Devlog [Unknown] – [The Book of D'ARK]
Date: [6/4/2225]
Location: [Outer Fringe – Approaching Galactic Core]
Summary:
I have found something ancient. Not a ruin, not a relic — a text. A book that should not exist in any known epoch, written in no fully human tongue, yet I understood it. I did not find it. It found me.
Findings:
It was buried within a fragment of a derelict construct, caught in a gravity pocket between two dying stars. The object radiated no energy signature, no entropy field. My scanners refused to acknowledge its presence — it simply was, and that alone defied protocol. I entered manually. I retrieved it by hand.
The cover bore a title burned in curling script that shifted as I stared too long:
D'ARK – an abbreviation, though the meaning is unclear. I suspect it means "Directory of Arkane and Restricted Knowledge" — though this is only guesswork. The real meaning may lie deeper.
It catalogues beings. Dark Ones. The lesser ones, minor horrors and whispering voidlings, are freely listed — things that nest in the stellar veins, things that move between magnetic shadows and pulse behind radiation echoes. Their forms are suggested, but never shown. Their names taste like rusted salt when spoken aloud.
But past a certain point in the book, the entries are sealed. Not metaphorically — physically. Pages shuddered when I tried to turn them. Glyphs recoiled. A sentient defense embedded in ink and thought. These restricted beings fall under the following ranks:
High Elders
Low Great Ones
High Great Ones
Low Elder Great Ones
High Elder Great Ones
Every attempt to read further caused my vision to blur and space to bend inside the helmet. The suit's neural dampeners activated autonomously — it was not my choice. The knowledge pushed back.
The author, or what passes for one, signs the preface with a name I cannot repeat — but in sound, it resembles something like:
N'kazirul, The King Of The D'ARK.
It is… related somehow to the name "Nicolas." The name persists through fragments, but what remains is rewritten, swallowed, elongated. Perhaps this Nicolas was real person once. Or perhaps this is what became of him.
This book was never meant for mortals.
And I intend to read all of it.
While I could not breach the locked entries of the higher ranks, the open contents of the Book of D'ARK still held vast and ruinous taxonomy. It describes entities in hierarchies not of power alone, but of conceptual corruption — each category more removed from the reality we know, and each more hostile to the very structure of cause and thought.
What follows is not a list of names — those are sealed or intentionally erased. What remains is the meaning of each rank, as best as I could translate:
False Gods
These are mythological deities — figures venerated across thousands of worlds, from Earth's ancient pantheons to the forgotten divinities of alien empires. The Book names them "False" not because they lack existence, but because they are misunderstood.
They are not divine creators, but echoes. Refractions of deeper beings glimpsed through the lens of mortal belief. Sustained by worship, shaped by ignorance, they are masks worn by something older.
Lesser Ones
Entities that dwell in the margins of existence — between atomic drift and stellar decay. They are void-leeches, entropy feeders, parasites of probability. Often unseen, they thrive beneath the laws of physics, feeding on the spaces between cause and effect.
Like Velthash.
They do not conquer. They erode. A Lesser One whispers, and you become your own undoing.
Greater Ones
Unstable horrors whose passage warps space and logic. In their wake, geometry bends, time loops, and memory fails. Stars flicker and go silent.
They can be summoned — but always at a price. No summoner has survived unchanged. Most perish. Others become vessels for meanings too ruinous to endure.
Great Abominations
These are not lifeforms, but the collapse of form itself. Anti-creatures, born from broken will and aborted realities. Eyeless. Formless. Endless. They are negations incarnate.
Some are described as "laws that died screaming," others as "rejected answers from the universe's first draft."
They do not speak. They unmake. Their presence turns dreams to ash. Their touch silences entire symphonies of stars.
Low Elder Ones
The lowest rank of true eldritch intelligences. Not deities. Not devils. Architects. Observers.
They dwell outside of causality, peering inward. Called "pre-cognitive designers" by some, and "unfinished questions" by others. They do not act — they intend.
Even fragments of their intention are enough to fracture empires and unweave meaning. The Book warns: Do not name them. Do not seek them. Do not dream of them.
End of accessible content. Remaining entries sealed.
I suspect I have crossed a threshold merely by understanding these.
The Book is no longer passive. It turned a page while I slept. Its script now forms within my dreams.
I write this while I still know what thoughts are mine.
— M. Alvarez