Avatars of Caspian

Infant Avatar - The Birth of a God

Slowly walking towards you with an expression of great solemnity is a blonde-haired child of around sixteen months. His hair, a cascade of blonde that seems to draw from his mother's lineage, flows softly around a face that carries the unmistakable mark of refinement and idealization, as if every feature has been sculpted to an epitome of inherited beauty. He wears a pale yellow chiton, as if he were costuming as a cherub. In his tiny hands, the child carries a golden tiara set with rich red rubies and glittering diamonds.

You know in the pit of your stomach that this is something to be dreaded.

But it is his eyes that truly captivate and terrify. They are an extraordinary green, flecked with blue, holding a depth and beauty that seems almost supernatural. These eyes, impossibly wise and ancient, pierce through you, seeing beyond the physical to the very essence of your being. They are the eyes of one who understands the fabric of reality and can manipulate it at will. They bore into you with an intensity that feels like a violation, as if they can see every hidden corner of your soul. Those eyes while extraordinarily beautiful yet horrifyingly wrong; windows to a mind that was far beyond human comprehension.

The child stops a few paces from you, his gaze never wavering. There is a gravity to his presence that belies his tender age, an authority that demands recognition and obedience. The solemnity of his expression, the ethereal beauty of his form, and the latent power that radiates from him all speak to his true nature—an avatar of a divine being, destined to reshape the world.

Tiny though it may be, there is more concentrated power in this child than in any foe you have ever faced.

In this moment, you realize the enormity of what stands before you. This is no mere child, but a harbinger of profound change, a being whose very existence would alter the course of history. The sense of dread intensifies as you understand that the world as you know it is about to be irrevocably transformed by the will of this divine entity.

As he lifts the golden tiara, the rubies and diamonds catching the last rays of sunlight, you can almost feel the shift in the air, the gathering of forces unseen. This is the beginning of a new era, heralded by a child who is both innocent in form and ancient in spirit. And as you stand there, powerless and awestruck, you know that nothing will ever be the same again. The dread you feel is not just for yourself but for all of humanity, teetering on the brink of an abyss from which there will be no return.

An evil power greater than all the world has ever known waits to be born, growing more restless each day to be released into the world.

The conception itself may be spontaneous or involve great trauma and violence

Attempts to end the pregnancy will inevitably fail. Abortion clinics close or are busy. Taxis won't stop. Pills will prove to be ineffective.

The mother is typically clandestinely protected and cared for during the pregnancy. Mysterious deliveries of cash or other aid may end up under her door.

If the mother survives the birthing (not all do), then she is regarded with no more affection than any other lowly creature or lay worshiper - though the avatar can and will feign such feelings if needed to maintain the facade of being a normal human child, it rarely does so, and may seem detached and 'emotionless'. The child might even be mistaken for being autistic.

It can and will eat anything organic or inorganic - even ingesting tiny live animals or engage in cannibalism if the opportunity presents itself. Its need for nourishment will exceed those of an infant of the same age.

Despite its unusual origin the child is an avatar of Caspian like any other. It is fully aware of what it is and who it is from the moment of its conception. It is also fully aware of the power it possesses. It will freely use these whenever the opportunity to do so unnoticed. People around the child may have their thoughts read, their actions may be manipulated to cause harm to themselves unconsciously (a knife cutting vegetables slips and cuts off appendage instead for instance). They might feel flashes of different emotions (fear, anxiety, lust, anger) and hallucinations when the avatar is present, and nightmares where the child's true nature is hinted at when they sleep. They may even see visions of a dystopian future ruled by the child (all true). This will all be a careful orchestration by the avatar -- driving its caretakers and parental figures to madness and eventual death once they have outlived their usefulness and/or annoyed or offended the avatar in even some small way. Attempts to kill the avatar through normal means will always be unsuccessful - poison will not affect its physiology, knives or gun wounds will heal instantly even if they happen to strike (most will miss or be deflected), and above all the avatar will be aware of any assassination attempts through its telepathy. Such would-be assassins will typically suffer the worst fates and may wish that the avatar would simply kill them quickly.

If they should somehow learn about the avatar's true nature and through some miracle survive with that knowledge, they will most likely not be believed and be committed to a mental institution or prison where an 'accident' or 'suicide' will silence them.

The only exception are members of the Caspian cult, who instinctively recognize the newborn 'messiah' in their midst and what a great opportunity to serve the living embodiment of their deity in person is. They will obey the avatar's every command and passing whim, nurture and protect the child from every threat, even sacrifice themselves without a moment's hesitation. The avatar will treat such individuals as only slightly more valuable than pawns and will sacrifice them as necessary and without hesitation to advance its plans for the world, making only the most basic considerations and contributions towards the cult's needs and survival and typically only when those needs coincide with the avatar's own needs and desires. The avatar may, more instance, find hidden wealth or create it whole-cloth and the cult may enjoy a brief period of prosperity. However, the avatar may then demand that the cult's leader turn over his beloved spouse and/or dearest daughter for the avatar's own unspeakable lusts and desires - a demand that the cult leader is in no position to disobey. Resources that have been painstakingly stockpiled for decades by the cult will be liquidated without hesitation if necessary. The avatar will usually not be actively malicious towards these worshipers and will even acknowledge their heartfelt devotion; it simply believes that such awe and servitude towards it is the natural state for all of humanity, and that the cult is simply the first to recognize it (as the rest of the world will also). If the entire cult and every member in it must be sacrificed, the avatar will do so without the slightest regret. It can always form another one if needed - new worshipers and devotees are often simply a mind-control glance and a spoken word away.

If it is allowed to reach adulthood, the avatar will rapidly advance in its education and whatever career it chooses - a luminary to surpass any other the world has ever seen. Possessed of vast supernatural intellect and even vaster supernatural might any obstacles will be quickly eliminated or subverted. If the avatar joins the seminary at the age of 12, he will become Pope by his 30th birthday. If he runs for local office in a small town, he will make the Senate and then easily win the Presidential nomination as soon as he reaches the minimum age required to do so (which may even be circumvented depending on what manipulations are enacted). If the avatar decides to remain hidden and joins a small street gang, it will rapidly rise to become the most powerful and feared figure in the criminal underworld in less than a decade, with new addictive drugs on the street and every rival or obstacle eliminated in short order. Even if it only becomes a revolutionary born in small impoverished nation and leading a pathetic rebel group, one could expect it to easily topple the ruling government of that nation and turn it into a thriving nation with ambitions to invade its neighbors by the time the growing season starts. Even if the career is simple as academia or medicine, the avatar will easily be able to solve previously unsolvable problems, devise new energy sources, miraculous cures for once incurable diseases, come up with new theories that will overturn old ones using impeccable logic (even altering reality locally to 'prove' its theory 'correct'). Let’s just say earning something like the Nobel Peace Prize would be the work of an afternoon for the avatar.

Regardless of which path to power the avatar chooses, it is destined to become the most powerful figure of that world - holding immense wealth, political connections, and able to exert its will on entire nations - with its power growing every day. Subtle use of its powers ensures that any opposition it faces will be eliminated or any needed resource can be gained in short order. Only the avatar's inner circle of minions will have any inkling or knowledge of its true supernatural nature, and will likely be so thoroughly taken or beholden to it that betrayal will be virtually impossible. Indeed, its closet minions will likely to merely be puppets or extensions of the avatar itself through prolonged contact, human only in appearance, and having only one will.

Hidden from the unsuspecting eyes of humanity, the Child Avatar's presence warps the reality around them, subtly at first, but with increasing intensity as his power increases. 

Unnatural disasters and horrific omens will follow its career and be orchestrated to advance its plans in some way. World wars will be started between once peaceful nations. Economies will rise and fall seemingly at random. Earthquakes, famines, the reemergence of hostile species previously thought extinct or completely unknown to science will plague the world. Whispers of power, dominance, and a new world order seep into the minds and dreams of the susceptible, sowing discord and marshaling forces to the cause of Caspian the God-King.

Eventually it will tire of the pretense and reveal its true nature to the world, which will only happen when civilization is brought to the brink of collapse. Every citizen of the world will be enslaved, and every border will be dissolved. The avatar will then perform a ritual that will harness the collective worship of the world's survivors and open a Gate to bring the 'true' God-King to the world that the avatar has conquered.

The world will become a mirror image of Caspia in spirit - a place only previously imagined in the pages of dystopian fiction.

Description: The child is always male, and in appearance nearly always resembles the mother's parentage and characteristics initially, though those features will be refined, idealized, perfected. The only exception are the child's eyes, which are green with blue flecks -- extraordinarily beautiful and unique. However, the more the child develops, the more he will resemble Caspian's default form.