The Dark That Hates

 A thousand thousand years ago, an Dark first appeared. No one knows where the Dark came from. Some say it was the workings of a jealous god, others believe it to be the mistake of the first wizard, and others see it as a natural force, omnipresent in the universe.

The dark is ambivalent about you. It neither cares for you, nor sees you as a threat. It merely is. In contrast, The Dark (proper noun) knows you, and It absolutely despises you. It loathes you. It sees your existence as a personal affront to Itself. The Dark hates you. The Dark is Hate.

The Dark is a living force within the world of Neurim. Despite numerous attempts to do so, The Dark is impossible to communicate with, either because It cannot speak or because It can't be bothered to speak to mortals. Regardless, there are two truths known about The Dark: that It is intelligent and actively malicious (It wants every mortal dead), and that It is born of negative emotions. Places rich in anger, fear, and especially hatred summon The Dark. Mortal suffering feeds the dark. It knows this.

That's why It birthed monsters.

What makes a monster.

Monster is a word with a specific meaning in Neurim.

A human is not a monster, at least not in the literal sense. A human can think. A human has higher thought. A human can do whatever it wants if it puts its mind to it.

A dwarf is not a monster, at least not in the literal sense. A dwarf can think. A dwarf has higher thought. A dwarf can do whatever it wants if it puts its mind to it.

An orc is not a monster, at least not in the literal sense. An orc can think. An orc has higher thought. An orc can do whatever it wants if it puts its mind to it.

A goblin is a monster. It cannot think like a mortal. Its actions are programmed into it, like a machine. A goblins sole goal is to bring harm to mortals. Goblins may take intelligent actions, but they do so only to further their goal of bringing harm to mortals. Goblins might build a city, but the city is not like a human city. It is a war machine, designed to raise beasts and forge weapons to further the eternal war of The Dark against mortals. The goblins cannot stop themselves. A human might commit an act of evil because they chose to do so. A goblin does not get to choose. It is intelligent, yes, but it is not sapient.

There is one other difference between mortals and monsters. Monsters are created, literally forged by The Dark. There are no goblin children. They come out of the shadows fully formed and with ill-intent. Such is the way of things.

Those The Dark claimed.

Many a cult has tried to beseech The Dark for power. The Dark ignores them. To work with mortals would to go against every thing It stands for. A blasphemy against It's very existence. That has not stopped some from worshiping It like a god. 

Though The Dark refuses to work with mortals willingly, it has, at times, corrupted them on accident. Prolonged exposure to The Dark can change you. Warp your mind. Exacerbate your worst qualities.

The sixth cycle of the dwarves suffered this. Together they dug deep in search of the first dwarven ancestor, The Sculptor. At some point, they ran out of lamp oil, and they continued to toil in the dark. But the dark bred paranoia, and paranoia bred The Dark. Over years, the dwarves grew distrustful of others. Everyone else was a threat. The sixth could only trust the sixth. These dwarves are the Duergar. Some Duergar had their minds completely eaten by The Dark. They are the ur-paranoia, the beings from which distrust and fear are born, the Dero.

The elves once lived in harmony, together as elf-trees, immortal and wise. The high elves were the leaves, which brought the trees sun and bore beautiful flowers. The wood elves were the trunks, which brought stability and protection. And the dark elves were the roots, strong and proud, which gathered water and sustained the tree. Over the ages, the roots grew jealous of the attention the other elves got. The leaves grew wondrous fruit, and the trunk was home to many a beast, but the roots were left to be gnawed at by fungus and insects. It was this jealousy that formed The Dark, and what eventually convinced the dark elves to slither into the caverns below the earth, forever splitting the elf-trees.

These are the two most well known cases, but there are other such stories. Of shut-ins driven mad by their own anger, of small villages cursed not by goblins but by prejudice. Still, these cases are rare. The Dark prefers more direct methods.

The dungeon yet lives.

There are no mortals The Dark hates more than adventurers. It is them who interrupt It's work. It is adventurers who slay goblins, and bring light to places that It holds. For them it has created the ultimate threat: the dungeon.

There are places out there one might call a dungeon. Abandoned temples, ruined keeps, caves deep and dark. The Dark might have a presence within them. They might be home to monsters, and adventurers might plunder these places for riches. But they are not true dungeons. A true dungeon is alive.

Deep within the earth they churn, colossal entities of winding corridors, immense danger, and immense riches, each a terrible angler fish for adventurers. These dungeons are explicitly nonsensical. They steal from the world. A dungeon might eat a town, and then a town grows inside of it. They border on the reality of what is real and normal and what is eldritch and arcane. A dungeon might be filled with monsters, mortals, beasts, or whatever the dungeon decided to eat. The dungeons keep them safe and sustained, a minor price to pay to attract their true prey.

From the author.

Lore's over. You can stop reading if that's all you're interested in.

Neurim is my personal fantasy world, a place with all the fantasy tropes endemic to the standard, but with a layer of the strange and alien placed on top. The Dark is a core part of this world, an explanation for why monsters exist. There's a reason I tackled it first. It was the first thing I wrote. I wanted the act of killing monsters to be simple and universally acceptable. Goblins are basically biological robots. Killing them is a moral good. I'm also weird and picky about words in real life, so Neurim gets to be weird and picky too. A monster is an explicit thing, and while a human might be able to be a monster (figurative), they can never be a monster (literal).

Living dungeons are an in universe explanation for the mythic underworld. They are rare, ancient, and dangerous, and reality is allowed to be a bit weird inside of them. There are plenty of normal dungeons that abide the rules of the world in Neurim. There are also complexes of malicious stone that exist to eat adventurers.