Only the ignorant look upon the night sky and marvel at
the beauty of the stars, for between them lie the great
gulfs of the cosmos, the gaping chasms of terror some
call the Dark Tapestry. Over the centuries many inquisitive
minds have made a study of this abstruse topic. Their most
common fate is madness. Indeed, the guest registers of
asylums around the Inner Sea are considered incomplete
without at least one former expert of astrological studies.
Some of these rambling lunatics lost their sanity by
merely reading (or perhaps comprehending) the contents
of forbidden manuscripts and codices on the subject, texts
whose very titles evoke mysteries best left veiled. Others
had their minds torn from them through the performance
of ill-advised rituals found within such moldering pages.
But a lifetime of madness seems merciful when compared
to the doom of those reckless enough to take the most
dangerous step: to seek contact with the dreadful alien
beings who call the endless void their home, the fabled
Dominion of the Black.
The following are theories and crumbs of understanding
about the Dominion of the Black, fitfully gleaned by those
mad and undaunted scholars. Much of this information
was inferred from missives of alien origin, drafted by
intelligences so utterly inscrutable that translations
made by terrestrial academics are at best only shadowy
ref lections of their original sources. Moreover, the
scholarly minds that put pen to paper on the subject were
more often than not precariously teetering on the precipice
of hopeless lunacy at the time of composition. As a result,
every “fact” asserted about the Dominion must be treated
in the end as an inherently mutable thing, a tentative
hypothesis awaiting the collection of more data.
Of course, the collection of such data is fraught with
peril, and warrants a cautionary tale.
The Account of Gaius Beaulenard
Born in 4588 ar to an indolent aristocratic family of
Oppara, Gaius Beaulenard might likewise have led the
life of a dissolute sybarite. From his youth, Beaulenard
showed a keen intellect and natural interest in science. After
completing the shallow, obligatory education expected of
Taldan nobility, he set off on his own to study alchemy and
became a skilled naturalist, taking advantage of the capital’s
many fine libraries and private collections of wisdom. Once
he had exhausted those resources, he traveled to Cassomir
to see what its fabled libraries might contain. It was there
in a small shop with the grand name of the Athenaeum of
Expeditionary Glory that he came upon a crumbling copy
of Van Jeust’s despicable Lords of the Night Heralds.
From that point on, Beaulenard was obsessed with the
Dominion of the Black, fascinated by their evident godlike
command of the very foundations of creation itself. He
hired his services out to the ruler of Omash for a full
year—no small feat for a Taldan aristocrat only a year after
the uncertain end of the great Taldor-Qadira war. His
agreed-upon payment was unfettered access to the libraries
of Katheer, Sedeq, and Omash, believed to hold the Inner
Sea’s most extensive collections of books concerning the
Dominion. The details are murky, but only a few months
after delving into the stacks of Sedeq’s most well-guarded
vault of learning, Beaulenard f led Qadira, having apparently
absconded with a number of priceless tomes, including the
Libram of Absolute Emptiness and the Mah-Theneg Codices,
both reputed translations of actual Dominion writings.
The Taldan scholar went underground for a number of
years, aware of the sizable bounty Qadira had placed on his
head and the small army of assassins seeking to collect it.
He spent those years immersed in the pages of his pilfered
books, and also taught himself divination magic to aid in
what had become a near-pathological need to understand
the meaning of the tomes.
Beaulenard re-emerged in 4611 in Ilizmagorti, where
he paid a small fortune for a mostly complete copy of the
damned tome Secrets of the Dreaming Dark, liberated from
an Egorian collector’s private library in a raid that cost six lives. The book supposedly contains methods for directly
contacting agents of the Dominion of the Black, as well as
formulae and summoning spells rumored to require no
talent beyond an ability to pronounce the throat-torturing
words inscribed on its pages. Beaulenard rented a manor
home on a remote cliff overlooking the Arcadian Ocean.
Secluded there with a half-dozen servants, he set about
making contact. Exactly what happened over the course
of the following months is uncertain, but the villa was
obliterated by an unquenchable fire that burned for a full
month. A year later a crate showed up on the doorstep of
the family manse in Oppara. It contained selections from
Beaulenard’s extensive library of forbidden tomes, along
with a letter.
Beaulenard’s family was deeply pained by news of their
son’s death. The books, however, were eventually sold to an
avid collector of such tomes for an incredible sum. After all,
destroying a library of such obvious value and importance
would have been an unforgiveable waste. The following are
some of his findings regarding the impenetrable obscurity
of the Dominion of the Black.
Hierarchy
Referring to the Dominion of the Black as an empire
imposes a frame of reference that misrepresents its utterly
alien nature. While the Dominion controls many worlds
across many galaxies, those places should be thought of as
production facilities and experimental laboratories rather
than settlements or colonies. There is no Dominion home
world, per se. Rather, the Dominion is an association of
dozens of bizarre alien races whose ultimate goals are
largely a mystery to those outside its innermost ranks.
Most familiar are the neh-thalggu, better known as
“brain collectors,” who serve as the Dominion’s primary
scouts. Several races similarly utilize the brains (or steal
thoughts from the minds) of other species for their own
nefarious purposes: the bah-thegga and bah-uurla, dehnolo,
jah-tohl, rhu-chalik (Pathfinder Adventure Path #86,
86), and yah-thelgaad (see page 90). It’s believed these
races are closely related on a genetic level, the products
of centuries-long gene manipulation and f lesh-molding.
The priestly caste within the organization is comprised of
both the worm-like chyzaedu and the haeshi-shaa, a race
that lives its long life cycle alternating between gaseous
and liquid form. Bred to control the Dominion’s ships
that cross the vast emptiness of space, shipminds are also
incredibly important to the Dominion’s work, though
where they fall in the hierarchy is a complicated issue.
For more information on shipminds, see the Shipyards
section and page 86.
None can say with certainty what leads the Dominion of
the Black, though several bizarre names arise among the
communiqués and gospels of its servants, their strange
constructions the result of poorly translated concepts
not truly expressible by humanoid languages. The-Five-
Who-Speak-As-One stands as one of the most regularly
mentioned overlords, an entity that supposedly exists
on an organic vessel the size of a small moon. Another
contender is a creature that may be the source of the
Dominion’s shipminds—this being, Infinity-Ceases-Now,
is described as a massive, amoeba-like creature that has
absorbed the brains of countless sentient beings and lies
ensconced (perhaps imprisoned) within a cave-riddled
rogue planetoid’s molten core. Grandchild-of-Eternity’s-
Despair is yet another Dominion being of immense power,
thought to guide the operations of the Dominion’s endless
network of f leshfarms. Descriptions of its appearance
vary so wildly as to suggest some hallucinatory quality
that clouds perception. Finally, Teramin Mais, the Aspis
Consortium’s resident expert on the Dominion, theorizes
that the Dominion of the Black is led by the Dark Tapestry
itself, via some sort of pervasive psychic manipulation
that occurs at a level beyond human comprehension.
Perhaps most disturbing are rumors that some of
these immensely powerful rulers of the Dominion might
already be close to Golarion. The Night Heralds have long
sought to free a trapped entity known as Tychilarius,
sometimes called the Drowned God. And those who’ve
studied Aucturn suspect the entity Carsai the King, ruler
of that planet’s Citadel of the Black, of Dominion ties.
Associat ions
Books regarding the Dominion of the Black often mention
a vast number of strange creatures, and scholars of such
issues often debate which creatures are actually part of
the Dominion and which are simply subservient to their
goals. Some speculate that the primary difference is that
those creatures making up the Dominion proper have
either been created or greatly modified by the Dominion.
With enough time and work, some of these associated
creatures may find their entire
species drawn into the Dominion
and made anew through their
horrific processes.
Intellect devourers are often
attached to research facilities
and f leshfarms, most often in
subordinate roles. Drawn to
the work more by their innate
sadism than devotion to the
Dominion’s obscure aims,
the intellect devourers
are tolerated despite
their petty cruelties and
idiosyncratic methods
because they often end up
servicing beings in the highest
echelons of the Dominion in the
same way humans service the lower orders—
as components for augmentation. In addition,
the alien oozes known as vespergaunts (Pathfinder
Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Bestiary 58) often ally
with the Dominion, serving as emissaries to worlds
that have drawn the Dominion’s ravenous attention.
The Dominion of the Black has also bred and engineered
countless servitor creatures. These subservient races far
outnumber Dominion allies and are at least partially
cataloged in the Encyclopedia of Vhaeso’s Tears. Most owners
keep the book under lock and key, as the methods to summon
the creatures catalogued are also found within its pages.
Creatures such as the lunarma (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 4 185),
neshmaal (Pathfinder Adventure Path #84 86), and yangethe
(Pathfinder Module: Dragon’s Demand 63) number among the
abhorrent beasts referenced.
Although cults like the Night Heralds willingly serve
the Dominion of the Black, intelligent humanoid agents
are a rarity within the Dominion. Humanoid races are
considered inherently inferior, thought of more as cattle
and experimental animals for whatever bizarre breeding or
modification programs Dominion scientists concoct. The
apparent fragility of humanoid psyches drives this prejudice,
as humanoid minds are believed less able to withstand the
enormity of certain cosmic truths. Those humanoids who do
manage to rise in the ranks of the Dominion are beings of
exceptional mental sturdiness or uniquely useful dementia.
More information on the Night Heralds can be found in
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Occult Mysteries.
The Dominion intently observes the native species of
many worlds, taking special interest in “lesser” species on
a genetic level—kidnapping subjects for manipulation,
twisting, and modification. The preferred theory suggests
that such manipulation aims to augment the cerebral
development of those creatures for the Dominion’s own
enigmatic purposes—though some suggest that the gray
matter of sentient creatures is simply a technological or
dietary need. Some historians even posit that Osirion’s
sudden rise from barbarism was driven by Dominion
interference in that society’s development.
Millennia-old inscriptions
from that nation’s earliest
days speak of inhuman
visitors from the stars
“making playthings of
men.” Paintings in some of
the oldest desert tombs support
such theories with depictions of
unfortunate figures being infected
with f lesh-altering contagions,
peasant laborers with insectoid
limbs grafted on their bodies, and
of course the fabled “countdown
clocks.” These ominous timepieces,
tied to alleged alien visitation, supposedly point to an
unknown event at a time in the not-so-distant future.
Anekept of An, a highly respected Osirionologist,
claims to have recently translated a previously unknown
word imbedded in the design of all of these clocks:
“harvest.”
Fleshfarms
Written by a nameless lunatic-scholar upon ruins outside
Absalom, the bizarre record titled The Entrails of Creation
catalogs dream-visions of what the Night Heralds refer to
as “f leshfarms.” The account describes countless horrors,
such as many-tentacled machine-creatures called jahtohl
overseeing and directing legions of naked, terrified
laborers and shivering thought-slaves. Such vast nationfacilities
accept entire enslaved species and sort them for
a spectrum of terrible uses. These captives serve as both
slaves and building materials for the manufacture of new
Dominion servant species, bizarre devices, hanging slave
crèches, and semi-living spacefaring vessels. The majority
of tools and abominations visited upon the universe by the
Dominion of the Black originated at one of these atrocity
factories.
The record avoids mentioning what animates f leshfarms,
but in a single instance makes reference to a being the
author call a maestro. Though the reference proves vague,
this being or class of beings serves as an artisan-tyrant,
a manipulator responsible for experimentation and
innovation. While numerous types of Dominion creatures
are named, these explorers in science and perversion
seem to come from a range of species, or are themselves
composed of multiple entities. The tome refers to these
beings “harvesting inspiration,” though what this means
is unclear.
In the dungeons of Pangolais, the Night Herald seer
Vasoov claims—in his most lucid rambling—to have
been born on a “sphere of living chains and iron claws.”
According to him, none escape such places alone, and even
his dark salvation came only as the result of a terrible
world-shifting mistake. His descriptions parallel many
of those in the The Entrails of Creation, and more than once
Night Herald radicals have sought to liberate him. Such
attempts have all failed fantastically, though, as the steel
roots extruding from the limbless seer have overgrown
his entire cell.
Shipyards
Records connected to the Dominion of the Black commonly
share imagery of entities the size of continents, seas, moons,
and other unfathomably large objects skulking amid the
stars, preying upon whatever they find. Though riddled with
rambling metaphors and nonsensical verse, compilations
of insane ramblings such as Predators of Light, Life Slake, and
the Account of the Hierophant, are highly sought after by the
Night Heralds for their descriptions of vessels capable of
moving amid the stars.
The Dominion is famous for its starships—organic and
metal constructions feared by all space-faring races. It is
difficult to classify these “creatures,” if that is indeed the
proper word. Bred, molded, and constructed at shipyards
orbiting dead worlds shorn of every possible resource,
these enormous entities have a lifespan of centuries. A
ship itself has no will or personality. Rather, a number of
organisms designed for maintenance tend these vessels,
one being a class of creatures known as shipminds. Bred
for each specific ship, shipminds are psychically infused
ooze creatures physically fused with their vessels, attached
to the body of their ships by cybernetic devices and organic
conduits. Fleshfarm engineers, responsible for fashioning
the various organic elements, design the bizarre cradles
from which the oozes interface with the living vessels. For
all intents and purposes, no division between ship and
shipmind exists; once they’re connected to each other,
the two are inseparable, with the shipmind controlling
every ship function.
Some of these spacecraft supposedly possess the
capability of giving birth to smaller quasi-organic and
metal ships that are used as shuttles for shorter journeys.
Such vessels sometimes land at a site but lack the ability
to lift off again. In these cases, their organic components
simply rot, while their one-time crews salvage the ships’
metal parts. If a Dominion ship crash lands or is damaged
beyond its own ability to heal or repair, the connected
shipmind frequently goes mad and must be put down by
survivors. The arrival of such a ship spells great peril for
any world, whether Dominion passengers survive or not, as
the rotting vessels poison the environment, maintenance
organisms escape and wreak havoc on the local ecosystem,
and native species that feed off the carcasses undergo
unpredictable mutations.
Religion
There is great uncertainty among scholars as to the
religious beliefs and practices of the Dominion. One
matter of agreement, however, is that powerfully religious
undertones f lavor translated Dominion texts, such as the
much maligned The Last Theorem. Those tomes carry many
references to the abominable Great Old Ones: Azathoth,
Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth, among others, leading
many scholars to the mistaken belief that the Dominion
worshiped these beings as deities. However, most prophets
and scholars hold that the Dominion is in open conf lict with
these entities and those who worship them.
The most popular current theory is that the Dominion is
devoted to and worships the Dark Tapestry itself. Whether
as a cosmic god-entity, an unthinking primal force, or some
other ur-being. One recovered Dominion text thought to be
a treatise on their religious convictions is entitled Nullity
and is a mere 13 words long. The words are each written
on a separate page made of human skin, and the pages are
deliberately jumbled between the tome’s soot-stained covers.
It’s believed that if these 13 words are read in their correct
order, the reader will instantly gain full understanding of
the nature of divinity. None of those who have allegedly
succeeded at this task lived long enough to share their
enlightenment, each being brutally and mysteriously
murdered.
Black holes appear to hold some special significance in
Dominion theology. The terms used to refer to these stellar
objects are alternately translated as “infinity’s doorway”
and “mouth of god.” Fulvia Nostraema’s infamous essay
“Nihilism’s Sacred Garrote” (written just prior to her
permanent relocation to the Darakole Sanitarium in Vyre)
details a ceremony called the Banquet. She contends that
the ritual occurs every other year and involves f lotillas
of Dominion vessel-beings orbiting just outside the
gravitational reach of key black holes for several days while
complex liturgies are executed. The rituals apparently
include casting untold thousands of sacrificial creatures
into the inescapable maws of these awesome celestial objects.
In addition to the sacrifice of slaves, Nostraema claims that
during the lengthy ceremonies dozens of the Dominion’s
living spacecraft impulsively hurl themselves and their
passengers into those inexorable gravity wells in acts of
rapturous ecstasy. Her thesis calls into question the common
conceptualization of the Dominion as dispassionate,
calculating scientists seeking perfection of the intellect
or the physical form. More ominously, it also assumes a
population of beings large enough to sustain the senseless
extinction of enormous numbers.
Nostraema’s description of the Banquet also lends
credence to what has long been thought a lunatic notion
proposed in the last century by the Qadiran sage Imed
Ibn Surhal: that the Dominion of the Black’s ultimate aim
is neither conquest nor domination, but rather the utter
destruction of all sentient life—the most ostentatious
sacrifice to the Dark Tapestry imaginable. At the behest
of the Church of Sarenrae, Qadiran authorities fiercely
suppressed Surhal’s treatise that outlined his implausible
theory, Apocalypse at the Dark Center of the Universe, shortly
after its dissemination. Surhal was allegedly found dead
in his study soon afterward, with obscenities scrawled
on the walls in the scholar’s own excrement and his body
naked and mutilated by a mosaic of self-inf licted cuts.
Though he had lost much blood, the cause of death was
ruled as asphyxiation. He had apparently choked to death
on a single cockroach he had shoved down his own throat.
Conclusions
Scholars of Dominion lore who still have the unfettered
use of their minds—unlike Gaius Beaulenard—agree
on one thing: the Dominion does not wish
the inhabitants of Golarion well. Whatever
enigmatic alien purposes it pursues, the
Dominion views “inferior beings” as
material for unrestrained exploitation.
Some of these sages and scholars have tried
in earnest to warn authorities throughout
the Inner Sea region, but their raving appeals have fallen
on deaf ears—for who listens to a maniac? Despite their
shattered minds, these scholars have some element of truth
in the screams and mumbles echoing through the halls of
asylums. The Dominion is out there, and ways to contact
them are within the reach of the people of Golarion—in
some cases lurking not so very far away.
The means by which the unwise and unwary can
contact the Dominion are varied. Poring over the
various texts associated with the Dominion, scholars
have discovered plans and schematics for unknowable
devices. Even the work that the Technic League has put
in on understanding the alien technology that fell to
Numeria in the Rain of Stars has yet to approach the
level of technology and understanding required to
create a prototype with these deciphered plans. Yet while
Golarion’s residents have yet to achieve the means to
contact the Dominion with technology, magic is a simpler
approach. Gleaned from various fouls texts are methods
to reach out and speak with their strange intelligences,
though it is unknown exactly to who or what in the
Dominion these spellcasters are speaking.
The Dominion of the Black infects sites throughout
Golarion, its atrocities often blamed on other, more
terrestrial abominations. Indeed, it makes sense that
many governments and individuals would be eager to
find more mundane explorations for their problems. For
if the Dominion of the Black ever turns its attention to
Golarion in earnest, then it’s possible that not even the
heroes of legend or the gods of civilization can save the
planet’s peoples, and a quick and ignorant death may be
the greatest mercy anyone can hope for.