatest of treasures to him, and he will invite all who choose to come to join him, to become part of his infinite exaltation, now and forever."

This is what some followers said when we asked them about him and his disposition, as their priests had told them in turn.

What the Eye wants is unknowable as we cannot just talk to him to ask, or even confirm if he exists just like every other god, but according to those worshippers who have made study of his aspect it is doubtful that he desires anything from us other than merely to comprehend us, each and every one, in every way. No angle or lens through which we view creation is wrong, and all things are good to him, according to the agreements of many centuries of debate, meaning, and interpretation his admirers have lavished upon every unknowing sign he passes on to them.

Why exactly people worship the Eye of the Storm is an interesting question, and one that not even all of his adherents are able to articulate. A god who provides nothing, offers little, and is not even aware that one exists is a hard pill for most to swallow, after all. But those who believe generally either find enough solace in his mere existence to continue onwards, or think that the predicted future of him that their form of worship promises is enough of a worthy goal to work towards in steady prayer and contemplation.

Acts

According to his adherents and even his anathematics, The Eye's existence is separate from the universe. When stars roared and fought and died and built the universe around him, he never even glanced away, for it is all as the passing of instants in his existence at the heart of the storm. Without even knowing it, the fabric of reality whirled and spun, the universe replacing whatever the vortex was before its coming, and he gazed on still.

While the Eye of the Storm is isolated from the rush of the world that swirls around him, the world is not isolated from him, even though he knows nothing of it. As he thinks, sometimes his thoughts, his miniscule movements, stray beyond the realm of himself, cascading across the vortex beyond reality and imprinting upon the world, divine twitches and shivers in an unimaginable form and scale. From these come the miracles, aberrations, and signs that his believers interpret to divine His nature and will. Stories abound of his influence touching a location or item, whether for a brief instant of unknowable anomaly or a permanent change.

While some of his most ardent worshippers say that all anomalies unexplainable by science are the direct manifestation of his action on the world, few are so bold as to claim the horrors the more abominable of anomalies may cause to him. There are many people and forums of debate who trawl through the lists of oddities to the world and argue and debate about which are caused by his uncomprehending touch, and whole towns and settlements may spring up around the less instantly deadly ones.

Some people do this documentation, this research and cataloguing of their own god because they want to know him in the same way he would want to know them if he had the faintest idea that they existed, others because they want to perform a public service to people seeking to worship him, and some because they are afraid. Afraid because no matter how smart, how cunning and devilish, how strong of personality and will, it will make no difference to their fate if his innocent and unseeing touch should rend them limb from limb without a trace. It is not clear why a god who is associated with staticness in a time of change or holding still when all is moving primarily has effects of changing and new forms upon the world, but this is commonly thought to be due to the unconscious nature of these actions, and should he consciously direct his will then the apparitions and change-making deeds would vanish, as if they were just figments of his imagination.

Another reason why some people fear his effects upon the world, even if they revere him otherwise, is that these effects might instead of being incomprehensibly vast and sudden as other doomsayers fear, be instead very small at first. Subtle, stretched thin throughout time and changing the land, the earth, the sky, and the people. Changing them into something they never were meant to be.

Cults

Followers of the Storm: These devotees of the Eye of the Storm are the largest group of his believers by far, pledged to await his notice. They desire for his attention to be drawn to the universe, so that their awaited moment can finally come and he can take joy in the perfect form of all life, all sentience and everything about creation.

In an attempt to become closer to their god, Followers of the Storm will often meditate for long periods of time, especially in loud or dangerous situations such as during a storm alert or at a rock concert, in order to test themself. Sometimes this might get them in trouble, or even hurt, but this is thought to only make the meditation more worthwhile. The purpose of this meditation is generally to understand yourself fully, and better yourself through an objective and all-encompassing look at every aspect of your personality. This is not an easy thing to do under normal conditions, so becoming calm and focused enough to do so in a busy shopping center during a mass sale is a deeply challenging thing that may take years of training to do so under less strenuous conditions.

They believe that through understanding the immense concentration and self-contemplation that the Eye exists in, they may succeed in discovering how to draw his attention beyond the perfect moment of himself and achieve their great goal.

The Openers: The Openers believe that The Eye is only in his current state of perfect isolation, unchanging on any scale we see, because of the machinations of the foul limbo gods, who they also acknowledge in the same sense as the limbo religions. In their lore, they say that the limbo gods long ago tricked and captured him, winding creation and the universe into the maelstrom that people see when having visions of the Eye. If the universe were not permanently wound up like this, they say, then many of the ills that plague it would pass, as it is directly responsible for this state of unbalance from whence all else flows. They study and analyse the remnants of his passing, trying to find a way to free him from this supposed trap, which is according to them keeping him from visiting them and allowing them to join him in the great contemplation of the universe.

Some even go as far as to think that he really is aware of the world and its plights, making their desperation to bring him to his senses so that he can be free and carry out his will even stronger. They consider the Followers of Storm to be somewhat heretical, and hate the Miskatinites with such passion that bloodshed and murder between them is almost inevitable when they clash in study of The Eye's alterations to the worlds of the universe.

_{The Eye of the Storms followers vary greatly in their opinions, outlooks, and levels of murderous instability. - Art by Dorf}

Anti-Cults

Miskatinites: The only organised anti-cult to the Eye are the miskatinites, a relatively small but influential collection of scholars and academics, who believe that were the Eye to ever gaze upon the universe the same as he contemplates himself, that acknowledgement would be so complete and powerful that it would erase or ruin all the wonders and life of the universe, even if he means no wrong. As such, they are classified as an anti-cult as their goals and desires are diametrically opposed to normal worshippers who wish for him to notice and come to them. They tend to have a sneering or superior attitude towards his other worshippers, seeing them as idealistic fools who are courting their own destruction by seeking to know God.

Miskatinites share the Opener habit of collecting information, and they often go on expeditions to anomaly sites and places of worship with an eye to thoroughly document, write about, and possibly even pilfer a few artefacts from the area. These notes are collated and shared, especially ones related to Opener cults, who the Miskatinites have a special disgust for and enmity with.

Un-knowers: The Un-knowers have a very different view towards how the Eye of the Storm should be regarded to all the other cults. While most of these cults are all for the gaining of knowledge pertaining to him, and are deeply interested (whether they support it or not) in the obtainment of methods to rouse or otherwise alert him to the presence of the universe and the life within it that adores and reveres him, they take quite a different view. Namely, they want to leave him alone.

They find the whole idea and methods surrounding his general worship and antiworship distasteful or offensive. The actual reasons for this may vary strongly from person to person, even in the same small disorganised groups of the eclectic anti-cult, but whatever their reasons may be, their goals are the same - to stop his worship. To end all attempts to document what he does, and to burn the records those age-long documentation has produced. In all, to leave him alone and let him be forgotten in his entirety. This might take the form of the theft and destruction of the miskatinite's records, the "accidental" death of Storm-Follower preachers, or spying and calling law enforcement on the darker secrets of the Openers.

These people hide their faces behind dark glass and masks, taking refuge in anonymity and using their colour symbolism as a way to identify with other Un-knowers whose beliefs may be very opposed to their own.

There are many reasons that Un-knowers offer for their beliefs. Some find the thought of being reduced to a mere buzzing around the perception of something so alien and beyond that we can only call it a god to be humiliating, an insult to life that should be stoppered. Others respect his divinity, but say that it is abhorrent to try to rouse him from the frozen instant of contemplation that exemplifies all of the symbolism built around him, and that since he chooses to exist only in a state of contemplation, it is beyond rudeness, beyond impiety, beyond arrogance to rouse him for nothing more than our own gratification. And others still think that some things are simply better off not learned, and that the safest thing to do is to let him go, forever.

Creations

The Eye is not known to create anything, and is not even thought to consist of or reside in a realm of anything as base as matter himself, existing in his beautifully unknowable way in his realm beyond all. However, his unintentional incursions into the simple world as we know it, mere threads of laughter skipping through dimensions that we are too small to comprehend, do have effects.

These changes to reality, bends in the fabric between us, are generally considered to fall into a few distinct types of what are otherwise considered anomalies. Slight transformations or mutations in nearby populations are often found skirting the edges of more divine apparitions. People who do not know of the Eye's influence will often attribute this to curses or blessings from their own rudimentary gods.

One of the more dangerous signs of the Eye's touch is when an area develops bends that lead nowhere and corners that are really paths, through which someone stepping will find themself lost, possibly forever, in an impossible corridor connecting points unknown. When these begin to proliferate, everyone knows that it is time to abandon the area before the angles themselves become hungry and aggressive.

Majestic glimpses of the existence of himself, his more serious touches leave vortexes, smooth apparitions and echoes of a viewpoint that none could ever have, unbreakable windows looking at snatches and fragments of the beauty and frozen perfection that lies beyond causality itself.

Rooms that cannot be made, being larger outside than in, floors that smoothly wrap to the walls in utter defiance of gravity or simple geometry, all are by him and sometimes have temples built around them due to their harmless but disconcerting nature.

Some of these anomalous blessings of god are kept shut away by notails and other people who believe that the layman should not see, touch, or feel them, but there are enough scattered here and there that pilgrims who wish for a glimpse of proof that their devoted can sate themselves, great care being taken that none are smashed by a whale grown abnormally large, infused with memories of something impossibly greater.

Demi Gods

The Eye of the Storm is not said to, known to, or thought to have created any kind of demigod, assuming he exists, as his direct imposition on the world would according to scripture be so great that even the presence of his children would likely cause a huge and instantly-noticeable change to the fabric of reality. This is believed by scientists and pulp novel writers alike to be for the worse to everyone who needs a stable fabric of space-time for continued existence. It is not known whether anything would cause him to create a demigod, but the idea of inducing him to do so has been posited as a possible method of alerting him to the universe's presence, with the formed being serving as a kind of divine messenger or herald.

The fact that these demigods simply do not exist has not stopped his many followers through the ages from imagining and writing about what such a being might look like were it to appear. These theories are varied in the extreme, it is commonly thought that they would share aspects associated with him, as well as his known traits.

These could include the ability to make spatial distortions similar to those he is said to cause unconsciously, to mold or freeze the forms of other beings, or just be as simple as being surrounded by a vortex, cosmetic or otherwise, like some kind of divine whirlpool.

Special

None.

Trivia

• The planets Ensmith and Matin'madens are the hubs of Eye worship in the universe due to their high level of associated anomalies.

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