The Builder

The Builder is a great astral being whose fixation on physical reality drives campaigns of possession, transformation, and dimensional theft. The being active during Jason Asano's lifetime is a replacement for an earlier Builder who was sanctioned, but it inherits the same cosmic function and pursues control through mortal vessels, cults, and engineered realities. Its repeated clashes with Jason Asano turn a remote cosmic threat into one of the defining antagonisms of Jason's life. (Chapters 134, 842, 846)

Biography

Return to Pallimustus and Rimaros

The Builder's interest in Pallimustus first becomes intelligible through the machinery its followers use to sever astral spaces. Unable to coexist directly with physical reality, it recruits cults with gifts of power and has them prepare self-sustaining fragments that can be stolen into a world assembled in the deep astral. This ambition treats inhabited worlds as raw material: the Greenstone operation would have preserved the targeted astral space by inflicting civilisation-ending destruction on the reality anchoring it. (Chapter 134)

Mortal intermediaries are not merely servants but imperfect interfaces. Star seeds gradually overwrite hosts, while stronger preparations convert people into platforms through which the Builder can express its will and adapt their powers. Its vessels nevertheless impose severe constraints. One body is ruined into a feral energy ghoul by power it cannot contain, and the use of Thadwick Mercer produces a volatile, childish expression of the Builder's own personality. Jason's rejection of a star seed and resistance to spiritual domination make him both an affront to the Builder's authority and proof that its possession is not absolute. (Chapters 223, 250–255, 326)

After Jason returns to Pallimustus, the conflict becomes increasingly indirect because the Builder and its agents have already overreached. Jason provokes two violations serious enough that Dawn is permitted to act on behalf of the opposing World-Phoenix, including one use of her unrestricted power. The Builder's flying fortress attack leaves Livaros damaged and entangles its forces with Purity's schemes, but Dawn ultimately destroys the fortress and its diamond-rank threats. Jason then bargains for the Builder's withdrawal, turning its failed vessels and broken campaign into concessions instead of the dominion it sought. (Chapters 448, 516, 557–581)

Yaresh and the messenger war

The withdrawal does not erase what the Builder created. Around Yaresh, native cultists and converted remain in an underground war long after their patron removes its off-world forces and revokes many of the resources sustaining them. A Builder army and its burrowing machines had joined the fight over the brightheart city and its natural array, but the great astral being abandons that investment when the larger Pallimustus campaign ends. The stranded cult must therefore survive as a remnant rather than an extension of unlimited cosmic backing. (Chapters 582, 685, 694)

That abandonment reshapes the Builder's conflict with Jason. The surviving cult calls him the Defier because he repeatedly stopped their patron and took part of its power, while their desperate alliance with the Yaresh expedition reveals how much the Builder's grand strategy has narrowed. Their reality-altering resistance to the natural array remains useful, but their conversions have desecrated living bodies and helped create the population later claimed by Undeath. The Builder's methods continue producing consequences even when the Builder itself has moved on. (Chapters 750, 753, 763)

Later revelations place that destructiveness within an older cosmic dispute. The current Builder was installed after the original was sanctioned and brought into the post-Sundering pacts, whose loopholes it follows only flexibly. It insists that restoring the Cosmic Throne will correct the other great astral beings' mistake, even while its pettiness and demand for deference survive in mortal form. During Jason's transcendence, the Builder joins the struggle over the throne through a heavily modified messenger vessel and ultimately participates in restoring the cosmic authority that will once again constrain it. (Chapters 842, 846, 869)

Appearance and personality

The Builder has no single inherent mortal appearance. It is encountered through bodies made or seized for that purpose: Thadwick's familiar human form, Shako's much stronger prime-vessel body, and later a messenger reconstructed with alabaster flesh, silver wings, amber eyes, and a toga of interlocking metal shards. The variation is functional rather than cosmetic, because each body determines how much power and what kind of temperament can reach physical reality. (Chapters 251–252, 326, 567, 869)

Its central trait is possessive fascination with material existence. The Builder does not promote an ideal in the manner of many great astral beings; it wants to make, take, and refashion reality itself. That ambition is paired with impatience, vanity, and an insistence on respect. In Thadwick's form those qualities become openly petulant, demonstrating that a vessel translates cosmic will through a mortal personality rather than serving as a perfectly neutral mouthpiece. (Chapters 134, 326, 846)

The Builder can be calculating and ruthlessly pragmatic despite those emotional weaknesses. It empowers cults for years, abandons them when they stop serving its larger purpose, and accepts bargains quickly when the terms advance its interests. Jason repeatedly exploits the gap between that confidence and the rules governing great astral beings, turning the Builder's certainty that it controls the exchange into binding concessions. (Chapters 134, 567, 694)

Magic and abilities

Cosmic authority and reality forging

The Builder's authority is aligned with creating, modifying, and imposing structure on reality. At cosmic scale this allows it to anchor stolen astral spaces into an artificial world and supply knowledge for devices that manipulate dimensional boundaries. The same affinity underlies world engineers, clockwork systems, flying fortresses, and bodies rebuilt as fusions of flesh and artifice. Jason later uses the portion of Builder authority he stole to forge structures within his soul realm, confirming that the power is not merely destructive but fundamentally architectural. (Chapters 134, 138, 810)

Authority does not amount to unrestricted action. Great astral beings are constrained by cosmic agreements, sanctions, and the incompatibility between their full existence and ordinary physical reality. The Builder consequently needs followers, vessels, and prepared dimensional conditions. Overstepping those rules grants rival powers compensating opportunities, as when its agent's violations allow Dawn to intervene. Restoration of the Cosmic Throne also returns a higher, neutral oversight that the post-Sundering pacts had inadequately replaced. (Chapters 448, 842, 869)

Star seeds, conversion, and vessels

Star seeds are the Builder's principal means of taking hold of mortal agents. They transform a host, protect themselves from ordinary detection, and gradually supplant personality and will. Volunteers can surrender part of themselves while retaining a measure of identity, but unwilling hosts may be almost entirely overwritten. More comprehensive conversion produces bodies whose abilities can be reshaped under the guidance of a vessel, turning individuals into specialised components of a coordinated force. (Chapters 134, 223, 251–255)

The process has significant limits and costs. A body may be unable to carry enough power for the Builder's intended work, and excessive power can permanently destroy it. A vessel also affects how the Builder thinks and behaves: Shako is a capable prime vessel, while Thadwick makes the Builder impulsive and immature. Strong souls can resist or reject the intrusion, and Jason's repeated victories demonstrate that transcendent origin does not make a star seed or its maker infallible. (Chapters 223, 250, 326, 567)

Cults, constructs, and strategic reach

The Builder expands its reach by providing mortal organisations with power and otherworldly technical knowledge rather than a moral doctrine. Its adherents field converted soldiers, construct armies, dimensional machinery, burrowing engines, and mobile fortresses. These assets allow operations across many worlds and astral spaces without requiring the Builder to appear directly, but they depend on local labour, supply, and leadership. Once the Builder withdraws its non-native forces and resources, the remaining Pallimustus cultists are powerful but isolated. (Chapters 134, 138, 516, 694)

This distributed strategy can outlast a failed campaign, yet it also fragments responsibility and control. Cultists continue fighting, converting bodies, and pursuing survival after the patron's priorities change, leaving catastrophes that other factions must resolve. The Builder's greatest practical weakness is therefore inseparable from its preferred method: every layer that makes intervention possible also creates a vessel, agent, or bargain that can fail, distort its intentions, or be turned against it. (Chapters 326, 567, 694, 763)

Relationships

• Jason Asano: Jason rejects the Builder's star seed, repeatedly frustrates its campaigns, steals a fragment of its authority, and binds it through bargains. The cult's title of “Defier” recognises that their conflict has become a persistent challenge to the Builder's presumed supremacy. (Chapters 223, 567, 750, 810)
• Dawn: Dawn represents the World-Phoenix's opposition to the Builder's attacks on dimensional integrity. The Builder's agents overstep their permitted role often enough to grant her escalating intervention, culminating in the destruction of its flying fortress. (Chapters 448, 557)
• Thadwick Mercer: Thadwick is prepared and used as a vessel, but his personality makes him one of the Builder's worst interfaces. The possession magnifies his petulance into the cosmic being's behaviour and leaves lasting devastation in Thadwick's identity. (Chapters 251–252, 326, 846)
• Shako: Shako is a much more capable prime vessel whose body lets the Builder enter negotiations inside Jason's soul realm. Even his power is limited by cosmic strictures, and the World-Phoenix can suppress him when acting through Dawn. (Chapters 326, 567)
• Purity: Purity's institutions become entangled with the Builder's infiltrators and campaigns. Their overlapping deceptions amplify the damage around Greenstone and Livaros, although neither side proves a dependable instrument of the other. (Chapters 134, 189–190, 516)
• Raythe: Raythe explains the history of the original Builder's sanction and the current one's weak compliance with the cosmic pacts. Both later participate in the gathering around the restored Cosmic Throne. (Chapters 842, 869)