III. The Imprisonment

The first mortal encounter with Osoyo came near the elven homeland of Sovyrian on Castrovel. In a vast canyon filled with a magical sea of mist, the massive ice-blue form floated through the air. Those who inhaled its chilling, shadowy vapors developed paranormal abilities of considerable magnitude. They also lost control of their minds entirely, becoming potent yet senseless thralls. The entity did not negotiate this arrangement. It did not ask. It simply breathed, and those who breathed in turn became its instruments.

Imprisonment on Golarion was not the elves’ first plan, or even their second. Initially, the High Families theorized methods by which the Blackfrost Whale might be weakened enough for mortals to stand a chance of defeating it. But as Osoyo’s influence on Castrovel grew, they were forced to admit they had no time. They used what they had learned to temporarily incapacitate the entity and began the staggering project of transporting it back to the depths of the Dark Tapestry, from whence it had originally come.

The records from those who took part in this attempt note, with obvious horror, that Osoyo began to rouse from its torpor far more swiftly than anticipated. It seemed the lesser of two evils to imprison it in a remote corner of a world that, at the time, had little sapient life dwelling upon it. After all, the elves could not simply let it go free. Many perished during the imprisoning process.

Those few elves who returned to Castrovel afterward did not live long. They all died of mysterious circumstances that necessitated their burial in asteroid tombs, far from any living world, as though their colleagues feared that whatever had followed them home might be contagious.

The matter was considered settled. It was not settled. It was merely postponed, by several thousand years, which to elven sensibilities may have felt like a reasonable interval but to the rest of us looks rather less like a solution and more like a delayed catastrophe.