The King of All Tears
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Overview
The King of All Tears (Commonspeak), also Illithon (Elftongue \ˈɪləˌθɔn\ for madness), and Xael’mourith (Farspeak \ˈzaɪəlkˌmɔrɪθ\ for no known translation), is an Eldritch God associated with the Strange Realm of The Horizon, specifically the region known as The Nautilus Towe, and is recognized as the patron and origin of the Eldritch species commonly called the Thought Eaters. Its Commonspeak name comes from the tragic understanding that vulnerability to it comes from the very thing that makes thinking creatures unique.
Integral scholarship classifies the King of All Tears as a godlike phenomenon rather than a true god. It does not seem to manifest any consistent form of will, instead, manifesting through the amplification, fragmentation, and eventual weaponization of thought itself. Most information concerning the King of All Tears derives from Thought Eaters theological records, suppressed chronicles of the Dwarfhome incursion, and postwar analyses produced under the authority of the Lich Queen.
Among the Eldritch Gods, the King of All Tears is considered uniquely dangerous to scholars, philosophers, and spellcasters, as its influence does not merely distort perception, but collapses the boundary between thinker and thought.
History
The King of All Tears came into existence at the very beginning of the Shattered Age, contemporaneous with the collapse of The Orrery and the transformation of the Servitors of Destiny into Eldritch entities. As with the other Eldritch Gods, its prior identity as one of The Fates is inferred but unrecoverable.
Early Shattered Age records suggest that Thought Eaters society coalesced rapidly around the King of All Tears, forming one of the most internally coherent Eldritch cultures known to Integral scholarship. This coherence is believed to be a direct consequence of their shared cognitive structure rather than evidence of centralized command.
During the Shattered Age, the Thought Eater worshippers of the King of All Tears briefly manifested beyond the Horizon in the mortal lands of Dwarfhome, where it became the focal point of a short-lived but devastating dominion of mutated Humans. Contemporary sources describe cities where citizens wept constantly, not from pain, but from uninterrupted, unsilenced, internal monologue.
This dominion was ultimately dismantled by the Lich Queen, whose nature as an undead intelligence appears to have rendered her partially resistant to Illithon’s influence. The King of All Tears withdrew from the Integrum following this defeat, and no comparable incursion has since been recorded.
Description
The King of All Tears manifests in two primary forms.
Anthropomorphic Form
Described as a towering, regal humanoid figure, three meters tall, draped in layered robes resembling ghostly visages. Instead of a face, it bears a smooth, elongated mask from which descend numerous thin, vein-like tendrils, as long as its body. These tendrils do not writhe aggressively, but sway subtly, as if responding to unspoken ideas in the minds of nearby observers. Witnesses report that when this form is present, internal monologues become painfully audible and impossible to silence, looping and repeating with increasing clarity until concentration becomes impossible.
Surreal Form
A colossal, floating brain, vast as a castle, suspended from below by massive vein-like tentacles that wrap around the ridges of its exposed cortex. These tendrils pulse rhythmically, suggesting circulation.
Personality
The King of All Tears embodies the Strange Epiphany of the sensation of thinking, specifically the phenomenon of self-awareness and the internal monologue. Integral scholars emphasize that this should not be mistaken for intelligence in the mortal sense. Rather, Illithon appears to experience existence as an unbroken cascade of self-referential thought, where every idea immediately reflects upon itself.
Like all Eldritch Gods, the King of All Tears 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 King of All Tears manifests as a progressive corruption of cognition, specifically the internal monologue and the capacity to trust one’s own thoughts. Integral scholars classify this progression as a cognitive perceptual infection, culminating in catastrophic delusional disorder.
Environmental Cues
Regions under Illithon’s influence exhibit subtle but pervasive cognitive anomalies. Individuals report heightened self-consciousness, compulsive rumination, and spontaneous grief without identifiable cause. Prolonged exposure is often associated with collective unease, shared intrusive ideas, and sudden emotional breakdowns that lack external triggers.
Written and spoken records produced in such areas frequently display recursive commentary, excessive self-correction, and contradictions within a single document, suggesting that thought itself has become unstable.
Early Corruption: Perceptual Awareness
The initial stage is marked by a distracting and persistent internal monologue. Affected individuals experience an inability to disengage from their own thoughts, which announce themselves with intrusive clarity. This is not experienced as external sound, but as an overwhelming presence of cognition. Persistent, unpleasant déjà vu commonly accompanies this stage, as thoughts feel simultaneously familiar and subtly incorrect.
Advanced Corruption: Perceptual Otherness
As corruption deepens, the afflicted develops a profound sense that their internal monologue is not entirely their own. Thoughts appear observed, commented upon, or subtly guided by an alien presence. This experience resembles depersonalization, but with the critical distinction that the alienation centers on cognition rather than emotion. At this stage, individuals lose confidence in their ability to reason, interpret evidence, or distinguish memory from invention. Doubt becomes constant and inescapable.
Terminal Corruption: Catastrophic Psychotic Delusion Disorder
In the terminal stage, the alien internal monologue fully dominates the mind. All perception, memory, and decision-making are processed through elaborate and internally consistent delusional frameworks. The afflicted retains a sense of self, but that self is subordinated to an alien cognitive narrative that cannot be questioned or escaped.
Behavior becomes extraordinarily dangerous, driven by false beliefs experienced as absolute truth. Integral healers classify this condition as Psychotic Delusional Cognition Disorder, a state functionally indistinguishable from extreme, persistent psychotic schizophrenia, and universally fatal to social functioning.
Orisons
Most Orisons of the King of All Tears arise among the Thought Eaters, for whom Illithon represents both creator and pinnacle of existence. Illithid Orisons act as massive hivemind networks of invasive thought, capable of inducing paralysis, psychic feedback, and enforced introspection in others. Illithid veneration of the King of All Tears centers on accumulation and processing of thought. Brain matter is harvested, fused, partially digested, and regurgitated into vast cerebral slurries housed within organic vats. These serve simultaneously as nourishment, ritual offering, gestational medium, and experimental substrate.
Among mortals, the King of All Tears most often draws the attention of philosophers, arcanists, and individuals suffering from obsessive self-analysis. Pacts may arise through misguided intention, particularly among those who believe greater understanding will bring peace. More commonly, Illithon’s mark manifests as an involuntary curse, imposed upon those who think too much, too deeply, or too constantly.
Notable Orisons include:
- Călinescu the Unresting: Human, Man, Norhome, Dawn Age, Unknown. A philosopher whose treatise On the Inescapability of Thought reportedly caused readers to experience weeks-long states of uncontrollable weeping. He vanished shortly after completing the final volume.
- Varesh-Imun: Hollow, Woman, Dwarfhome, Shattered Age, Dead. A court diviner who served the brief Illithid dominion in Vashad. Surviving records suggest she could extract truths by forcing subjects to hear their own thoughts spoken aloud.
- The Pale Regent: Thought Eater, Dwarfhome, Shattered Age, Alive. An Illithid Orison whose role during the Vashad incursion remains contested. Some accounts name it a governor, others a priest, and others insist it never existed as a discrete individual at all.