The Wind Which Destroys
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Overview
The Wind Which Destroys (Commonspeak), also Aphagion (Elfspeak \ʌˈfeɪˌʤiɒn for nothing eater) and Obox’ob (Farspeak \ˈɒbɒksˌɒb\ for no known translation), is an Eldritch God associated with the Strange Realm of The Horizon, specifically the region known as The Carrion Crown, and is recognized as the patron and origin of the Mawspawn. The Commonspeak epithet The Wind Which Destroys originates from early encounter reports describing a constant, wind-like rushing sound produced by countless mouths opening simultaneously in the creature’s presence. This sound precedes physical manifestation and is often the first warning sign of contamination.
Integral scholarship classifies the Wind Which Destroys as a godlike phenomenon rather than a true god. Its influence manifests through corruption of gustatory perception and appetite, progressively severing the relationship between nourishment, satiety, and survival. Most reliable information derives from famine-zone records, cult suppression campaigns, and medical documentation of anomalous eating disorders.
History
Shattered Age
The Wind Which Destroys came into existence during the Shattered Age, contemporaneous with the collapse of the Orrery and the emergence of the other Eldritch Gods. As with its peers, its prior existence as a Servitor of Destiny is inferred but unrecoverable.
Dark Age
The most thoroughly studied incursion of Aphagion occurred in the late Dark Age, when several agricultural regions experienced simultaneous crop abundance and mass starvation. Survivors reported that food became increasingly repellent, while inedible substances induced brief sensations of relief. The incursion dissipated without direct confrontation, leaving behind widespread cannibalism, mass graves, and long-term psychological damage among survivors.
Description
The Wind Which Destroys manifests in two primary forms.
Anthropomorphic Form
Appears as a towering humanoid figure approximately three meters in height, with a vaguely symmetrical body plan composed of pallid, swollen flesh. Facial features are minimal or absent, replaced by a vertical seam that opens into a mouth when the entity is active. Additional mouths intermittently open across the torso, limbs, and neck, each snapping shut without coordination. The figure does not walk so much as drift, accompanied by the constant sound of inhalation. This form conveys no emotion, intent, or awareness, functioning as a crude approximation of humanoid structure rather than a disguise designed for comfort.
Surreal Form
The surreal form of the Wind Which Destroys is a colossal floating sphere, larger than a fortress, covered in retracting tentacles. Each tentacle is studded with mouths bearing a wide variety of teeth: humanoid, animal, and wholly alien. These mouths open and close continuously, producing the roaring wind-like sound from which the entity takes its name.
Personality
The Wind Which Destroys embodies the Strange Epiphany of taste, specifically the perception of nourishment and aversion as primary determinants of behavior. Integral scholars caution that this does not imply hunger, desire, or satisfaction. Rather, Aphagion appears to experience reality entirely through ingestion, where all matter is evaluated solely by its capacity to be consumed.
Like all Eldritch Gods, the Wind Which Destroys does not display recognizable psychology. Its behavior is inscrutable and inconsistent, offering no evidence of intention, desire, or awareness. Integral scholars increasingly caution against assuming consciousness at all, suggesting that Soma may function as a masked phenomenon rather than an agent, analogous to a Chinese Room executing a process without understanding.
Abilities
The influence of the Wind Which Destroys manifests as a progressive corruption of gustatory perception and appetite, escalating into catastrophic disorders of consumption.
Environmental Cues
Regions under Aphagion’s influence exhibit pervasive signs of rot and contamination. Food spoils rapidly regardless of preservation. Clean water acquires bitter or metallic aftertastes. The air carries a faint odor of decay even in the absence of visible sources.
Animals in affected areas display erratic feeding behavior, consuming carrion, soil, or their own offspring. In advanced zones, entire ecosystems destabilize as trophic relationships collapse.
Early Corruption: Perceptual Awareness
The initial stage is marked by a persistent abnormal taste that does not correspond to any ingested substance. Food tastes “wrong,” flat, or nauseating. Familiar flavors become indistinct or unpleasant, while no alternative provides relief.
Affected individuals often report constant awareness of their mouth and tongue, accompanied by involuntary salivation or gag reflexes.
Advanced Corruption: Perceptual Otherness
As corruption deepens, the afflicted develops an overwhelming craving for something that tastes normal, though no food satisfies this need. Hunger becomes constant but untethered from nourishment. Eating induces disgust rather than relief.
At this stage, individuals begin experimenting with increasingly inappropriate substances in desperate attempts to restore sensory coherence.
Terminal Corruption: Catastrophic Compulsive Aphagic Disorder
In the terminal stage, appetite becomes entirely dissociated from survival. The afflicted engages in extreme and self-destructive consumption behaviors, including autophagia, pica, bulimia, and cannibalism. Eating is no longer motivated by hunger, but by the compulsion to silence an unrelenting internal demand. Mortality rates are extremely high, either through poisoning, infection, or violent social collapse.
Orisons
The majority of Orisons of the Wind Which Destroys arise among the Mawspawn, amorphous but stable-bodied Eldritch creatures covered in mouths and grasping tentacles. Mawspawn Orisons function as living vectors of appetite corruption, spreading hunger without nourishment through proximity alone.
Among Mortals, Aphagion most often draws the attention of individuals whose lives are defined by food: gluttons, culinary obsessives, famine victims, and those suffering from eating disorders. Some seek the Wind Which Destroys intentionally, hoping to escape hunger or regain sensation. All are met with horror.
Cultic practices associated with the Wind Which Destroys emphasize ritual consumption. Ceremonies involve forced feeding, ingestion of filth, communal binging, and consumption of taboo substances. The goal is not pleasure, but surrender to appetite as an external command.
Notable Orisons include:
- Marcea the Hollow Host: Human, Woman, Acrolon, Dark Age, Dead. A famine survivor who led a cult that consumed its own dead in hopes of relief. None survived.
- The Feastless Congregation: Mawspawn, Horizon, Dark Age, Alive. Creature whose feeding rituals reportedly stripped entire civilizations of edible resources.
- Saint Ulmor of the Last Bite: Human, Man, Acrolon, Shattered Age, Dead. A mendicant who preached salvation through starvation. His followers died eating stone, cloth, and flesh.