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ENTRY 28: EBRIETAS, DAUGHTER OF THE COSMOS

Through the Lumenflower Gardens, a secret entrance can be found to the flooded and ruined remains of what appears to have once been one of the crypts of the old labyrinth, where you can find the fungus-riddled corpse of a creature resembling none other than Rom, demonstrating that she was not in fact the first and only of her kind.

This location is known a the Altar of Despair, and "mourning" at this altar is a huge and otherworldly figure. Ebrietas, the Daughter of the Cosmos is yet another Great One that won't instigate the battle herself, in this case having truly nothing against us humans, but more on that shortly.

Ebri's design is incredibly difficult to parse in-game, and still not easy to describe once you understand it, but her body is basically shaped like a human figure on its knees, wrapped in a membrane of slimy skin until the lower legs split into two slug-like feet. Her thin humanoid arms end in long, branching clusters of soft tentacle-like fingers. On her back are four incredibly long tentacles with scaly looking undersides, like snakes, and a number of smaller, thinner tendrils. She has a pair of massive bat-like wings that even allow her to fly, a little, even if the membranes are a tattered lace-like mesh.

Her head and face are the most difficult to put into words; almost like a roughly spheroid, greyish heart covered in countless tubes, valves, veins and cilia. There are some flat, pointed flaps hanging off the bottom and lined with tiny teeth, though that's the closest you can come to saying she has any recognizable mouth parts.

The entire front of Ebrietas's head is split open, the inner cavity stuffed with more of those small, pale tubes. Her only apparent eyes are just a single pair, intensely green, relatively small and strangely suspended in the valves. Within this cavity, what we can see inside the head is a mass of wet, pinkish-red flesh with globules of deeper crimson, almost reminiscent of a bleeding-tooth fungus!

So we know she's beautiful, that much is obvious, but her role in the setting and story is incredible too. Ebrietas is the "deep secret" of the Healing Church, the Earth-shattering discovery made in the labyrinths so long ago. Willing to communicate directly with members of the church, she actually advised them on many of their ensuing experiments and may be the true ongoing source of the old blood, assisting in the efforts to bring humanity closer to the Great Ones.

Also fascinating is the ancient artifact that allowed humans to contact Ebrietas in the first place; most "chalices" in the game look like, well, chalices, but the Isz Chalice looks more like some kind of giant cup fungus or a sea sponge. The impression I get from the alien looking relic is that it's just this overall rough shape that matters.

This isn't all just out of the goodness of her heart, as far as we know, but possibly sheer desperation. Seemingly in a constant state of sorrow, Ebrietas is referred to as the "Left Behind" Great One, and her relationship with the Church is repeatedly worded as working together to reach the cosmos. It seems clear that all she wants is to go home, having struck a deal with humans to bring their respective worlds closer together.

You can also see a clear similarity between Ebrietas and the Celestial Children, however simplified and undeveloped the latter might be. The humanoid anterior, gastropoid posterior, facial tentacles, tendril-tipped humanoid arms and of course the wings! It's her blood, then, that must alter human embryonic development into these poor little sweethearts, and the lead theory is that the Church conducted these particular experiments to try and provide Ebrietas with a child, either at her behest or to just kind of make her happy. In the latter case, that's probably because her constant misery was getting in the way of their goals or even having negative repercussions for reality itself, but I'm going to pretend they just cared about their friend and wanted her to cheer up. Wouldn't you?!




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