6 Things That Only Elders Gods Present At The Birth Of The Universe Will Remember

Remember back when our eternal forms were totally unbounded by the laws of physics? You could have as many tentacles as you wanted.

1. TENTACLES

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Oh man, the tentacles. Remember back when our eternal forms were totally unbounded by the laws of physics? You could have as many tentacles as you wanted. A thousand. A million. Tentacles for days, an ALL-YOU-CAN-HAVE-TENTACLE BUFFET. But then all the sudden we had to propel ourselves through space and support the weight of our planet-devouring teeth and claw open interdimensional rifts in the suffocating boundaries of space/time. Suddenly a million tentacles, while totes cool, were nowhere near as practical as say fifteen or twenty. I mean, by a show of hands, how many of us elders have abandoned tentacles all together? Shame on you. Nothing says “Elder God” like a butt full of teeth and a mouth full of tentacles.

2. APOCALYPTIC VISIONS

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Remember when every other aeon-long dream you had was of the violent death of the cosmos? The same dream over and over -- it was like everyone had only one channel and it just looped that parking-garage episode of Seinfeld over and over. Awful. I mean, I guess it was pretty cool to see how the fabric of reality will melt as the gaping maw of Father Oblivion tears open the center of the Cursed Galaxy and begin to chow down on the dimensions like a stack of Pringles. But it was a total bummer to know from the beginning that this time around “intelligent life” would never attain Elder ascension before consuming themselves into extinction. It was like skipping to the end of a movie where everybody dies. Lame.

3. FREAKING STAR DUST

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Sure, us Elder Gods are master architects of the material world -- manipulating mortal “civilizations” into raising sky-scraping skull-towers in our honor, whittling cold planets into totems of pestilence and despair -- but it wasn't always that way. Remember when matter was basically a metric crap-ton of dust? It was like you put a Pixie stick in your pocket and it broke open and that shit got everywhere. It’s pretty hard to be a destroyer-of-all when there’s nothing to destroy. You think you know boring? Your phone’s dead on the half hour bus-ride to Costco? Try floating aimlessly for billions of years in the miasmic vortex of the dawn of the universe. Luckily that cosmic dust started to gather into little clouds, and sniffing that junk got you high. Nothing takes the harsh off buzz-killing apocalyptic prescience like some sweet sweet nebula.

4. GIANT SPACE SLOTHS

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Cute. Covered in space-moss. DUMB AS BRICKS. Without fail, the first sentient mortals of any new universe are always the space sloths. Drifting through space, latching onto planets like a toddler to a beach-ball, space sloths will suck a sea of primordial goo down in an instant. Whatever. NBD. But if you drift within their telepathing range... be prepared to be entrapped in the most boring conversation you have ever had. Talking to a giant space sloth is like playing ping pong with someone via the postal service. The US Postal Service. The last one I ran into had written a billion-word mystery novel about space-moss. By the time I had traveled the twelve light-years to reach him, he had nearly finished reciting the whole freaking thing. How did it end? With me biting of his head and drinking his blood. Giant space sloths -- the first and only species to be hunted to extinction because they wouldn’t shut up. Sorry not sorry.

5. THE BINDING RITUAL

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Somebody’s always got to be an asshole. It’s why people can’t put good candy out in those unattended bowls on Halloween. Remember when Tygameron the All-Consumer thought he could get away with arranging the stars into constellations of the ancient Skar-Runes to summon Father Oblivion and kick off the Apocalypse early? Typical Tygameron. Some Elder Gods never learn, am I right? Good thing I still remembered the tri-tones of the Binding Chant from the last time we all gathered to exile Tygameron to the cramped-dimension-of-chains-and-rusty-nails. Catchy stuff -- even if you aren’t an Elder God present at the birth of the universe, you can still hear echoes of the Binding Chant in the “music” of those silly art-creating worlds. Better luck next time, Ty-guy.

6. THE GRAND FEAST

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I mean how many life-bearing planets can an Elder God consume in one go? Turns out like a million and a half. When the order to cull the universe emanated from the thousand-eyed wurm coiled around the collapsed star that serves as Oblivion's window into the corporeal, I didn't feel super hungry. I had just had a Milky Way, and was snacking on an asteroid field. But once I got going, oh man were those green worlds good. And the crunchy-sound a trillion souls make as they are torn from their bodies and fed through to the gauntlet of ego-killing that is an Elder’s spirit-pancreas to then emerge as an eternally drifting space ghost? Oh yeah. That’s the good stuff.

Never eaten a planet? Imagine if Ferrero Rocher chocolates were the only place you could get Nutella. And Nutella was a little closer in composition to crack cocaine. You’d eat a lot of Ferrero Rocher. The next Grand Feast is due any day now, and I've got my stretchy pants on. In fact, I've posted up right outside a certain solar system that hosts a certain green and blue marbled planet... Noms.